Aaaaand Its Gone

Chapter 10 — The Shadow That Learned

The clock’s hands still refused to move, but Josephine could feel the seconds anyway.
They pressed at her skin like faint heat.
Each loop brought a sharper memory—the way her father’s match always broke in half, the way her mother always whispered please before speaking aloud.

By the fourth or fifth restart she began to answer her parents’ questions before they asked them.
Thomas would blink, confused; Margaret would only stare, lips parted, as if she could hear another version of the same conversation layered behind this one.

When the house fell silent, Josephine climbed to the attic.
Light from the narrow window struck the dust at an angle that never changed, freezing the air into bands of pale gold.

Objects had doubled: two trunks, two chairs, two broken dolls, each pair slightly misaligned, the second shimmering like heat above the first.
When she reached toward the ghost of the chair, her fingers met a thin resistance, as if air itself had muscle.
The duplicate quivered—and a voice, faint as paper, whispered her own name.

Not Josephine.
The way her mother said it when she was frightened: Josie.

She looked down.
Her shadow was stretched across the floorboards, but its edges didn’t quite match her shape.
It lifted its head a heartbeat before she did, turned its face a little faster, tilted its hand a little farther.
And when she whispered, Who are you?, it mouthed the same question in perfect silence.

A tremor passed through the attic.
The duplicate objects blurred, their outlines pulsing like sound waves.

The shadow whispered—not through air but directly in her thoughts:
I am what the house remembers. And you are what it keeps.

Josephine sat cross-legged on the wooden planks and took a stick of chalk from the shelf.
She drew a rectangle on the floor, careful lines connecting, steady hand.
The chalk hissed faintly, bright white against the wood.
When the shape closed, the boards swelled under it, a slow inhalation.

For a heartbeat the line glowed like embers, and she heard the house exhale.
Then the chalk faded, leaving only a faint impression of light beneath the boards—like something waiting to be opened from the other side.

Downstairs, Margaret froze mid-stir of her tea.
A second set of footsteps echoed above her own, heavier, out of rhythm.
She called her daughter’s name, once, then again.

At the top of the stairs, a small figure appeared—Josephine, pale in the half-light.
Behind her, from the attic doorway, a second Josephine stepped forward, eyes fixed on the first, moving a fraction ahead, like a reflection that had learned to walk alone.