It had been a month since Easter, but the world still carried the faint memory of it — a ghost of a holiday that lingered stubbornly in the corners of the town, refusing to be swept away. Wilted wreaths still clung to the doors of old houses, their bright ribbons now dulled and fraying in the endless tug of the wind. On faded wns, once manicured and proud, the pastel colors of forgotten eggs and crumpled candy wrappers dotted the grass like bruises that refused to heal. The rain had come and gone, tamping the earth ft and washing the sidewalks clean, but somehow the remnants of celebration persisted, half-buried, half-forgotten.

  The grass had grown thick and wild in every yard, creeping up around porch steps and curling over garden stones. It swallowed everything — the lost toys, the abandoned baskets, even the edges of the cracked sidewalks that spiderwebbed their way through town. Every so often, a burst of sound would shatter the stillness: the steady drone of a wnmower or the lonely call of a crow circling in the high, pale sky. Other than that, the streets remained empty, as if the town itself were holding its breath, waiting for something.

  Spring was supposed to be a season of new life. New beginnings. Fresh starts.

  But not here.

  Here, everything seemed paused — as if the whole pce was caught under a thin sheet of gss, fragile and unmoving. Even the flowers that had once pushed bravely through the soil now drooped under the weight of heavy rains and heavier silences. Windows stayed shuttered. Yards went untended. The few people who did step outside moved quickly, speaking in hushed voices, their gazes lowered to the cracked pavement as if afraid of meeting the eyes of something lurking just beyond their vision.

  The church bells still rang, but their sound was different now. Hollow. As if the towers themselves had emptied out over the years, leaving only ghosts to pull the ropes. The chime drifted across town at odd hours, carried by a wind that smelled of damp earth, rusted iron, and something else — something colder.

  In the fading light of te afternoon, the houses leaned into one another like tired old friends at the end of a long night. The paint peeled from their siding, and the roofs sagged under the slow pressure of time. Ivy climbed up the walls unchecked, twisting itself around gutters and shutters, pulling everything back into the ground. And in that dim, aching stillness, where the sunlight barely reached and the shadows grew thick as cloth, it was easy — too easy — to believe that something unseen was waiting. Watching. Holding itself back, but only just.

  My name is Iris Caldwell, and every Easter, for as long as I can remember, I have received a code that held secrets to my past.

  The first one came when I was nine years old.

  It had been tucked inside a pstic egg — bright green with a tiny crack running down one side. I remember holding it up to the sun, watching the light filter through it like colored gss, and feeling, for a moment, like I was touching something important. Something meant just for me. Inside, there wasn’t candy or stickers like the others had. Instead, there was a scrap of paper covered in strange symbols — spirals and sshes and tiny, careful marks that looked almost like a nguage, but not one I had ever seen before.

  At the time, I thought it was some kind of mistake. A prank, maybe. I tucked the slip of paper into my pocket, meaning to show my sister ter. But ter never came.

  Because that was the year she died.

  And after that... the notes kept coming.

  Every year, without fail, sometime around Easter, I would find another one — hidden inside a hollow tree trunk, wedged under my doorstep, or folded between the pages of a library book I could have sworn no one else had touched. Always the same strange, careful symbols. Always with no expnation. I never told anyone about them. Not my parents. Not my friends. I barely even told myself. It became easier, after a while, to pretend they didn’t matter. Easier to convince myself that they were just random, meaningless coincidences.

  Except they weren’t.

  Because every time I looked at those notes — every time I traced my fingers over the strange, looping marks — I felt it. That pull. That ache behind my ribs, low and sharp and hollow. As if some part of me recognized the shapes, even if my mind couldn’t understand them.

  As if my sister was still trying to reach me.

  Still trying to tell me something.

  I used to dream about her sometimes.

  Not the way she had been — ughing, running barefoot through the fields behind our house, her hair streaming out behind her like a banner — but the way she was now. Quiet. Pale. Watching me from the corners of rooms. Standing behind the trees at the edge of the pyground. A figure just out of reach, blurred and silent, her mouth moving but no sound coming out.

  At first, I thought it was just grief.

  Then, I thought it was guilt.

  But then the sightings started happening to other people.

  Mrs. Landry, who ran the florist’s shop on Main Street, swore she had seen a little girl in a white dress standing outside her window te one night.

  Mr. Evans, the mailman, said he heard the sound of crying in the alley behind the bakery, but when he went to look, no one was there.

  Even my best friend, Leah, once confessed to me in a whisper that she had woken up to find a small, cold hand pressing against her bedroom window.

  They all described her the same way — a girl about my age, with long dark hair and wide, sorrowful eyes.

  None of them knew it was my sister.

  None of them knew it was me she was trying to reach.

  I stopped talking about her after that. Stopped mentioning the notes. Stopped answering questions about the dreams that left me waking up gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs like a frantic bird. It was easier that way. Safer.

  But the notes kept coming.

  And every year, they grew more desperate.

  More complex.

  As if the message was getting closer, but time was running out.

  This year, though, something felt different.

  Maybe it was the way the crow had circled above my house three days in a row, its sharp cries cutting through the morning stillness like a knife.

  Maybe it was the way the air felt heavier, thicker, every time I stepped outside — as if the very ground was trying to hold me back.

  Maybe it was the way I sometimes caught glimpses of her reflection — in puddles, in windowpanes, in the shiny curve of a doorknob — always standing just behind me, always just out of reach.

  Or maybe it was because this year, for the first time, I had almost understood one of the symbols.

  I hadn’t meant to. I had just been doodling in the margins of my notebook during css, letting my hand move without thinking, when I realized I was copying one of the shapes from the notes. A spiral inside a triangle. A symbol that pulsed on the page like a heartbeat.

  And for a brief, dizzying moment, I had felt it — a whisper of understanding. A breath of memory.

  Gone as quickly as it came, but enough to know: I was close.

  Closer than I had ever been.

  This year, I wasn’t going to ignore the signs.

  This year, I wasn’t going to turn away.

  This year, I was going to find out what my sister had been trying to tell me all along.

  Even if it meant facing the truth.

  Even if it meant tearing open wounds that had never really healed.

  Even if it meant that the town — and the life I thought I knew — would never be the same again.

  Because the thing about ghosts is... they don’t haunt the living for no reason.

  They haunt us because we’ve forgotten something.

  Because we’ve buried something too deep.

  Because they’re waiting for someone brave enough to listen.

  And this year, I was ready to listen.