THE OTHER TWIN

 Every Halloween, the town of Blackwood locked its doors before sunset.

Nobody said why.

They didn’t have to.

Everyone knew about the Connelly house.

Everyone knew about the blood.

Everyone knew about the two little girls who had been found alive after the murders.

Well.

One girl had been found alive.

The other had been taken away.

And for years Emerlynn Connelly had convinced herself she remembered nothing.

That was the lie she told everyone.

It was also the lie she desperately needed to believe.

The first letter arrived three weeks before Halloween.

There was no return address.

Emerlynn found it lying on the floor inside her front door when she came home from work.

She stared at it for several seconds.

Her name was written across the envelope.

Emerlynn Connelly.

The handwriting was thin and crooked.

Almost childlike.

She didn’t want to open it.

She knew that before she even touched it.

Something inside her recognized the envelope.

Her hand trembled as she tore it open.

Inside was a single photograph.

It showed the Connelly family standing on the front porch.

Her father.

Her mother.

Her older brother.

And two identical little girls standing between their parents.

Emerlynn and Everly.

They were both eight years old.

Both wearing Halloween costumes.

Both smiling.

Emerlynn stared at the photograph.

She remembered that night.

She remembered the costumes,

She remembered the porch.

She remembered her mother’s voice telling them not to run into the street.

Then-

Nothing.

The photograph slipped from Emerlynn’s fingers.

Something cold crawled through her chest.

On the back of the photograph someone had written:

You remember more than you think.

Emerlynn immediately threw it into the trash.

Then she spent the entire night staring at the ceiling.

At 2:13 am, she heard a little girl laughing outside her bedroom window.

She sat upright.

The laughter stopped.

She listened.

Nothing.

Then came three soft knocks against the glass.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Emerlynn didn’t move.

Her childhood bedroom had been on the second floor of the Connelly house.

There had been a window there.

And on Halloween night someone had knocked on it.

She had forgotten that.

Or she thought she had.

The next morning, she called the hospital.

“Can I speak to Everly Connelly?”

There was a pause.

“Are you family?”

“Her sister.”

Another pause.

“She isn’t taking visitors.”

“Please.”

The receptionist sighed.

“Emerlynn, she’s been asking about you.”

Emerlynn froze.

“What did she say?”

“She keeps saying the same thing.”

“What?”

The receptionist lowered her voice.

“She says, ask Emerlynn what happened after the clock struck midnight.”

Emerlynn hung up.

That night, another letter arrived.

This one contained a newspaper clipping.

Connelly family murdered on Halloween night.

Beneath the headline was a photograph of the house.

Blackwood had never forgotten the story.

Four members of the Connelly family had been murdered.

Their father.

Their mother.

Their brother.

And their uncle who had been visiting that night.

The police searched for a killer.

They found no stranger.

No footprints.

No weapon.

No forced entry.

Only two surviving children.

Emerlynn and Everly.

But Everly had disappeared from the house before police arrived.

She was found several miles away, wandering along a road.

She couldn’t remember what had happened.

Neither could Emerlynn.

At least, that was what everyone believed.

Emerlynn folded the newspaper clipping,

Then she noticed something written beneath the headline.

There were two killers.

Her breathing stopped.

She read it again.

Two killers.

That night, Emerlynn dreamed about the house.

She was eight years old again.

She stood in the upstairs hallway.

The lights were off.

Something wet dripped onto her hand.

She looked up.

Her mother was standing at the end of the hallway.

Her white Halloween costume was covered in red.

“Run!” her mother whispered.

Emerlynn tried to scream.

Her mother shook her head.

“Don’t let Everly find you.”

Emerlynn woke screaming.

The bedroom door was open.

She lived alone.

She knew she had locked it.

She got out of bed and walked toward the hallway.

On the floor was another envelope.

She opened it.

Inside was a key.

And a note.

Basement, Halloween night. You left something behind.

Emerlynn knew immediately where the key belonged.

The Connelly house had been abandoned for years.

She hadn’t been back since the murders.

She had spent her entire life avoiding it.

But now she stood outside the house on October 31st.

Blackwood was alive with decorations.

Children laughed in the streets.

Porch lights glowed orange.

But the Connelly house remained dark.

Emerlynn unlocked the door.

It groaned open.

The smell hit her first.

Dust.

Rot.

And something faintly metallic.

She stepped inside.

Every memory seemed to wait for her.

The staircase.

The living room.

The broken chandelier.

The hallway.

Then she heard a whisper.

“Emerlynn.”

She spun around.

Nobody was there.

She went downstairs.

The basement door was locked.

The key fit.

Inside, the air was freezing.

Her flashlight swept across boxes, old furniture, and dusty photographs.

Then she saw something carved into the wall.

Two names.

Everly.

Emerlynn.

Underneath them was a sentence.

One of you remembers.

Emerlynn’s flashlight fell from her hand.

Her mind suddenly filled with images.

Her father arguing with someone.

Her mother crying.

Everly standing behind the basement stairs.

A knife.

A scream.

Two little girls holding hands.

And then another memory.

A memory she had buried so deeply that it felt like somebody else’s life.

