In Fresno Memorial Gardens, three separate figures stood over three separate graves, each clutching identical bone talismans that gleamed dully in the moonlight. They had arrived alone, each believing their grief to be unique, their mission private. None noticed the others scattered across the large cemetery, nor did they see how the stars seemed to dim overheard, as if reluctant to witness what was about to unfold.

  In the eastern corner, beneath an ancient oak whose branches clawed at the sky like supplicant hands, Martha Wilson knelt before a fresh grave. Her husband Richard’s name was still sharp-edged in the granite, the earth before it still slightly mounded, not yet settled into the permanence of long burial. Her fingers trembled as she placed the birdcage-carved talisman on the grave, its bone surface catching the moonlight in subtle patterns that seemed to shift when not directly observed.

  “I brought your wedding ring,” she whispered, placing the gold band besides the talisman. The candle she lit sputtered against the night breeze, its flame casting her shadow long and distorted across the neighboring headstones. “Just like the man said. A personal item.”

  Her tears fell silently, pearls of grief disappearing into the thirsty earth. Forty-three years of marriage ended by a sudden heart attack. Forty-three years, and still so much remained unsaid.

  “I miss you, Richard,” she whispered. “I miss you so much it’s like someone carved out my insides and left me hollow.”

  Thomas Wilson placed his keyhole-carved talisman on his father's grave across the cemetery, near the western wall where the newer plots stretched in too-perfect rows. His candle burned steadier than Martha’s, protected from the wind by his cupped hand. An old pocket watch—his father’s most reassured possession—lay besides the bone vessel.

  “I should have been here,” Thomas murmured, guilt weighing on his words like stones. “I was in Europe when Betty called. I thought… I thought the business deal was so important. More important than coming home when you asked me to.”

  His father had died alone in a hospital room while Thomas secured an investment that made him wealthy beyond measure—wealth that now tasted like ashes in his mouth.

  “I’d give it all back for one chance to say goodbye properly,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word. “One chance to tell you I’m sorry.”

  Near the mausoleum that dominated the cemetery’s northern edge, Harold Vasquez stood right before his son’s grave. Unlike the others, he had not knelt—his military bearing wouldn’t allow it. The spiraling-vortex talisman sat precisely centered on his son Michael’s headstone, flanked by a candle and Michael’s dog tags.

  Harold’s face was a mask of controlled emotion, only his eyes betrayed the storm within. Three years ago Michael had been found in his garage, a suicide according to the official report. For three years, Harold had refused to accept the coroner’s findings. It just wasn’t right.

  “They say you took your own life,” Harold said. His voice barely even reached his own ears, he spoke so softly. “But I knew you, son. You wouldn’t. Not without a reason. Not without leaving me some explanation.”

  He hesitated, fingers brushing the cold metal of the dog tags. “I need to know the truth. Who was with you that night? Who drove you to it? Or… was it really your choice?”

  Three candles burned in the darkness. Three voices spoke names into the night. Three bone talismans waited like silent sentinels, conduits to a realm that should have remained undisturbed.

  The midnight bell of a distant church finished its twelfth toll and Martha Wilson raised the talisman to her lips and whispered the latin phrase scribbled on a diner napkin: “Veni, vocem audiat meam, loquere et abire.”

  She held her breath and waited. The candle flame danced but revealed nothing. The night remained silent but for the rustle of leaves and the distant hoot of an owl.

  Disappointment flooded her veins like ice water. “Richard?” she tried again, desperation edging her voice. “Richard, please, just one word.”

  Nothing.

  Thomas Wilson closed his eyes as he recited the incantation, the unfamiliar latin awkward on his tongue. “Veni, vocem audiat meam, loquere et abire.”

  The words hung in the air before dissipating like smoke. His candle’s flame bent low, nearly extinguished, then rallied, burning steady once more. Thomas waited, hope and dread mingling in his chest.

  Silence answered him. Silence, and the weight of guilt that refused to lift.

  “Dad?” he whispered. “I’m here now. I’m listening. Please, dad.”

  Nothing.

  Harold Vasquez spoke the latin clearly, with he precision of a man who had given and received orders for decades. “Veni, vocem audiat meam, loquere et abire.”

  His candle flared suddenly, the flame stretching upward, impossibly tall. It transitioned from warm gold to an electric blue that cast Harold’s face in corpse-light. The dog tags beside the talisman vibrated, a slight tremor at first, then violently enough to clatter against the stone.

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  Harold took a step back, instinct overriding curiosity. The blue flame cast no heat, but the air around it grew colder, crystallizing his breath into visible clouds.

  “Michael?” he whispered, his composure cracking.

  The ground before the headstone shifted—not the dramatic upheaval of horror movies, but a subtle movement, as if something far below stirred from long sleep. The earth seemed to exhale, releasing a sigh of stale air that carried the unmistakable scent of decay.

  Harold’s candle wasn’t the only one burning blue now. Across the cemetery, Martha and Thomas watched in terror as their candles transformed and the flames reached toward the sky like azure fingers. The talismans they’d placed began to glow with the same cold light, the carved patterns suddenly appearing less decorative and more purposeful—less like art and more like keys.

  And beneath three scattered graves, something answered the call of their grief. Something that had waited a very long time for an invitation to return.

  The pounding on my motel door dragged me from a nightmare where ravens pecked at my eyes while reciting my social security number backwards. I jolted awake. My heart hammered against my ribs like it wanted to escape. Dawn had barely broken, the thin gray light that seeped through the curtains told me it couldn’t be past six. The pounding came again, more desperate this time, accompanied by a woman’s voice calling my name with the particular pitch that only true terror can produce.

