He stares at the space where she'd stood. Where he'd kissed her goodnight.
For weeks, after she left, the room remained silent. Even though he knew she couldn’t come back, that she wouldn’t leave him, the sight of the empty place where she'd been fills him with relief. He can sleep easier knowing that she won’t come back. That he won’t have to live without her.
That night, after a particularly long day at work, he lies down and stares at the darkness. There’s no one there. No ghost, no voice in his ear. Just him and the shadows.
They grow, the shadows. They reach for his throat, and he screams.
Afterwards he feels guilty. Guilty because he knows there’ll be nobody there to comfort him, to say things were going to be okay. Guilty because he can feel them, creeping along the ceiling and the walls. He wants to call the police. He needs help.
Instead he goes back to bed, wraps himself in his blankets, and closes his eyes.
But the shadows don’t leave, and neither do the voices.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, sweating and shaking. He reaches blindly for his phone and switches on the lights. He doesn't look at it. It makes the shadows appear. Instead he tries to remember the words from his dream. They slip through his fingers like water.
YOU ARE READING
The Crow
Horror"So here's the thing," says the crow, "if you've never heard of me, hear me now. I'm your least expected fortune teller. I'm the one that brings death and despair. Yield to me, so I shall spare you from your doomed fate." "Foolish," says the human. ...
