Her Last Secret (eBook)

Psychological Thriller with full of twist and buried secrets

Madi Farshchi (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
407 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-080948-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Her Last Secret
A Psychological Thriller by Madi Farshchi

Some secrets don't stay buried.
Some were never meant to be uncovered.

When Lauren returns to her hometown after the mysterious death of a teenage girl, she doesn't expect to find herself in the middle of a nightmare.

The town is quiet. Too quiet. And the deeper she digs, the more she uncovers a twisted legacy tied to a powerful family, a hidden experiment, and a dark past that never truly ended.

Every answer leads to more lies.
Every face hides a mask.
And someone is watching her-someone who will do anything to keep the truth buried.

With the help of a man who may not be who he claims to be, and a growing obsession to uncover the truth, Lauren risks everything to piece together what happened to the girls of Project Dahlia... and what's still happening now.

What she finds will change everything.
If it doesn't destroy her first.

Textauszug

Chapter 1 – Part Two

Bloodlines and Ghost Stories

 

Lauren stared at the woman on her porch, rain dripping from the stranger’s coat in long, deliberate lines. The storm had softened to a drizzle, but the air still felt heavy—like the house was holding its breath.

“You said… Lena was your cousin?” Lauren asked.

The woman—Margaret—nodded slowly. “Yes. And if you’ve found her journal already, I imagine she’s been whispering to you, hasn’t she?”

Lauren’s stomach tightened. “I’m sorry, but… who are you?”

“I told you. Margaret Whitmore. I was raised in this house with Lena. Before she vanished.”

“Vanished?” Lauren echoed. “She died.”

“That’s what the family said,” Margaret replied. “But you’ll find the Whitmore’s have a long tradition of rewriting inconvenient truths.”

The words hit Lauren like a slap.

She hadn’t told anyone about the journal. Or the mirror. Or the woman in the photograph that looked like her. And yet here was a stranger, standing in her doorway, talking like the house had already given her permission to speak.

“I think you should come in,” Lauren said carefully.

Margaret stepped across the threshold like she belonged there.

⸻

They sat in the living room, the fire crackling low. Lauren wrapped her hands around her mug, but her tea had gone cold. The locket she’d found in the attic—now sitting in her pocket—felt like it was burning through the fabric.

Margaret glanced around the room, her eyes scanning the crown molding, the wallpaper, the worn floorboards. “It’s changed,” she said. “But not enough.”

Lauren hesitated. “Did you… grow up here?”

“I spent summers. This house belonged to our grandmother. It passed to Lena after she died. But Lena never got the chance to make it her home.”

“Why not?”

Margaret’s eyes met hers. “Because she started remembering.”

Lauren’s pulse kicked.

“Remembering what?”

“That she wasn’t the first Whitmore woman to be forgotten.”

Margaret pulled a photograph from her coat. It was the same one Lauren had found behind the wardrobe. The woman in front of the house. Same face. Same locket.

“You look just like her,” Margaret said.

Lauren didn’t respond.

“She kept seeing things,” Margaret continued. “Said the mirrors didn’t show her anymore. Said they showed a girl with her eyes, but… someone else’s face. A girl who came after. A girl the house was waiting for.”

Lauren’s mouth was dry. “Why are you telling me this?”

Margaret looked at her like the question was absurd. “Because you are that girl.”

Lauren shook her head. “No. That’s not—this is just a coincidence.”

“Is it?”

Lauren stood. Pacing. Trying to control her breathing.

“I’m not related to Lena. I married into this family. My husband—Daniel—he’s a Whitmore. Not me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Margaret said calmly. “The house doesn’t care about surnames. It cares about blood. Energy. Memory.”

Lauren stopped pacing. “You sound like Lena.”

“I hope so,” Margaret said. “She was the only one who ever told the truth.”

⸻

Lauren didn’t remember how the conversation ended.

She remembered Margaret leaving as quietly as she’d arrived.

She remembered locking the door.

And then, she remembered running upstairs and tearing open the attic again.

The journal was still there.

She opened it, flipping to the final page.

 

April 21st, 1965

They’ve taken the baby. Said it’s for the best. That the family needs to start over. I hear crying in the walls, but there’s nothing there. Just dust and silence and my own stupid hope.

I think the house is hungry again.

⸻

Daniel came home late.

The storm had started again, hammering the windows, flooding the streets outside. His hair was damp. He smelled like bourbon and exhaustion.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” he said, shrugging off his coat.

“I met someone,” Lauren replied without looking up from the journal.

