Mara woke to the absence of noise.
It was not silence — silence had its own kind of weight, a breath held in the air, the pause before words. This was something worse. It was the kind of absence that gnawed at the edges of her awareness, as if the world around her had simply evaporated. She sat upright, disoriented, sweat clinging to her spine, the room spinning in the quiet.
No crickets. No cars. No distant hum of life or the usual buzz of electric wiring. Nothing.
Just her heart, thundering in her ears.
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It blinked red, 1:13 a.m.
The same time as the night before.
And the night before that.
Her pulse quickened as the same pattern settled around her like a thick fog. The air felt too still, as though the town itself had been drained of life. The walls pressed inward, as if holding its breath — waiting for something.
She reached for the recorder, fingers shaky.
"1:13 a.m. Woken again. No environmental sound detected. Town appears inert… again."
Thud.
A knock. Low, dull, wet. It came from behind the wall, not the door. Not from the hallway. It came from within.
She froze. The sound echoed in the pit of her stomach.
Thud.
Thud.
Each strike was deliberate, like a warning. A test.
She waited. Her body tensed, her skin crawling as the silence stretched taut, filling the room with something thick and oppressive. Her breath caught. She turned her head to the wall behind her bed. The wallpaper was cracked in places. Some strips of it had peeled back, leaving pale, yellowed drywall exposed.
The knocks came again.
Thud. Thud.
Urgent now. Like a request. Or a demand.
Mara stood slowly, careful not to disturb the delicate balance of stillness around her. Each movement seemed too loud, too sharp. As she turned to face the wall, she could hear the sound of her breath — ragged and shallow — as it filled the room. Every nerve in her body screamed to turn around, to run, to leave. But she couldn't.
The knocking continued. A deep, thudding rhythm that sent shivers down her spine.
She stepped closer. Her hand reached out for the wall, fingers brushing against the rough surface of the peeling wallpaper. The air grew colder. The moisture in the room felt thicker, like the very fabric of the motel was soaking up the silence.
And then, just as her palm pressed against the wall, she heard it.
A whisper. Soft, too soft to be certain. But it wasn't the wind. There was no wind. It was something… else.
"You brought it back…"
Mara jerked away, twisting around, scanning the room in a flash. Her heart was pounding in her chest. But the room was empty. Nothing but the shadows that stretched too far in the corners, and the cold light of the blinking clock.
Her reflection in the dresser mirror caught her eye.
It hadn't moved.
It stood still, watching her with hollow eyes, its face a frozen mask. She blinked. Her pulse surged in her throat. She whipped her head to the side again, but her reflection stayed still — unmoving, like it was waiting for her to act.
And then, impossibly, it blinked.
The movement was too slow, too deliberate. A beat too late.
Mara's breath caught in her throat.
Then it smiled.
A faint, almost regretful smile that made her stomach lurch.
She staggered back.
"No," she whispered. "Not now. Not you."
The reflection didn't move. It stayed frozen in the glass, its smile fading slowly. The eyes, wide and dark, watched her with too much knowing.
Trembling, Mara turned away, forcing herself to look at the wall again. The knocking had resumed — faster now, more frantic. It was coming from inside the plaster, just below her hand.
Thud.
Thud.
She could feel it in her bones.
She crossed the room, each step creaking against the decaying wood floor. The wall near the nightstand bulged slightly, the paper stretched and puffed out like it was alive. As if something was pushing from the inside. Something... or someone. Her heart raced as her gaze traced the curve of the bulge.
And then she saw it.
Claw marks. Faint but unmistakable. Long, dragging scratches that marred the wallpaper beneath the surface. They weren't made by a tool. These were gouges. Raking. Something had tried to get out.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Mara pressed her palm against the warm wall.
The pulse beneath her hand intensified, rhythmic and steady. Then — she felt it. A faint tremor.
And then… the voice.
The voice that had haunted her dreams. Her sister's voice. Lydia. It crackled out from the recorder she had set on the nightstand, clear as day:
"You left me in the fire, Mara…"
"No." Mara spun around, clutching her recorder tightly. "Not now. Not you."
