Chapter 4: The Mirror Cracks
The drive back to the station felt like a journey through fog. The night outside was suffocating, the streetlights flickering like faint stars that had long ago lost their brilliance. Evelyn kept her hands firmly on the steering wheel, her grip tight enough to leave marks. Every few seconds, her eyes darted toward the rearview mirror, as though expecting something—or someone—to appear behind her.
It was a feeling she couldn’t shake, one that crawled beneath her skin and made her pulse race. Her breath came faster as the memories, those dark fragments from the past, played out like a distorted movie in her mind.
She had to confront them, she knew that much. The past had always been a part of her, but until now, she had thought it was behind her, buried deep beneath the walls of her mind. But the killer—he was pulling it all back into the light, piece by agonizing piece.
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was already past midnight. Marcus had insisted they both rest, but Evelyn knew she couldn’t. She had to find the connection, had to unlock the door that had been sealed shut for years.
Her phone buzzed suddenly, breaking her out of her reverie. She glanced down at the screen, a frown pulling at her lips when she saw the number.
“Detective Price,” she answered, her voice cold but steady.
“It’s Marcus,” came the familiar voice. “We got something.”
Evelyn’s grip tightened. “What?”
“It’s about the warehouse. We pulled the records on the building, like you asked. It used to be an old mental hospital.”
Her breath caught in her throat. The past she had been trying to escape… it was all coming back now. “A mental hospital?” she repeated, the words slipping from her lips in disbelief.
“That’s right. It was abandoned about fifteen years ago after a series of… incidents. It was supposed to be torn down, but somehow, the place just… stood there.”
“I need to know everything,” Evelyn replied, her voice suddenly urgent. “Every detail you can find. And I need it now.”
“I’ll send everything to your email. But Evelyn… there’s something else.”
“What?”
“We found something in the records. A name. Your name.”
Her blood ran cold, and for a moment, the world seemed to tilt. “My name?”
“Yeah. You were listed as a visitor there. Several times. In the late nineties.”
Evelyn could barely breathe. The walls around her, the walls she had carefully built to keep her past locked away, were starting to crack. She wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t want to know.
“Send me everything,” she managed to say, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Without another word, she hung up. Her hands shook as she reached for her phone and quickly checked her inbox. Marcus had already sent the files. Her stomach churned as she opened the first attachment, the information spilling out before her like an avalanche. Dates, times, and a list of visitors to the hospital. And then, like a punch to the gut, her name appeared—scrawled across the page, marked with a strange kind of finality.
Evelyn Price – Visitor
Date of Visit: May 15, 1997
Reason for Visit: Unspecified
There were more visits listed, each one followed by the same cryptic notation—unspecified.
Evelyn’s mind was racing, her heart pounding against her chest. What was this? Why had she been there? She tried to remember, tried to pull the memories out of the haze that had enveloped them, but it was like reaching into a deep, dark pool—nothing clear enough to grasp.
She swerved the car into a nearby parking lot, the tires screeching as she slammed the vehicle to a stop. The old mental hospital. Her past. The game.
The killer’s clues had taken on a terrifying new meaning. He knew about her. Knew things she had forgotten, or maybe tried to forget. But why? What did he want from her? And why now?
Her phone buzzed again, snapping her from her thoughts. Another message from Marcus. She quickly opened it.
“I found something else,” he wrote. “The files mention an incident involving a patient named ‘R.’ That’s all we’ve got. No other details yet.”
Evelyn felt a jolt of recognition. The letter “R.” It was too much of a coincidence. Her mind started to race again, every fiber of her being screaming that the past was about to resurface in a way she could never have anticipated.
The letter. The name. They were all connected.
Evelyn quickly typed out a response. “Find out everything you can about patient ‘R.’ Who were they? What happened?”
Her phone buzzed immediately with an acknowledgment. Marcus was on it.
Evelyn sat in her car, the weight of the past pressing down on her like a vice. The pieces were falling into place now, but they didn’t make sense. It was like a twisted puzzle that she had never asked to solve. Her mind spun with questions, each one more frightening than the last.
Why had she been a visitor at that hospital? What had happened there? And what was the killer trying to tell her with these twisted games?
She had to know. She had to understand before the lines between the killer’s game and her own reality shattered beyond repair.
She slammed the car door and headed back to her apartment. There was no time to waste. Each second that passed brought her closer to the truth—but also closer to becoming the next victim.
And she was running out of time.
