The Last Latch

Three weeks after the sleepover at Elara’s place, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed us home. Not to my house—I’m not that lucky—but to the space between us, the group chat we’d all but abandoned. It started with a single message from Mara, the youngest of us, at 3:33 AM: “Is the cat still looking at me?”

We’d all seen it that night, the ceramic tabby with the glowing green eyes, its head slowly turning to follow each of us as we sat frozen in the glow of the TV. But that was Elara’s house, a hundred miles away. Mara lived with her aunt in a basement apartment with no pets. When I asked her about it the next morning, she just sent a string of laughing emojis and said she’d been ‘in a mood.’ I tried to believe her.

But the next night, at the same time, Cleo—the one who’d always been the rational one—sent a photo. It was her bathroom mirror, and in the corner of the frame, a faint white blur. “I swear I didn’t edit this,” she wrote. Then, the phone call. I picked up, and she was breathing hard. “It’s not in the mirror,” she whispered. “It’s in the closet. I can hear it breathing.” The line went dead.

I drove to her place, a thirty-minute ride that felt like hours. The streets were empty, the streetlights flickering as if they too were afraid. When I arrived, her door was unlocked. The apartment was dark, and I called out her name. No answer. I found her in the bedroom, crouched behind the bed, her eyes wide. She pointed to the closet door, which was slightly ajar. “Don’t open it,” she said. But I did—I don’t know why, some idiot instinct to confront the thing. The closet was empty, but the air was cold, and I felt a hand press against my back, pushing me forward. I stumbled, and when I turned, Cleo was gone.

For two weeks, we searched. Police found nothing. The rest of us—Mara, the twins Dara and Nia, and I—stayed close, checking in constantly. But then the messages started again, this time from Cleo’s number. “You left me,” it said. Then a photo of our sleepover, the cat’s glowing eyes now a bright red. Then a voice note: the sound of a door slamming, and a whisper that sounded like Cleo but wrong, layered with static: “It wants the youngest.”

We all knew what that meant. It wanted Mara. The one who’d first seen the cat move. I called her, frantic, but she didn’t answer. When I got to her place, the basement door was locked from the inside. I broke the window and slipped in. The apartment was trashed—furniture overturned, a trail of white ash leading to the bathroom. And there, floating above the sink, was the white figure. Not a ghost—a rent in the air, a thin tear that leaked a dim light. And through it, I could see Cleo, alive, but pressed against the other side, screaming soundlessly. The figure turned to me, and I felt the pressure on my back again, pushing me toward the tear. I screamed, but no sound came out.

I don’t remember leaving, only waking up in my own bed, my clothes damp with sweat. The sun was up, and my phone was ringing. It was Mara, her voice calm, almost serene. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not after me anymore. It’s waiting for you.” The call ended. I looked at my bedroom door, and it was ajar. I knew, with a certainty that made my blood run cold, that the white figure was in my closet. And I knew that if I opened it, I would see my own reflection, staring back from the other side of that tear. But I couldn’t help myself. I sat up, walked over, and wrapped my fingers around the knob. It was cold, so cold. And as I turned it, I heard a soft click, like the last latch of a door that should never be opened.