Thursday of 6 June 2001
The fire was all over the place.
Ezra stood in the middle of the hallway, pajamas too big, smoke biting his eyes. The air burned inside his nose like needles. Everything smelled like plastic and meat.
He didn't cry.
The silence was loud, broken only by wood cracking like bone. Somewhere behind him, something collapsed. He didn't turn.
Ahead, through the smoke, the hallway ended at a door. His parents' bedroom. He knew they were in there.
Or… had been.
He took one step.
A shape moved in the doorway.
It wasn't his mother. It wasn't his father. It was tall. Like a shadow caught in the light. No face. No sound. Just stillness, framed by flame.
Ezra froze. The thing didn't move.
Then—it tilted its head.
Almost… curiously.
And Ezra took another step.
The fire parted for him.
He didn't know how he got out. He only knew the last thing he heard as the house groaned and folded in on itself like paper.
A voice. Low and cold. Whispering in his ear as the flames reached up toward the sky.
"You're mine now."
Fifteen Years Later
Ezra jolted awake, breath sharp and shallow, his shirt clinging to him with sweat.
The room was dark. Early morning. The fan in the corner clicked with every slow rotation. Outside, rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers.
He sat still for a moment, letting his mind catch up to his body.
The dream again.
No—not a dream. A memory.He knew the difference. Dreams didn't leave the smell of smoke in your nose.
He stared at the ceiling. It was clean. Plain. No markings. But for a moment, just a flicker, he saw it again—
The burn.
The marks carved into wood.
Ezra blinked.
It was gone.
"Ezra!"The voice came from downstairs."You're going to be late again."
Father Hale.
Ezra sat up, rolled his neck once, then twice. His body still ached from yesterday's run. He didn't sleep well—not ever—but last night had been worse. The fire dreams always left him raw.
He moved on instinct. No wasted motion. Pulled off the damp shirt. Grabbed a clean towel. Walked across the cold wooden floor into the narrow hallway.
The bathroom door creaked open under his hand. Mirror fogged. Tiled floor cracked. Leaky shower head. Everything familiar. Everything routine.
That's how Ezra stayed sane—routine.
As the hot water steamed against his back, Ezra closed his eyes and tried not to see the hallway again.Not the flames.Not the shadow in the doorway.Not the way the fire had moved for him, like it knew him.
He ran a hand through his hair, then rested his palms against the tile. The water hissed and echoed.
Fifteen years. He still couldn't forget. Still didn't understand.
He shut the water off, letting the silence ring in his ears. For a second, it felt like something else was in the quiet—some breath, some whisper just beneath hearing.
But it faded.
Ezra wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped into the hallway. Bare feet on worn wood. The scent of damp stone and burning incense drifted faintly up the stairs.
Hale was already awake. Of course he was.
The old man never really slept anymore—he just waited.
Ezra dressed quickly in his room: plain black shirt, dark jeans, boots by the door. No mirror. He didn't keep one in here anymore.
He headed downstairs.
Father Hale stood in the kitchen, hunched over the stove like a shadow stitched together with old bones. He wore the same threadbare cardigan as always, sleeves pushed up. A small radio hummed static beside a chipped coffee mug.
"You're slipping, Ezra," he said without looking. "It's the third time this month."
Ezra didn't answer right away. He poured himself coffee, sat on the stool across from him. The clock on the wall ticked unevenly. Rain dripped from the eaves outside.
"You had it again, didn't you?"
Ezra looked up.
The priest's eyes were sharp. Pale, but not soft. There was a storm in them, same as always.
Ezra nodded once. "Yeah."
"Same one?"
"Exactly the same."
Father Hale sighed and turned off the burner. The kettle whined as it cooled. He leaned against the counter, arms folded.
"You've kept it buried for years. And now it's clawing back. That means something."
Ezra stared at the swirling surface of his coffee.
"Something's changing."
"Or coming," Hale said quietly.
They let the silence sit between them for a moment. The rain outside grew heavier.
"We need to talk to someone," Hale continued. "Someone outside the Church. This might be bigger than what we—"
"No," Ezra said sharply, standing. "We're not dragging anyone else into this."
"You don't get to decide that anymore," Hale snapped back. "Not if others are dying."
Ezra turned away, grabbed his coat, pulled the hood up.
"I'm going to class," he muttered.
Hale stepped forward. "Ezra—"
But the door had already shut behind him.
The sky over Howell was still bruised with early morning gray as Ezra pulled onto the road, the Mustang's engine rumbling low beneath him like something alive.
He didn't turn on the radio. He never did.
Silence was better.
The wipers squeaked across the windshield, sweeping away the mist. Rain fell in steady sheets, the kind that made the trees blur and the traffic lights bleed red and green into the pavement.
He kept his eyes on the road. Always scanning. Always watching. Like the world might change when he wasn't looking.
The Mustang's interior still smelled faintly like oil and old leather. Hale had given it to him on his eighteenth birthday. Said it belonged to a friend of his. Never said which friend. Ezra didn't ask.
The drive to Ann Arbor took almost an hour. Most people hated that kind of commute, but Ezra liked it. It gave him time to breathe—to reset. Time alone with the road.
