The Girl Came Back Wrong

They told me to find a missing girl. I found the cellar first. Stone walls. Iron hooks. The word "ALIVE" scratched in chalk. Then the whispers started. My own voice on recordings I didn’t make: "She’s in the orchard." The night I saw her, she was barefoot in a nightgown, grinning in my torchlight. Clean. Unhurt. "The man in the cellar was nice," she said later. "He didn’t have a face." They closed the case. Called it a miracle. But the last recording is still on my phone. My voice, frantic: "She’s not the same." And hers, giggling: "Neither are you." (I check my reflection a lot now. Just to be sure.) #NoSleep #TrueCrime #SomethingIsOff