The café was quieter than usual. The amber light from the old chandelier cast long shadows across the tables. Emma stirred her coffee absentmindedly, her eyes darting toward the door.
"Sam's late," she muttered, breaking the silence.
"Weird. He's never late," Mark said, checking his phone. He typed out a quick text and frowned when no reply came.
"Maybe he overslept," Chloe offered, though she sounded unsure. They always met here at 7 PM. It was their thing—a ritual that had persisted since college.
By the next morning, Emma's concern turned into unease. Sam's phone was disconnected, his apartment was empty, and his boss claimed no one named Sam had ever worked there.
"That's impossible," Emma insisted when they met again. "We were just with him two nights ago!"
But the others didn't seem to share her conviction. Even Chloe hesitated. "Emma… are you sure? I don't remember him being there."
Emma froze. "What are you talking about? We've known Sam for years!"
Mark rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, I don't want to freak you out, but… I can't picture his face right now."
Two days later, Chloe was gone.
Emma discovered her absence when she arrived at Chloe's apartment to find strangers living there. Her heart pounded as they claimed to have lived there for years. Mark was already losing his grip.
"We're imagining things," he said over the phone, his voice trembling. "Maybe it's some kind of… mass hysteria?"
Emma didn't believe it. She couldn't. Chloe's laugh still echoed in her mind; Sam's goofy grin was burned into her memory. But when she searched for their photos, her camera roll was blank.
She dug out an old yearbook from college. Their names weren't there. She thumbed through her text messages—empty threads.
Desperation clawed at her. Emma forced Mark to meet her at the old theater on the edge of town, the one they'd broken into last year on a drunken dare.
"I don't think this is a good idea," Mark muttered, staring at the decaying marquee above. The words had long since faded, leaving only black smudges on the pale brick.
"It has to be connected," Emma insisted, gripping a flashlight. "This is where it started."
The air inside was heavy, oppressive. Dust swirled in their beams of light. As they ventured deeper, Mark grabbed her arm.
"Do you hear that?" he whispered.
Emma nodded. Faint whispers echoed from the walls, overlapping, like dozens of voices speaking at once.
They found the source in the main auditorium. The stage was cracked and splintered, but at its center stood a figure—a shadow without a body, its form shifting like smoke.
"You've come back," it hissed.
Emma stepped forward, heart hammering. "What did you do to them?"
The shadow rippled, its voice like nails scraping glass. "They are mine now. Forgotten. Erased. This is the price of your trespass."
Mark tried to run, but the entity's tendrils lashed out, pulling him to the ground.
"Wait!" Emma screamed. "Take me instead! Leave him!"
The shadow paused, its formless body quivering. "A noble offer… but unnecessary."
Mark's scream was cut short, and Emma watched in horror as his outline dissolved into mist.
Emma was alone.
The town carried on as if nothing had happened. She tried to remind people of her friends—showed them photos that no longer existed, told them stories no one else remembered.
"You must be mistaken," her coworker said one day, a polite smile on her face.
But Emma wasn't mistaken. Every night, the whispers followed her home. Every morning, her reflection seemed fainter, her own memories slipping away piece by piece.
She went back to the theatre, standing in the silence where her friends had vanished.
"I won't forget you," she whispered.
The whispers answered: "But they will forget you."