Unseen

CONTENT WARNING:

Contains: Death/Grief, Psychological Horror / Trauma, Threats / Stalking / Murder (implied)

The house is too quiet. It shouldn’t be this quiet the night after a funeral, but it is. The air presses against my skin, heavy and unnatural. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen where we used to cook dinners together. The tick of the wall clock that he broke his thumb in the process of hanging up. The distant groan of the old pipes he never got around to replacing. Every sound feels sharper than it should, as though the house itself is listening, like he's still a part of every corner of our home.

I sink onto the bar stool before the island at the center of the kitchen, the leather squeaking under my weight loud against the deafening quiet. As I pour water into the chipped mug, movement catches the corner of my eye, a flicker along the hallway wall. A shadow. Deliberate. Too quick, too purposeful to be a trick of the light. My stomach tightens, and I freeze, every nerve alert.

“Hello?” I whisper, voice brittle. The words dissolve into the silence.

Nothing. I blink. The shadow is gone just as quickly as it appeared. My hands tremble causing water to spill from the mug.

"Grief plays tricks on the broken mind.” I softly whisper to myself rubbing my hands over my face, but the air smells wrong. A faint scent of cedar and smoke. It’s light but unmistakable. Daniel. My husband. He’s dead, everyone says. DEAD. Yet I feel it, movement, a presence, watching, waiting.

As I lie in bed I can’t seem to find the strength to close my eyes and go to sleep. Instead my eyes are glued to the ceiling, the constant cycle of thoughts of my husband and what had happened in the kitchen earlier. The funeral drained my body but it feels as if my mind is sharpened. I hear the faintest creak of the floorboards, soft, hesitant, like someone trying not to be heard. The sound drifts through the quiet, followed by a subtle shuffle that sends a ripple of unease through me. I tell myself it’s nothing, just the house settling the way old houses do. But there's no way it is, it feels too deliberate.

At the edge of my vision a flicker catches my eye. The shadow has returned. A man, hunched, moving across the floor in a way that looks mildly disfigured. Could it be him? I quickly turn my head hoping to get a better look, but nothing. I clutch the covers to my chest, unease seeps into my bones, radiating outward until every nerve hums with it. Daniel is dead. Everyone says so. The coroner, the police, the neighbors and yet, I can feel him here. Or have I gone crazy?

Hours pass. Shadows stretch along walls, bending and twisting. My reflection in the darkened television flickers with movement that isn’t mine. The objects in the house shift subtly. Books tumble, a newspaper folds itself, the cup I just placed on the counter tilts slightly as if someone else touched it. Dust on the mantel shifts into letters:

DO YOU REMEMBER?

My chest tightens. I remember. The fight. The shouting. The vase. My hands. I told everyone it was an accident. They believed me. I told the story so many times I almost believed myself. But the shadow knows.

I pack a bag and drive to a hotel, far from the streets and houses that could carry his memory. I think distance can save me, help me to forget. But it can’t, it won’t. I find myself stuck in the hotel bed not wanting to move, to think, to feel, but my brain won’t shut off. It won’t stop, until a light tapping from the wall behind the headboard pulls me from my thoughts. Three deliberate taps. My pulse hammers in my ears. The air smells like smoke and cedar once again. My hands curl into fists, knuckles white, and I call the front desk. No one is in the adjoining room.

I pace barefoot on the thin dingy carpet, the cheap lamp casting shadows that unravel and shudder.. One pauses in the corner. A human shape. My stomach twists. A muffled, almost nonexistent whisper fills my head.

“You can’t escape.”

I scream into the darkness, my voice swallowed by the room. The nights blend together. Every sound is him. Footsteps outside the door, whispers through the vents, scratches along the walls. Sometimes I see him in corners, fleeting glimpses. The curve of a shoulder, the tilt of a head and then nothing.

My thoughts spin, uncontrollable. Am I losing my mind? Or is this real?

I walk in circles around my hotel room until my legs ache, until the hotel walls blur. Shadows lengthen. The air grows colder. My pulse is deafening.

Then he appears.

At first, it’s just a shadow. It’s just a trick of the light. It has to be. But it lingers. It breathes. Slowly, it begins to take shape in the far corner of the room, where the darkness folds over itself. The edges sharpen, lines filling in until the figure is unmistakably human. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Composed in a way that makes the air itself hesitate. The longer I look the clearer he becomes. Features emerging from the blur like a photograph developing in silence. Every inch of him is a memory I wish I could forget. Every detail strikes like a heartbeat I thought had long gone still.

“Hello,” he says, low and deliberate.

I can’t move. My throat locks. “Daniel?”

He smiles, calm and cruel. Every muscle carries memory, every line of his face a reminder of the last time I thought I had control.

“Oh, so it seems you haven’t forgotten me, huh?” he says through a soft scoff.

It’s him. Alive. No, I must be going crazy.

I feel it in my chest, a twisting knot of fear and recognition. “You’re dead,” I whisper.

“I know what you told them,” he says, voice soft, even. “I know what you did. The car, the fire… and the lie.”

I shake my head, panic rising. “No… I didn’t mean—”

“You thought you killed me,” his tone grows sharper. “You thought you were free? But I wanted you to understand. To feel what I felt when you left me. When you hit me. When you thought you could erase me!”

He steps closer and I stumble back. My breath catches. My pulse races. I know. I know now. This isn’t a haunting. This isn’t grief playing tricks. This is him. This is revenge.

He crouches slightly, watching me, and I notice the subtle changes. He shaved the stubble I loved. His hair is shorter. It's no longer golden blond but a dark shade of black with a reddish undertone. He smells different now, refined. Calm.

“I left,” he says, almost conversational. “I disappeared. I changed my name, moved to another city. Nobody knows who I am. I built a new life while you thought I was gone. I watched you every day. Listened. Waited.”

My stomach twists. The terror is almost physical, crawling up my spine.

“You’ve spent every second terrified,” his voice smooth, soft, terrifying. “Every shadow, every creak, every whisper. You felt it and it was me. It always was me.”

I stumble to the floor trying to put distance between us. My hands shake. My voice fails. “Daniel… please… I’m sorry…”

He smiles faintly just lifting the one corner of his lips.. “It’s too late. You don’t get to apologize. You didn’t leave me a choice. I had to make you understand.”

I can see it now. Every whisper, every flicker, every shadow in the corner of my eye. He made it happen. Every cold breeze brushing my skin, every subtle movement of objects, it was all him, a slow, patient symphony of terror.

The hotel walls grow fuzzy. Shadows press closer. I can feel it, my fate closing in and there is no escape. He steps forward, closer and I see the sharpness of his intent. The calm patience. The inevitability.

I know. I know what’s coming.

I try to run. I can't, my legs fall weak beneath me. I try to scream but the sound is trapped.

“You should have never tried to forget,” he whispers, voice low, final, and the air presses against me like a weight I cannot lift.

When I close my eyes, the room goes black and my body grows cold. He brings his lips to my ear, “You always thought you were safe. You weren’t.”

The last of my senses cling to the sound of his footsteps retreating with each heartbeat until a quiet click marks the closing of a door. Darkness pulls me under as he disappears into a world that will never suspect. Clean. Free. Untraceable.

And I… become part of the shadows. The one that waits in the corner of someone else’s eye. The house still stands. Floorboards groan when the wind passes. Mirrors reflect faint, shifting shapes. Shadows wait…Waiting for the next person to notice.