CHAPTER 10
359 Words
Night returned to Saint Matthew’s Convent like a living thing.
Rebecca lay awake in her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Mercy,” she whispered. “You’re quiet again.”
Silence.
Her throat tightened. “I don’t like when you do that.”
A pause.
Then—
“…I am listening.”
Rebecca exhaled shakily. “You keep saying that.”
“Because you must learn to hear without fear.”
Rebecca turned on her side. “The convent doesn’t feel the same anymore.”
“It never was,” Mercy replied.
Rebecca swallowed. “The walls creak differently now.”
“They remember.”
A sudden knock echoed through the dormitory hallway.
Rebecca sat up. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes.”
Another knock. Slower. Heavier.
Rebecca whispered, “Who knocks at this hour?”
Footsteps followed—dragging slightly.
Rebecca’s breath trembled. “Mercy… that sounds like—”
“The night I died,” Mercy finished.
The handle of Rebecca’s door rattled.
“Rebecca,” a voice called softly.
She froze. “That’s… Sister Clara’s voice.”
“…She should not be here,” Mercy said.
The knocking grew firmer.
“Open the door,” the voice urged. “You’re not safe alone.”
Rebecca shook her head violently. “She died years ago.”
The handle twisted.
Rebecca whispered urgently, “Mercy, what do I do?”
“Do not answer the dead when they wear familiar voices.
The knocking stopped.
Silence flooded the hall.
Rebecca pressed her hand to her mouth, tears burning her eyes. “That wasn’t you, was it?”
“No.”
“What was it?”
A pause long enough to make her chest ache.
“Something else has noticed me.”
The corridor lights flickered.
Rebecca whispered, “You mean there’s more than one spirit here?”
“…This place feeds them.”
A scream echoed from the far end of the convent.
Rebecca gasped. “That was real.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca stood, heart pounding.
“Someone’s in danger.”
“And now,” Mercy whispered, “you must decide who you answer.”
- Writer
