THE RIFT BETWEEN US

chapter 3

CHAPTER 3 : MANSION OF SECRETS

The letter sat on my desk like it belonged to someone else.

I’d stared at it so long the words barely registered anymore. Just a smudge of ink, a blur of meaning that refused to make sense, no matter how many times I tried to decode it. I told myself to stop—to just put it away and file it under old ghosts and idiotic mistakes—but my fingers moved of their own accord, lifting the paper again like they were drawn to it by muscle memory or madness.

Its edges were soft now, worn thin from how many times I’d folded and unfolded it. If paper could bruise, this letter would be black and blue. My thumb traced the same corner it always did, worrying it like a rosary bead. Like it might suddenly spill the answers it had so cruelly withheld.

Mark Dawson.

That was it. Two words. A name I hadn’t said aloud in years.

The ink was heavier on the “M,” like whoever wrote it had hesitated just before committing. Like even he wasn’t sure who he was anymore.

But I was sure.

Too sure.

That name didn’t belong to the present. It belonged to another version of me—one with rings on her fingers and stars in her eyes. The girl who used to talk about forever with a straight face. Before the vanishing. Before silence swallowed the man I once thought I’d marry.

Mark had disappeared six years ago. No warning. No note. One minute he existed—he was warm and real and annoying and charming—and the next he was… erased.

I never even got to grieve him properly. No body. No headline. No closure. Just the long, torturous stretch of not knowing.

And now this.

I read the name again, blinking as if it might morph into something else. Something saner. But it never did. Beneath it, a return address. One that made no sense. I’d run it through every map app I could think of. No hits. Not even a red pin. Like the street didn’t exist. Or existed in a place you weren’t meant to find.

Something about that scared me more than I wanted to admit.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling, trying to breathe. The air in my office felt too still. Too thick. The ticking of the wall clock was louder than usual, like each second was a countdown to something I couldn’t see.

I was spiraling. I knew that. I knew it. But knowledge did nothing to stop the way my stomach clenched or the way my skin prickled like I was being watched.

I reached for the drawer beneath my desk, fumbling until my fingers curled around cold metal. The flask. I hadn’t touched it in months—some kind of hollow promise I’d made to myself when the nightmares had faded.

They were coming back now. Creeping in around the edges.

My phone buzzed—startling me enough that I jumped. A calendar reminder: Lecture Hall B, 11:00 a.m. “Myth & Memory”. Ironically cruel.

I was supposed to be the expert on how stories bend over time. How myths are born from real events—just stretched, distorted, repeated. The mind does funny things when it’s desperate to believe something never happened.

Or that it did.

Apparently, I was my own case study now.

I shoved the letter back into its envelope, pressing the flap down even though it no longer stuck. I could still feel the ink on my fingertips, like it had seeped into my skin.

Mark Dawson.

That name shouldn’t exist anymore. But there it was. Unchanged. Waiting. Like he’d never left at all.

And the worst part?

I wasn’t even sure he had.

The envelope was still in my bag, like a weight pulling my shoulder down with every step.

By the time I made it to Lecture Hall B, the students were already filing in, faces half-glued to their phones, coffee cups, earbuds. A blur of motion and noise. I was just another part of the machinery to them—Professor Evelyn Hart, myth specialist, deliverer of forgettable knowledge and predictable syllabi.

I pulled the door closed behind me and walked to the podium like it was something I had done in another life. Maybe it was.

“Let’s talk about memory,” I began, hearing my own voice as if it belonged to someone else. “Specifically, the mechanics of forgetting. How time, trauma, and repetition can erode certainty.”

My fingers tapped the screen of the projector. Slides blinked to life—names, dates, artifacts, long-forgotten mythologies.

I couldn’t focus.

I couldn’t feel the words.

My mouth moved, but my mind was three feet away, hovering over the letter. Over his name. Over the way he’d just appeared again.

Had anyone else seen him?

Had anyone else ever known he existed?

A laugh rose from the back row. I glanced up—just students, half-awake and dead-eyed. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe he’d never been real in the first place.

The lecture ended without me realizing it had truly begun.

Papers rustled. Backpacks zipped. The herd moved.

I stood behind the podium, staring at nothing in particular, until the echo of footfalls faded into the hallway. I could still feel that eerie, quiet tension in the air—as though someone had stayed behind.

“Cutting work already?”

The voice came from behind me—too close. Too sudden.

I flinched.

The cold raced up my spine, and I turned, heart leaping against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

He was leaning against the doorframe. Casual. Confident. Like he’d been there all along.

My breath caught. My brain scrambled for words and came up empty.

“Oh, Mark… you scared m—me.”

God, why was I stammering? Why did his name taste so familiar and so foreign all at once?

