Elias looked down at his desk. His phone, sitting face-up, began to tap against the wood. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. The rhythm matched the video perfectly.

The video starts mid-motion. The camera is shaky, held by someone jogging through a sun-drenched backyard. You can hear the rhythmic thud-thud of sneakers on dry grass and the aggressive drone of cicadas—that heavy, electric hum of a Tuesday in August where the heat feels like a physical weight. At the mark, the runner stops abruptly.

He looked out his window at the same oak tree, now skeletal in the winter air. In the video, the timestamp flickered: . The girl vanished in a single frame, leaving only the grass swaying where she had been.

MP4" . Since the metadata suggests this video was captured on , the story leans into that strange, quiet mid-pandemic summer. The Ghost in the Gallery