The song grew louder as the days passed. It was always there, whispering at the edges of her awareness. Eve started to hear it in places it couldn’t possibly be: on the static-laden intercom of the subway, in the shuffle of leaves on the sidewalk, in the way her coffee pot gurgled in the morning.

Her sleep suffered. At night, the melody would wrap itself around her dreams, leaving her groggy and irritable. She began snapping at friends, avoiding phone calls, retreating into herself.

Then the dreams changed. She started seeing flashes of a shadowy figure, always distant but unmistakably there—a man in an old, frayed suit, his face obscured by the haze of her dream. And always, the melody followed him like a shroud.

Eve couldn’t take it anymore.