Everly was crying.

“Emerlynn, stop!”

Emerlynn shook her head.

“No.”

“You said we’d never tell.”

“I won’t.”

“You promised.”

A man’s voice came from upstairs.

“Girls?”

The twins stared at each other.

Everly whispered, “He’s coming.”

Emerlynn remembered.

She remembered everything.

The murders hadn’t begun with a stranger breaking into their house.

They had begun with the twins.

They had discovered their father was planning to send Everly away after years of blaming her for things she hadn’t done.

Emerlynn had hated him for it.

She had hated everyone.

And Everly had been frightened.

But Emerlynn had convinced her sister that they could make their family disappear.

Not kill them.

Not at first.

Just frighten them.

Make them leave.

But fear became anger.

Anger became violence.

And violence became something neither girl could control.

Emerlynn remembered holding the knife.

She remembered her brother.

Her mother’s scream.

Her father’s pleading.

She remembered Everly standing beside her.

She remembered the blood.

And she remembered something else.

Afterward Everly had looked at her.

“You didn’t it.”

Emerlynn had stared at her.

“We did it.”

Everly shook her head.

“No.”

She backed away.

“You did.”

The memory shattered.

Emerlynn collapsed onto the basement floor.

“No,” she whispered.

A voice came from behind her.

“Yes.”

Emerlynn turned.

Everly stood at the bottom of the stairs.

She wore a gray hospital sweater.

Her hair was shorter than Emerlynn remembered.

But her face was exactly the same.

Like looking into a mirror that had aged without her.

“Everly?”

Her sister smiled sadly.

“I knew you remember eventually.”

“You escaped.”

“I was found.”

“You’ve been sending the letters.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Everly looked around the basement.

“Because I got tired of being the only one who remembered.”

Emerlynn stood slowly.

“You were there.”

“I was.”

“You helped me.”

“I tried to stop you.”

Emerlynn’s stomach twisted.

“No.”

Everly’s eyes filled with tears.

“You were angry. You kept saying they deserved it. I thought you would stop after dad.”

Emerlynn couldn’t breathe.

“You watched.”

“I was eight years old.”

“So was I.”

Silence filled the basement.

Above them, fireworks exploded somewhere in town.

Red lights briefly flashed through the basement windows.

Everly stepped closer.

“You’ve spent all these years telling yourself you were the only survivor.”

Emerlynn stared at her.

“But you weren’t.”

Everly touched her chest.

“I survived too.”

Emerlynn looked at her sister.

Then she understood the letters.

The photographs.

The warnings.

Everly hadn’t been trying to frighten her.

She had been trying to make her remember.

Because there was one final thing Emerlynn hadn’t remembered.

The police had found Everly wandering alone on the road.

But they had found Emerlynn inside the house.

Sitting beside her family’s bodies.

Covered in blood.

Holding the knife.

She had told them she didn’t know what happened.

And they had believed her.

Because she was a frightened eight-year-old girl.

Because Everly had been found miles away.

Because nobody wanted to believe that two children could have done something so terrible.

Everly reached into her pocket.

She pulled out one final envelope.

Emerlynn didn’t want to open it.

“What is it?”

“The truth.”

“I already know,”

“No.”

Everly handed to her.

“Not all of it.”

Emerlynn opened the envelope.

Inside was a photograph.

It showed the basement.

It had been taken the night of the murders.

Two little girls stood in the center of the room.

Everly was crying.

Emerlynn was smiling.

On the back someone had written:

You weren’t following Everly.

Emerlynn’s eyes widened.

She read the next line.

She was following you.

Emerlynn looked up.

Everly was gone.

“Everly?”

No answer.

The front door stood open.

Outside, children walked through the street carrying pumpkins.

Parents laughed.

Music played.

Everything looked normal.

But Emerlynn knew it wasn’t.

She turned toward the Connelly house.

In the upstairs window stood a little girl.

Eight years old.

Wearing a Halloween costume.

Emerlynn froze.

The girl raised one hand.

Three knocks sounded against the glass.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Emerlynn whispered the words she had been trying not to say for years.

“Something’s not right.”

The little girl smiled.

And then Emerlynn realized something terrifying.

The little girl wasn’t Everly.

She was Emerlynn.

Her younger self.

Still trapped inside the house.

Still waiting for the night to begin.

And suddenly, Emerlynn understood why Everly had been so desperate to make her remember.

The murders weren’t the secret.

The secret was what happened afterward.

Everly had escaped the house.

But Emerlynn had never truly left.

Part of her remained there on that Halloween night.

The part that remembered.

The part that knew.

The part that had been waiting all these years for someone to come back.

Behind her, the front door slowly slammed shut.

Emerlynn turned.

The house was dark.

Then, from somewhere upstairs, she heard a little girl’s voice.

“Emerlynn?”

She closed her eyes.

The voice whispered again.

“Come find me.”

And for the first time in years, Emerlynn remembered exactly what she had said that night.

Not to Everly.

Not to her family.

To herself.

I’ll never forget.

The lights in the house flickered on.

One by one.

Every room.

Every hallway.

Every memory.

And Emerlynn stepped inside.