Unknown
Emma Caldwell was ordinary.
She was 32 years old, standing at about 5'6", with a slender but slightly soft frame,evidence of gym memberships paid for but rarely used. Her skin was fair, smooth, and always smelled faintly of vanilla from the body lotion she applied every morning out of habit.
Her hair was chestnut brown, cut just past her shoulders in soft, natural waves that she sometimes straightened when she had the energy. She kept it simple,usually parted to the right, tucked behind her ears, revealing the small silver stud earrings she never took out.
Her eyes were a warm hazel, a blend of green and brown that shifted depending on the light. People always told her she had "kind eyes," though she never saw anything particularly remarkable about them herself. Dark, neat eyelashes framed them, though mascara made them look even more defined on the rare occasions she wore it.
She had a straight, delicate nose, lips that were naturally pink, and a small beauty mark just below the left side of her jawline. Her features were soft, symmetrical, unassuming,she was the kind of person you could pass on the street and forget moments later.
Emma's wardrobe reflected her personality: practical, clean, and effortlessly put together. She preferred neutral colors,cream sweaters, tailored black slacks, soft blue blouses. Her office job required business casual, and she made sure to always look professional, even if she didn't particularly care about fashion. A single silver bracelet adorned her wrist, a gift from her mother years ago that she never took off.
Her nails were always neatly trimmed and painted in muted tones,pale pink, soft gray, or clear polish. Her hands were smooth, delicate, a contrast to the stress-induced knuckle-cracking habit she had carried since childhood.
She wore a faint trace of floral perfume, subtle but enough to leave an impression. It was the same perfume her mother had worn when she was a child,a comfort scent she had adopted as her own.
Emma was, in every way, utterly normal. Someone who blended in, who followed the motions of life with quiet grace. Someone who didn't stand out.
Emma worked as a financial assistant at a mid-sized firm in downtown Portland. It wasn't her dream job,she had never been passionate about numbers,but it paid well enough, and she was good at it. Her days were filled with spreadsheets, data entry, and processing expense reports. The work was repetitive, structured, and, in a way, comforting. There was something reassuring about balancing numbers, ensuring that everything was in order.
Her desk was meticulously organized,color-coded folders, a neat stack of sticky notes, and a small, framed picture of her and her mother from a trip to the Oregon coast years ago. A tiny potted succulent sat next to her monitor, a gift from a coworker she had somehow managed to keep alive.
Emma wasn't particularly close to most of her coworkers. She was friendly, polite, but she kept to herself. She attended office parties out of obligation, laughed at small talk in the breakroom, but never truly felt connected to anyone,except for Mark Holloway.
Mark was a junior accountant, only a year older than Emma at 33, with a dry sense of humor and a tendency to overshare about his personal life. He was the kind of person who could make even the most mundane tasks entertaining, turning dull meetings into inside-joke marathons. They had started at the company around the same time and had naturally gravitated toward each other.
While others saw Emma as quiet and reserved, Mark saw her sarcastic, deadpan side. He was one of the few people who could actually make her laugh. Over the years, their bond had grown,not quite romantic, but closer than a typical workplace friendship. They got lunch together more often than not, texted each other memes during long meetings, and occasionally grabbed drinks after work.
Her life was structured predictable and safe.
Emma worked. She laughed. She went home. She woke up and did it all over again.
Days bled into one another, a comfortable rhythm of routine. Mornings filled with emails and coffee, evenings with sitcom reruns and quiet solitude.
She had no enemies. No dark past. No reason to feel unsafe.
But then, the little things started.
A feeling, at first.
Like being watched.
Like walking into a room and forgetting why, only to have the sensation that something had been waiting there for her.
A whisper of movement in the corner of her vision,gone the second she turned her head.
Brushed off. Ignored.
Until the night her phone rang.
And life,her normal life,began to slip through her fingers.
That night was quiet, the city humming softly outside her apartment window. Emma stood in the bathroom, the scent of minty toothpaste filling the air as she ran her toothbrush over her teeth in slow, absentminded circles. The glow of the vanity light reflected off the mirror, casting a soft yellow haze across her tired face.
Then, her phone vibrated against the marble counter.
The sound startled her,sharp, sudden in the stillness. She spat into the sink and wiped her mouth before glancing at the screen.
Unknown Caller.
A pulse of unease spread through her chest.
Her finger hovered over the decline button, but something,morbid curiosity, maybe,made her hesitate. Who the hell would be calling this late?
She swallowed hard, then swiped to accept the call.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Emma's brow furrowed. "?Hello?"
Then she heard it.
Breathing.
slow? deep? wet.
Not the normal sound of someone idly on the other line, but something deliberate. Something too close. Each inhale dragged in like someone was savoring the air, each exhale a rasp that sent a shiver down her spine.
Emma straightened, her free hand gripping the counter. "Who is this?"
The breathing didn't stop.
She turned toward the open doorway, suddenly feeling watched. Her skin prickled, her muscles tensing. It wasn't just the sound,it was the way it felt. As if, somehow, that breathing was coming from inside her apartment.
Her breath came faster. "Hello?"
Still nothing.
Then,click.
The call ended.
Emma stood frozen, her pulse hammering against her ribs. The quiet of her apartment now felt wrong,too heavy, too still.
She stared at her phone, her stomach twisting into knots.
A prank, she told herself. Some weirdo. That's all.
Her fingers moved faster than her thoughts, blocking the number, shoving the phone into her pocket. She shook her head, forcing a laugh at how tense she'd gotten over nothing.
Still, when she crawled into bed that night, she made sure to double-check the locks.
The next night, it happened again.
Emma had barely slept the night before, jolting awake at the faintest sound, her mind conjuring shapes in the shadows. She tried to convince herself it had been just a prank. Just some sick creep who would get bored and move on.
But when her phone rang at exactly 11:58 PM, her stomach twisted into knots.
She had left it on the nightstand, face-down, as if that would stop her from seeing it. But she felt it. The vibration hummed through the mattress like an insect burrowing under her skin.
She didn't answer.
She told herself she wouldn't.
Instead, she stared at the screen, watching the words Unknown Caller flicker against the darkness. Her heartbeat thudded against her ribs, faster, harder, the edges of her vision tightening.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
Longer than before. Too long.
Then, silence.
Her entire body sagged in relief.
Then,another ring.
Emma flinched so hard she nearly fell out of bed.
The same number.
She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the heels of her hands against them. Her breathing was too fast, her chest too tight. It felt like something was wrapped around her ribs, pulling, constricting.
Just let it ring.
Just let it ring.
Then,a notification.
One new voicemail.
She stared at the screen, heart hammering. Her hands were shaking, sweat pooling in her palms.
Don't listen to it.
But the temptation was unbearable, a slow, crawling need to know.
Her thumb hovered over the screen before pressing play.
At first, just static.
Then,the breathing.
It was worse this time.
Thick, uneven gasps. Like lungs filled with liquid, dragging in air that didn't want to come.
Then came the scraping.
A slow, deliberate sound beneath the breathing, like fingernails carving into wood.
Emma swallowed hard. The sound continued, steady and relentless, like something trying to get in.
Her entire body locked up.
Then, the whisper.
"I see you."
The message ended.
Emma threw the phone across the room.
She didn't sleep that night.
Or the night after that.
By the fourth day, she was running on fumes.
