At night, the dreams come.
They're never the same, but always familiar.
A field of silver grass under a starless sky. A woman in white with no face. A whisper in my ear I can never remember when I wake.
And always—always—the sound of crying.
Sometimes it's a child.
Sometimes it's me.
I keep a notebook under my pillow, one the other kids don't know about. I fill it with sketches of what I see. Shadows with wings. Eyes without faces. Symbols that burn even when I draw them lightly.
I don't understand any of it.
But it feels like me.
Like something I'm not supposed to forget.
At school, Jonah's been acting strange.
He watches me more now. Not in a creepy way, just… carefully. Like he's waiting for something.
Today during lunch, he asked, "Do you ever feel like you're not who people think you are?"
I froze with my fork halfway to my mouth.
"Yes," I said softly.
He leaned closer. "Me too."
He told me about the burn mark on his arm. How it appeared one night after a storm, shaped like a spiral. How sometimes he hears things—voices in static, in wind.
I didn't laugh. I couldn't.
Because I'd seen the same spiral. On the girl in my dreams. Etched into the floor in one of my sketches.
And once… once, I swear I saw it glowing on my own hand.
I told him that.
He didn't blink.
That night, I went home and stared at my palm for an hour.
Nothing.
No glow. No mark.
But I felt it.
Something was waiting beneath the skin.
Something old.
Something watching.
The next day, Jonah didn't come to school.
No call.
No explanation.
Just… gone.
And the silence that followed?
It wasn't just quiet anymore.
It was wrong.