Forgotten Things Leave Scars
882 Words
Mara didn’t sleep.
She sat at the edge of her bed with the lights on, watching her own reflection in the hallway mirror until the sun rose. The shadow in the glass had vanished. But its presence lingered, coiled like a bruise around her ribs.
Lucien had disappeared, too.
No door creaked open. No footsteps. Just gone.
And yet… his file still sat on her table.
By mid-morning, Mara had done what she always did when her world started to fall apart.
She went back to work.
The Archive had always been her sanctuary a place where facts lived in boxes, untouched by grief or ghosts. But as she stepped through the security doors and nodded to the receptionist, something felt off again. The lights above her buzzed louder than usual. The hallway seemed longer. And when she passed the reflective glass in the elevator, her reflection didn’t blink when she did.
She looked away quickly.
Mr. Adler was already in his office, the door slightly ajar. She glimpsed him on the phone, his voice low and sharp, fingers tapping against an old folder marked Classified 1911.
For a second, she thought she saw Lucien’s name on the front.
When she blinked, it was gone.
At her desk, she powered on her terminal and opened her logs. The file on Lucien had vanished again completely. No sign it had ever been scanned, entered, or shelved.
She reached under her coat and pulled out the copy she’d kept, technically. But she didn’t care.
She flipped it open again. The photo slot was empty once more.
But something had been added.
A handwritten message at the bottom in old, inked cursive:
“If you remember him, you begin to disappear.”
– E.R.
Emmaline Ray? No. Emmaline Brown.
Her sister had written this.
Mara’s breath hitched. This was real. All of it.
She turned quickly and almost collided with Isobel Ray, the woman standing at her elbow.
Isobel blinked, startled. “Mara?”
Mara hadn’t seen her in years.
Isobel still wore oversized sweaters and that nervous energy like a second skin. Her amber eyes were ringed with exhaustion. Her scarf looked older now, hand-knotted and frayed.
“I got your message,” Isobel said softly. “About Emmaline.”
“I didn’t send a message.”
Isobel swallowed. “You did. Last night. Told me to meet you here. Said it was urgent. Said” Her voice cracked. “Said you remembered him.”
Mara led her to the lower stacks, where no cameras reached. They sat in the Archive’s forgotten annex, shelves lined with war records and shredded policy reports.
“I saw him,” Mara whispered. “He came to my apartment.”
Isobel stared at her, lips parted. “Lucien Vale?”
“You knew him.”
“I thought I’d imagined him,” Isobel murmured. “Everyone else forgot. One day we were talking, the next… he was gone. Erased from the records, from the photos, even from memory. I thought maybe I was losing it.”
“You weren’t.”
Isobel looked like she might cry. “Then where did he go? What is he?”
Mara hesitated. “He said something’s hunting us. The Hollow. It takes what no one remembers.”
Isobel flinched.
“You’ve seen it,” Mara guessed.
“Only in dreams,” Isobel said. “But Emmaline… she saw it awake. And then she vanished.”
The lights above them flickered. A wave of cold brushed past.
Both women went still.
And then behind them a sound. Like a footstep on paper.
Mara turned slowly toward the far aisle.
Lucien stood there.
Still dressed in black. Still unreadable.
He looked at Isobel. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
Isobel backed up. “Oh God. It’s happening again.”
Lucien stepped forward, slowly. “You’re both in danger. The Hollow’s growing restless. It doesn’t like being remembered.”
“I don’t care,” Mara snapped. “I’m not forgetting my sister. Or you.”
Lucien’s jaw tensed. “Then you need to run. Now.”
“Why?”
Behind them, the lights cut out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
And in the silence, they heard it: the sound of papers rustling without wind. Like someone flipping through forgotten memories.
Then came the whisper: “Mara…”
It wasn’t Lucien.
It wasn’t Isobel.
It was Emmaline’s voice.
Mara froze. Her chest squeezed.
Lucien grabbed her arm. “Don’t follow the sound.”
But she already was.
She stepped forward, hands shaking. “Emmaline?”
The stacks grew taller. The lights flickered back on but only at half-strength, bathing everything in a strange, amber haze.
A piece of paper floated down from the shelf above them.
Mara caught it.
It was a drawing.
A sketch of a man’s face. Half Lucien. Half shadow.
Beneath it, a single phrase:
“Memory is the last tether. Let go, and you vanish.”
Lucien stepped beside her. “That’s what it wants. It lures you with the voice of what you love.”
“Is she alive?” Mara whispered.
He didn’t answer.
Isobel’s voice broke: “Mara look at your hand.”
She did.
Her fingers… were blurring. Fading at the edges like graphite smudged by rain.
- Writer