She started leaving all the lights on, as if that would help. She triple-checked the locks on her doors and windows, pressing her palm against them, holding her breath, waiting for something,anything,to move.
But the apartment was always still.
Too still.
It didn't matter if she turned her phone off.
The calls always came.
They found her.
Night after night, at exactly 11:58 PM.
And each time, the breathing was louder. Closer.
The scraping was no longer just a sound.
It was a feeling.
Something pressing against the walls of her apartment. Something digging its way toward her.
By the second week, she stopped sleeping entirely.
By the third, she stopped feeling like a person.
By the fourth, she realized the calls weren't just calls anymore.
They were invitations.
And she was running out of time.
At first, the calls were always the same,silence, then breathing, then nothing.
By the sixth week, Emma was unraveling.
Her body ached from exhaustion, her eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness. Shadows lurked beneath her skin, a sickly pallor spreading over her face. The weight of the nights before had sunk into her bones, carving into her like dull knives.
She hadn't slept,not really. She would doze off for minutes at a time, only to jolt awake, drenched in sweat, convinced that something was standing at the edge of her bed.
She no longer trusted the dark corners of her apartment.
And then, at exactly 11:58 PM, her phone rang.
She knew what she would see before she even reached for it.
Unknown Caller.
Her breath hitched, throat tightening. Her hands trembled as she gripped the phone, the edges slick against her clammy fingers.
Don't answer.
She should have let it ring.
She should have thrown the phone across the room and locked herself in the bathroom, pressed her hands over her ears until it stopped.
But some sick, festering part of her needed to know.
Needed to hear it.
Her thumb hovered over the screen, hesitation clawing at her, but then,she pressed accept.
For a moment, nothing.
Just the usual breathing.
Only this time, it was different.
Wetter. Hungrier.
It dragged in deep, like something was sucking the air straight from her lungs. The sound of damp, wheezing inhales, choked and starving, pressing against her eardrum.
A new sound followed,a creaking.
Like joints popping out of place. Like something unfolding itself from a space too small.
Emma pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, bile rising in her throat.
Then, the voice came.
"You're going to die, Emma."
The words were wrong.
Not whispered, not spoken, but something in-between.
Like they were being dragged across raw, open flesh.
Like broken glass grinding into concrete.
Emma's stomach curled in on itself. Her pulse roared in her ears, a deafening drumbeat of sheer, primal panic.
She couldn't speak. Her throat wouldn't work.
The silence stretched, sticky and suffocating.
Then,the voice again.
"Tick? tock?"
Tick?
Something shifted in the background.
A grotesque, wet squelching, like flesh pressing against flesh. Like something dragging itself forward.
Tock?
A slow, deliberate scraping, like nails raking against wood, carving something deep.
Emma's vision blurred. The room tilted.
Her hand jerked, disconnecting the call.
Click.
The silence after was deafening.
Emma sat there, her body locked in place, the phone slipping from her numb fingers.
Something was wrong.
Something was so, so wrong.
She barely made it to the bathroom before she was retching violently into the sink, her body shaking with uncontrollable tremors.
This wasn't just a prank.
This was real.
And it was getting closer.
She changed her number the next morning.
Spent over an hour with the phone company, her voice a shaking, broken mess, barely able to form sentences.
She tried to explain,someone was harassing her, calling her night after night, whispering things she shouldn't be hearing.
The customer service rep didn't care.
They changed her number. Assured her it was done.
For the first time in nearly a week, she breathed.
That night, at exactly 11:58 PM, her phone rang.
A new number.
Unknown Caller.
Emma choked on a scream.
Her hands shook so violently she nearly dropped the phone.
No. No, no, no,
Her entire body went rigid, her lungs feeling like they were filled with ice water.
She stared at the screen, at the glowing words that shouldn't be there.
New number.
Same call.
Same voice.
She didn't want to answer.
But her thumb moved on its own.
Her skin crawled the second she pressed accept.
She didn't even get a chance to speak.
The breathing came immediately.
Faster this time.
Excited.
Emma's stomach knotted in revulsion.
Then, the voice.
"You can't run, Emma."
A slow, dragging chuckle followed.
A sound that didn't belong to a person.
Something slick. Guttural.
Like lips peeling apart after being fused together for centuries.
Emma's vision tunneled. Her entire body convulsed in terror.
She hung up.
Her pulse slammed against her ribs, her breath coming in short, painful bursts.
She pressed her back against the wall, shaking, waiting,listening.
But her apartment was quiet.
Too quiet.
Her ears rang with the weight of it.
It felt like the silence was watching her.
She stopped answering unknown numbers after that.
Told herself that if she ignored them, they would stop.
That whoever,whatever,was calling her would get bored.
But they didn't stop.
They got worse.
Much, much worse.
Emma was failing.
She could feel it in every dragging second of the workday, in every typo-filled email, every miscalculated figure, every deadline she barely scraped by.
She used to be sharp. Precise. Reliable.
Now, she was a ghost of herself.
The nights bled into the days, leaving her in a constant haze. The ringing in her ears never stopped. Even when her phone wasn't ringing, she felt it,a phantom vibration against her hip, a whisper just beneath the hum of the office. Sometimes, she caught herself staring at her screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard, unable to remember what she had been doing.
She tried to act normal.
She needed to act normal.
But people noticed.
At first, it was just concerned glances. Quiet murmurs when she left meetings looking pale and shaken.
Then came the warnings.
"You've been late every day this week, Emma."
"Another mistake like this could cost us a client."
"Are you okay?"
She wasn't okay.
She was falling apart.
Her stomach clenched.
Had she eaten today?
Yesterday?
She couldn't remember.
Her hands trembled as she gripped the sink, nails digging into the porcelain.
She couldn't keep doing this.
She was crumbling, and no one cared.
No one believed her.
Then she fell asleep at her desk.
She hadn't meant to,she had just closed her eyes for a second, just a moment to breathe, to rest her aching head on her folded arms.
But when she woke up, there was drool on her keyboard.
And Mr. Corman was standing over her.
"Emma," he snapped.
Her stomach plummeted.
She sat up too fast, knocking over her coffee. The mug hit the floor with a shatter, hot liquid splattering over her heels.
"I,I wasn't,"
"You were asleep," Corman said.
His voice was clipped, sharp with irritation.
"This is the third time this week," he continued. "You're missing deadlines. You're making mistakes. I don't know what's going on with you, but it's affecting your work."
Emma's mouth was dry.
"I,I'm just tired, I,"
Corman sighed, rubbing his temple.
"Look, if you can't handle your responsibilities, maybe you should take some time off."
No.
No, no, no,
The thought of being alone in her apartment all day, waiting for nightfall, waiting for the calls, was unbearable.
"I can fix it," she blurted. "It won't happen again."
Corman didn't look convinced.
"I hope not," he said. "Or we'll have to discuss your future here."
Then he walked away, leaving her shaking in her chair, her heart pounding in her ears.
Her hands clenched into fists.
She felt like she was slipping through the cracks of her own life.
And no one cared.
No one believed her.
Except for Mark.
Mark found her an hour later, curled up in a chair in the break room, staring blankly at a cup of coffee she hadn't touched.
"Emma," he said, voice gentle. Careful, like he was afraid she might shatter.
She barely glanced up.
"I know," she muttered. "I look like shit."
Mark didn't laugh.
He pulled out the chair across from her, studying her face.
"You've been different," he said. "For weeks. You look?" He hesitated. "Like you're scared all the time."
