The Forgotten Echo

Chapter 2 – The Ghost Behind the Canvas

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the paintings.

There was something profoundly wrong here—not just the deaths, but a feeling so strange it clung to my chest like a weight. Familiarity. An echo from somewhere buried deep.

I knew that face.

Though I couldn’t recall her name, nor where she was from, deep inside my ribcage, beneath the pounding of my heart, I felt I had touched her cheek before. I had loved her. Or maybe I had hurt her. Perhaps both.

The studio was small, cramped. A worn easel stood in the corner. A tin of watercolor paints lay open, the faint scent of old oil paint mingling with a metallic tang that reminded me too much of blood.

I sat down in a creaky wooden chair. Without thinking, my hand moved almost by instinct. I reached for a paintbrush and began to stroke the blank canvas before me.

I didn’t think.

I didn’t plan.

I just painted.

My hand trembled as the brush glided along the canvas’ smooth surface, the strokes quickening, feverish. Sweat beaded at my brow. I was no longer in control. Each brushstroke seemed to carry its own will.

Fifteen minutes later, I stopped.

On the canvas lay a new painting.

The woman — that familiar face — was sinking into water. Her hair fanned out like dead seaweed. A hand reached for her leg. That hand…

Was mine.

I recognized the faint tattoo wrapped around the wrist. An inverted triangle.

I looked down at my own wrist.

The tattoo was there.

I had killed her.

No.

I couldn’t have. I didn’t know her. I couldn’t remember anything.

I jumped up, heart hammering, everything spinning. The painting slipped from the easel, crashing to the floor with a heavy thud — like the sound of a dying heartbeat.

I stumbled back into the bedroom, rifling through the tangled sheets. Under the mattress, I found a small black leather notebook. No name on the cover.

I flipped to the first page:

March 18th — I dreamed of you dying again.

This time, the water. Something lurking beneath the surface of the lake. You look like you’re forgiving me.

I didn’t write those words.

But the handwriting — it was hauntingly familiar.

I was reliving the death of a woman I didn’t remember.

And somehow… I was the one killing her, over and over.