But today felt different.
The longer he drove, the heavier the air felt. Like the sky itself was pressing down. His hands gripped the wheel tighter than usual, knuckles pale.
He kept seeing that flicker in the corner of his vision.
Just a flicker.
A shape in the tree line. A shadow on the road behind him.
Every time he looked, nothing was there.
The dream was still clawing at the back of his mind. Not just the fire—the voice. That whisper. The one that always came right before his world fell apart.
You're mine now.
Ezra's jaw clenched.
He took the exit onto Washtenaw Avenue. The traffic thickened. Students with umbrellas and headphones weaved through puddles across crosswalks. The university skyline rose through the drizzle—clean lines, glass windows, clock towers muted by fog.
The parking garage across from East Hall was nearly full, but he found a space on the third level, tucked between a rusted Honda and a spotless silver SUV.
He shut off the engine. The Mustang ticked as it cooled, metal settling in the damp.
Ezra sat there for a moment. Let the rain fill the silence.
People passed by in the lot below—laughing, shouting, alive.
And Ezra just sat, unmoving, eyes locked on his own reflection in the rearview mirror.
Ezra stepped out of the car and pulled up his hood.
He didn't believe in ghosts. Not really.
He just shoved off this hunch and walk inside.
Rain gathered in the corners of the lot, puddles swallowing the painted lines. The gray sky stretched flat over Ann Arbor, the kind of pale that drained color from everything beneath it.
Ezra walked the short distance to campus without rushing, his boots heavy against the wet pavement. Around him, the university stirred to life. The buzz of traffic, snips of conversation, the occasional siren in the distance.
He cut through the courtyard behind East Hall, hands in his jacket pockets, ignoring the flyers, the student volunteers with clipboards, and the guy offering free energy bars like they were lottery tickets.
By the time he reached the Philosophy building, his shoulders were already damp from the rain.
Inside, the hallways smelled like old paper and industrial carpet. Students milled around the bulletin boards and water fountains, half-awake, scrolling through their phones or thumbing through assigned texts. The lights overhead buzzed with that faint, fluorescent hum—constant, irritating, grounding.
Ezra didn't speak to anyone.
He rarely did.
Room 216. Philosophy of Mind. Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00 a.m. Professor Green.
He slid into his usual seat near the back—second row from the end, by the window—and pulled out his worn notebook.
Students trickled in one by one. Ezra kept his eyes on the notebook's blank page, drawing shallow lines between the printed blue ones. Nothing shapes, just motion. Just pressure.
He heard the soft shuffle of someone sitting beside him—same as every week.
Without looking. He knew who it was.
Her name was Mina Carter.
She'd been in his classes before. Art History, Introduction to Ethics. Quiet, observant. She always smelled faintly of lavender and coffee, always had her sleeves pushed up, even in winter.
She wasn't loud, like most people in his life. She wasn't fake, either. She was soft around the edges in a way Ezra had never been. Soft in a way that made people trust her before she ever opened her mouth.
And she noticed things.
Like how he never took his coat off.Like how he always sat with his back to the wall.Like how he never talked to anyone unless directly spoken to.
Ezra didn't mind her presence. Which, for him, was saying something.
She pulled out a pen and a pale blue notebook covered in hand-drawn doodles. A cup of coffee steamed in a thermos by her side.
Class started.
Professor Green began his usual meandering lecture on the Ship of Theseus and the problem of continuity of self through time. He talked with his hands, pacing in front of the chalkboard, gesturing like the ideas could be caught midair and dragged to ground.
Ezra listened. Or, more accurately, he absorbed.
He didn't take notes.
But Mina watched him now and then.
Not in a creepy way. Not constant. Just enough to notice the way he clenched his jaw when something didn't make sense. The way he tapped his pen three times exactly before stopping. The way he never laughed—not even when Professor Green made one of his terrible metaphysics jokes that sent the front row into polite giggles.
She'd considered talking to him. Once. Maybe twice.
More than that, if she was honest.
She wasn't dramatic about it. She wasn't one of those girls who talked about him in the dorm or speculated with friends. In fact, most people didn't talk about Ezra at all. He wasn't "cool" or mysterious. He was just quiet. A shadow in the classroom. Most people forgot him as soon as they left.
But Mina had noticed something else.
Sometimes, when Ezra thought no one was watching, his eyes would drift toward the windows—not to daydream, not out of boredom. More like he was waiting for something to appear.
Something no one else could see.
She'd opened her mouth once. To ask if he wanted to study sometime. She'd rehearsed it, even: "Hey, I know we've been in a few classes together. Do you want to maybe go over the next chapter before the exam?" Easy. Casual.
But when she turned toward him that day in Ethics, the words died on her tongue.
Because his eyes looked like they'd just seen something awful. Not fear—worse than that. Recognition. Like he'd glimpsed something in the lecture hall that didn't belong in this world.
So she didn't speak.
She didn't speak today, either.
When class ended, Ezra stood, gathered his things with quick, practiced motions, and left the room without a word.
Mina watched him go.
And that was that.