THE GIRL IN THE FIRE

For a long, paralyzing moment, Daniel couldn’t breathe.

The crowd that had gathered began to whisper, some laughing awkwardly, others frowning in confusion. But Daniel didn’t hear them. His ears rang with one sound — fire.

His mind spun backward, to a night long buried.

A crackling blaze. Smoke in his lungs.
A girl’s voice crying out from inside the flames:

“Danny! Don’t go! Please!”

He had been seven then — just a scared boy clutching his mother’s hand, dragged away from the collapsing house next door. The fire trucks arrived too late. They said the little girl trapped inside didn’t make it. Her name was Lila.

And that was the first time Daniel had ever heard the word death.

So why — after twenty years — was that name haunting him now, coming from the lips of a woman everyone called mad?

That night, Daniel didn’t post the prank video.
He couldn’t.

He sat alone in his apartment, lights off, replaying the scene in his head. The way her eyes — wild yet painfully lucid — had fixed on his. The way she said, “You left me to die.”

He opened his laptop, searching “Santiago Post Office homeless woman,” but there were only grainy photos — none recent. He scrolled endlessly, until one forum mentioned her nickname:

The Humming Lady.

According to locals, she sang one tune every day at sunset. No one knew the song. Some said it was a hymn. Others claimed it was a lullaby.

Daniel froze when he found a video clip taken by a tourist.

Her voice — thin, trembling — sang the words:

“In the garden where we played… the fire couldn’t take my name…”

His breath caught. He knew that melody.
He used to hum it to his neighbor’s little sister when she was scared of thunder.

Lila.

The next morning, Daniel went back to the post office.
The cardboard bed was empty.

He asked around — street vendors, guards, taxi drivers — but no one had seen her since yesterday.

“She disappears sometimes,” said a fruit seller. “But she always comes back by sunset.”

Daniel waited. For hours.

At dusk, the wind turned cold. Shadows stretched long across the cobblestones. Then — faintly — he heard it.

That humming.

She came walking from the end of the street, barefoot, her long tangled hair glowing orange in the fading light. The same torn skirt, the same vacant gaze — except now, her eyes softened when they met his.

“I knew you’d come,” she said quietly.

He swallowed hard. “Who are you?”

“You know,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Lila’s dead. She died in that fire twenty years ago.”

Her lips curved into the faintest, saddest smile. “That’s what they said. But the fire didn’t take me. It just… changed me.”

Daniel felt his stomach twist. “That’s impossible.”

She reached into the pocket of her tattered coat — and pulled out something small, glinting faintly in the light.

It was a melted ring — a plastic toy ring from a vending machine, warped by heat.

“I never took it off,” she said softly. “You gave it to me when you said we’d be friends forever.”

His knees nearly gave way. He remembered it — the day before the fire, two kids sitting in the yard, trading silly trinkets. He had given her that ring and promised to protect her.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice breaking. “Where have you been all this time?”

“Everywhere,” she whispered. “Hospitals, shelters, streets. They said I was crazy. I remembered the fire, but no one believed me. Not even your mother when I went to find you.”

Daniel’s throat tightened. His mother had died five years ago. Could it be true?

He whispered, “Why didn’t you tell anyone who you were?”

Her eyes clouded. “Because no one listens to the mad.”

They sat in silence for a long time. The city noises faded into the background. For the first time, Daniel saw past the dirt and rags. Her features were faintly familiar — the same sharp chin, the same freckles on her cheeks.

“I thought I imagined you,” he said. “I thought you were gone.”

She looked at him and smiled faintly. “You never really looked, Danny. You became famous for seeing everything through a camera — except people.”

Her words cut deeper than any insult. He’d built his online fame mocking others, turning pain into content. But here she was — the ghost of his childhood — reminding him who he used to be.

He looked down at his phone, then powered it off. “No cameras,” he said. “Not this time.”

Over the next days, Daniel visited her every evening. He brought food, clean clothes, and a blanket. Slowly, she began to talk more — fragments of memory stitched between humming and silence.

She remembered waking up in a hospital after the fire, her face bandaged, her mind fogged. Her parents were gone. The authorities had sent her to a care home, then to psychiatric wards when her trauma made her scream at night.

“Everyone forgot me,” she said one evening. “Even you.”

Daniel’s eyes filled with tears. “I was just a kid.”

She nodded gently. “And now you’re grown. Maybe you can remember for both of us.”

One night, rain fell hard over the city. Daniel found her shivering beneath a bridge. He helped her up, insisting she stay in a hotel room for the night. She resisted at first, mumbling about curses and promises, but he didn’t let go of her hand.

In the warm light of the small room, she looked fragile but human again.

He turned away to give her privacy, then heard her whisper, “Do you ever think the dead watch us?”

He hesitated. “I think sometimes the ones we love… never really leave.”

She smiled faintly. “Then maybe I never left either.”

The next morning, he woke to find her gone — bed neatly made, window open, the humming faintly echoing from the street below.

But on the nightstand, she’d left something wrapped in paper.

It was the melted ring — now polished, threaded through a new chain. And beneath it, a note:

I’m not cursed anymore. I just wanted you to see me one last time — not through a camera, but with your heart.

Thank you for keeping your promise, Danny.

Tears blurred his vision as he held the chain. For the first time, he didn’t reach for his phone.

Instead, he walked outside into the morning light, where the city hummed and life went on. Somewhere, faintly, he swore he heard her song again — softer now, like a goodbye carried by the wind.