Her throat clenched.
She could lie. She should lie.
Say she was just stressed, sick, not sleeping well.
But Mark wasn't like the others.
He had always been good to her. The only person at work who didn't treat her like she was disposable.
And she was so tired of being alone.
The words spilled out before she could stop them.
"They won't stop calling me."
Mark frowned. "Who?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "But they know my name. And they keep," Her breath hitched. "They keep saying I'm going to die."
Mark's face paled.
"What?"
She told him everything.
The first call. The breathing. The voice. The way it always found her, no matter what she did.
The way it was getting worse.
Mark listened.
Really listened.
No forced smiles, no skeptical glances at the door like he was waiting for an excuse to leave.
When she finished, her hands were shaking so badly she had to set down her coffee before she spilled it.
She braced herself for disbelief.
For pity.
For the same tired, dismissive words everyone else had said,
"You're overreacting, Emma."
"It's just a prank, Emma."
"You should see someone about this, Emma."
But Mark just sat back in his chair, exhaled, and said, "That's not normal."
Relief crashed over her so hard it almost made her dizzy.
Someone believed her.
"Have you gone to the police?" he asked.
She nodded. "They said there's nothing they can do. No threats, no proof, just a 'persistent prank caller.'"
Mark's jaw tightened.
"Bullshit," he muttered. "That's not a prank, Emma. That's?" He trailed off, rubbing his hand over his mouth.
She swallowed. "I don't know what to do."
Mark was silent for a long time.
Then, finally, he said, "Then we'll figure it out."
Not you.
We.
She almost cried.
For the first time in weeks, she wasn't completely alone.
But deep down, Emma knew,
Even he couldn't save her.
Mark was the kind of person who made life easier just by being in it.
He wasn't loud, or flashy, or particularly outgoing, but he had a quiet confidence to him,a way of making people feel safe in his presence. He was steady. Dependable. The type of guy who never raised his voice but could command a room just by speaking.
Emma had always appreciated that about him.
At work, Mark was one of the few people who never got caught up in office politics, never whispered behind people's backs. He did his job, did it well, and then went home. He was efficient without being robotic, smart without being arrogant.
Unlike the others, he never made her feel like she was just another employee, just another cog in the corporate machine.
That was why they got along.
That was why she trusted him.
Physically, Mark was broad-shouldered and tall, but not in an intimidating way. He carried himself with an easy, relaxed posture, like someone who was comfortable in his own skin. His dark brown hair was always slightly messy, no matter how often he tried to smooth it down, and his stubble had a habit of creeping in by the end of the workday. His eyes,green, sharp, always observant,had a way of seeing through people, like he knew when someone was lying before they even opened their mouth.
He dressed simple,button-ups with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, dark jeans when he could get away with it. Nothing about him screamed for attention.
But people liked him.
People trusted him.
So did Emma.
Because if anyone was going to believe her, it was him.
Later that night
Emma knew it the moment she woke up,abruptly, violently, as if something had yanked her from unconsciousness. Her skin was slick with sweat, her sheets tangled around her legs. The air in her apartment felt thick, humid, unnatural, like something had been breathing in the room with her for hours.
Then,
Her phone vibrated violently on the nightstand.
The glow of the screen sliced through the darkness, casting long, twisting shadows across the ceiling.
Emma's stomach dropped.
UNKNOWN.
She stared.
The numbers on the screen blurred, her mind sluggish with sleep-deprivation. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked gasps as she reached for the phone with trembling fingers.
She knew she shouldn't answer.
She knew what waited on the other end.
And yet, he had to.
The silence stretched, taut and suffocating, as she lifted the phone to her ear.
She didn't speak.
She didn't have to.
Because the moment the call connected,she heard it.
The breathing.
Wet. Heavy.
The kind of sound you might hear in a room filled with rot, where something swollen and wrong was taking in too much air, too greedily, too hungrily.
She gripped the phone tighter, her knuckles burning white.
The sound squelched in her ear, thick and organic, something too close to chewing,or swallowing.
Then, the whisper:
"I'm getting closer."
Emma jerked away, sucking in a sharp, trembling breath.
The voice was inside her skull, seeping through the receiver, wrapping around her like invisible fingers.
She threw her phone across the room.
It hit the wall hard, dropping to the floor with a dull thud. The screen flickered once before going dark.
But the damage was done.
The silence that followed was too thick.
Her bedroom wasn't empty anymore.
Something was here.
Watching.
She could feel it,a shift in the air, a change in the atmosphere. The room felt smaller, like the walls were pressing inward, like she was trapped inside a closing fist.
Her breath came in sharp little gasps, barely contained, too loud.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Maybe if she stayed still, if she didn't move, didn't breathe, it would go away,
The closet door creaked open.
Just a sliver.
Just enough.
Her entire body locked up.
Her gaze flicked toward the dark gap between the door and the frame, and she felt it,a presence.
Not seen.
But felt.
Her mind screamed at her to look away.
But she couldn't.
She had to know.
Her body moved against her will, her head tilting ever so slightly,
Something was there.
Not fully visible. Not in the room, but just past the threshold. Something standing in the darkness, wrapped in the black of her closet, where the light never quite reached.
And it was waiting.
For what?
For her to look long enough?
For her to close her eyes again?
For her to acknowledge it?
The breath hitched in her throat.
Then,
A twitch.
Not her.
It.
A small shift. A barely-there movement, like someone adjusting their stance.
Her lungs seized.
She lunged forward, grabbed her phone off the floor, and sprinted from her bedroom.
From that night on, sleep was a distant memory.
Her apartment became a prison of shadows and whispers.
She tried to tell herself she was imagining things, that she was just sleep-deprived, paranoid.
But the proof was everywhere.
Little things, at first.
Her keys weren't where she left them.
The bathroom mirror had streaks in the steam after she showered,long, thin streaks, like something had traced its fingers through the fog.
Her closet door,always shut, always locked,was open every morning.
She started locking it with a chair.
But somehow,somehow,it always ended up just slightly ajar.
Then came the mirrors.
One night, around 3:00 AM, she found herself in the bathroom, gripping the sink, staring at her reflection.
Her skin was a wasted thing, stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones, so pale it was nearly translucent in the dim glow of the bathroom light. The overhead bulb flickered, washing her in a sickly yellow hue, making her look almost corpse-like. Beneath the surface, faint blue veins webbed beneath the fragile tissue, pulsing weakly, sluggishly, as if struggling to push life through her withering form.
She lifted a trembling hand to her face, pressing her fingers to her cheek.
Cold.
She was so, so cold.
Her hands looked no better,bony, skeletal, her knuckles too sharp, her fingertips trembling as she traced the sharp edges of her own features. She barely recognized herself.
Her eyes were sunken, swallowed by dark, bruised hollows that stretched deep beneath the sockets, smudges of exhaustion and something far, far worse. The once-vivid green had dulled to something murky, faded, like the color had been leeched out, drop by drop, leaving behind only emptiness.
They stared back at her from the mirror,wide, unblinking, too hollow,as if they no longer belonged to her at all.
Something else lived behind them now.
Something else was watching.
Her lips,cracked, raw, bleeding,quivered as she exhaled, her breath misting faintly against the glass. The skin was peeling in jagged strips, splitting at the corners where she had worried them raw in the dead of night, her teeth tearing into her own flesh without realizing.
The taste of iron and salt still coated her tongue, thick and bitter.
