The Echoes of Unlit Corners

In the town of Hollowbrook, shadows didn’t follow people—they led. They pooled under streetlamps like spilled ink, slithering ahead of their owners to trace paths only the lonely could see. The townsfolk called it shiverwalking, a term borrowed from the fraying journals in the attic of the abandoned observatory. No one remembered who wrote them, but the pages hummed with warnings: “Beware the shadow that turns to face you.”

Mira returned to Hollowbrook after seven years, her father’s ashes sealed in a tin lunchbox he’d carried to the coal mines. She’d inherited his house, its windows boarded, its floors littered with Polaroids of a childhood she’d burned in her mind. The first night, her shadow refused to climb the stairs. It pooled at the base, shaping itself into a girl’s silhouette—her silhouette, age twelve, holding a stuffed rabbit he’d won her at a fair. The rabbit’s name was Thistle. Mira had forgotten.

“You’re not real,” she whispered.

The shadow tilted its head.

Hollowbrook’s only diner, The Starless, served coffee bitter enough to scar the tongue. There, Mira met Jorah, a mechanic who repaired clocks no one owned. His shadow coiled around his ankles like a loyal dog, but its edges flickered, pixelated. “It’s the guilt,” he said, nodding to hers, now crouched under the booth, folding origami cranes from napkins. “They mold themselves to what you bury.”

“How do I stop it?”

“You don’t.” He slid her a key. “The observatory. Answers eat better in the dark.”

The observatory’s telescope pointed not at stars, but at the town below. Mira’s shadow leapt ahead, morphing into moments she’d amputated:

- Age 14: Her father’s cough rattling the dinner table, her own voice sharp as she hissed, “Stop pretending you’re dying.”

- Age 17: A car idling at dawn, her suitcase heavy with stolen cash.

Last week: The voicemail she’d deleted unplayed—“Mira, I’m sorry I—”

Jorah found her curled under the telescope, her shadow now a funhouse mirror of her father’s stooped frame. “They’re not hauntings,” he said. “They’re echoes. You muted them, but they kept breathing.”

“How do I make them stop?”

“You let them speak.”

Mira’s shadow led her to the mineshaft where her father had worked. Inside, the walls glistened with coal dust and something worse—old shadows, pressed into the rock like fossils. Hers pressed a hand to the wall, and the shaft filled with voices:

“You’ll never come back, will you?” (Her father, leaning on the doorway.)
“I’m not your nurse!” (Herself, slamming the phone.)
“I kept Thistle in my locker,” whispered the shadow-girl, holding the rabbit.

Mira’s knees buckled. “I didn’t know.”

The shadow smoothed her hair, cold as a winter window. “You don’t grieve what you lost. You grieve what you didn’t love enough.”