I didn't remember falling asleep.When I opened my eyes, the room was still dark, the faint blue glow of my laptop casting ghost light across the walls.
At first, I thought the screen had frozen, but then I saw the words.New sentences. Fresh paragraphs. None of which I had written.
I sat up slowly, every sound too loud, the creak of the chair, the shallow pull of my breath. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling, afraid to touch it.
The document was open to the same story I'd been working on… but it was writing itself.
Line after line appeared, one keystroke at a time, describing things that had happened hours earlier. My dreams. The way I'd turned over in my sleep. The whisper I thought I'd heard from the hallway.
"She dreams of fire and rain. Of the night she lied."
I froze. That wasn't just writing, that was my dream.
I tried closing the laptop, but the screen wouldn't turn off. The words kept appearing, faster now, filling every inch of white space.
I felt something shift in my chest, a kind of coldness spreading from the inside out. I whispered, "Kane, stop it."
And for a moment, the typing paused.Just for a moment.
Then, a single line appeared, slow and deliberate:
"I'm not outside, A.K. I'm already here."
I backed away, my pulse thundering in my throat. The air around me felt alive, like the room itself was breathing. Or maybe it was me. Or maybe it was us.
That night, I realized the haunting wasn't about the apartment, or the laptop, or even the ghost I thought I'd been talking to.
It was about me.He was inside my thoughts now.Inside the spaces between what I wrote and what I dreamed.