She swallowed hard.
It was getting worse.
She could feel it,this thing growing inside her, burrowing beneath her skin, eating her from the inside out.
Her body was failing her.
Her mind was breaking.
Piece by piece, she was unraveling.
And the worst part was,
Something else knew it.
Something that had been waiting.
Something that was already here.
And in the mirror,
It smiled.
The overhead light buzzed faintly.
And then,
A shift.
Not behind her.
Not in the hallway.
Inside the mirror.
Her stomach lurched.
At first, it was so subtle, so small, that she might have ignored it,the tiniest twitch, the barest movement, just enough to make her question if she'd seen it at all.
But then,
It moved again.
Not her.
The reflection.
Something standing just behind her.
She froze.
It was tall. Too tall.
Its arms hung at its sides, longer than they should have been, fingers curling slightly at the ends.
Its face,
There wasn't one.
But it was looking at her.
The scream built in her throat.
She spun around,
Nothing.
The bathroom was empty.
Her chest heaved, breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
She turned back to the mirror.
The figure was still there.
Closer now.
So much closer.
Right behind her.
Her hands shot out for the light switch.
Darkness.
The next morning, she called the police.
The officer who showed up was young,too young. Maybe twenty-five at most, with sleep-heavy eyes and a polite, practiced patience that told her he had done this before, had listened to stories like hers and dismissed them just as quickly.
She had done this before, too.
This wasn't the first time she had called. It wasn't even the second. The last two officers had said the same thing,"No real threat," "Prank calls happen," "Nothing we can do unless there's proof." She hadn't expected much this time either, but she had hoped,hoped that this time, someone would listen.
Because this time, it was different.
This time, she had seen something.
"You said you've been getting threatening phone calls?" the officer asked, pulling a small notepad from his pocket, his voice neutral, detached,like this was just another routine annoyance.
Emma sat hunched over on her couch, her hands knotted in her lap to hide the tremor. Her eyes burned, raw from too many nights spent awake, from too many moments spent staring at her phone, dreading the inevitable vibration that always came.
"Yes." Her voice cracked. "Every night. Always from an unknown number."
The officer barely glanced up as he jotted something down. "And you changed your number?"
"Twice."
He gave a slow, unimpressed nod, flipping to the next page in his notebook as if she had just told him her WiFi was down.
"Do you have any idea who it could be?"
Emma hesitated.
No.
She didn't.
But it felt like they knew her. Like they could see her. Like they were always watching.
Her throat tightened. "No? But it," She swallowed. "It feels like they know me."
The officer sighed.
That long, weary exhale that people gave when they thought you were overreacting.
She felt her stomach tighten.
She had told him about the messages.
She had told him about the breathing on the line.
She had told him about what she saw last night,the shadow in the corner of her room that wasn't a shadow, the thing in the mirror that shouldn't have been there.
And he didn't care.
He snapped his notepad shut. "Ms. Caldwell, I'll be honest with you. Calls like these,especially from an unknown number,are almost impossible to trace. Could be a scam. Could be a prank. Best thing you can do is ignore them."
Emma felt her stomach sink, cold and heavy.
She already knew that was what he would say.
But she had called anyway.
Because she was scared.
Because she was so, so scared.
Her voice came out small. "I can't ignore them."
The officer stood, slipping his notepad into his pocket.
"Try," he said, offering her a sympathetic, meaningless smile. "If it escalates, call us again."
And that was it.
That was all.
No protection. No real concern.
She was alone.
Again.
That night, Emma sat curled on her couch, knees drawn to her chest, a kitchen knife clutched so tightly in her fist that her knuckles ached.
The apartment was silent.
Too silent.
Even the hum of the fridge, the distant traffic outside,everything felt too still. As if the entire world was holding its breath.
Her phone lay face-up on the coffee table, the screen dark, but she could feel it,the weight of it, the threat of it.
Her pulse thudded in her ears.
Then,
Ring
She flinched.
The screen glowed against the darkness.
UNKNOWN.
Her fingers dug into the handle of the knife, pressing deep.
She let it ring.
Let it go to voicemail.
A minute passed. Then another.
Then,
A text.
The notification pulsed softly on the screen, waiting.
She stared at it for a long time before finally reaching out, her fingers trembling as she unlocked the phone.
One new message.
Why won't you pick up, Emma?
Her breath caught.
Her stomach curled in on itself, twisting into something sharp and sickly cold.
She blocked the number.
Her hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped the phone.
Another vibration.
Another message.
From a new number.
That won't work. You know that.
A sharp, choking sound crawled up her throat.
Then,
A shift.
A flicker of movement in the corner of the room.
Her head jerked up.
Her breath hitched.
Her grip tightened on the knife, her knuckles bloodless.
Something had moved.
She was sure of it.
So sure.
Her eyes darted wildly across the dim apartment. The shadows stretched, pooling in the corners, too dark, too deep, as if something could be lurking inside them, watching her.
She forced herself to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
She was losing her mind.
She had to be.
But as she stared into the corner of the room
It stared back.
A shape without form. A presence without substance. It didn't move, didn't breathe, yet she felt it watching.
The air thickened, pressing against her lungs, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe.
Then, the light shifted. The shadow dissolved. And she was alone again.
But the feeling never left her.
She tried to tell herself it was nothing. Just her mind playing tricks. Stress. Exhaustion.
No one would believe her anyway.
No one except Mark.
Mark had always believed her.
And that was why he came that night.
Why he died that night.
Emma didn't call him.
She hadn't called anyone.
She had stopped trying.
Stopped hoping.
Because hope was useless.
The thing calling herstalking her, feeding on her fearit didn't care that she had begged for help. That she had screamed into the phone, into the night, into the void.
No one could save her.
Not anymore.
So, when the phone rang that nightUnknown Caller, 11:58 PMshe already knew.
She answered.
A sharp inhale. Wrong.
Then
A whisper.
"It's time, Emma."
A pause.
"Open the door."
And then
A knock.
Soft. Delicate.
From across the apartment.
Her stomach turned to ice.
Her breath stilled.
No.
She was on the fifth floor. The hallway was empty at this hour. There was no one there.
And yet
BANG.
The knock became a fist pounding against wood.
Her pulse screamed in her ears.
And then, another voice.
A real voice.
"Emma?"
Her stomach lurched.
Mark.
Her body finally snapped back to life.
She ranbare feet slapping against the floor, every instinct in her body screaming No, no, no!and yanked open the door.
Mark stood there, panting, his face creased with worry, his hazel eyes scanning her up and down.
"Jesus, Emma, I've been calling you"
A shadow moved behind him.
Emma's breath hitched.
Her voice broke. "Markget inside."
He frowned. "What? Emma, what's"
She grabbed his wrist, her nails digging into his skin. "Pleasejustget inside."
And because he was Mark, because he was the only one who had ever truly cared, he listened.
He stepped inside.
She slammed the door.
Locked it.
Bolted it.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, every beat like a hammer against bone.
Mark watched her, his brows furrowed. "Emma, you're shaking. You look"
BANG.
Both of them froze.
The sound hadn't come from the door.
It had come from inside.
Mark's gaze flickered over her shoulderinto the apartment.
And then
His face changed.
His expression shattered, twisting into something raw, unfiltered, primal.
His mouth openedas if to speak, as if to scream
Emma turned.
And she saw it.
The thing that had been calling her.