He tilted his head just slightly, the corners of his mouth lifting into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Scared you? Why? Were you expecting someone else?”

That tone. Smooth, teasing, edged with something I couldn’t name. It wasn’t the Mark I remembered. Or maybe it was—and I’d just forgotten the shadows.

“No. Of course not,” I said, forcing a steady voice. “It’s just… my office is my space. A knock next time would be nice.”

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at me. Looked through me.

His gaze was heavier than it used to be—like he saw everything and said nothing. Like he knew something I didn’t, and he was enjoying watching me puzzle it out.

“Sure,” he said finally, and straightened. “Maybe next time.”

I exhaled—too loudly—and stepped around the podium, pretending to gather notes I hadn’t used.

He didn’t move. Just stood there, blocking the door, like a question that refused to be answered.

“You always have a lot of free time hanging around here,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, casual. “Don’t you have your own work?”

Mark chuckled, low and dark. It wasn’t the laugh I remembered. It was older. Rougher. There was no warmth in it.

“Some things,” he said slowly, “I need to see with my own eyes, Eve.”

The way he said my name—I hated how it sounded good. Too good. Like a lyric from a song I’d tried to forget.

“What does that mean?” I asked, the words sharper than I intended.

But he was already moving. Already stepping backward into the hall, his figure retreating like smoke.

“You’ll figure it out,” he said. “Eventually.”

And then he was gone.

The door clicked shut behind him, the sound final and hollow. Like a lid sealing a box.

I stood there for several seconds, staring at the space he’d just occupied.

Had he even been real?

My hand went to my bag, fingers closing around the envelope again. Its edges bit into my palm.

No.

He was real.

He was here.

And something was deeply, terribly wrong.

♡

I didn’t remember walking to the parking lot. Didn’t remember locking my office, taking the elevator, or passing the front desk.

I only remembered the letter—its brittle edges digging into my palm like it wanted to leave a mark.

Mark had been real. I’d seen him. Heard him. But something about him was off—close, but... not right. Like a perfect painting with the eyes ever so slightly wrong.

My hands clenched around the steering wheel as I drove, the sky turning a heavy, unnatural purple. Clouds sagged low, streetlights blinking past like they were keeping count. The letter sat beside me, glowing in the headlights like it knew the way.

I hadn’t planned to go anywhere.

But I’d entered the address without thinking. As if the decision had been made for me.

The streets narrowed. Buildings thinned into woods. Trees leaned in. The radio felt intrusive, so I killed it. Even silence felt too loud.

The pavement gave out. Gravel turned to dirt. My GPS flickered, guiding me down a path that didn’t exist on the map. No signs. No houses. Just a pin in a gray void.

And then I saw it.

The house.

It didn’t rise so much as loom. Rotting, immense, with black windows and vines choking the stone. A ruin too stubborn to die.

I parked and stepped out. The cold hit instantly, sharper than it should’ve been. My breath came out in fog. The wind moved through the trees like it was whispering warnings I couldn’t understand.

Still, I moved forward.

The house watched me. I could feel it. My flashlight trembled in my hand as I climbed the steps.

The door gave way under my touch, opening with a long, groaning breath.

And I stepped inside.

Musty air hit me—mold, dust, old wood, and something else. Something damp and chemical.

My light scanned the foyer—cracked tile, rotting stairs, a chandelier missing half its bones. Wallpaper peeled like dead skin. The place didn’t just look abandoned. It looked resentful.

I turned to leave.

The door shut behind me on its own.

Click.

I reached for the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. My gut twisted.

The air was heavier here. Not just foul. Thick. It pressed on my lungs like warning hands.

I moved forward anyway, light carving through the dark. My boots creaked across warped floorboards. Past a collapsed sitting room. Past doorways swallowed in black.

Then I saw it.

A door at the end of the hall.

Slightly open.

I didn’t breathe. I just walked.

My hand touched the wood. It moved.

The smell hit me first—chemicals. Like a darkroom, or a memory being developed.

Then my light hit the walls.

And I froze.

Photographs.

Dozens. Hundreds.

Taped, nailed, pinned. Every inch covered.

All of me.

Images I didn’t know existed. Old ones from college. A café. A train platform. A library corner. Me asleep. Me last week. Me last night.

One, enormous, in the center.

Me.

Smiling beside Damian.

The one who vanished.

My ex-fiancé.

We looked happy. Intimate. Like nothing had ever gone wrong.

But I didn’t remember that moment. I couldn’t.

I staggered back, heart trying to punch its way out.

The air crackled. My skin prickled.

Then—I heard it.

A breath. Behind me.

I turned.

Slow.

And there he was.

“You’ve come, Eve.”