The Nowhere Pact

"I didn’t have a choice."

The words came out of my mouth quieter than I intended, but the weight they carried felt anything but soft. They hovered in the thick silence of the interrogation room, curling into the cracks of the peeling wallpaper and stale air. I stared at the table, at the tiny groove my thumbnail had carved into the wood.

Across from me, Theo Bishop—my former classmate, my maybe friend, and the boy I might have once loved—leaned back, arms crossed. He didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Just waited. Studying me like he was trying to solve a puzzle only he had the pieces to.

"There’s always a choice," he said finally. "You just didn’t like the ones you had."

My fingers curled into fists.

He was right. And he wasn’t. But how do you explain to someone that some choices don’t feel like choices when your entire world is crumbling under lies you didn't even know you were a part of?

Two weeks earlier, none of this existed. At least not in the way it did now. Ravenhill was just a place you tried to survive. You got up, went to school, avoided the people who hated you, tolerated the ones who pretended to like you, and came home. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It started on a Friday night. A dare. The kind that felt stupid but inescapable. I was at Jules' house—the closest thing I had to a friend group. Jules, the manipulative queen bee with a smile like poison. Theo, the quiet mystery who'd moved to Ravenhill last year. And a few others whose names don’t matter anymore because they faded out the second things got real.

Jules had dared me to break into the old McAllister house. The one on the edge of Black Hollow Ridge, left to rot after the family moved away under mysterious circumstances no one in town liked to talk about. Every small town has its haunted house, and this one was ours.

I was going to say no. I was.

But then Theo said, "I'll go with her."

And suddenly, it wasn’t a dare anymore. It was a challenge.

The McAllister house was more preserved than abandoned. That was the first red flag. There was no dust, no graffiti, no broken windows. Just silence. Silence that felt... intentional. Like someone was waiting.

The second red flag? The room upstairs. The one with newspaper clippings pinned on the walls, connecting names with red thread like something out of a conspiracy theory. My name was there. So was Theo's.

I froze. "What is this?"

Theo didn't answer. He picked up a phone from the corner. A landline. Plugged in. Still working.

Static buzzed, and then a voice crackled through the receiver: "They know you're here."

We left.

That should have been the end. We should’ve gone home, burned our clothes, forgotten the house ever existed. But two days later, I started getting texts from a number with no ID.

UNSEEN: I know what you did.

UNSEEN: 14 days. Or it goes public.

I ignored it. At first.

Until Jules went missing.

They said she ran away. But I knew better. Her room had been trashed. Her phone was found face-down in Black Lake. Blood under the screen. And the last text she sent had been to me.

Jules: you told him didn’t you. you stupid b*tch.

I didn’t know what she meant. But deep down, a part of me—the part that had been in that house—started to understand.

Theo became my shadow after that. He didn’t say why. He didn’t have to. We both knew whatever we stepped into at McAllister House wasn’t a prank or a dare. It was a warning.

And then I found the envelope in my locker. No name. No return address. Just a single word, typed on the outside:

CONFESSION.

Inside was a USB. On it, a recording. My voice. Distorted, but undeniably me.

"I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. She wasn’t supposed to fall—"

My throat closed. I had never said those words. Not out loud. Not to anyone.

Unless I had.

The pieces started clicking into place like a slow, cruel jigsaw. Ravenhill had secrets. And some of them were tied to a group of kids from ten years ago. A group that included Theo’s older brother, Elijah.

Elijah had drowned. That was the story. But the autopsy said otherwise. Bruises. Defensive wounds. Water in his lungs, yes, but not enough to explain how long he was under.

Theo showed me the report. He said he stole it from his dad’s filing cabinet. His dad, the sheriff. One of the names on the McAllister wall.

"They made a pact," Theo said. "To protect each other. To hide something. And now someone wants us to finish what they started."

"Why us?"

His eyes met mine. "Because of who we are. Who we were."

He showed me a photo. Four kids. Three boys, one girl. I recognized Theo and Elijah.

The girl? Me. Seven years old. Dressed in yellow. Laughing.

But I didn’t remember being there.

"We were part of it," he said. "We just don’t remember how."

I started dreaming after that. Dark woods. Drowning. A scream that never reached the surface. My scream.

The texts escalated.

UNSEEN: You lied. She died.

UNSEEN: 9 days.

More photos appeared. Ones I didn’t remember being in. My handwriting in old notebooks. A map with my house circled.

Someone was gaslighting me. Someone wanted me to believe I had done something horrible. And maybe... I had.

But Theo stayed. Even when he should’ve walked away. Even when I yelled at him. Accused him. Pushed him.

He stayed.

Which brings us back here. To the interrogation room. To the fallout.

Because last night, they found Jules.

Buried.

And next to her, the phone. The one from McAllister House. With my fingerprints.

They brought me in. They asked questions I didn’t have answers for. Showed me things I couldn’t explain.

And when Theo finally came in, asking why I hadn’t told him the truth sooner, the only words I could say were the ones that started this story:

"I didn’t have a choice."

But I think now... maybe I did.

And maybe it’s time to make the next one count.