It had no real shape. Just a mass of living darkness, writhing, twisting, shifting like liquid shadow. Its limbs were too long, its body too thin, stretching as it oozed forward.
But its face
Just a gaping, cavernous hole where its mouth should be, a yawning, bleeding void that seemed to breathe, suck, devour.
And it was smiling.
Mark shoved her behind him.
She barely registered the movement before the lights flickered.
The shadows swallowed the room whole.
And then
Mark screamed.
A sound that wasn't human.
Emma tried to move, tried to reach for him, to pull him back, to do something, anything, but her body was locked in place, frozen in terror.
She could only watch.
Mark's body lifted off the ground.
His arms twisted backward, his bones snapping like dry twigs.
His skin stretched, pulled too tight, too thin, like something beneath it was moving, shifting, crawling.
His mouth
Oh, God, his mouth
It ripped open at the corners, widening, splitting his cheeks apart, until it was too big, too empty.
His eyes bulged, veins bursting, pupils dilating into nothing.
And then
The thing devoured him.
Not like a beast.
Not like an animal.
It unmade him.
Dissolved him into the darkness.
One moment, Mark was therecontorted, broken, mouth hanging open in silent agony
And the next, he was gone.
Vanished.
Erased.
As if he had never existed at all.
The lights snapped back on.
The shadows recoiled.
And Mark was nothing.
Not even blood remained.
Just his phone.
Face-up. Cracked.
A notification blinked on the shattered screen.
1 New Message.
Unknown: You can't be saved, Emma.
Her body gave out.
She collapsed, shaking so hard her teeth clattered against each other.
Her fingers dug into her scalp, her nails tearing into her own flesh, but she couldn't feel it.
Mark was gone.
Truly, completely gone.
She was alone.
Again.
And then
Her phone began to ring.
It would never leave her.
No matter how many times she changed her number.
No matter how many times she blocked it.
No matter how many times she begged it to stop.
It wanted her.
And it was coming closer.
The night was cold.
Even with every window shut, every draft sealed, the air inside her apartment felt wrongthick, damp, heavy with something she couldn't name.
She sat curled up on the couch, arms wrapped around herself, her phone clutched in her shaking fingers. The screen was cracked from when she had thrown it.
It had been doing that thing again,ringing when it was turned off.
And she had made the mistake of answering.
Again.
"Did you miss me, Emma?"
A voice like wet, rotting wood scraping against concrete.
She had thrown up in the kitchen sink after that one.
Now, she sat in silence, grieving.
For herself.
For her mind, which was slipping further and further into a pit she couldn't climb out of.
And for Mark.
Her stomach twisted.
She had tried to hold on to his memory, to keep him alive in her mind, but the longer she thought about him, the more distorted he became.
She could no longer picture his smile.
Or the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed.
When she tried, all she saw was his mouth splitting too wide, his body twisting, his skin stretching, his eyes bulging until,
She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop.
She had tried calling his number the next day.
Just to hear his voicemail.
It had disconnected.
Like he had never existed.
Her only friend. Gone.
And she was alone.
A sound broke the silence.
Tap.
She flinched, heart slamming against her ribs.
Tap. Tap.
She whipped around, breath shallow.
It was coming from the window.
Her pulse thundered.
Her apartment was on the fifth floor.
No balcony.
No fire escape.
There should have been nothing there.
And yet,
Another sound.
Tap. Scratch.
Like nails dragging against glass.
Her breath turned to ice in her throat.
She forced herself to move, to twist just enough to glance at the window.
At first, there was nothing.
Just the dark city skyline.
And then,
The shape formed.
A shadowy hand, tipped with jagged, black claws, slowly pressed against the glass from the outside.
Emma stopped breathing.
It was watching her.
It had found her.
Her phone vibrated violently in her lap.
She didn't want to look.
Didn't want to see the screen.
But she did.
Unknown.
Her hands shook so violently the phone nearly slipped from her grasp.
She didn't answer.
She couldn't.
She wouldn't.
A minute passed.
Two.
Then, the call stopped.
And a text came through.
Unknown: Why won't you let me in, Emma?
A sob ripped through her throat.
She squeezed her eyes shut, curled into herself, rocking back and forth. This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real.
Then,
A creak.
The closet door.
Not the window.
Behind her.
Her body locked up.
She had locked that door earlier.
She knew she had.
Her breath came in sharp, shallow bursts as she slowly turned her head.
The door was open an inch.
Nothing but a black void beyond it.
Then, the whisper.
"I see you, Emma."
?
Her vision went black.
Weeks Later
The landlord hesitated before unlocking the door.
Something was wrong.
The air in the hallway had that stagnant, lifeless weight to it,like a place where time had stopped. The usual scents of dust and stale carpet lingered, but beneath it, curling in sickly tendrils under the door, was something else.
Rot.
Not just the musty odor of old food or mildew. This was thick, cloying, wet decay, the smell of something once alive, now long past saving. It wormed its way into his sinuses, coating the back of his throat with a taste that made his stomach churn.
He swallowed hard and fit the key into the lock.
Emma hadn't paid her rent.
Hadn't answered the door.
Hadn't picked up her phone.
And no one,not a single person,had heard from her in weeks.
Some part of him,some deep, primal instinct,screamed at him not to open the door.
But it was already too late.
The lock clicked.
The hinges groaned.
And the moment the door swung open
The smell hit him like a sledgehammer.
Thick. Rancid. Gagging.
A wave of putrid heat rolled out of the apartment, wrapping around him like wet, rotting flesh. His vision swam as bile surged up his throat. He gagged, clamping a sleeve over his mouth, but it didn't help. The smell wasn't just in the air,it was in the walls, the floors, the furniture. A deep, festering corruption that had seeped into every inch of the place.
Then, he saw her.
Emma.
Or what was left of her.
She was curled in the farthest corner of the room, her body twisted into a position no living thing should be in.
Her back had snapped backward, her spine forming an unnatural arch that jutted her ribcage forward like something had wrenched her body from the inside out. Her arms were wrapped around herself, not in comfort, but in sheer, agonized desperation.
Her fingers, oh God, her fingers.
They were frozen mid-spasm, twisted into jagged claws, as if she had tried to dig herself out of her own body. The nails had splintered and broken away, some torn off entirely, leaving raw, bloody stumps. Dried, dark streaks coated her hands and forearms.
She had clawed at something.
No, not something.
Herself.
Her shoulders, her chest, even her throat bore deep, angry gouges. Torn flesh. Bloodied streaks. As if she had been trying to rip something out of her skin.
But then there was her face.
Oh, God.
Her mouth was open.
Not just open, stretched.
Torn wide in a silent, endless scream, the corners of her lips shredded into deep, raw fissures that carved into her cheeks. The muscles of her jaw had snapped, leaving it unhinged, hanging at a grotesque angle. The ligaments had ruptured, delicate tendons flayed apart like snapped violin strings.
Her teeth
Some were missing. Others broken, shattered into jagged fragments, bloodied at the roots. A few were embedded in her own tongue, driven inward, as if something had forced her jaw open past the limits of human anatomy.
Her eyes.
Wide. Too wide.
The delicate flesh of her eyelids had torn, peeled back in places, as if she had been forced to witness something too horrible to comprehend. The whites were gone, swallowed by a web of black and crimson as the veins had ruptured, leaking blood into her stare.
But it wasn't just the color.
It was the expression in them.
Not just fear.
