The rain didn't just fall in Seattle; it mourned.
Rayan sat in his cramped apartment, the blue light of his laptop screen illuminating the dark circles under his eyes. His career as an investigative journalist was dying, buried under a mountain of discarded cigarette butts and rejected pitches. He was a man who hunted ghosts in a world that only cared about viral trends.
A sharp, rhythmic rapping at his door broke the silence. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Rayan frowned. It was 3:00 AM. He pulled himself up, his joints popping, and peered through the peephole. The hallway was empty, the flickering fluorescent light casting jagged shadows against the peeling wallpaper. Slowly, he cracked the door open. No one was there, but a small, heavy wooden box sat on his welcome mat.
He took it inside. The wood was cold, smelling of damp earth and something metallic—like old blood. Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay a rusted iron key and a single Polaroid photograph.
Rayan's breath hitched.
The photo showed a man standing in front of a tilted sign that read: Welcome to Oakhaven. The man was Rayan. He was wearing the same leather jacket he had on right now. But there was one problem. Oakhaven had been declared a "dead zone" by the government twenty years ago after a tectonic shift supposedly swallowed the town. And Rayan hadn't left his apartment in three days.
On the back of the photo, jagged handwriting crawled across the white space: "The shadows miss you, Rayan. Come home before they come to fetch you."
Suddenly, his laptop speakers hissed. A low, distorted static filled the room. Rayan turned, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The screen, which had been showing a blank Word document, was now filled with a single image: a live feed of his own front door from the hallway.
In the video, a tall, distorted figure with elongated limbs was standing right outside his door. It didn't have a face—just a smooth surface of pale skin. The figure leaned in, its head tilting at an unnatural 90-degree angle, as if listening to Rayan's heartbeat through the wood.
Then, the figure raised a hand and began to mimic the exact rhythm from moments ago.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Rayan backed away, his heel catching on the rug. He scrambled for his phone, but the screen was dead. The tapping stopped. Silence, heavy and suffocating, filled the room.
Then, the rusted key in the box began to vibrate. It didn't just shake; it hummed with a low-frequency moan that made Rayan's teeth ache. He looked at the door. The handle was slowly, silently turning.
"I didn't lock it," Rayan whispered, his voice cracking.
The door creaked open an inch. A gust of wind blew into the room—not the cold wind of a Seattle night, but a warm, stagnant breeze that smelled of pine needles and decay. Through the gap, Rayan didn't see his hallway.
He saw a forest. A dark, mist-covered forest where the trees looked like reaching fingers.
And then, a voice—his own voice, but deeper and distorted—whispered from the darkness of the doorway.
"You're late for the funeral, Rayan."
A pale, thin hand gripped the edge of the door, and the floor beneath Rayan's feet began to turn into soft, sinking mud.