Author note

Echoes in the Dark is a work of fiction, but its roots grow from the soil of reality.

The story draws inspirated from real-life ritualistic murders that shook everyone between the 1980s and early 2000s—cases where belief, obsession, and madness blurred into horror. It also borrows from the psychology of real detectives who have spoken about the haunting silence that follows every crime scene: the kind that doesn’t fade even after the case is closed.

This is not a story about monsters hiding in the dark.

It’s about the darkness that hides in men—the one that wears a uniform, holds a gun, and still wakes up shaking at 3 a.m. wondering if the evil he chased has already found a home inside him.

The fantasy elements in this story are symbolic: the maze-like dreamscapes, the shadows that whisper, the illusions of time. They are the language of trauma—how the mind reshapes truth when it’s too unbearable to face.

So while the names, places, and events are fictional, the emotions are not.

The fear, the obsession, the guilt—those are real.

And sometimes, that’s where every true horror begins.

–S

They called it a copycat case.

I called it déjà vu.

When Detective Arin Dev receives a midnight call to a murder scene—a woman posed with coins on her eyes and a ledger page pinned to her chest—he feels something stir in the back of his mind. A pattern. A shadow. A memory.

The crime mirrors an unsolved ritual murder from 1987, a case buried and forgotten. As Arin investigates, each clue becomes a mirror, reflecting fragments of himself. He begins to see connections no one else can—threads between past and present, between the killer and his own fears.

But the deeper he maps the case, the more the boundaries blur. Are the clues leading him to the murderer… or back to his own darkness?

By the time the final “dot” connects, Arin will uncover not just the killer—but the haunting truth that every crime leaves behind an echo, and sometimes… that echo lives inside you.

Acknowledgement ♠️

This story is for those who walk through the night and still search for the truth.

To the detectives, investigators, and unseen minds who spend their lives tracing shadows—your silence tells stories the world never hears. You carry the weight of the dead, and still manage to chase the living.

To the survivors of real crimes, whose pain echoes long after headlines fade—your courage is the reason stories like this exist.

To the psychologists, profilers, and writers who look too deeply into the human mind and dare to stay there—thank you for proving that darkness, when understood, can become its own kind of light.

To every insomniac who reads stories like these before sleep—may you find beauty even in the most haunting corners of imagination.

And lastly, to the unseen hand that led me through this maze of crime, memory, and dreams—

you know who you are.

Or maybe… you don’t anymore.

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