Not just pain.
Terror.
The kind that seeped into the marrow. That emptied a person from the inside out, leaving behind only a husk of what they once were.
Her skin.
It was wrong.
Not just gray, not just lifeless, but withered, pulled taut over her bones as if something had drained her from within. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips dry and split. She wasn't just dead.
She had been emptied.
Whatever had taken her, it had stolen more than just her life.
It had taken something deeper.
Something worse.
The landlord staggered backward, bile burning up his throat.
His boot stuck to something.
A thick, oozing trail of blackened fluid.
It seeped from the open closet, pooling across the floor in slow, viscous tendrils, leading directly to Emma's corpse.
And then,
A sound.
A low, wet vibration.
Not from the walls. Not from the pipes.
From her hand.
Her phone was still clutched in her grip, her fingers locked so tightly around it that the knuckles had split open, dried blood crusting beneath her nails.
The screen was still on.
Still lit.
Still vibrating.
A call was coming through.
Unknown.
The landlord choked on a breath, his body frozen in horror.
The smell hit them before they even reached the door.
Even with masks, even with the hallway windows open, the putrid stench of decomposition clung to the air, thick and suffocating. Officers exchanged uneasy glances as they stood outside Apartment 3B, none of them eager to be the first to step inside.
Something was wrong here.
They had all worked death calls before,overdoses, suicides, unattended deaths where the bodies weren't found for weeks. They had smelled death.
But not like this.
The lead investigator adjusted their gloves and stepped over the threshold.
The air inside was still. Too still. The usual sounds of an old apartment,creaking pipes, humming refrigerators,were absent. The room felt hollowed out, like something had drained all the life from it, leaving only the stench of death behind.
And then they saw her.
The woman was curled into the corner of the room, twisted into an impossible position. Her back was arched unnaturally, ribcage protruding like something had tried to pull her apart from the inside. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, but not in protection.
In desperation.
Her fingers were stiff, clawed, frozen mid-spasm. Her nails,some missing, others cracked down to the raw, bloody quick,had torn deep gouges into her own skin. Across her arms, her shoulders, even her throat. The scratches weren't from a struggle with an attacker.
She had done this to herself.
One of the forensic techs knelt beside her, hesitating before reaching out to examine the wounds.
"She was trying to dig something out of herself," they murmured. Their voice was hushed, as if speaking too loudly might stir something in the room.
The investigator didn't respond. There were no words.
The apartment was ice cold. The thermostat read 55 degrees, but it felt even colder. The windows were locked. The door had been deadbolted from the inside, the security chain still latched when the landlord arrived.
No forced entry.
No sign of anyone coming or going.
Yet here she was,broken. Twisted. Emptied.
Cameras flashed, filling the silence with harsh bursts of white light. The medical examiner arrived not long after, a tired-looking man whose hands had seen too many corpses. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt beside the body.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered.
No one disagreed.
Her face was the worst part.
Mouth frozen wide, lips split and torn, jaw unhinged at an angle no human body should allow. The skin at the corners of her mouth had split open in deep, red fissures, exposing raw muscle underneath.
Her eyes,
They were still open.
Too wide.
The lids had retracted so far they looked stretched, as if something had forced them to stay open. The delicate pink flesh beneath them was torn, raw. The whites of her eyes had darkened, consumed by a web of burst blood vessels, staining them red and black.
But it wasn't just the color.
It was the expression.
Terror. Pure, absolute terror.
This wasn't just death.
This was something worse.
The examiner swallowed hard, carefully prying her fingers open. Her hand was locked in a death grip around something.
Her phone.
The screen was still on.
Still lit.
Still vibrating.
A call was coming through.
Unknown.
They transported the body to the morgue.
And in the quiet, inside the cold, sterile walls of the morgue miles away
Jessica had worked the night shift for three years. She had seen bodies in all states of decay,bloated drowners, blackened fire victims, the hollow-eyed suicides, and the ones who had died alone, left to rot in the summer heat until the neighbors complained.
But this?
This was different.
She could feel it in her bones, in the marrow itself.
Something was wrong with this one.
Emma Caldwell.
Young. Healthy. No prior medical conditions. No drugs in her system. No signs of physical trauma.
Yet she had been found curled into a corner, twisted beyond human limits, her face frozen in a scream so visceral it sent shivers up Jessica's spine every time she glanced at her.
The coroner had listed the cause of death as a heart attack.
But that wasn't right.
Jessica had seen heart attack victims before. They didn't look like this.
They didn't die screaming.
Her fingers trembled as she finished filling out the paperwork, the fluorescent lights above buzzing softly, casting sickly yellow light across the stainless steel slab where Emma's body lay.
Jessica avoided looking at her face.
But it was impossible to ignore the feeling.
That watching feeling.
Even with Emma's eyes sewn shut, it felt like something behind them was still staring. Still seeing.
The air in the room was cold, too cold, the industrial refrigerator humming in the background, but Jessica still felt a bead of sweat slide down her spine.
Then
A vibration.
Soft. Muffled.
Jessica stilled.
Her phone?
No.
Not hers.
The sound was coming from across the room.
She turned slowly, heart hammering against her ribs.
It was coming from the locker.
The one containing Emma's belongings.
The buzzing intensified, rattling against the metal like an angry insect caught in a glass jar.
Jessica's stomach twisted as she stepped forward, hand outstretched, the tips of her fingers ice cold as they brushed the handle.
She opened it.
Inside, Emma's phone sat in a clear evidence bag, screen flickering, vibrating violently against the shelf.
Jessica's throat tightened.
The screen glowed in the dim light.
One missed call.
Unknown.
Her breath hitched.
Then.
The screen lit up again.
A new call.
Jessica's stomach clenched as she stared.
Unknown.
The letters seemed to writhe, distorting, twisting,
Rearranging themselves into something else.
EMMA.
Jessica's pulse slammed in her throat.
No. No, that was impossible.
Then,
A sound behind her.
A sharp, rattling inhale.
Jessica froze.
The blood in her veins turned to ice.
Her body screamed at her not to turn around.
But she did.
Slowly.
So, so slowly.
And behind her,
On the cold steel slab,
Emma had moved.
Her jaw, that unnatural, ruined jaw, unhinged even wider.
Her fingers. still curled, still rigid, had shifted just slightly, as if they were reaching.
Jessica's lungs seized, a scream rising in her throat.
Then.
Her phone.
The one in her pocket.
It started ringing.
UNKOWN
Emma Caldwell was ordinary.
She was 32 years old, standing at about 5'6", with a slender but slightly soft frame,evidence of gym memberships paid for but rarely used. Her skin was fair, smooth, and always smelled faintly of vanilla from the body lotion she applied every morning out of habit.
Her hair was chestnut brown, cut just past her shoulders in soft, natural waves that she sometimes straightened when she had the energy. She kept it simple,usually parted to the right, tucked behind her ears, revealing the small silver stud earrings she never took out.
Her eyes were a warm hazel, a blend of green and brown that shifted depending on the light. People always told her she had "kind eyes," though she never saw anything particularly remarkable about them herself. Dark, neat eyelashes framed them, though mascara made them look even more defined on the rare occasions she wore it.
She had a straight, delicate nose, lips that were naturally pink, and a small beauty mark just below the left side of her jawline. Her features were soft, symmetrical, unassuming,she was the kind of person you could pass on the street and forget moments later.
