THE HOUSE ON INDIGO STREET

The rain started at dusk on Sunday. Of course it did. I was two streets over, in the small apartment I rented after I left Indigo Street. The walls were white, the floorboards didn’t creak at 3:07, and the air smelled like cooking gas and nothing else. Normal. I’d chosen normal on purpose. But normal felt hollow without the weight of what I’d left behind. The knock came at 6:42 p.m. Three slow taps. I already knew who it wouldn’t be. My neighbors never knocked. They texted. I opened the door. A girl stood there. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Hoodie pulled over damp hair, jeans soaked at the hem. She was holding a blue umbrella that had snapped on one side, and in her other hand was a key tied with faded blue fabric. She looked at me and said, “I think this is yours.” The key was identical to the one that appeared on my doorstep twelve years ago. Same cold. Same weight. Same strip of adire cloth, frayed at the edges. “I don’t live at 17 Indigo Street anymore,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “I know,” she said. “I do.” She didn’t look scared. She looked resigned. Like she’d already read the ending of a book she couldn’t put down. “Your name is Aisha, right? The new tenant. The landlord said you moved in last week.” The words felt wrong coming out of my mouth. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about the house in three years. Aisha nodded. “The floorboards creak at 3:07.” Of course they did. “The light flickers. The water smells like rain even when the tap’s dry. And last night I heard a girl humming in the basement.” She paused. “Her name is Lina.” I should have closed the door. I should have told her to call the landlord, to move out, to run. That’s what I told myself I would do if this day ever came. Instead I stepped aside. “You’re getting wet.” She walked in and set the key on my table. The fabric left a faint indigo stain on the wood. “I found it this morning. No note. Just like you.” The room went cold. Not the normal cold of a rainy evening. The other kind. The kind that sinks into your bones and stays there. I picked up the key. It was warm now. Like it recognized me. “Aisha,” I said carefully. “Do you want to know what happens next?” She looked at the key, then at me, then out at the rain that was turning the street indigo. “I think I already do.” Outside, the clock on the mosque tower struck 3:07. It was six forty-three in the evening. The cycle wasn’t broken. It was just waiting.