The silence that usually came with the night was shattered by the whispers of neighbors.
Blue and red lights from the police cars painted the street in a distorted rainbow of chaos. An ambulance stood in front of the house, its back doors open.
A young girl sat inside, wrapped in a thin blanket while a nurse treated her trembling hands.
She stared straight ahead.
The police sirens became distant. The murmurs faded. The flashing lights blurred.
All she could hear was her own heartbeat, loud and violen t as if it wanted to burst out of her chest.
She didn't feel the pain.
Even as the nurse pressed cotton against her skin, she felt nothing.
Slowly, she shifted her gaze.
Across the street. But as soon as she did a voice call out.
" Who are we?" The voice that only rang in her ears.
Her gaze was shifted back to where it was before.
Behind the wooden gate of the neighboring house stood two figures.
A girl her age.
And a younger boy.
Their eyes were fixed on her.
Their white sleeping clothes were stained with something dark.
Something only the three of them knew the origin of.
"Who are we?"
A voice echoed in her mind again as their eyes luck in one another.
It sounded like both of them speaking at once.
"Who are we?"
The world around her dissolved.
In the next second, she was standing in front of them.
The girl smiled faintly.
The boy tilted his head.
"We are the siblings."
Their voices overlapped.
"We've got your back."
It didn't sound like comfort.
It sounded like a promise.
Or a threat.
Their gaze swallowed her whole
She gasped and opened her eyes.
Darkness.
Her bedroom ceiling.
It had been sixteen years.
And the nightmare still hunted her.