“Mom,”** he said. **”This was under the statue.”
I took the paper and unfolded it with trembling fingers. It was stiff, like it had been wet and dried again—smudged with faint fingerprints. Only a single line was written on it, in jagged, almost frantic handwriting:
“You think clay is quiet. But it remembers everything.”
I just stood there, staring at the note while my stomach turned to stone. What did that mean? And why had my husband looked like he’d seen a ghost when he saw the statue?
I tried to play it cool for the kids. Kissed them on the forehead, got them all strapped in, and drove them to school like it was a normal day. But my mind was racing.
As soon as I got home, I opened the front door and found my husband in the living room. The statue was gone. Vanished. I looked at him and said, “Where is it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Where. Is. It.” I repeated, sharper this time.
He sighed, rubbed his temples, and said something I never expected.
“It wasn’t supposed to come here.”
I blinked. “What does that mean? Who made that thing? Why does it look exactly like you?”
He hesitated. Then he finally said, “Before we met, before the kids… there was this artist. A woman. We dated briefly, but things got… weird. Obsessive. She worked with clay. One day, I ended it. She told me I’d regret it. That one day, I’d be surrounded by everything I love, and I’d still feel cold clay watching me.”
“You think she made that?” I asked.
“She used to say she could trap people in her art,” he muttered. “She said it wasn’t just sculpture—it was remembrance. That clay could hold souls.”
I felt a chill crawl up my spine. “So what now? You just hide it?”
He stood up. “I destroyed it. Smashed it to pieces. It’s gone.”
But that night, as we got ready for bed, I noticed something strange. A faint white dust on his fingertips. Like clay. And when I walked past the garage…
…I heard the sound of something scraping slowly across the concrete floor.
I opened the door.
Nothing.
Just darkness.
But I swear—swear—I saw the outline of something standing in the shadows.
Something shaped like him.
And it was smiling.