WHEN IT RAINS

The rain started as a whisper - soft droplets against the pavement, gentle tapping on windowpanes. It slid down the marble columns of the Lancaster estate, tracing thin veins of water over the stone as if the house itself were bleeding. The air was thick with petrichor, the earthy scent of damp soil mixing with the ghostly perfume of jasmine from the overgrown trellis near the entrance. The sound of the rain was a symphony; each drops a note in a haunting melody.

Samuel Lancaster stood in the doorway, the dim light from the crystal chandelier behind him casting his long shadow across the polished floor. His hands rested at his sides, fingers twitching as if longing to close around something solid. There she was, past the wrought-iron gate, the empty street, and the veil of shifting mist.

The woman.

She hadn't moved in over an hour.

The streetlamp's sickly glow barely touched her figure, making her less a person and more a presence - a smear of darkness against the silver rain. A too-still silhouette, head tilted slightly, hair damp and clinging to her face like seaweed. Her dress, though soaked through, didn't shiver in the wind. The rain should have driven her away by now, made her step back, retreat, turn - but she stood like a statue left out in the storm, untouched by the cold. Her eyes, a piercing shade of blue, seemed to hold a secret.

Samuel exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the night air. A drop of water slid from his temple to his jaw, tracing a path like a fingertip, slow and deliberate. His heartbeat drummed a quiet rhythm beneath his ribs.

She was watching him.

The space between them crackled with tension, like a held breath, stretched taut, waiting to snap. The wind carried the faint creak of the gate as it swayed as if something had nudged it to open an inch.

He should turn away.

He should close the door.

But he couldn't bring himself to do it. The suspense was palpable, hanging in the air like the heavy scent of jasmine.

*-*

Three Months Earlier

The funeral was as it should have been - quiet, respectful, and filled with the appropriate sorrow. A sea of black-clad mourners huddled beneath a sky heavy with unshed rain, their hushed whispers blending with the wind and their murmured condolences dissolving into the damp air. The scent of fresh earth and dying flowers clung to the cemetery, a cloying mix of life and decay.

Samuel stood beside Rosa's parents, his posture perfectly composed, his hands cold despite the warm breeze that drifted through the headstones. The wind carried the distant chime of church bells, a sound that should have been comforting but instead felt like a warning, hollow and stretched too thin.

Rosa's mother clung to him, her grip trembling, the sharp edges of her nails pressing into the sleeve of his tailored suit. The silk barely shielded him from the pressure, and he wondered absently if she realized how tightly she was holding on - as if he were the last thread tying her daughter's memory to the world.

"She loved you so much, Samuel," she whispered, her voice fragile, her breath warm against his shoulder. "She always talked about how lucky she was."

He let his arms wrap around her, his grip firm but distant, offering comfort in the way one might comfort a stranger. His voice was smooth and practiced. "I was the lucky one."

The words sat heavy on his tongue yet weightless in his chest.

After the service, his boss pulled him aside, speaking in the hushed, measured tone people reserved for grief they did not fully understand. "Take all the time you need," he said. "A loss like this… I can't imagine. We'll hold things down at the office."

Samuel nodded, thanked him, and allowed himself to be led away. He had learned his role well - the grieving husband, the shattered man. But grief did not settle in his bones the way it should have. It did not wrap around his chest like a vice and did not steal his lungs' breath.

The days that followed blurred into routine. Once filled with soft laughter and the scent of jasmine tea, the house was now an echo chamber of silence. The bed felt too large, the sheets too smooth, and the bed was untouched on one side. The absence was loud in ways he had never anticipated: the refrigerator's hum at night, the absence of her toothbrush beside his, the ghost of her perfume in the closet, clinging to clothes she would never wear again. His attempts to find solace in his routine only highlighted the void left by her absence.

He returned to work, slipping into meetings with robotic precision. His colleagues watched him from the corners of their eyes, their whispers thick with assumptions. His struggle to connect with others was palpable, and his isolation was a heavy shroud.