Emma's wardrobe reflected her personality: practical, clean, and effortlessly put together. She preferred neutral colors,cream sweaters, tailored black slacks, soft blue blouses. Her office job required business casual, and she made sure to always look professional, even if she didn't particularly care about fashion. A single silver bracelet adorned her wrist, a gift from her mother years ago that she never took off.
Her nails were always neatly trimmed and painted in muted tones,pale pink, soft gray, or clear polish. Her hands were smooth, delicate, a contrast to the stress-induced knuckle-cracking habit she had carried since childhood.
She wore a faint trace of floral perfume, subtle but enough to leave an impression. It was the same perfume her mother had worn when she was a child,a comfort scent she had adopted as her own.
Emma was, in every way, utterly normal. Someone who blended in, who followed the motions of life with quiet grace. Someone who didn't stand out.
Emma worked as a financial assistant at a mid-sized firm in downtown Portland. It wasn't her dream job,she had never been passionate about numbers,but it paid well enough, and she was good at it. Her days were filled with spreadsheets, data entry, and processing expense reports. The work was repetitive, structured, and, in a way, comforting. There was something reassuring about balancing numbers, ensuring that everything was in order.
Her desk was meticulously organized,color-coded folders, a neat stack of sticky notes, and a small, framed picture of her and her mother from a trip to the Oregon coast years ago. A tiny potted succulent sat next to her monitor, a gift from a coworker she had somehow managed to keep alive.
Emma wasn't particularly close to most of her coworkers. She was friendly, polite, but she kept to herself. She attended office parties out of obligation, laughed at small talk in the breakroom, but never truly felt connected to anyone,except for Mark Holloway.
Mark was a junior accountant, only a year older than Emma at 33, with a dry sense of humor and a tendency to overshare about his personal life. He was the kind of person who could make even the most mundane tasks entertaining, turning dull meetings into inside-joke marathons. They had started at the company around the same time and had naturally gravitated toward each other.
While others saw Emma as quiet and reserved, Mark saw her sarcastic, deadpan side. He was one of the few people who could actually make her laugh. Over the years, their bond had grown,not quite romantic, but closer than a typical workplace friendship. They got lunch together more often than not, texted each other memes during long meetings, and occasionally grabbed drinks after work.
Her life was structured predictable and safe.
Emma worked. She laughed. She went home. She woke up and did it all over again.
Days bled into one another, a comfortable rhythm of routine. Mornings filled with emails and coffee, evenings with sitcom reruns and quiet solitude.
She had no enemies. No dark past. No reason to feel unsafe.
But then, the little things started.
A feeling, at first.
Like being watched.
Like walking into a room and forgetting why, only to have the sensation that something had been waiting there for her.
A whisper of movement in the corner of her vision,gone the second she turned her head.
Brushed off. Ignored.
Until the night her phone rang.
And life,her normal life,began to slip through her fingers.
That night was quiet, the city humming softly outside her apartment window. Emma stood in the bathroom, the scent of minty toothpaste filling the air as she ran her toothbrush over her teeth in slow, absentminded circles. The glow of the vanity light reflected off the mirror, casting a soft yellow haze across her tired face.
Then, her phone vibrated against the marble counter.
The sound startled her,sharp, sudden in the stillness. She spat into the sink and wiped her mouth before glancing at the screen.
Unknown Caller.
A pulse of unease spread through her chest.
Her finger hovered over the decline button, but something,morbid curiosity, maybe,made her hesitate. Who the hell would be calling this late?
She swallowed hard, then swiped to accept the call.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Emma's brow furrowed. "?Hello?"
Then she heard it.
Breathing.
slow? deep? wet.
Not the normal sound of someone idly on the other line, but something deliberate. Something too close. Each inhale dragged in like someone was savoring the air, each exhale a rasp that sent a shiver down her spine.
Emma straightened, her free hand gripping the counter. "Who is this?"
The breathing didn't stop.
She turned toward the open doorway, suddenly feeling watched. Her skin prickled, her muscles tensing. It wasn't just the sound,it was the way it felt. As if, somehow, that breathing was coming from inside her apartment.
Her breath came faster. "Hello?"
Still nothing.
Then,click.
The call ended.
Emma stood frozen, her pulse hammering against her ribs. The quiet of her apartment now felt wrong,too heavy, too still.
She stared at her phone, her stomach twisting into knots.
A prank, she told herself. Some weirdo. That's all.
Her fingers moved faster than her thoughts, blocking the number, shoving the phone into her pocket. She shook her head, forcing a laugh at how tense she'd gotten over nothing.
Still, when she crawled into bed that night, she made sure to double-check the locks.
The next night, it happened again.
Emma had barely slept the night before, jolting awake at the faintest sound, her mind conjuring shapes in the shadows. She tried to convince herself it had been just a prank. Just some sick creep who would get bored and move on.
But when her phone rang at exactly 11:58 PM, her stomach twisted into knots.
She had left it on the nightstand, face-down, as if that would stop her from seeing it. But she felt it. The vibration hummed through the mattress like an insect burrowing under her skin.
She didn't answer.
She told herself she wouldn't.
Instead, she stared at the screen, watching the words Unknown Caller flicker against the darkness. Her heartbeat thudded against her ribs, faster, harder, the edges of her vision tightening.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
Longer than before. Too long.
Then, silence.
Her entire body sagged in relief.
Then,another ring.
Emma flinched so hard she nearly fell out of bed.
The same number.
She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the heels of her hands against them. Her breathing was too fast, her chest too tight. It felt like something was wrapped around her ribs, pulling, constricting.
Just let it ring.
Just let it ring.
Then,a notification.
One new voicemail.
She stared at the screen, heart hammering. Her hands were shaking, sweat pooling in her palms.
Don't listen to it.
But the temptation was unbearable, a slow, crawling need to know.
Her thumb hovered over the screen before pressing play.
At first, just static.
Then,the breathing.
It was worse this time.
Thick, uneven gasps. Like lungs filled with liquid, dragging in air that didn't want to come.
Then came the scraping.
A slow, deliberate sound beneath the breathing, like fingernails carving into wood.
Emma swallowed hard. The sound continued, steady and relentless, like something trying to get in.
Her entire body locked up.
Then, the whisper.
"I see you."
The message ended.
Emma threw the phone across the room.
She didn't sleep that night.
Or the night after that.
By the fourth day, she was running on fumes.
She started leaving all the lights on, as if that would help. She triple-checked the locks on her doors and windows, pressing her palm against them, holding her breath, waiting for something,anything,to move.
But the apartment was always still.
Too still.
It didn't matter if she turned her phone off.
The calls always came.
They found her.
Night after night, at exactly 11:58 PM.
And each time, the breathing was louder. Closer.
The scraping was no longer just a sound.
It was a feeling.
Something pressing against the walls of her apartment. Something digging its way toward her.
By the second week, she stopped sleeping entirely.
By the third, she stopped feeling like a person.
By the fourth, she realized the calls weren't just calls anymore.
They were invitations.
And she was running out of time.
At first, the calls were always the same,silence, then breathing, then nothing.
By the sixth week, Emma was unraveling.
Her body ached from exhaustion, her eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness. Shadows lurked beneath her skin, a sickly pallor spreading over her face. The weight of the nights before had sunk into her bones, carving into her like dull knives.
She hadn't slept,not really. She would doze off for minutes at a time, only to jolt awake, drenched in sweat, convinced that something was standing at the edge of her bed.
