Smoke in the Walls

The fall didn’t kill me. It just drove the breath out like I’d swallowed fire. The basement caught me in its ribs, hard concrete bruising bone. Dust and cinders rained over my face, grit in my teeth. For a second the dark pressed so tight it felt like drowning. Then the flashlight rolled beside me, still alive, its beam slashing across the black.

Ash everywhere. Knee-deep in some spots, soft as snow but bitter in my throat. The smell was sharp, not old soot—fresh accelerant baked into the walls. Whoever burned this place wanted the bones to keep bleeding long after the flames died.

I pushed up slow, ribs screaming. The beam cut across the far wall and froze me cold.

Photos.

Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, nailed into scorched wood. Faces half-burned, some I recognized from old news clippings, some I didn’t. All victims of fires across Port Meridian over the last two decades. And threaded among them—my parents. Same photos from their funeral program. Even one of my sister, Sarah. Twelve years old. The picture had been burned at the edges, her smile blackened.

My hands tightened until the gloves cracked.

“Mara!” Rourke’s voice roared from above. “Talk to me!”

I looked up. A ragged hole gaped in the ceiling, smoke drifting. His silhouette leaned over the edge, flashlight shaking.

“I’m here,” I snapped, throat raw. “Stay back. The whole place is wired.”

Because I could see it now. Thin metal lines snaked through the ash—tripwires, set across the floor like veins. My fall hadn’t triggered them. Pure luck. Whoever staged this wanted me alive long enough to see the display.

A soft sound rose under the crackle of settling timber. Like a recording on loop. Faint. Tinny. I followed it, weaving careful steps through the maze of wires.

A portable tape player sat on a cinderblock, half-melted from heat. It hissed static, then a voice came through. Calm. Patient.

“You don’t sleep, do you, Mara?” A man’s tone. No accent I could pin, no inflection but certainty. “I remember. The way you ran through smoke. You should’ve died that night. The wrong Ellison burned.”

I stopped breathing. The static swallowed the voice, spat him back again.

“This city forgets its fires. But not me. I remember every flame. Every scream. And I remember you.”

The tape clicked off. Silence. My pulse hammered so loud it felt like a siren in my skull.

I crouched, picked up the recorder. Cold. Too cold for something that had just survived a blaze. Which meant it hadn’t been here long.

The matchbox in my pocket felt heavier. Same brand. Same night. The Ashmaker wasn’t a ghost. He was flesh, waiting for me to put the pieces together.

Above, Rourke swore. “Mara, get the hell out of there. The floor’s giving.”

I turned toward the stairs on instinct. The beam cut across another shape. A second chair, tucked against the wall. Not burned. Not occupied. Empty, but waiting. Leather restraints hung loose. A smear of blood streaked the armrest.

A chill spread through me that the fire couldn’t touch. Whoever staged this wasn’t just writing history. They were reserving a seat. For me.

The ceiling groaned, wood snapping. Rourke’s shout blurred with the sound. I moved fast, threading between wires, lungs filling with ash. The stairs loomed, half-collapsed but still standing.

I made it halfway up when I froze.

Movement at the top. A figure against the smoke. Too tall, too still to be Rourke.

The limp gave it away. Left leg dragging like it belonged to someone else.

The Shadow.

For a second, neither of us moved. My flashlight beam cut up, but the smoke swallowed his face. Only the limp remained, a rhythm that pulled at memory until my stomach twisted.

“Mara!” Rourke’s hand grabbed my wrist from behind, yanking me the rest of the way up. The hole shrank behind me, smoke coughing through it. When I spun back, the figure was gone.

The chief barked orders, firefighters dousing what embers still clung to the ruins. Rourke shoved me toward daylight. My lungs tore with every breath, but my head was colder than ever.

Outside, the block reeked of wet ash and gasoline. Reporters had gathered, circling like sharks. Cameras lit my face. I turned away, hair damp with smoke, jacket streaked gray.

Rourke caught my arm, voice low. “Tell me you didn’t see what I think you saw.”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. My eyes were still on the smoke. It curled upward, spelling things I didn’t want to read.

A firefighter stumbled out of the house, mask dangling. He carried something wrapped in canvas. Laid it on the ground with hands that shook.

“Found this in the wall,” he said.

They peeled the canvas back.

A photograph. Large. Charred but intact enough to know exactly what it showed. My parents’ house, years ago. Fire still alive in the windows, flames curling like teeth. And there, in the lower corner, caught in the frame—me. Twelve years old, standing in the yard, face half-lit by the blaze.

I don’t remember anyone taking that picture.

The crowd murmured. Rourke’s hand slipped from my arm.

But I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. My eyes stayed locked on that frozen child. Ash on her cheek. Smoke in her hair. Eyes wide like she already knew what was coming.

The flashbulbs popped from the press. Sirens screamed somewhere far away. But all I heard was the whisper from the tape, replaying itself in the marrow of my bones.

The wrong Ellison burned.

And then the photo curled in the night air, edges catching flame that no one had lit.

Sleep didn’t come. When it did, it wasn’t sleep.

The dream brought fire. Always the fire. Flames licking the ceiling, smoke pressing low. My father’s voice yelling through the crackle, my mother’s scream tearing in half. Sarah’s hand reaching through the dark. Always reaching. Never reaching far enough.

I woke with the taste of smoke thick in my mouth.

The phone buzzed again. Another number I didn’t know.

“Mara.” This time it was Rourke. His voice was rough, hollow. “You need to get down here. Now.”

“Where?”

He gave the address. My stomach dropped.

The old rail station. Abandoned twenty years. Burned ten.

I didn’t ask questions. I grabbed the gun, the badge, the lighter I swore I’d quit using. Stepped into the night.

The station loomed against the skyline, ribs of black iron cutting into the sky. Windows shattered, walls scarred with soot. Rourke waited by the chain-link, face pale under the streetlight.

“What did you find?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Just opened the gate. His hands shook.

Inside, the air was cold, stale with old fire. Our footsteps echoed too loud. My beam cut across walls, catching graffiti, rat nests, and something worse.

A row of photographs. Taped across the wall.

My face. Over and over. From different nights, different cases. From childhood. From now. Even one of me sleeping on my couch, mouth open, hair tangled.

My knees went loose. “How the hell—”

“Keep looking,” Rourke said.

The last photo was new. Taken tonight. Me, sitting at my table, staring at Sarah’s picture.

Which meant someone had been inside my apartment.

I swallowed bile. My hand closed tighter around the gun.

Then the sound came. A match strike.

Sharp. Soft.

The flame flickered alive at the far end of the hall.

A figure held it. Face lost in dark. Limp in his step.

The match burned out, but the image didn’t leave. It seared.

And the whisper came again, not from memory, not from tape. From the dark

itself.

“The wrong Ellison burned.”

The walls groaned. The air shifted. And I knew what was coming before I smelled the gasoline.

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