The Dark That Waited

The cold had settled early that week, the kind that crept into the walls and stayed there. Even inside, the air felt heavy, as though the house itself had stopped breathing. Evan had noticed how quiet everything had become lately—the usual chatter of children outside, the hum of neighbors’ televisions, even the distant rhythm of the highway. All of it had thinned, drained away, leaving a silence that didn’t feel peaceful so much as waiting.

He had started leaving the radio on just to fill the rooms, but even that had begun to betray him. Stations cut out mid-sentence, voices dissolving into static or long, empty pauses. The city was still there—of course it was—people going to work, lights turning on, engines running. But at the edges of every ordinary thing, there was a sense of something slipping, like a rope stretched too thin.

The light was fading outside. The winter sun had slipped away earlier than anyone expected. Evan pulled the curtains shut and flicked the switch, but the bulb only shuddered—one weak pulse—and died.

It had been happening for weeks now. The whole suburb sinking into shadow earlier and earlier. Nothing worked the way it used to. The roads were broken up and swallowed by weeds, the garbage collectors had stopped coming altogether, and the supermarkets were either stripped bare or mysteriously full only when he had no money to spare.

He blamed the government. He blamed the council. He blamed fate, sometimes. On bad days, he blamed himself.

There were evenings when he tried to keep his routines going—to cook, to clean, to pretend the world hadn’t shifted. He would boil rice and eat it standing at the counter, listening to the faint thrum of the refrigerator struggling to stay alive. Sometimes he’d step onto the balcony and look down the length of the street, searching for any sign of movement, any proof that other lives were still unfolding. But the windows across from him were dim, the doorsteps bare. Even the stray cat that used to haunt the bins had stopped appearing. It was as if the neighborhood had quietly agreed to fade, to thin itself out, to become a place only half here.

Sometimes he wondered if the quiet was coming from outside or from him. There were days he would wake and feel as though something in him had emptied out during sleep—some internal hum of life packed away, like furniture draped in sheets. He would move through his room carefully, almost reverently, touching the back of a chair, the handle of a drawer, the frame of a photograph, as if to confirm that things still existed by feel. His breath sounded too loud in the mornings. His footsteps felt intrusive, even when he tried to tread softly. He had never been afraid of silence before; he had welcomed it once, treated it like a kind of refuge. Now it pressed against his ears like deep water. It made it harder to think. Harder to remember what days used to feel like. Harder to recall the sense of being among others, even when alone.

The buses stopped at four now—if a bus came at all. He stepped out of his narrow flat and into the outside gloom. Darkness into darkness. But the night outside was thicker, almost physical. It clung to his face, muffling sound, swallowing colour.

It felt—wrong.

Unlit.

Unwatched.

Or perhaps too watched.

He walked. Slowly at first. The houses around him were silhouettes—no warm squares of window light, no glow from streetlamps. Even the moon, when he glanced up, seemed to be smothered behind a film of cloud that was too thick to be cloud.

The air was cold. And still.

The silence around him was total. No dogs barking. No cars passing on the highway. No televisions murmuring through thin apartment walls. The whole neighborhood felt abandoned, as though everyone else had simply slipped away while he wasn’t looking.

He stood there for a long moment, unsure if he was waiting for something to happen or simply delaying returning indoors. The street had the look of a place left midway through living—gardens half-tended, curtains half-drawn, cars parked at slight angles, as if people had meant to come back but never quite did. There should have been the faint echo of televisions behind walls, the clatter of dishes, a cough, a laugh, a door closing somewhere. But there was nothing. The quiet wasn’t just absence; it had texture, weight, a density that pressed against him. He tried to remember the last time he had spoken to someone—actually spoken. The memory didn’t come. He couldn’t decide if that meant it had been a long time or if all days had simply begun to resemble one another. He found himself wondering whether the world outside was changing, or whether the change had begun in him first.

He turned slowly, leaning his back against the cold door. The street stretched ahead, dim shapes of houses and fences barely visible in the suffocating dark. A streetlight flickered weakly a few houses down, buzzing like an insect trapped in a glass jar.

A plastic trash bin rolled somewhere ahead of him and stopped—not from wind, but as if something had nudged it deliberately. Something unseen. Something that did not care to be seen.

His pace quickened.

He felt his heartbeat rise, a sharp steadying in his chest.

He told himself he wasn’t frightened.

He lied.

The darkness deepened. It shouldn’t have been possible—and yet it did. A second shade of black swallowing the first. Shadows inside shadows.

In the rubbish piled along the street, he heard a soft disturbance—like hands or claws raking through damp paper and glass. He could not see the source, but he could feel something moving out there. Not toward him—no—but present. Aware. Sharing the night.

He held himself very still, willing the sound to stop, willing the air to settle. There was no reason for anything to be behind him—the street was empty, the houses dark. But his body didn’t believe his reasoning. His heartbeat had changed rhythm—not faster, but heavier, like something knocking from the inside. Sweat formed at his hairline despite the cold. His hands had gone numb. He tried to swallow and found his throat too tight. A part of him—rational, steady—told him to turn and look. But a quieter, older part refused.

Then he heard it.

A sound too faint to be footsteps.

Too slow to be breathing.

A whisper of movement just behind his left shoulder.

He didn’t look.

Looking would make it real.

He broke. He ran, stumbling the last few steps to his door. His fingers shook as they closed around the handle. He twisted—

Locked.

Of all nights. Of all moments. He had locked himself out.

No wind.

No cars.

No birds.

Only the darkness pressing in behind him.

He turned.

Something was there.

He could not see it, only the shape of its not-shape—

an absence deeper than night itself.

A hollow where reality bent,

where the world forgot how to be solid.

The kind of thing that should not exist

in any place where the sun had ever shone.

The colour drained from his face,

as though the dark had pulled it straight out through his skin.

He stumbled backward.

Slipped.

Fell face-first into the wet, cold mud.

And the darkness moved closer.