Daniel froze.

“She said her name was Margaret. Claimed she was Lena’s cousin.”

Daniel swallowed. “She came here?”

Lauren nodded. “She told me things. About this house. About your family.”

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Lauren—”

“She said Lena didn’t die.

That she vanished. That your family covered it up.”

Daniel hesitated. Just for a second.

But it was enough.

“You knew,” Lauren said, her voice cracking.

“I didn’t know everything. I just—I knew there were rumors. My dad never talked about her. I thought she ran off.”

Lauren stood. “She didn’t run. She was erased.”

Daniel crossed the room, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot. The move, the hospital, the—”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t reduce me to trauma. This isn’t anxiety. This isn’t grief. This is real.”

He looked at her like she was glass.

Like he was already preparing to pick up the pieces.

“I believe you,” he said softly. “But we’re not in a horror movie. We’re in a house with creaky floors and family skeletons. That’s all.”

Lauren stepped back.

“Then explain why your attic has a trunk full of letters written by a woman who predicted I’d show up.”

Daniel didn’t answer.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t deny it.

⸻

At 3:17 a.m., Lauren woke gasping.

Not from a dream.

From a sound.

The attic door creaked open on its own.

She didn’t go to it.

She turned and stared at the mirror across the bedroom.

Her reflection wasn’t sleeping.

It was watching her.

Smiling.

Lauren didn’t scream.

She wanted to—but the sound got caught somewhere behind her ribs. Instead, she just stared at the mirror, her reflection sitting upright in bed while her real body stayed still beneath the covers.

She blinked.

The reflection didn’t.

Then, ever so slowly, it tilted its head.

Not Lauren’s tilt.

Its tilt.

A second later, it caught up to her.

The reflection realigned, syncing with her movements like a delayed feed.

But Lauren had already seen it. Felt it.

She rose from bed, her legs shaking, heart pounding like a war drum in her chest. She didn’t wake Daniel. Not this time. He wouldn’t believe her. Not until it was too late.

She crossed the bedroom, grabbed her robe, and made her way to the study. The storm had dulled to a soft patter, but the air still felt charged, like lightning had settled in the walls and decided to stay.

Lauren flipped on the desk lamp. It flickered once, then glowed a weak yellow.

She opened the journal again, scanning entries at random.

April 17th, 1965

The girl in the mirror is growing stronger. She moves before I do. She whispers things I don’t understand. She knows something I don’t. She says I was replaced. That I’m the echo. But I don’t remember being anyone else.

Lauren flipped forward.

April 19th, 1965

They keep saying I’m sick. That I need rest. But I’m not tired. I’m wide awake. It’s the house that sleeps. I think it dreams through us. That’s how it remembers what it was. What it did.

I think it wants to wake up.

⸻

She snapped the journal shut, breath shallow.

This wasn’t just trauma. This wasn’t madness.

This was deliberate.

Whatever happened to Lena wasn’t just a tragedy—it was part of something bigger. Something systemic. And Lauren was now tangled in it.

 

She opened her laptop and searched:

Lena Whitmore + Brighton Hill + missing

Whitmore House death record

Margaret Whitmore Brighton family records

Nothing.

No obituary. No record of commitment. No news articles. No property transfers. It was like Lena Whitmore had been scrubbed from the town’s memory.

Lauren leaned back in her chair.

“Who erases a person?”

And more importantly—

“Why?”

⸻

By morning, Daniel was already gone.

No note. No message. Just his absence, the smell of his aftershave still lingering on the pillows.

Lauren made herself coffee, but it tasted like ash. Everything did lately.

She walked through the house with the locket in her palm. Turning it. Studying it. The clasp was delicate, but it wouldn’t open.

She’d tried everything.

The mirror in the hallway caught her reflection.

Except it didn’t.

Her image wasn’t there.

She stood in front of it.

The mirror remained blank.

Then slowly, a figure began to emerge.

It wasn’t her.

It was a woman—standing in the attic.

Holding the same journal Lauren had in her hand.

Wearing Lauren’s face.

But older.

Tired.

Broken.

Behind her, the trunk sat open, and shadows moved like hands reaching for her ankles.

Lauren blinked, and the mirror returned to normal.

Her face. Her robe. Her eyes wide with terror.

She turned and fled the hallway.

⸻

Later that afternoon, she went back to the attic.

She didn’t want to—but it was worse not knowing. Every time she avoided it, the house seemed to...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.5.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-080948-9 / 0000809489
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-080948-3 / 9780000809483