THE FIFTH MAN IN MY FUNERAL

The dead woman had my face. I knew it before I heard my name. The recording crackled through my headphones, filling my little restoration studio with the soft hiss of old tape. Rain tapped against the window. A desk lamp illuminated the damaged cassette, a pair of scissors, and the handwritten note that had arrived with it. IRA VEYLAN — PERSONAL. DO NOT RESTORE. Naturally, I had restored it. My profession involved recovering voices that time had tried to erase. I repaired recordings for grieving families, historians, lawyers, and occasionally people who wanted to hear a dead relative say something they had never said while alive. Most recordings contained ordinary things. A mother’s lullaby. A grandfather’s unfinished joke. A final message that ended with the speaker asking someone to buy milk. This one began with a funeral bell. I adjusted the volume. A man’s voice emerged from the static. “She’s beautiful when she’s dead.” I stopped breathing. The voice was low, controlled, almost tender. There was no grief in it. No trembling, no hesitation. Only satisfaction. Another man answered. “You shouldn’t say that here, Adrian.” Adrian. The name meant nothing to me. Yet something beneath my ribs tightened as if my body recognized it before my mind could. The recording continued. Footsteps crossed gravel. Wind brushed the microphone. Somewhere in the distance, a woman was crying. Then came a voice I knew better than my own. Mine. “Don’t let him bury me.” I ripped off my headphones. For several seconds, I sat motionless, staring at the cassette player. I had never recorded those words. I had never attended the funeral being described. And according to my birth certificate, I had been thirteen years old when the recording was supposedly made. I checked the cassette label again. The date was October 17, thirteen years ago. My birthday. I pressed PLAY. The crying woman had stopped. A second man spoke, his voice rougher than the first. “She’s already gone.” “No,” another replied. “She always comes back.” A metallic click followed. Then a third voice whispered, so close to the microphone that I could hear the faint movement of his breath. “Five men. Five promises. One grave.” A pause. “Let the game begin.” The recording ended. I sat in silence until my phone rang. The number was hidden. I answered. “Hello?” A man breathed into the receiver. I heard rain on his end, too. Then the faint sound of a door closing. “Did you listen to it?” he asked. “Who is this?” “That isn’t important.” “It is when someone sends me a recording of a funeral featuring my own voice.” Silence. Then he said, “Did you hear the sixth voice?” My fingers tightened around the phone. “There were five men speaking.” “No.” His voice sharpened. “There were six.” I looked at the cassette. “Who died?” “You did.” The call ended. For a moment, I couldn’t move. Then anger pushed through the fear. Someone had found an elaborate way to frighten me. Perhaps a client with too much money and too little imagination. Perhaps someone who had discovered my birthday and decided to turn it into a sick joke. I searched the number. Nothing. I searched the date of the funeral. Nothing. Finally, I searched my own name alongside the words death, funeral, and October 17. The results were ordinary. An old school competition. A photograph from a charity event. A newspaper article about a fire that had destroyed a building on the outskirts of the city. Then I found something strange. An obituary. IRA VEYLAN, BELOVED DAUGHTER, DIED OCTOBER 17. No photograph. No age. No family details. Only a location: Vesper House. I opened the article. The page had been archived thirteen years ago and removed from the original newspaper’s website. The search preview showed one additional sentence. She leaves behind five men who will never forgive themselves. My phone buzzed. An email had arrived from an unknown sender. Subject: YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED HOME. There was no message, only an address and an attached photograph. I opened it. The image showed a vast stone mansion standing beneath a bruised evening sky. Tall windows glowed with candlelight. Ivy covered the walls. A black iron gate stood open at the end of a long driveway. Five men stood on the front steps. They were all dressed in black. Even in the grainy photograph, I could distinguish their faces. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and severe. Another had long dark hair falling across his forehead. A third wore a faint smile that looked more like a threat than an expression of amusement. At the center stood a man with dark eyes and an immaculate black suit. He was holding a photograph. I enlarged it. The photograph in his hand showed a young woman in a black dress. Me. Not a woman who resembled me. Not a distant relative with similar features. Me, with the same small scar beneath my left eyebrow and the same expression I saw every morning in my bathroom mirror. Except the woman in the photograph looked older. And she was standing beside the man in the black suit with her hand resting over his heart. On the back of the photograph, someone had written four words. I WILL FIND YOU AGAIN. My apartment doorbell rang. I jumped so violently that my phone slipped from my hand. Nobody knew I was home. I crossed the room slowly and looked through the peephole. A man stood in the corridor. He wore a charcoal coat over a black shirt. Rain glistened in his dark hair. His face was strikingly handsome, but there was something unsettling about the way he stood—as if he had been waiting outside my door for years rather than minutes. In one hand, he held a small velvet box. In the other, a brass key stained dark brown at its teeth. He looked directly into the peephole. “I know you’re there, Ira.” I didn’t move. He smiled faintly. “You always take three seconds to decide whether to open a door.” My stomach dropped. “Who are you?” I called through the wood. “Adrian.” The name from the recording. I backed away. He placed the velvet box on the floor. “I’ve brought something that belongs to you.” “I’m calling the police.” “Of course you are. You said the same thing the first time.” The first time? I stared at the door, my mind racing. “I’ve never met you.” His expression changed. For the first time, the confidence slipped from his face. Something raw and exhausted appeared beneath it. “Not this time,” he whispered. He leaned closer to the door. “Listen carefully, Ira. In approximately forty minutes, a woman wearing a red coat will arrive at this building. She’ll ask for you. Don’t let her inside.” “Why?” “Because she is the reason you’re alive.” He paused. “And the reason you died.” I heard him walk away. I waited until the elevator doors closed before opening my apartment door. The corridor was empty. The velvet box sat on the floor. Inside lay a silver wedding ring. My name was engraved on its inner surface. Beneath it was a folded piece of paper. My hands trembled as I unfolded it. Five names had been written in elegant black ink. Adrian Voss. Cassian Rook. Nikolai Soren. Elias Thorne. Silas Wren. Beneath the names was a sentence. ONE OF THEM KILLED YOU. FOUR OF THEM LET IT HAPPEN. At the bottom, someone had added another line in red ink. And you loved the one you should have feared. I looked at the ring again. Something was engraved on the opposite side, so small I hadn’t noticed it before. A date. October 17. Thirteen years ago. My birthday. My wedding day. I was still staring at it when the elevator chimed. Footsteps approached my apartment. Then came a knock. Three slow taps. I raised my head. A woman’s voice drifted through the door. “Miss Veylan? I’m looking for Ira.” I froze. “Who are you?” “My name is Mara. I knew your mother.” I had never known my mother. I had been told she died shortly after giving birth to me, leaving behind no photographs, no letters, and no relatives willing to speak about her. Mara continued. “I know about the recording. I know about Adrian. And I know what happened at Vesper House.” I took a step toward the door. “How?” “Because I was there when they buried you.” The corridor fell silent. Then she added, almost apologetically: “But before you open this door, there’s something you need to understand.” I gripped the ring until its edges hurt my palm. “What?” Mara’s answer came in a whisper. “The woman they buried thirteen years ago wasn’t the first Ira Veylan.” A cold sensation spread through my body. “And she won’t be the last.” Behind me, the cassette player clicked on by itself. The recording began again. This time, I heard the sixth voice. A man’s voice. Calm. Familiar. Intimately close. It spoke from the speakers as if the man were standing directly behind me. “Hello, my wife.” I turned around. Nobody was there. But on the dark screen of my turned-off computer, a reflection stared back at me. A man stood behind my shoulder. He was smiling. And when I spun around, the room was empty. End of Chapter 1