  “Mr. Holmes! Please! You have to help me!”

  I fumbled for my watch on the nightstand—5:47AM. Too damn early for whatever this was. My first thought was police, but cops don’t beg. My second thought was one of yesterday’s marks had buyer’s remorse and wanted their money back. That, I could handle.

  I pulled on my trousers and undershirt, smoothed my hair back with one hand, and approached the door cautiously. Old habits die hard; I checked through the peephole first.

  Martha Wilson stood outside, though ‘stood’ was generous. She swayed on her feet like a sapling in a hurricane, her silver hair wild and uncombed, her clothes—the same black dress from yesterday—rumpled and stained. Her face was the real shocker; pallid as a fish belly, eyes red-rimmed and wide with a fear so naked it made me take a step back.

  I opened the door, professional smile half-formed before I fully processed her condition. “Mrs. Wilson, what brings you—”

  She lunged forward and grabbed my shirt with surprising strength, her fingers twisting the fabric. “He came back,” she whispered hoarsely. “Richard came back.”

  I gently disentangled her hands and guided her into the room, and shut the door behind us. Part of me registered that this could be a scam—people had tried to shake me down before—but the trembling of her body against mine felt too genuine to fabricate.

  “Sit down,” I said, leading her to the room’s single chair. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

  She collapsed into the chair and drew shuddering breaths that seemed to pain her.

  “I did exactly what you said. The talisman, the candle, his ring. I spoke the words and waited, but nothing happened. Nothing.”

  I nodded encouragingly, already constructing a reasonable explanation about patience and spiritual receptivity—the kind of soothing nonsense that usually calmed disappointed customers.

  “So I went home,” she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I was so disappointed. I thought maybe I’d done it wrong. But then… at three o’clock, I heard knocking.”

  A cold feeling filled my gut. “Knocking?”

  “At my bedroom window.” Her hands twisted together in her lap. “My bedroom is on the second floor, Mr. Holmes.”

  I swallowed. My throat felt incredibly dry. “Probably a tree branch. Or birds—”

  “It was Richard.” The words fell like bombs. “He was at my window, knocking with his knuckles—tap-tap-tap—just like he used to when we were dating and he’d throw pebbles to get my attention.”

  “Mrs. Wilson—”

  “He said my name through the glass. ‘Martha,’ he said, ‘let me in.’ And his voice… it was his voice, but with something else behind it, like when you play two records at once.”

  I felt my whole body pucker up as goosebumps snuck up on me, and the hairs on the back of my arms stood up. I told myself it was the early hour, the lack of coffee, the residue of my nightmare still clinging to my consciousness.

  “And did you…?” I couldn’t finish the question.

  “I let him in.” Tears welled in her eyes. “God help me, I opened the window. I was so happy, Mr. Holmes. So happy to see him again.”

  She looked up at me, and the naked horror in her gaze made me take another step back.

  “But it isn’t him. Not really.” Her voice cracked. “It looks like Richard—his face, his hands, the mole on his left cheek—but it moves wrong. Like it’s wearing Richard like a suit that doesn’t quite fit.”

  A memory flashed unbidden—the raven’s voice in the darkness. That ritual you sold them wasn’t a lie. Not entirely. Which means what follows… won’t be pretend either.

  “What…” I cleared my throat. I tried again. “What does it do?”

  “It follows me around the house. It watches me. And it whispers…” She closed her eyes tightly. “It whispers things Richard couldn’t have known. Secrets I never told him. Things I did when he was away on business trips. People I thought about. Regrets I never shared.”

  She leaned forward, her voice dropping even lower. “It knows everything, Mr. Holmes. Everything I’ve ever thought, felt, or wanted to do but didn’t. It keeps telling them back to me, one by one, like it’s reading from a list.”

  A drop of sweat rolled down my spine despite the room’s chill. This was a scam. It had to be. A creative attempt at extortion from a woman who’d figured out she’d been swindled. But the alternative—that I’d accidentally opened a door to something genuinely supernatural—was too absurd to contemplate.

  “When I tried to leave this morning,” she continued, “it blocked the door. It said, ‘You called me back, Martha. You don’t get to leave me again.’ But I managed to slip out when it was… when it was in the bathroom, looking at itself in the mirror. It spends a lot of time doing that, tilting its head at different angles like it's trying to understand how faces work.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried to think. This woman wasn’t lying—or if she was, she believed her own delusion so completely that the distinction was meaningless.

  “Mrs. Wilson, I think you may have experienced what we call a grief hallucination. It’s quite common after—”

  “Don’t.” She cut me off, anger overwhelming fear. “Don’t you dare patronize me. You gave me that bone thing. You told me what words to say. You promised me one last chance to speak with my husband, and now something is in my house wearing his skin like a costume, and it won’t leave!”

  She stood suddenly, swaying but determined. “You’re going to fix this, Mr. Holmes. You’re going to come with me right now and send that thing back to wherever it came from, or I’m going straight to the police and telling them exactly what kind of ‘spiritual service’ you’re running.”

  I stared at her. Self-preservation warred with the growing, unwelcome suspicion that I had stumbled into something far beyond my understanding—something that the raven had tried to warn me about twice now.

  “Let me get my coat,” I said finally. The day, so new and barely begun, had already spiraled beyond my control.