It was always raining in the memory.
Seven-year-old Harley stood barefoot in the hallway, the floorboards cold beneath her heels. The house felt cavernous, darker than it should have been. Only the kitchen light remained on, throwing a long, sickly yellow trapezoid across the floor and stretching the shadows into jagged shapes.
She clutched her teddy bear to her chest, the faux fur matted under her white-knuckled grip. She didn't know why she was awake, only that the silence had been broken by something "wrong."
Then came the voices. They weren't shouting; that would have been easier to understand. They were quiet, controlled, and heavy with a kind of danger Harley couldn't yet name.
"...You don't understand what you're asking," her father said.
A second voice answered—sharp and cold as a razor blade. "You don't understand what happens if you refuse."
Harley froze. She stopped breathing, trying to turn into a statue there in the shadows.
"She's just a child," her father pleaded.
Silence followed—thick and suffocating. Then, a two-word death sentence: "I know."
The rhythm of footsteps approached. Harley's heart hammered against her ribs, a wild bird trapped in a cage. When her father finally stepped into the hallway and saw her, his eyes blew wide. It wasn't the look of a man caught; it was the look of a man seeing his world end.
He didn't scream for her to hide. He didn't run. He just looked at her and whispered, "Harley."
His voice was terrifyingly gentle, a lullaby in a nightmare. But his eyes were screaming a single word: Run.
The sound followed instantly: a sharp, mechanical crack that was too loud for the small hallway. Her father collapsed, the movement sudden and graceless. Harley didn't scream; her throat had turned to stone.
A man stepped over the threshold. He was tall, moving with a stillness that felt predatory. He didn't panic at the sight of a witness. Instead, he tilted his head, studying her like an unexpected complication; something inconvenient that happened to be breathing.
He stayed there for a heartbeat, memorizing her face. Then, as if satisfied, he simply turned and walked back into the darkness. He didn't need to chase her. He knew the memory would do the work for him.
--
Harley lurched awake, the transition from the past to the present feeling like a physical blow.
Her apartment was silent, but her hands were still locked in a death grip around the edge of her blanket. Grayhaven. She was in Grayhaven. She was safe.
She stood and walked to the window, the rhythm of the rain tapping against the glass mimicking the cadence of the memory. It never changed. It never stopped. Resting her forehead against the cool pane, she watched the city lights blur through the downpour.
"...I remember," she whispered to the empty room.
__
Below, on the rain-slicked street, Isaiah sat in the dim glow of his dashboard. He watched her window, a silent sentry in the dark. He had been there that night, too—a shadow outside the house, watching a killer walk away.
He stayed because he knew the one thing Harley hadn't realized yet: The man in the hallway hadn't spared her out of mercy. He had seen Isaiah watching from the street, smiled, and left her as a message.