The keys dangled from my trembling fingers, catching the hallway's sickly fluorescent light. I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Because what stood before me simply couldn't exist.
Aarohi.
My dead best friend, standing in my rain-soaked hallway, water pooling beneath her feet.
Lightning flashed through the narrow window at the end of the corridor, illuminating her face in harsh white light. The smile—too wide, stretching her lips unnaturally. Those eyes—unblinking, fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin crawl. And her chest... perfectly still. No rise and fall of breath.
I backed away, my shoulder blades hitting the wall behind me. "You can't be real."
Thunder crashed outside, rattling the cheap light fixtures. Aarohi's smile never faltered.
"Aren't you going to invite me in, Divya?" Her voice was exactly as I remembered—that slight lilt, the way she always made my name sound musical.
My apartment door hung open behind me, revealing the chaos of my life: case files strewn across every surface, half-empty wine bottles crowding my coffee table. The walls were covered with framed photos—frozen moments of Aarohi and me in college. Her bright eyes and genuine smile captured forever, mocking the thing that stood before me now.
Five years. Five years since I watched her being dragged into that car. Five years of nightmares where I reached for her hand but always fell short. Five years of explaining to everyone—my therapist, my colleagues, my parents—how I wasn't crazy for insisting there was more to her abduction than what the police reports said.
Five years of Detective Roshan's weekly calls—the only person who believed me when I said I saw something inhuman in that car with her.
"Are you just going to stand there?" Aarohi tilted her head, rain dripping from her dark hair onto her shoulders. "I came all this way to see you."
My training as a clinical psychologist kicked in—analyzing, rationalizing. This was a psychotic break. Stress-induced hallucination. Grief was finally consuming me whole.
But then she stepped closer, and the scent hit me—jasmine and sandalwood, the perfume she always wore. The same one I kept a bottle of in my bathroom cabinet, unable to throw it away.
"How—" My voice cracked. "How are you here?"
"I promised I'd always come back for you, didn't I?" She stepped past me into my apartment, her movements too smooth, too fluid. "Remember? Junior year, after that disastrous date with what's-his-name? I promised I'd never leave you alone."
Water dripped from her clothes onto my hardwood floor, but when I looked down, there were no footprints. Nothing to mark her passage across the floor.
"You're dead," I whispered. "I saw them take you. I saw—"
"You were late." Her voice held no accusation, just a statement of fact. "You were supposed to meet me at seven, but you got caught up with that paper for Professor Matthews. The one about trauma and memory formation."
My blood turned to ice. How could she know that? I'd never told anyone why I was late that night—the guilt too overwhelming to voice aloud.
"I ran after the car," I said, the memories flooding back with sickening clarity. "I called the police while running. I knew I couldn't catch up, but I ran until—"
"Until you fell and hit your head on the curb." Aarohi finished my sentence, reaching out to touch the small scar near my hairline. Her fingers were cold—too cold—and slightly... wrong. Like skin stretched over something that wasn't quite bone.
I flinched away. "How do you know that? The police report didn't mention—"
"I know everything about you, Divya." She moved to the wall of photos, studying them with curious intensity. "Like how you keep the air conditioning at exactly 68 degrees because anything warmer gives you nightmares. Or how you still sleep with Mr. Whiskers, that ratty stuffed cat your dad won at a carnival when you were seven."
Each detail felt like torture. Things only the real Aarohi would know. Things we'd shared in late-night confessions and tearful breakdowns.
"What happened to you?" I finally asked, keeping the kitchen island between us as she wandered my apartment. "That night. What happened after they took you?"
For a split second—so brief I almost missed it—her smile faltered. Something alien flickered behind her eyes, something cold and calculating and definitely not Aarohi. Then the mask snapped back into place.
"I'll tell you everything," she promised. "But first, how about some tea? You still take yours with honey and lemon, right?"
She moved to the kitchen with unnerving familiarity, reaching for the exact cabinet where I kept my mugs. Her sleeve rode up as she stretched, revealing a hospital bracelet around her wrist. White plastic, with today's date printed in stark black letters: BLACKWOOD PSYCHIATRIC FACILITY.
My breath caught. Blackwood—the same facility where they'd conducted Aarohi's autopsy five years ago. After... After that horrible incident.
---
The night it happened played on an endless loop in my nightmares. Running late to meet her. The screech of tires. Watching helplessly as shadowy figures dragged her into a van. My legs pumping beneath me as I chased them down the street, screaming her name until my voice gave out. The fall. Blood on the pavement. And then, darkness.
The police had their theory: another unfortunate abduction. The case closed when they found what they claimed was her body three weeks later. Only Detective Roshan believed me when I insisted there was more to it. Something is wrong with how it all happened. Something unnatural about the way her abductors moved.
His weekly calls became my lifeline in the aftermath. A tether to sanity as I tried to bury myself in my work as a clinical psychologist with a reputation for helping trauma victims, yet unable to even heal from my own trauma of witnessing Aarohi's abduction five years ago.
If only I hadn't been running late that night.
---
"What's that?" I pointed to the bracelet, trying to keep my voice steady.
Again, that momentary glitch—her head tilting at an unnatural angle, neck bending further than humanly possible. "Just a formality," she said, her voice suddenly flat. "I came back for you, Divya. I promised I would never leave you alone."
The landline phone rang, shattering the moment. Detective Roshan's name flashed on the caller ID. He never called this late unless—
Aarohi moved with impossible speed, yanking the phone cord from the wall. "No interruptions tonight," she said, that too-wide smile returning. "We have so much catching up to do."
The lights flickered as another wave of thunder rolled across the city. Through the rain-streaked window, I caught a glimpse of movement—a silhouette watching from across the street, perfectly still despite the downpour.
"Is someone out there?" I moved toward the window.
"No one's out there," Aarohi answered too quickly. When I turned back to her, she was standing much closer than she had been a second ago, though I hadn't heard her move. "Just shadows playing tricks."
I pressed my face to the glass, scanning the dark street below, but the figure was gone—if it had ever been there at all.
The night deepened around us as Aarohi moved from photo to photo along my wall, studying each one intently. In the half-light, I noticed something unsettling—she was mimicking the expressions from the photos, practicing each smile and head tilt like an actor rehearsing for a role.
My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number:
It's not her. Don't let it stay after midnight.
I quickly deleted the message when Aarohi looked my way.
"They're coming," she whispered suddenly, staring at the blank wall with unfocused eyes.
"Who's coming?" The hairs on my arms stood on end.
She turned to me with that too-wide smile, her head cocked at that impossible angle.
"Don't worry," she said, reaching for my hand with those too-cold fingers. "I'll protect you this time."
The storm raged outside, lightning casting her shadow against my wall—a shadow that didn't quite match her form, with too many angles and limbs that shouldn't exist.
And she still hadn't blinked.
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