The rain hammered against the window of Elena’s office like a relentless accusation, each drop echoing the pounding in her temples. She stared at the faded photograph on her desk: two girls, no more than twelve, arms linked, grinning under a summer sun. Sarah and Elena, inseparable until the day Sarah vanished without a trace. Twenty years later, the case had gone cold, buried under layers of forgotten police reports and Elena’s own suppressed memories. As a psychologist specializing in trauma recovery, Elena had spent her career helping others unearth painful truths. Yet her own past remained a locked vault, key long lost.

It started with the dreams. At first, fragments: Sarah’s laughter turning to screams, the metallic tang of blood, hands slick with mud. Elena dismissed them as stress-induced, a side effect of her grueling caseload. But when a new client handed her a box of old newspaper clippings about Sarah’s disappearance, the dreams sharpened into nightmares. ‘You were her best friend,’ the client said, eyes gleaming with obsession. ‘You must know something.’ Elena didn’t. Or so she thought.

Driven by an inexplicable pull, Elena delved into the case. She pored over yellowed articles in the dim light of her home library, the air thick with the scent of aged paper and regret. Sarah Ellis, 12, last seen near Blackwood Cliffs on August 15th, 2003. No body found. Suspicions fell briefly on the family, then fizzled. Elena’s own name appeared in one grainy photo, her younger self tear-streaked, pleading for Sarah’s return. But there was another figure blurred in the background: her brother, Marcus, then 16, watching with shadowed eyes.

Marcus. The thought of him stirred unease. They hadn’t spoken in years, not since he moved across the country after their parents’ death in a car crash—a crash Elena always suspected he caused, though evidence was scant. He was the golden boy, charming and volatile, while Elena hid in books and shadows. Sarah had idolized him, trailing after him like a puppy. Jealousy, Elena realized now, had simmered between them even then.

She drove to Blackwood Cliffs the next day, the winding road slick with mist. The cliffs loomed, jagged teeth against the gray sky, whispering secrets to the wind. Parking at the overlook, Elena stepped out, the chill seeping into her bones. This was where Sarah was last seen, according to witnesses—a vague report of two girls arguing. Elena closed her eyes, willing memory to surface. Flashes: Sarah’s blonde hair whipping in the wind, words sharp as knives. ‘You wish Marcus liked you more!’ Sarah had taunted. Elena’s cheeks burned at the recollection. But then… nothing. A black void.

Back home, Elena found an old journal in the attic, her childish scrawl filling pages with adoration for Sarah—and resentment toward Marcus. Entries grew frantic near the end: ‘Sarah spends all time with M. Says I’m boring. Hate them both.’ The last page was torn out. Heart racing, Elena called Marcus. His voice, smooth as ever, greeted her warily. ‘Elena? What’s this about?’

‘I need to talk about Sarah.’ Silence stretched, taut as a wire.

‘Old wounds, sis. Let it go.’ But he agreed to meet, two days later at their childhood home, now Elena’s alone.

The days crawled by, each hour laced with tension. Elena’s sessions suffered; patients complained of her distraction. Nightmares intensified: now she saw hands pushing, a body tumbling into fog-shrouded depths. She woke sweating, convinced it was metaphor. But doubt gnawed. She scoured police files obtained through a contact—nothing incriminating against Marcus, but notes on a covered-up family altercation weeks before. Their father had yelled about ‘secrets,’ mother hushed him.

Marcus arrived on a stormy evening, his once-boyish face lined with age and secrets. They sat in the living room, fire crackling, shadows dancing like specters. ‘Why now?’ he asked, nursing whiskey.

‘The dreams. The clippings. I think… something happened up there. With Sarah.’

He leaned forward, eyes intense. ‘You remember nothing, do you?’

‘Tell me.’

He sighed, rubbing temples. ‘We were all messed up. Dad drinking, Mom popping pills. Sarah came over that day, obsessed with me. You followed, jealous. I heard shouting from the cliffs. Ran up, found you both. Sarah was dangling from the edge, you holding her hand, screaming for help. I pulled her up.’

Elena’s stomach twisted. ‘Then why did she disappear?’

Marcus’s gaze hardened. ‘She slipped. Blamed you in her panic. Said you’d pushed her. I told her to shut up, it was accident. She ran off crying, said she’d tell everyone you tried to kill her.’

Lies. It felt like lies. Elena pressed, voice rising. ‘Why didn’t you tell police?’

‘Because Dad made us cover it. Said it’d destroy us. We searched for days, but she was gone.’

Doubt festered. Elena showed him the journal. Marcus paled at the missing page. ‘Where’s the last entry?’

‘Torn out. You?’

‘No.’ His denial rang false.

That night, alone, Elena returned to the attic. Behind a loose board, the torn page: ‘Today I told S the truth about M and me seeing him kiss her sister. She laughed, called me liar. Pushed her. No, she fell. M came, helped bury the—no.’ The ink smeared, words fragmented. Bury? Horror dawned.

No. Impossible.

She drove back to the cliffs at dawn, flashlight piercing fog. Scrambling down a hidden path, overgrown and treacherous, she followed instinct to a copse of trees. There, under brambles, a patch of earth uneven. Digging with bare hands, mud caking nails, she unearthed a rusted locket—Sarah’s, engraved with their initials.

Gasping, memories crashed: Sarah taunting about Marcus’s secret kiss with Elena—yes, stolen moments Elena never admitted. Rage boiled, Elena shoved Sarah, she teetered, fell, skull cracking on rock below. Marcus arrived, saw, helped drag the body here, buried it shallow. ‘Our secret,’ he whispered. ‘Or we’re both gone.’ Parents knew, hushed it. Elena repressed it all, convincing herself Sarah ran away.

But the twist: as Elena clutched the locket, phone buzzed. Marcus: ‘Found it, didn’t you? Come home.’

Racing back, she confronted him. ‘You helped me bury her!’

He smiled sadly. ‘Protected you. Always have. But the guilt ate you alive, made you forget. I took the blame in your dreams, let you hate me.’

No—the real shock: Elena lunged, but Marcus held papers. ‘I recorded everything. You confessed just now. But I didn’t help bury. You did it alone. I covered by saying I saw nothing. The body? You hid it so well, even I searched in vain.’

Memory fully unleashed: yes, alone in panic, buried Sarah, told Marcus a lie, he believed, protected by silence. But why the journal? Her own fabrication in repression.

Marcus: ‘The car crash? I caused it because Dad was forcing truth out. To protect you.’

Elena collapsed, the weight crushing. Sirens wailed distant—anonymous tip? Her own subconscious?

In the end, truth freed her, but at cost of everything. Handcuffs cold, Marcus’s eyes met hers: forgiveness? Or final deception?

She’d never know.