The package arrived without a sound.
Marianne Hale didn't notice it until the kettle screamed. She lifted it off the burner, the whistle trailing off like a dying breath, and only then saw the envelope sitting in the center of her porch. There was no knock, no shadow disappearing down the walkway. Just the pale morning mist and the heavy hush that clung to her old house like mildew.
She opened the front door, mug of tea forgotten in her hand. The envelope was thick, unmarked but for her name, Dr. Marianne Hale, typed in faded Courier font. No postage. No return address.
Her stomach tightened.
She bent to pick it up, fingers trembling slightly as the weight of the contents shifted inside paper. Dozens of sheets, maybe more. She caught a faint scent as she straightened ink and dampness, and something she couldn't name. Memory, maybe.
She locked the door behind her.
Back inside, Marianne stood at her kitchen island, the envelope before her like a warning. She took a breath and opened it.
No cover page. No title. Just the first line scrawled in sharp, slanted cursive across the top of the first page:
"She died with her eyes open."
Marianne read it again.
The handwriting struck her like a half-forgotten melody unmistakable in its edge and elegance. Clean loops, elongated letters. A flourish on the final 'n.'
Senna Calix.
Her pulse skipped.
She sank into the chair at the island, the mug cooling beside her. She turned the next page. Then another. The script remained the same flowing, erratic in places, like it had been written quickly, emotionally. Pages filled with vivid descriptions of a woman's final moments,pain, confusion, an almost poetic rendering of violence.
Marianne forced herself to read slowly.
The story unfolded in fragments. A woman stalked through city streets, followed by a man she doesn't know. She becomes aware of the presence too late. She tries to run. He follows. The chapter ends with her pinned against a brick wall in an alleyway, her breath ripped from her throat as if by an invisible hand.
There were no character names. No cities. But the details were precise. The scent of the alley. The pattern of rain on the asphalt. The squeak of a broken streetlight swinging above them. The way the woman's ring finger was broken backwards.
Marianne closed the pages.
It wasn't a story.
It was a case.
She pushed the manuscript away, hands trembling. Her mind reached backward, five years ago, the last time she saw Senna. A session cut short. Tears. Screaming. Then silence. The disappearance.
She'd assumed Senna had overdosed or fled to another country. There were rumors. That she'd been institutionalized. That she'd joined a cult in the mountains. That she'd killed someone and vanished into her own fiction.
But there had never been proof. Never a body. Just her final book: The Hollow Season, a chilling masterpiece so intimate it had ruined two marriages and cracked the spines of therapists everywhere.
Including Marianne.
She reached for her tea and found her hands were cold.
She needed to call someone. Maybe Alex. He'd worked Senna's file after she vanished. Or Elias Mercer. He owed her a favor from when she'd helped profile that serial arsonist three years ago.
But she didn't move.
Instead, she reached for the manuscript again.
The next page detailed the killer's thoughts,methodical, poetic, even tender. He wasn't just stalking the woman. He was studying her. She was a character in his novel, and he wanted to get her right.
He described her footsteps how they faltered at intersections, how she clutched her purse tightly but never turned around. She knew something was off, but kept convincing herself it was nothing.
"She made herself forget the feeling," the page read. "Because fear is always easier to silence than to obey."
Marianne whispered the sentence aloud. It sounded like Senna. Not just the words....but the weight behind them. The dread and longing stitched together like silk.
Then something even stranger.
Midway down the page, the killer makes a note. A footnote, like a whisper:
"She reminds me of you."
Marianne stood. The chair scraped loudly against the tile.
She walked to the window and yanked the curtains open.
Her yard was empty. Her street, still. Just a quiet stretch of pines and houses left to rot under gray April skies.
Still, she locked the window.
Senna was alive. Or someone wanted her to think so. And if the details in the manuscript were real…
She opened her laptop and searched the news.
It didn't take long.
Unidentified Woman Found in Alley Behind West 43rd
Victim's Finger Broken, Fatal Wound to the Neck
Marianne's blood ran cold.
The manuscript hadn't been inspired by the murder.
The murder had followed the manuscript.
Or worse....
It was still being written.
And Marianne had just turned the first page.