“Lynn, stop making me wake up in the middle of the night.”

“The sh-shadow…please-”

Reluctantly, Marie opened her eyes, got out of bed, and switched on the lights. Obviously no one was there, much less a shadow.

Lynn gawked at the wall as if it had started to speak. Marie groaned. “Lynn, you’re hallucinating again.”

“But-”

“Tomorrow you’re going to sleep in Mom’s room. Good night.”

It wasn’t long until Lynn began to cry.

Afterwards, Lynn slept with her mom in her room. Until Lynn never got out.

She couldn’t move out of her bed, because her legs were temporarily paralyzed. She randomly cried and the doctors were trying their best to heal her. Marie hardly met her.

Two days later, one of the doctors approached Marie. “Miss Hartman?”

The muscles in her body tensed. “Yes?”

“Do you, perhaps, by any chance, know who Wren is?”

“No.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Why?”

“Your sister’s been whispering that name every night. Every time we ask, she points to the wall and starts crying.” He bid goodbye, leaving Marie confused.

Wren used to be Lynn’s imaginary friend. That was it. Lynn used to talk about him a lot in the past, but Marie didn’t hear about him for the past few weeks. Another thing was Lynn always wore a small ring, which she claimed was from him, and wore it every day.

Lynn’s birthday arrived. Their mom hadn’t come back from work, and Marie had prepared a cake and stayed awake till midnight to surprise Lynn. She entered the room, set the cake down on the nightstand and sitting next to Lynn, who was sleeping. The curtains danced in the heavy wind, but just as Marie was about to close the windows, she noticed a small, dark red spot on Lynn’s blanket.

Marie stared at it; it spread every second, staining the blanket. Curious, she lifted the blanket. The knot in her stomach tightened.

A huge cut spread on Lynn’s arm; from the tip of her ring finger till her elbow. It bled thoroughly, droplets of blood staining the bedsheet. But what caught her attention was that the cut was deepened around Lynn’s ring finger, where her ring was tinted red.

Sweat trickled down Marie’s forehead. She did not like this at all. Wren was her imaginary friend. That was all. He shouldn’t be connected to this.

Again curious, Marie put forward her hand to touch the ring, when an icy cold hand grasped her wrist, making her almost jump out of her skin. Marie screamed in instinct, but Lynn shushed her. Her narrowed eyes showed no humor as she tightened her grip. “Don’t.”

Marie’s heart froze, her skin crawling. An icy chill went down her spine.

That was not Lynn’s voice.

It was someone else’s.

Wren’s.

Despite being terrified, Marie had a gut feeling that the ring was causing this. Wren was no joke. So she yanked her wrist out of Lynn’s grip and began to take off the ring.

Lynn yelled, now in her own voice. But she wasn’t screaming for Marie to stop. She was screaming in fear as the shadow of Wren approached from the corner of the room. Marie was almost done. The ring was beginning to loosen on Lynn’s finger when Marie’s eye caught something; the knife, that she had brought for cutting the cake, was floating mid-air. The candles were blown off, so she couldn’t see anything, but there was no mistaking the sharp knife, floating towards her.

Screams erupted the moment she yanked the ring off and threw it out of the window; Lynn was shrieking as pain shot up her mind, driving her insane. But there was another voice: a man’s screams of pure agony, echoing the room.

The last thing Marie saw was the knife zooming in.

Marie and Lynn were submitted to the mental hospital the other day. Marie was released after two weeks. It wasn’t until three months did she get to meet Lynn, who could walk again. Wren was no longer a touchy subject for Lynn, so she told Marie why everything happened.

Wren was an actual person, until the day they both went for a drive. When the brakes of the car failed, Lynn noticed that they were approaching a cliff, so, she, in panic, jumped out of the car, leaving Wren inside the moving car. Ever since then, she had seen Wren’s shadow every night. She had tried to remove the ring, which would increase his torture towards her. As long as the ring was there, he would keep haunting her.