Tennis became an escape - something physical, something that burned. The slam of the ball against the court, the sting of exertion in his muscles. He played too hard, his swings reckless, and the force behind each hit made the others exchange wary glances.

"You okay, Sam?" one of them asked after he missed an easy return, standing frozen at the net, his grip tightening around the handle of his racket.

He forced a smile. "Just tired."

They didn't believe him.

Three Months Later

It had been exactly three months since Rosa's funeral. It was also her birthday.

The sky was the color of slate, heavy and bruised with approaching rain. The first droplets streaked against the windshield as Samuel drove home, the rhythmic hiss of the wipers cutting through the silence. The city blurred past in smears of neon and shadow, the rain distorting the world into something unreal, something shifting.

Then he saw her.

She stood on the sidewalk near his building, her frame half illuminated by a flickering streetlamp. A woman - barefoot, half-naked, her soaked dress clinging to her like a second skin. Her dark hair hung in wet ropes over her face, strands plastered against her pale cheek.

Samuel's hands clenched around the wheel, fingers pressing deep into the worn leather.

The rain ran down her body in thin rivulets, but something darker streaked her skin. Mud? Blood? The water pooled at her feet carried swirls of something deep red, vanishing into the gutter.

His foot hesitated on the accelerator. The headlights cast her in stark relief - the sharp planes of her face, the unnatural stillness of her posture, the way her shoulders trembled, but her gaze did not falter. It was as if time had frozen, and Samuel was trapped in this eerie moment.

She was looking at him.

His chest tightened, breath catching somewhere between his ribs.

Just drive past. Don't stop.

He swallowed, forced his foot down, and the car lurched forward. The engine's low hum filled the space around him, but it did nothing to drown out the nagging pulse at the back of his mind. His inner turmoil was a storm raging within him, threatening to consume him.

Check the mirror.

His eyes flicked upward.

She hadn't moved.

The rain distorted everything, turning streetlights into watery halos and reflections into shifting phantoms. But she was still there, standing in the same spot, watching.

Samuel's throat felt dry, his pulse hammering too fast against his skin. He exhaled sharply, rolling his shoulders, forcing himself to let go of the tension gripping his spine.

A trick of the rain. An exhausted mind conjuring ghosts where none existed. He repeated this mantra, trying to convince himself, but the disbelief in his own words was palpable.

He told himself that all the way home.

As the storm drummed against his windows and thunder rattled the glass that night, he dreamt of her.

And the next time it rained, she was there again.

*-*

His colleagues noticed at work. During lunch meetings, he barely touched his food, stirring it absently, his gaze vacant as though listening to something only he could hear. His coffee sat untouched, growing cold. On the tennis court, he flinched when the first drops of rain hit the ground, his grip tightening around the racket like a lifeline. He missed easy shots. His movements were sluggish, his reaction time dull, as if something invisible weighed him down.

Conversations trailed off when he entered the room. Stares lingered too long. They thought he didn't notice, but he did. The way his coworkers watched him from the corners of their eyes, whispering in hushed tones, their concern curdling into unease.

One afternoon, his boss pulled him aside, his voice laced with careful hesitation.

"Sam, are you alright?" There was a measured pause. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Samuel forced a laugh - a short, hollow sound that scraped against his throat. "Just haven't been sleeping well."

A lie. A thin, brittle thing.

No one believed him.

*-*

And then, on the seventh night of rain, he saw her again.

Not a faceless, blood-streaked specter. Her - Rosa.

She stood beneath the streetlamp, motionless, the downpour slicking her hair to her skin. Her dress - the same one from their last night together - clung to her like the tide that had swallowed her whole. Satin, deep blue, heavy with rain, darkened at the hem with something thicker than water.

Samuel's breath turned to ice in his lungs.

Her dark hair fell in familiar waves over her shoulders, curling like the foam of breaking waves. Her lips trembled just slightly, but her eyes - God, her eyes - were locked onto him with a weight that crushed the air from his chest.

