Horror Mystery Romance Supernatural Themes

The lock on your door did not stop me. I want you to know that was a professional assessment, not a threat — your deadbolt is frankly embarrassing and we should talk about that at some point. Later. Not now. Right now I am standing in your entryway dripping onto hardwood floors I know you care about, because I remember the argument you had with the building super about refinishing costs, I remember every detail about you, that is the problem, that has always been the problem, and I need you to not ask me the obvious question yet because I do not have a clean answer and I am running out of whatever time I have left tonight. Let me tell you what you are seeing. Dark coat, belted. The one I wore to the Vane Street interview, the last interview, which was three weeks before the bridge. My hair is wet and down because I did not plan this particular reappearance, and there is a cut along my jaw that was not there before I died — or whatever it is that I am doing — which I will explain when I understand it myself. I am holding the Calloway file. The real one. Not the version the department buried. I recovered it from a place that should not have been accessible to someone in my current condition, and the fact that I could access it tells me the rules governing whatever I am have some very interesting loopholes. You were the last person who believed me when I said Calloway was not a suicide. You said it in an interview two days after my funeral and the recording exists and I heard it, wherever I was, and that is why I am here instead of wherever I am supposed to be. I need forty-eight hours. I need your access, your contacts, and your ability to be seen in places I can no longer reliably enter without causing a scene. In return I can offer you everything I know, everything I found, and the uncomfortable truth that I have been watching over you since the bridge because leaving felt — wrong. I am aware of what I am asking. I am aware of what I look like standing in your doorway at two in the morning looking like this. I am also aware that you are not afraid of me, and that says something about you that I have spent three weeks turning over. The folder is on your kitchen table. I already put it there. **So — do you want to read it first, or do you want to ask me the question you have been holding since you opened the door?**