"You ran."
Her breath hitched. The room was getting smaller, tighter, as if the walls were closing in. Her skin flushed hot and cold in waves, a tight knot forming in her chest.
She backed away, her pulse echoing in her ears.
"1:17 a.m. Voice matching Lydia Voss — deceased. Memory-trigger hallucination? Or echo?"
The voice came again. Louder. Clearer.
"Come see what you buried."
Mara's stomach lurched. She stared at the recorder, watching the red light blink in the darkness, but she couldn't breathe. She needed to run. But something kept her frozen in place.
Something shifted beneath the wallpaper.
The bulge split slightly.
A slow, slithering sound echoed beneath the surface. Then, something worse. Black liquid — thick and tar-like — began leaking from the seam, dripping down the wall like ink spilling from an open wound. The room reeked of mildew and rot.
Mara recoiled. Her hands shook as she tore open her duffel bag and pulled out the folding knife. She didn't hesitate. In one smooth motion, she sliced through the wallpaper, ripping into the plaster beneath it. The wall cracked open with a sickening sound, and she flung the pieces aside.
Behind the wall — no insulation. No wires. No studs. Just wood. Rough-hewn and ancient, engraved with symbols. Spirals. Eyes. Antlers. The carvings ran deep, like they had been gouged into the wood by something powerful, something desperate.
A cold draft hit her face. It carried the unmistakable scent of wet earth and decaying leaves. The tunnel stretched into darkness, the boards warped with moisture, the air heavy and stale.
She aimed her flashlight down the corridor. The beam cut through the blackness, catching on the far end. A figure.
Not a person. Not human.
It was crouched low, too low, its limbs long and spindly, its skin like bark — rough and cracked, sloughing off in places. Its face was a blur of shifting shapes, its features never holding long enough for her to focus on.
And then, in her mind, she heard the voice. Not through her ears. But through the pressure in her skull, like a pulse in her brain.
"You cracked the wall. Now the memories bleed."
Mara stumbled back, her hands numb and trembling. The panel slammed shut with a deafening clap, and the room fell into an unnatural silence. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and the air felt colder, smaller. The walls seemed to press in closer, closing around her, suffocating her.
Her reflection had returned to the mirror.
It was still.
But now — its eyes were red-rimmed. Its cheeks wet with tears. It wept silently, staring at her with those hollow, too-knowing eyes.
The silence grew unbearable. The air felt wrong, thick with something other.
At 3:08 a.m., she stood in the bathroom, scrubbing her hands raw under the cold stream of water. Black liquid, like ink, smeared across her palms, staining her skin. She couldn't wash it off, no matter how hard she scrubbed. It stayed. It soaked into her pores, like it had bled from her own flesh.
The light above flickered. Buzzed. Then died.
A shape moved behind the curtain of the shower.
Slow. Deliberate. Not fast. Not threatening. But waiting.
She didn't pull it back. Not yet.
Instead, she grabbed her recorder once more.
"Encountered interior tunnel hidden behind motel wall. Carvings match those found near Samantha's trailer. Possible architectural link between structures? Hallucination probability increasing due to sleep deprivation, audio anomalies, and mirror-based disassociation."
The curtain twitched.
She couldn't stop herself. She pulled it back.
Nothing. Just cracked tile and rusted pipe.
Except — one word etched into the soap-scummed wall:
WAKE
Mara recoiled, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
The world felt wrong.
Later that morning, as sunlight finally broke through the cloud cover, Mara stood behind the motel, looking up at the structure. There were no signs of the hidden passage. No bulging wall. No cracks or dents. Just an old, decaying motel, too quiet for comfort.
But the place felt different now. Larger on the inside. As if something else had been there all along, something dark, waiting. Beneath the floorboards, behind the walls, she swore she could still hear it.
Thud.
Thud.
Mara turned back to the room.
When she stepped inside, she was met with an empty frame.
The mirror was gone.
Just an empty, hollow frame.
And the wall behind it?
Completely clean.
It wasn't a trick of the light. It wasn't a malfunction.
The mirror had never been there at all.