The last time I saw my sister, she was walking into the woods with a man who didn't exist.
No footprints. No name. No trace of him anywhere.
The police called it a runaway case. My mother called it a tragedy. I called it what it was—a lie.
Because two weeks later, I saw her again.
It was past midnight, the kind of silence that makes even the smallest sounds echo. I was lying in bed, half-dreaming, half-listening to the branches tapping against the glass. Then came a different sound—a softer, deliberate rhythm.
A knock.
I sat up so fast my vision blurred. My breath hitched as I turned toward the window. And there she was.
Lena.
Barefoot. Hair tangled with leaves. Skin pale as frost beneath the porch light. She stood outside my window, her head tilted in that way she always did when she was teasing me. Smiling.
Knocking.
I should have screamed. I should have run.
Instead, I reached for the lock.
And that's when she whispered my name.
That's when I knew—whatever was standing outside my window that night wasn't my sister anymore.
"Lena?" My voice came out hoarse, barely more than a breath.
She didn't answer. Just kept knocking, her nails clicking lightly against the glass, slow and steady. She was smiling, but her eyes... they were wrong. Darker than I remembered. Deeper. Like staring into a place where light didn't exist.
I swallowed hard. "Mom—"
She pressed her fingers to the window, cutting me off. I watched as they slid down the glass, leaving streaks of something dark behind. Something that wasn't just dirt.
Blood.
The air left my lungs. I scrambled backward, my body instinctively knowing what my brain refused to accept. This wasn't Lena. Couldn't be.
Because I was there the night she disappeared. I saw the way the trees swallowed her whole. I heard the way she screamed.
And I knew, in the deepest part of me, that my sister was never coming back.
At least, not as herself.
But the thing outside my window—it wore her face. And it wanted in.