Lightning slashed across the sky. In that brief, stuttering flash of light, he saw her fully: the pallor of her skin, the sheen of water clinging to her, and the deep red staining the hem of her dress, blooming outward like ink in water.

And then, she screamed.

The sound ripped through the night, a jagged, guttural wail that shattered something inside him. It wasn't just in his ears - inside his skull, bones, and himself. A raw, piercing shriek clawed at his mind, peeling him open and unraveling him like thread stripped from the edge of a frayed rope.

Samuel collapsed, knees hitting the pavement, hands clamping over his ears. Stop. Stop. Stop. But the scream didn't stop. It wouldn't stop.

Because it wasn't just a scream. It was rage. It was pain. It was vengeance. It drowned him, dragged him under like the waves had dragged her. And in that suffocating abyss, a memory surfaced - sharp, inescapable.

Not an accident. Not a misstep.

He had killed her.

The wine glass trembled in his grip. The slow swirl of the drug dissolves, invisible, into a deep red. Her laughter had softened and slurred. Her eyelids had fluttered, her body leaning into him with blind trust.

How he had lifted her, effortlessly, over the yacht's railing.

Her body had hit the water like a whisper. Silent. Vanishing into the dark.

He had watched the bubbles rise. Pop. Vanish.

He had waited. Waited.

Waited.

She never came back up.

And yet now…

Here she was.

*-*

The hospital was quiet, save for the rain tapping against the barred windows - a ceaseless, rhythmic whisper against the glass. The fluorescent lights hummed faintly above, casting a cold, sterile glow over the pale walls. The air smelled of antiseptic and damp linen, the scent settling heavy in Samuel's lungs like a weight he could never quite exhale.

He sat hunched on the stiff mattress, hands tangled in his graying hair, his fingers pressing into his scalp as if trying to dig something out. A memory. A voice. A nightmare that refused to die.

The orderlies moved past his door in shuffling patterns, their voices distant, their presence insignificant. He barely noticed them anymore. They came. They went. They pushed little white pills into his palm and watched to ensure he swallowed. It didn't matter. The pills did nothing.

Nothing could stop her.

A flash of lightning split the sky. Samuel turned his head toward the window, his breath already shallow, his muscles locking tight. He knew what he would see. He always did.

She was there.

Standing just beyond the bars, the pale, flickering light haloed her body. Her soaked dress clung to her frame, the dark, heavy fabric dripping onto the windowsill. Her bare feet hovered above the rain-slicked pavement outside, toes barely grazing the surface. They were not touching.

Never touching.

Her hair, once soft waves that tumbled over her shoulders, now hung in tangled ropes, strands sticking to the sunken hollows of her face. Her skin, pallid and waterlogged, stretched too tight over her cheekbones. Her lips - blue, trembling - parted slightly, but no breath escaped. Her appearance was a grotesque mockery of the woman he once knew.

She stared.

Samuel's pulse thudded against his ribs. His stomach turned, but he couldn't move. He never could.

Her arm rose, slow and deliberate, droplets sliding from her fingertips.

A single, shaking finger extended, pointing directly at him.

Accusing.

Unrelenting.

Then, the scream.

The room shattered with sound - not just a noise, not just a voice - a force. A jagged, piercing wail rattled the glass, made the walls tremble, and tore through him.

Samuel clamped his hands over his ears, but it was useless.

The scream wasn't just in the air.

It was inside him.

It flooded his veins and scraped at the marrow of his bones. It filled every corner of the room and every cell of his body, vibrating, suffocating, and drowning.

He slammed himself against the wall, gasping, clawing at his arms, trying to rip something out - something buried beneath his skin. His own sobs broke through, raw and animalistic, but the scream only grew louder, pressing against his skull like a storm waiting to burst. His futile escape attempts only served to highlight his desperation.

No one came to help him.

No one ever did. The hospital's silence, the absence of any comforting presence, only deepened his isolation.

The rain poured outside heavy, relentless, a drumbeat to his unraveling.

She did not leave.

She never would.