The Apparition

1. You 

You would not say that you believed in ghosts. Not at all. It made no sense and your brain needed something to make sense for you to accept it. However, lately you have been noticing things, and it has been happening for a while, but you have always made it off as nothing. Surely, you just made a mistake, forgot that you had done it. But it has come to the point where you cannot deny it anymore.

It started with simple things, like you would be certain that you did not leave your pen there on the desk. Sure that you did not open the curtains in your bedroom. Items in cupboards just slightly out of place. These things were so easy to dismiss as nothing. But then you started feeling like someone was in the room with you, a presence – this was not a scary feeling at all, more comforting, like the presence was there for good reasons. You sometimes felt a slight warmth, like a breath near you. Even your pet would look at something that you could not see, never reacting in an alarming way but just looking.

Intellectually, you knew it did not make sense. You also knew that if you were really feeling these things, it should probably worry you more than what it did.

Dreams have been more vivid, you still have a hard time remembering what you dream, but they have changed. You would often wake up feeling incredibly sad, even crying. You would also wake up mid-laugh with no memory of what caused these emotions in you. And most damning was that you would be sure that you had been held – still feeling the warmth of an arm around you or a hand holding yours, even though you were very much alone in your bed.

This was not limited to your home. Although it was rare, you would occasionally feel a hand on the small of your back when you were stressed, a hand on your shoulder when you would start to panic, a whispered 'breathe' when you became angry.

Because your brain longed for logic, because you have always been one to look for rational explanations, you had tried to figure it out. Your conclusions came to the fact that you probably needed to see a professional. But you did not do that. You do not really know why not.

One night you woke up, not sure what woke you, but there was an unmistakable hand holding yours. You felt the weight of it, the heat, the size. You took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, because you couldn't see anything in the dark. You squeezed the hand gently and it reciprocated with equal tenderness. You reached your other hand over to feel, too scared to move the hand being held. But you knew if you tried to touch this hand it would disappear and that just broke your heart, made it clench in pain. So, you left it. You just held the hand, trying to get information about the hand without seeing it or moving again. The hand was larger than yours, long slender fingers and it held yours with deliberateness.

Another night you were woken by a voice whispering your name, right by your ear. You were sure that it was him even though him talking or making any sound was very rare. You woke up, smelling smoke and immediately shot up to see what was going on. A field nearby had caught fire, causing big billows of orange smoke to be visible when you looked out the window. You could see the flames, but it wasn't near enough to be of danger to you, but the wind was blowing some of the smoke in your direction so you closed the windows. You were almost relieved when you smelled the smoke on the curtains the next morning, because you were sure for a second, you had dreamt the whole thing.

Things started escalating as soon as October hit.

You would feel the bed dip with a weight behind you, but no one was ever there. When you unlocked your phone in the morning, a song would be paused, ready to play. It was sometimes songs you knew and loved and sometimes songs you had never heard, never knew existed. The song would always have something in it that you needed – lyrics that made you feel hopeful or even just a fun song to lighten your mood. You would always try to accept the message as best as you could. You felt the hand in yours more often. You realised it was not as often as you would have liked.