#shesback

Every night, at exactly 3:17 AM, I hear the front door unlock.

It’s always the same sequence: a soft click, a hesitant creak, and the faint sound of heels on hardwood. Then the smell—faint lavender and cigarette smoke, her scent. My wife’s scent.

The problem is, my wife, Eliza, died two years ago in a car crash. Closed casket. I never saw her body.

It started a month ago. I thought I was dreaming the first time I heard it. I sat up in bed, heart pounding, listening to footsteps making their way down the hallway. Then silence. Nothing in the morning. Just a locked door and an empty house.

But the next night, and the next, it kept happening.

So I did what any grieving, half-insane man would do—I started waiting.

At 3:10 AM, I’d sit on the couch, lights off, phone recording, watching the door. On the sixth night, the lock clicked. I froze. The door opened a crack, just a sliver. Then closed again. No one entered.

When I checked the recording, the time jumped. One frame showed the clock at 3:16:58. The next—3:18:01. A full minute gone. Glitched out. Nothing in between. Just static.

I called the cops. They found no signs of forced entry, no prints but mine. They suggested I might be sleepwalking or—worse—imagining it all. I didn’t tell them about the missing time. Or the lavender. Or that I started waking up with bruises shaped like fingertips on my arms.

I finally told my friend Mason. He brought over a thermal camera. We stayed up together. Nothing happened. 3:17 came and went. No sounds. No door. Just silence.

He left around 4, apologizing, saying I needed rest.

That morning, there were wet footprints on the kitchen tile. Bare feet. Size 6. Eliza's size.

I stopped inviting people over after that.

The bruises worsened. I’d wake up gasping, fingernail scratches across my chest. I tried leaving the house at night, staying at hotels. Still, 3:17 AM—door creak, footsteps, the scent. Even miles away. She followed.

I finally broke down and visited her grave last week. I found her headstone knocked over, deep scratches gouged into the marble. Not like vandalism. More like… claw marks. I paid a groundskeeper to help me lift the stone, and as we did, something weird happened—my phone buzzed with a text.

From Eliza.

It just said: “Why did you leave the door open?”

I threw up. Right there in the cemetery.

I went home and bolted every door and window. I even slept in the basement, no windows, no exterior doors. I thought I was safe.

That night, I woke up at 3:17 AM.

She was standing at the foot of the bed. Not a ghost, not translucent or floating. She looked exactly like she used to—except her skin was gray. Damp. Her eyes sunken. Mouth twitching like she was trying to smile but forgot how.

I couldn’t move. Sleep paralysis. She leaned down, close to my face, and whispered:

“I hate that you cremated me.”

The basement door upstairs slammed.

She was gone.

Since then, things have escalated.

Photos of us are shredded in the morning. Her wedding dress, which I boxed up in the attic, appeared folded neatly on my bed—damp and reeking of earth.

She’s not haunting the house. She’s haunting me.

Last night, I asked her—out loud—what she wanted.

At 3:17 AM, she answered:

“Finish what you started.”

I don't know what she means.

But I keep remembering something from her autopsy report. I asked the coroner, drunkenly, months after her death, whether she suffered. He paused, then said:

“Well… she had scratch marks on the inside of the coffin lid. Deep ones. We think she wasn’t dead when they buried her.”

I never told anyone that. Not even Mason.

Tonight, I’m digging up her grave.

Because I need to know one thing:

Is my wife still in there?

If she is—I’ll finally let her rest.

If she isn’t…