38 Bellwood Lane was not on any map Elara owned. The GPS couldn't locate it. The roads around it weren't paved. And when she finally arrived, feet crunching gravel, heart like a drum in her chest, she understood why.
It wasn't a house.
It was a facility.
Long abandoned. Its gate is broken, hanging sideways like a jaw unhinged. The sign above the front entrance still read:
BELLWOOD INSTITUTE FOR YOUTH AND ADOLESCENT CARE
Established 1972 - Closed 2006
The place smelled of rot and time. A forgotten orphanage turned psychiatric ward. The kind of place rumors grow teeth in.
Elara hesitated at the threshold.
A thin fog rolled across the ground like it remembered being summoned.
Her phone had no service.
And still, she stepped inside.
The first floor had caved in partially near the far wing. Graffiti bled across the walls, names, threats, crude sketches of demons or girls, sometimes both. Windows had been boarded up, but wind still found its way in. It whispered Elara's name through every hallway.
She followed the only light, a faint and flickering one.
It came from the stairwell.
She took the stairs slowly, each one groaning under her weight. The air grew colder the higher she climbed.
At the third-floor landing, the hallway was lit by lanterns. Actual lanterns, old-fashioned and glass-shielded.
Someone had prepared this.
And at the end of the hallway, a door.
Slightly ajar.
She pushed it open.
Anna stood by the window.
A single chair between them.
A mirror behind her.
Not large, just a square pane, broken in one corner, hung crookedly.
"Hello, Elara," Anna said softly, not turning.
Elara stepped in.
"Why here?"
Anna finally looked back.
Her face was tired. But not cruel.
"You were never supposed to find this place," she said. "But you did. Just like you found me."
"You sent the postcards."
"I had to. You've been walking in a circle your whole life. I wanted to help you draw a line instead."
Elara glanced at the mirror.
It remained dark.
"Why did my mother lie?" she asked. "Why did she hide you?"
Anna moved toward the mirror, her hand grazing the cracked glass like it was an old friend.
"She didn't just hide me. She gave me away."
"Why?"
Anna took a breath. "Because I was born before she married your father. I was the mistake she couldn't explain to a man who only loved order. A man who wanted daughters but only if they fit inside his story."
Elara swallowed.
"So she put you in this place?"
"No," Anna said. "She put me with a family. They sent me here when the voices started."
Elara's chest tightened.
"The same voice I've been hearing?"
Anna nodded.
"I called her 'The Watching Girl.' But you called her Mara."
Elara felt dizzy. The air here was too heavy.
"She's not real," she said.
Anna turned to her sharply.
"You still believe that?"
"I faced her. In the cabin. I ended her."
Anna's lips twitched into something between a smile and a warning.
"You ended your guilt, Elara. But Mara… she's more than that."
She walked to a desk near the wall and picked up a stack of photos. Handed them to Elara.
They were drawings.
Child-like.
Over and over again, the same girl.
Black eyes. Long mouth. Standing behind people. In the corners of rooms. Reflected in puddles. Mirrors.
Anna tapped one of the images. "That's mine. Age eleven. This one…" She flipped to the next. "Yours. From Isla's journal."
They were identical.
"I think she's an echo," Anna said. "Of something older than us."
"A demon?"
"A wound," Anna replied. "Passed down. Fed by silence and shame. Every generation has someone who carries it."
She looked at Elara.
"You were strong enough to face her. But not destroy her."
"Then what was the point?"
"To remember," Anna said. "So the wound stops growing."
Elara took a shaky breath.
"Why bring me here? Why now?"
Anna stepped aside.
Revealed a second chair.
A second mirror, tall and clean, leaning against the wall, was covered by a cloth.
"Because I want you to see what I saw."
Elara's gut twisted.
"I don't want to—"
"You have to."
Anna lifted the cloth.
The mirror shimmered.
Elara stepped forward.
The reflection was wrong from the start.
It wasn't her face.
Not fully.
The cheekbones are sharper. The eyes are darker. Something moved behind the glass.
A girl.
Not Elara.
Not Isla.
Not Anna.
But all of them… combined.
"Mara," Elara whispered.
She stepped back.
The reflection did not.
It stayed at the glass, lips moving.
No sound.
Anna approached slowly. Calm.
"I come here sometimes," she said. "To remind myself she's still in the walls. Not just of this building. Of us."
Elara turned away. "I don't want her back."
"She never left."
They sat in silence for a while.
Two sisters. Two survivors.
Two halves of a broken mirror.
Elara finally asked, "Why did she choose me?"
Anna looked down.
"She chooses the one who remembers last."
Elara stood. "I need to go."
Anna nodded. "There's one more thing."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a box.
Inside a recording tape. Old. Labeled in smudged ink:
"MARA // Session 12 — 1997"
Anna looked her in the eye.
"It's from my last therapy session before they transferred me out of Bellwood. I haven't listened in years. But I think you should."
Elara took it, her fingers shaking.
Outside, the night had fully swallowed the sky.
Elara climbed into her car and drove.
The tape sat on the passenger seat like a relic.
When she reached home, she locked the door. Drew the curtains. Plugged in an old cassette player she hadn't touched in years.
The tape clicked.
Static.
Then a voice crackled and high-pitched.
Anna. A child.
"She says I should tell you what I did."
A pause.
"But I didn't do anything. She did. She watches in the mirror. She smiles when I cry."
"What's her name?" the therapist asked.
"I don't think she has one."
"Then what should we call her?"
(Pause)
"Elara."
Elara's skin turned to ice.
The tape continued.
"She wasn't born yet. But I see her in my dreams. She tells me she's coming."
The therapist sounded confused. "Elara isn't real."
"Not yet."
Elara stopped the tape.
Heart pounding.
Mouth dry.
She didn't sleep that night.
The next morning, her phone rang.
Margaret.
Elara stared at it for a long time before answering.
"Hello?"
"Did you find her?" Margaret's voice was fragile.
"Yes."
Silence.
"Did she tell you everything?"
"Yes."
Another pause.
"I never stopped loving her," Margaret whispered. "But I was afraid of what she might awaken in you."
"She didn't awaken Mara," Elara said. "You did. When you buried everything."
Margaret said nothing.
"I forgive you," Elara said. "But I won't forget."
And then she hung up.
That afternoon, Elara went to the lake again.
The same one she used to visit with Isla.
The water was still.
The sky opened.
She sat by the edge with a journal and began to write.
Not to Mara.
Not to her mother.
To herself.
I am not your shadow.
I am not what happened to us.
I am the girl who returned.
I am the voice that never went silent.
That night, she burned the last painting of Mara.
She watched the flames eat the lines.
The mouth.
The eyes.
The shadow.
But in the mirror behind her
A flicker.
Just a blink.
Gone before she could turn.