The night was heavy with rain, the kind that soaked the bones of the city and washed the filth into its gutters. Harrow's End had always been a graveyard of forgotten dreams, a place where shadows lived longer than people. Tonight, the shadows were alive.
Inside a warehouse near the docks, a man struggled against the wire biting into his wrists. The chair he was bound to creaked with every movement, but it didn't matter. The metal cut deeper each time he fought, and the more he bled, the weaker he became. His breaths came short, ragged, and desperate.
"Please," he whispered hoarsely, as if the word could melt the darkness around him. "I've done nothing wrong."
The reply was silence at first. Then came the sound of footsteps — measured, deliberate, each one echoing against the dripping concrete walls. A woman emerged from the shadows, her hood pulled low, her coat swaying like a funeral shroud. She circled him slowly, like a predator too patient to strike.
"Nothing wrong," she murmured. Her voice was soft, almost delicate, yet it slithered into his chest and settled there like ice. "That's what you tell yourself, isn't it? That you've lived clean. That the past can't bleed into the present."
His eyes darted up at her. "I don't know you," he said, his voice shaking. "Whatever you think I did, you've got the wrong man."
A laugh escaped her lips, sharp and humorless. She stopped directly in front of him, pulling the hood back to reveal a pale face framed by dark, damp strands of hair. Her eyes glittered — not with madness, but with purpose.
"You don't know me," she said. "But you knew him."
The man froze. "H-him?"
The woman leaned down, her mouth inches from his ear. She whispered a name, and his entire body recoiled as though he'd been branded.
"Fayette."
The color drained from his face. His lips trembled, but no sound came. His silence was an answer in itself.
She smiled, though it was not the smile of joy, but of cruelty earned and rehearsed. "Ah. You remember. You all remember. You just pretend you don't. That's the game you played while he was alive, and it's the game you played when you let him die. But I don't forget."
He shook his head violently. "No. No, listen, that was years ago. I—I was told to— I didn't have a choice!"
Her expression hardened, as though the confession offended her more than denial. "There's always a choice. And you chose wrong."
From beneath her coat, the blade appeared. A carving knife, its edge gleaming faintly in the sparse light. She turned it slowly in her hand, letting him see it, letting the terror bloom across his face.
"Wait, please—" he choked, tears mixing with sweat. "I swear, I never meant for Fayette to—"
The knife moved before his words could finish. A swift, decisive thrust. The sound of steel splitting flesh echoed in the cavernous room. His body jerked, a wet gasp tore from his throat, and then silence — only the rain dripping through holes in the roof above.
His head slumped forward, lifeless.
The woman straightened, wiping the blade carefully with a white cloth before sliding it back into her coat. Her movements were calm, precise — the ritual of someone who had rehearsed this scene a thousand times in her mind.
From her pocket, she drew a small slip of paper. On it, written in jagged, black ink, were four words. She placed it gently on the man's chest, pressing it down with two fingers as though leaving behind a blessing.
DO YOU REMEMBER FAYETTE?
She stepped back, admiring the quiet horror of her work. Not the blood, not the death — those were only means. It was the message that mattered.
Her hood rose again. She vanished into the shadows, her footsteps swallowed by the rain.
---
It was almost dawn when the patrol car screeched to a halt outside the warehouse. Two officers pushed the door open and were met by the stench of iron and rot. Their flashlights cut through the gloom, and then one beam froze.
"Jesus Christ," one of them muttered.
The body sat slumped in the chair, eyes wide and glassy, the note still perched on his chest like a tombstone inscription.
The officer bent down, squinting at the paper. The words leapt out at him, sharp and deliberate.
His lips moved as he read them aloud:
"Do you remember Fayette?"
The other officer frowned. "What the hell does that mean?"
No one answered.
But somewhere far from the crime scene, in the suffocating quiet of a small apartment, a phone began to ring. Its shrill tone cut through the early morning air, demanding attention.
On the other end of that call, a detective would be told there had been a murder. A detective who had spent his whole life burying the name Fayette in the darkest corners of his memory.
And when he arrived at that warehouse, when his eyes fell on the note — his world would begin to unravel.
Because the dead had begun to speak.
And their voices would not stop until every secret was unearthed.
---