Blame my Shadow

The Pattern

I swallow. "It's just... a guess."

But it isn't.

It's memory stitching itself together in forbidden ways.

That night, I don't go home with Sarah right away.

I go to the records office.

The one place she told me not to go.

The place that smells like dust and rot and forgotten mistakes.

I tell myself I'm doing this to protect her.

That's the lie I use.

The truth is simpler.

I'm terrified of what I'll find if she's standing beside me.

The clerk barely looks up when I slide the names across the counter. I give him a calm smile, like my hands aren't shaking like I'm about to be judged by the past.

It takes time.

Boxes. Files. Yellowed pages.

Then—

There it is.

A thin folder from nearly two decades ago.

An unregistered residential detention property.

A "care facility."

Shut down within three months due to "unspecified allegations."

My vision blurs as I read the list of children temporarily housed there.

Every victim's name is on it.

So is mine.

My knees nearly give out.

Not a random pattern.

Not a copycat.

Not a coincidence.

We were all there.

Together.

I don't tell Sarah.

That's the first real lie I consciously choose to keep from her.

Instead, I start watching the evidence differently.

The killer isn't choosing victims randomly.

They're completing something.

Erasing a shared history.

And if that history exists...

Then someone else remembers it too.

Someone who stayed behind.

The police want another prediction.

The media is waiting.

Cameras crowd the station entrance like vultures.

"Say something, Oracle!"

"Is the killer going to strike again?"

"Are you afraid of yourself?"

The word yourself hits too close to the truth.

Inside, they push photographs in front of me again.

I try to feel the pattern.

I close my eyes.

Nothing comes.

My head is loud with memory, not intuition.

I force it.

Pressure builds behind my eyes like a headache that wants to become a fracture.