He spat into the dust. The copper taste clung to the back of his throat like old pennies. "Get out of my head," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the rough cuff of his woolen sweater. He gripped the edge of an overturned worktable, knuckles whitening as the floorboards stopped swaying beneath his boots. *"I can't,"* Léonie said. Her voice bypassed his ears entirely; it bloomed behind his frontal lobe, soft as damp linen, tinged with a hollow tremor. *"I didn't choose this either. When you touched the pigment... you drew me in. Or I drew you. I don't know."* "Great. Delusional psychosis brought on by poverty. Just what the creditors ordered." Bastien forced his posture upright, slipping into the airy, lazy cadence he always used when bailiffs knocked on his door. He offered a theatrical grimace to the empty rafters. "Listen, mademoiselle, if you're taking up residence in my skull, we need lease terms. House rules. Rule one: privacy when I'm changing. Rule two: no more snuff films projected directly onto my retinas." *"It isn't a joke,"* she murmured, bruised by his flippancy. *"And I don't see whatever you think you're hiding. I only see... what you dwell on. The small kitchen in Saint-Malo. The bills tucked under the flour tin. The guilt."* Bastien froze. His mask slipped, just for half a heartbeat, before he dragged it back down with an easy, crooked grin. "Then you already know my company is remarkably cheap. Don't look too closely, Léonie. It's dreadfully dull in there." A rusty car horn blared twice from the courtyard below, rattling the loose panes in the casement window. His chest seized. "Céline." He threw a dust sheet over the box of stolen pigment and took the service steps two at a time, avoiding the grand central staircase entirely. He couldn't stomach the white marble down there, not with phantom violet silk still burned against his optic nerves. The iron entrance doors were already pushed ajar when he reached the foyer. Céline stood on the threshold, framed by the gray drizzle of Brumeport. She had a battered leather satchel slung across her chest, a cardboard crate of canned food balanced on one hip, and hair the color of charred hazelnut whipped across her forehead. "You look terrible, Bas," she announced, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation. Her sneakers squeaked against the tiled vestibule. "Like you had an argument with a ghost and lost." "The dust has aristocratic lineage," Bastien said smoothly, taking the crate from her hands before her arms gave out. "It demanded an apology for being disturbed. You weren't supposed to take the midday coach. The ticket prices are criminal." "The conductor owes Monsieur Laurent for repairs on his tractor. I bargained." Céline kept a straight face. Her eyes—dark, razor-sharp, missing nothing—swept across the cavernous foyer. She stared at the grand staircase, her gaze lingering on the lowest riser. A subtle twitch pinched the corner of her brow. "The air here tastes like wet iron. It feels... heavy, Bastien. Like somebody left a damp coat over the house and forgot to take it off for forty years." "It’s sea mist, little owl. Salt and mold. Our inheritance in all its majesty." "Don't patronize me." She walked to the base of the flight, crouching to run a finger along the wood paneling near the newel post. "I stopped at the public library by the harbor before I caught the bus. They don't keep contemporary municipal records in the open stacks, but the local folklore pamphlets are uncurated. Did you know what they called this place before father bought the mortgage? *Le Tombeau des Ancolies*. The Columbine Tomb." "Towns with bad weather always invent bad poetry," Bastien said, setting the crate on a wooden chest. He felt an itch behind his temples, an invasive warmth. *"She has your chin,"* Léonie whispered inside his brain. Her voice was quiet, tentative, like an intruder peering into a parlor through a keyhole. *"And your eyes. She is very beautiful, Bastien."