Mara tried to bury the memory beneath morning light, but dread trailed her like a shadow. When Liam heard that low, animal-like sound from her empty room, the fear finally had a second witness. Their jokes couldn’t cover the way their hands shook on doorknobs, or how sleep became a negotiation with the dark. Their mother didn’t dismiss them or insist they were imagining things; she listened, watched, and chose to act.

The woman she invited didn’t hunt ghosts; she honored feelings. She named the heaviness, not as a monster, but as old fear lingering in the walls. That simple explanation loosened something inside them. Opening windows, shifting furniture, adding music and small symbols of safety turned the bedroom from a threat into a shared project. The taps never returned, but what stayed was more important: the quiet knowledge that fear loses power the moment you stop facing it alone.