Ashes of Him

The threshold

The rain had stopped by morning, but the silence it left behind was heavier than thunder.Ella sat on a low rock ,her fingers curled around a tin mug Ivy had filled with instant coffee. It was bitter and burnt, but she didn't mind.They were less than a mile from Ashvale now.Mason stood a few feet away with his arms crossed and his face expressing worry .Ivy leaned on the Jeep, checking the satellite signal from her modified GPS tablet. She’d stopped trusting cell reception hours ago. The usual bars and symbols had vanished, replaced by a blinking red cross that looked more like a warning than a tech error.Ella’s breath fogged in the cool morning air. Her memories, once fragments of dreams, were beginning to stitch themselves into flashes. The hallway with green linoleum floors. The ticking of a metronome, the sharp scent of antiseptic and citrus. A voice repeating: “Do you remember who you are?”

She didn't. Not fully. Not yet. But she would.“Signal’s jammed again,” Ivy announced, rising and sliding the tablet into her bag. “Which means one of two things: someone doesn’t want us tracked, or Ashvale’s still running some kind of perimeter interference.”

“You think the town’s… active?” Mason asked.

“No. But something is.”

Ella stood, brushing dry leaves off her coat. “Then we walk.” Ivy nodded and Mason fell in beside her without protest. The trio moved as one down the narrow trail that used to be a service road, now claimed by moss and roots.

Each step forward felt like they were crossing into another world.

They reached the outer rim of Ashvale just before noon. What once must’ve been a rusted welcome sign lay in two pieces, half-buried beneath the weeds. Ivy crouched down and brushed away the moss.

ASHVALE :Founded 1972

“I don’t like this,” Mason muttered, glancing behind them.

“Well,it is too late for that,” Ivy said, tightening her jacket buttons. “We’re here.”

Ashvale didn’t look haunted at first glance. It looked… paused. Like someone had hit the mute button on a small town and forgotten to unpause it.

Rows of buildings sat untouched by time, yet something felt wrong. A barber shop with a faded red paint still had scissors and combs laid neatly on the counter. A diner’s booths remained intact, menus still resting on the tables. But there were no people,no cars, no sound,not even bird chirps

Ella’s footsteps echoed faintly on cracked pavement as they walked toward the town square. Every so often, she’d stop and stare at something—a lamppost, a swing set, a church steeple. She wasn’t sure why they triggered her memory, only that they did.

“I used to play here,” she said suddenly, stopping at a dry fountain circled by benches. “I remember… sitting on that bench. I was putting on a blue dress and holding—” Her voice paused. “A stuffed rabbit with its ear missing.”

Mason stepped closer. “You’re remembering more.”

Ella nodded, breathing heavily. “Yeah. But none of it feels like mine.”

They moved into the main street, careful to stay together. Ivy kept her hand near the small pistol beneath her coat. Not for theatrics but because she didn’t trust the quiet.

“This doesn’t add up,” she murmured. “If the town was evacuated or shut down, there’d be signs. Looters. Graffiti. Fire damage. But everything has remained untouched.”

“Like it’s waiting,” Mason said.

Ella walked to a white building with a porch—Ashvale Medical & Cognitive Center, according to the tarnished bronze plate near the door.

Her pulse quickened.

This was it. She didn’t know how, but her body recognized it before her mind caught up. The smell,the angle of the windows,the flickering light above the entrance that no longer flickered.

“This is where it happened,” she whispered.

Ivy raised a brow. “Where what happened?”

Ella’s mouth opened, but she couldn't find words.

She wasn’t sure. Only that it was true.

Inside, the center smelled of dust and rot.The floorboards creaked underfoot as they stepped inside. The reception desk still had papers stacked neatly, pens in a holder, a cracked monitor turned off and coated with dust.

Behind the desk, a hallway stretched into the darkness.

Ella stepped forward, almost involuntarily.

“Ella” Mason warned but she he didn’t stop.Her legs moved with full action down the corridor and past two framed certificates.

Then, suddenly,she stopped in front of a door with a peeling number: 13A.

She reached out and touched the metal handle.“It was my room,” she said. Mason stepped up beside her. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Ivy gently opened the door, revealing a small chamber with a bed bolted to the floor, a desk with no drawers, and a mirror that was too polished for a place that wasn't longer active.

“It’s a one-way mirror,” Ivy said immediately. Ella entered the room slowly with her knees shaking.

“This is where they kept me but I wasn't the only one” she whispered. She sat on the bed and ran her fingers along the edge of the mattress. A notch had been inscribed into the metal frame. It read: REMEMBER DANA.Her throat tightened. Dana. The name from Ivy’s files. The woman who’d vanished.

Mason walked to the edge of the room and found a floor tile that shifted under his foot. He knelt and lifted it up, revealing a small metal box.Inside were tapes,dozens of labeled cassettes. Most were marked with numbers. But one had Ella’s name.

Ivy grabbed it, her eyes opening wide. “We need to find a player.”

“There’s probably one in the records room,” Mason said. “I saw an archive sign at the end of the hall.”

“Let’s move,” Ivy said. “And stay close. Something about this place is not feeling right.”

The records room was down two floors, past a rusted elevator shaft. Ella walked between Ivy and Mason, arms folded tightly over her chest. She could feel the memories behind every door.

She had been rewritten, modified and erased here.

But why?

They reached the archive room. Ivy broke open the door with a wrench and found a dusty but working VHS player inside a locked cabinet. She popped the tape in.

The screen flared.

Then static.

Then Ella’s face.

But it wasn’t this version of Ella. She looked younger,hollow-eyed and blank.

She was strapped to a chair in a white room.A man’s voice spoke off-camera: “Subject 13A, please recite the safety phrase.” Video-Ella replied in a flat tone: “Ashes to ashes, truth to silence.”

Ella’s stomach rumbled.

“What the hell is this?” Mason muttered.

The voice continued: “Do you remember Mason Hayes?”

Video-Ella blinked. “No. Should I?”

Mason flinched like he’d been slapped. Ella covered her mouth.The real horror wasn’t the procedure. It was the result.

They’d erased him. Deliberately.The screen went black.

Then flashed again.

This time, Dana appeared. Same chair,same room but she was screaming.

“Get it off me! I didn’t forget! You can’t make me...”

The screen turned static.

Ivy yanked the tape out of the player and turned to them. “We were right. Ashvale wasn’t a treatment facility. It was an experiment. And you were part of it.”

Ella felt the room tilt. “I need air.” she said breathing heavily.

They ran upstairs, bursting out into the light.

But they weren’t alone.

Standing across the square was a man in a black jacket, holding a walkie-talkie. He raised it slowly, speaking into it and then turned and vanished around a building.

Mason drew his knife. Ivy cursed under her breath. “Someone knows we’re here,” she said.

Ella gnashed her teeth. “Let them come.”

For the first time, she wasn’t afraid of the past.

She was ready to fight for her future.