* Bastien ignored her, keeping his focus pinned entirely on his sister. He stepped closer to Céline, reached down, and tugged a loose strand of hair back behind her ear with deliberate, familial tenderness. "You shouldn't have dug around in that trash. We're here to clean the place, list it with the notary, and pay off the debt on the Saint-Malo lease. We aren't here to play detective." Céline leaned into his hand for a brief fraction of a second, her guarded demeanor softening just enough to let the exhausted eighteen-year-old show through. "I know. But there are stories, Bas. Stories about people losing pieces of their heads. Waking up and forgetting their mother's maiden name. Forgetting who they loved. They blame something called a Shade. A leech that nests in the salt damp." Suddenly, the warmth in Bastien's head snapped shut. A sharp, stinging chill flared behind his eyes, cold as brine poured over an open cut. *"You touch her so easily,"* Léonie's voice hissed. It wasn't gentle anymore. It was ragged, raw, carrying a venomous, sudden jealousy that made Bastien stumble backward half a step. *"You look at her and your mind fills with light. When you look at my memory, you feel only disgust."* Bastien's throat went dry. The sheer force of the phantom girl's resentment struck him like an elbow to the ribs. He stared at the empty space above Céline's shoulder, stunned by the raw possessiveness vibrating through his skull. "Bastien?" Céline asked, her brows drawing together. "What is it?" "Nothing," he choked out, forcing a chuckle that sounded thin and cracked. "A cramp. Lack of coffee. Come on, let's get your bag upstairs to the second floor. The roof holds in the east wing." He carried her belongings up, showed her the dry bedroom, and hovered until she had unpacked her notebooks and donned a thick wool cardigan. Only when she sat by the radiator with an apple and a dog-eared folder of municipal archives did he slip back into the cold, north-facing studio on the top floor. He bolted the door behind him. "What was that?" he demanded fiercely into the gloom. Silence answered. Then, a hesitant, bruised whisper: *"I have been alone in the dark for so long. Nobody looks for me. Nobody touches me. You hold her like she matters, and I am only an errand you want to finish."* Bastien exhaled through his teeth. "She is my sister. The only person on this earth I would burn the world for. Understand that now, Léonie, or whatever bargain we have is finished." *"I don't have a sister,"* Léonie said faintly. *"I had... I had someone else. But I don't remember her face."* "Then let's find it." Bastien set a square of primed linen onto a wooden easel positioned near the gray light of the window. He ripped the dust sheet off the box he had found beneath the floorboards. The scent of linseed oil and bitter resin rose into the cold air. He selected an ox-hair brush and dipped it into the dense, dark violet paste. "Show me again," he said. *"It hurts."* "Show me. Not the feeling of falling. The top of the stairs. What did you see before the marble took your skull?" He pressed the bristles to the coarse weave. The oil dragged, stiff from decades of sitting in the dark. Bastien didn't paint with his usual cautious, commercial technique. He slashed the color across the linen, broad diagonal strokes depicting the sweeping curve of the mahogany balustrade. *"Cold air,"* Léonie whispered, her voice thinning, sinking deep into his pulse. *"The wind was coming from the broken terrace door. Rain on the parquet. She was shouting at me."* "Who was shouting?" *"I... I can't..."* "Look at it!" Bastien commanded, his voice rising, slamming a thick smear of bone black across the canvas to define the upper landing. "Look through my hands!" His wrist jerked involuntarily. A foreign impulse seized his fingers, forcing the brush into a sudden, furious rhythm. The bristles danced across the wet oil, blending ivory and raw umber into the shadows of the painted hallway. The phantom pressure in his skull swelled until his vision bordered on white heat. The canvas drank the paint, sharpening under his frenzied strokes. At the landing, the perspective aligned. The curve of the banister framed the upper hall with terrible, photographic clarity. His hand slowed, dragging a thin trail of charcoal wash along the top edge of the flight. There, carved out of the shadow just beyond the balustrade, stood a shape. Not a ghost. A living figure, lean and upright, draped in heavy dark cloth, one arm extended forward in the frozen geometry of a deliberate, violent push. But where the face should have met the dim hall light, the paint pooled into an impenetrable, unnatural void—a smudge of absolute black that swallowed the room's reflection whole.

The Echo Chamber