Through Their Eyes

Shadows of the Past

Skylar had vanished 7 years ago, and her reappearance stirred up unsettling emotions in Emby. Was Skylar alive, in danger, or seeking closure from the past? Emby found herself haunted by visions of Skylar’s fate, a chilling reminder of the mysteries that lingered in Fright Wood. Emby resolved to uncover the truth about Skylar’s reappearance, determined to put an end to the tormenting questions gnawing at her thoughts.

As she trudged back to her apartment in the relentless rain, Emby’s mind raced with thoughts of Skylar’s eerie disappearance. The weight of the town’s dark history pressed down on her, leaving her to wonder why fate had chosen her to unravel the enigma of Skylar Warner.

The thought unsettled her more than she cared to admit.

For years, she had convinced herself that she understood her abilities and that every vision carried meaning, every warning served a purpose. But lately the visions had become stranger. More fragmented. Faces appeared without names. Voices whispered from places she had never been. Events unfolded before her eyes only to vanish without explanation, leaving behind nothing but doubt.

What if the visions had finally broken her?

What if they had never been real to begin with?

She hated herself for even entertaining the thought, but exhaustion had a way of stripping away certainty. Seven years of unanswered questions, sleepless nights, and carrying burdens no one else could see had worn cracks through her confidence.

Sometimes she wondered if she had spent so much time staring into the darkness that it had begun staring back.

That same night as Emby was resting peacefully, she found herself living through Skylar’s eyes. Emby felt as though she was Skylar, but it was only a vision of the past.

Sleep did not come peacefully. It seized Emby by the throat.

She stood inside Skylar’s body, seeing the world through eyes blurred by tears. She felt the weight of a formal dress, the ache of shoes rubbing raw against her heels, and the humiliation of every passing car that slowed long enough for its occupants to laugh. Somewhere nearby, a phone vibrated again and again, but Skylar refused to read the message because she already knew what cruelty waited on the screen.

The vision jerked forward. The cemetery gate slowly groaned open by itself.

Skylar’s grief became Emby’s grief. She felt the old wound of losing parents whose remains had never been found. She felt the shame of believing Jason had chosen her when everyone else had spent years treating her as something diseased. Beneath those feelings pulsed another emotion; anger. Skylar had not gone to the cemetery to surrender. She had gone there to tell the dead that she was done begging the living to love her.

Then a branch snapped behind her.

Emby tried to turn Skylar’s head, but the vision would not obey. She could only watch through Skylar’s eyes as shadows lengthened over the gravestones. A hand covered her mouth as another arm locked around her waist. Then the world went black beneath a rough cloth bag.

Emby woke up screaming. Her fingernails had torn bloody crescents into her palms. Every mirror in the apartment was fogged from the inside, and one sentence had been traced across the bathroom glass;

YOU LEFT HER THERE.

For seven years, that had been Emby’s secret fear. She had ignored her final uneasy feeling on prom night. She had stayed home. She had convinced herself that Skylar needed space after Jason’s rejection.

Now the room is filled with the scent of burned hair and a woman’s voice whispered from beneath Emby’s bed, “She called your name until her voice was gone.”

Emby knelt despite every instinct warning her not to. Under the bed lay Skylar’s missing malachite necklace, slick with fresh blood.

The bedroom door slammed shut.

From the other side, someone began scratching slowly through the wood.