She no longer trusted the dark corners of her apartment.
And then, at exactly 11:58 PM, her phone rang.
She knew what she would see before she even reached for it.
Unknown Caller.
Her breath hitched, throat tightening. Her hands trembled as she gripped the phone, the edges slick against her clammy fingers.
Don't answer.
She should have let it ring.
She should have thrown the phone across the room and locked herself in the bathroom, pressed her hands over her ears until it stopped.
But some sick, festering part of her needed to know.
Needed to hear it.
Her thumb hovered over the screen, hesitation clawing at her, but then,she pressed accept.
For a moment, nothing.
Just the usual breathing.
Only this time, it was different.
Wetter. Hungrier.
It dragged in deep, like something was sucking the air straight from her lungs. The sound of damp, wheezing inhales, choked and starving, pressing against her eardrum.
A new sound followed,a creaking.
Like joints popping out of place. Like something unfolding itself from a space too small.
Emma pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, bile rising in her throat.
Then, the voice came.
"You're going to die, Emma."
The words were wrong.
Not whispered, not spoken, but something in-between.
Like they were being dragged across raw, open flesh.
Like broken glass grinding into concrete.
Emma's stomach curled in on itself. Her pulse roared in her ears, a deafening drumbeat of sheer, primal panic.
She couldn't speak. Her throat wouldn't work.
The silence stretched, sticky and suffocating.
Then,the voice again.
"Tick? tock?"
Tick?
Something shifted in the background.
A grotesque, wet squelching, like flesh pressing against flesh. Like something dragging itself forward.
Tock?
A slow, deliberate scraping, like nails raking against wood, carving something deep.
Emma's vision blurred. The room tilted.
Her hand jerked, disconnecting the call.
Click.
The silence after was deafening.
Emma sat there, her body locked in place, the phone slipping from her numb fingers.
Something was wrong.
Something was so, so wrong.
She barely made it to the bathroom before she was retching violently into the sink, her body shaking with uncontrollable tremors.
This wasn't just a prank.
This was real.
And it was getting closer.
She changed her number the next morning.
Spent over an hour with the phone company, her voice a shaking, broken mess, barely able to form sentences.
She tried to explain,someone was harassing her, calling her night after night, whispering things she shouldn't be hearing.
The customer service rep didn't care.
They changed her number. Assured her it was done.
For the first time in nearly a week, she breathed.
That night, at exactly 11:58 PM, her phone rang.
A new number.
Unknown Caller.
Emma choked on a scream.
Her hands shook so violently she nearly dropped the phone.
No. No, no, no,
Her entire body went rigid, her lungs feeling like they were filled with ice water.
She stared at the screen, at the glowing words that shouldn't be there.
New number.
Same call.
Same voice.
She didn't want to answer.
But her thumb moved on its own.
Her skin crawled the second she pressed accept.
She didn't even get a chance to speak.
The breathing came immediately.
Faster this time.
Excited.
Emma's stomach knotted in revulsion.
Then, the voice.
"You can't run, Emma."
A slow, dragging chuckle followed.
A sound that didn't belong to a person.
Something slick. Guttural.
Like lips peeling apart after being fused together for centuries.
Emma's vision tunneled. Her entire body convulsed in terror.
She hung up.
Her pulse slammed against her ribs, her breath coming in short, painful bursts.
She pressed her back against the wall, shaking, waiting,listening.
But her apartment was quiet.
Too quiet.
Her ears rang with the weight of it.
It felt like the silence was watching her.
She stopped answering unknown numbers after that.
Told herself that if she ignored them, they would stop.
That whoever,whatever,was calling her would get bored.
But they didn't stop.
They got worse.
Much, much worse.
Emma was failing.
She could feel it in every dragging second of the workday, in every typo-filled email, every miscalculated figure, every deadline she barely scraped by.
She used to be sharp. Precise. Reliable.
Now, she was a ghost of herself.
The nights bled into the days, leaving her in a constant haze. The ringing in her ears never stopped. Even when her phone wasn't ringing, she felt it,a phantom vibration against her hip, a whisper just beneath the hum of the office. Sometimes, she caught herself staring at her screen, fingers hovering over the keyboard, unable to remember what she had been doing.
She tried to act normal.
She needed to act normal.
But people noticed.
At first, it was just concerned glances. Quiet murmurs when she left meetings looking pale and shaken.
Then came the warnings.
"You've been late every day this week, Emma."
"Another mistake like this could cost us a client."
"Are you okay?"
She wasn't okay.
She was falling apart.
Her stomach clenched.
Had she eaten today?
Yesterday?
She couldn't remember.
Her hands trembled as she gripped the sink, nails digging into the porcelain.
She couldn't keep doing this.
She was crumbling, and no one cared.
No one believed her.
Then she fell asleep at her desk.
She hadn't meant to,she had just closed her eyes for a second, just a moment to breathe, to rest her aching head on her folded arms.
But when she woke up, there was drool on her keyboard.
And Mr. Corman was standing over her.
"Emma," he snapped.
Her stomach plummeted.
She sat up too fast, knocking over her coffee. The mug hit the floor with a shatter, hot liquid splattering over her heels.
"I,I wasn't,"
"You were asleep," Corman said.
His voice was clipped, sharp with irritation.
"This is the third time this week," he continued. "You're missing deadlines. You're making mistakes. I don't know what's going on with you, but it's affecting your work."
Emma's mouth was dry.
"I,I'm just tired, I,"
Corman sighed, rubbing his temple.
"Look, if you can't handle your responsibilities, maybe you should take some time off."
No.
No, no, no,
The thought of being alone in her apartment all day, waiting for nightfall, waiting for the calls, was unbearable.
"I can fix it," she blurted. "It won't happen again."
Corman didn't look convinced.
"I hope not," he said. "Or we'll have to discuss your future here."
Then he walked away, leaving her shaking in her chair, her heart pounding in her ears.
Her hands clenched into fists.
She felt like she was slipping through the cracks of her own life.
And no one cared.
No one believed her.
Except for Mark.
Mark found her an hour later, curled up in a chair in the break room, staring blankly at a cup of coffee she hadn't touched.
"Emma," he said, voice gentle. Careful, like he was afraid she might shatter.
She barely glanced up.
"I know," she muttered. "I look like shit."
Mark didn't laugh.
He pulled out the chair across from her, studying her face.
"You've been different," he said. "For weeks. You look?" He hesitated. "Like you're scared all the time."
Her throat clenched.
She could lie. She should lie.
Say she was just stressed, sick, not sleeping well.
But Mark wasn't like the others.
He had always been good to her. The only person at work who didn't treat her like she was disposable.
And she was so tired of being alone.
The words spilled out before she could stop them.
"They won't stop calling me."
Mark frowned. "Who?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "But they know my name. And they keep," Her breath hitched. "They keep saying I'm going to die."
Mark's face paled.
"What?"
She told him everything.
The first call. The breathing. The voice. The way it always found her, no matter what she did.
The way it was getting worse.
Mark listened.
Really listened.
No forced smiles, no skeptical glances at the door like he was waiting for an excuse to leave.
When she finished, her hands were shaking so badly she had to set down her coffee before she spilled it.
She braced herself for disbelief.
For pity.
For the same tired, dismissive words everyone else had said,
"You're overreacting, Emma."
"It's just a prank, Emma."
"You should see someone about this, Emma."
But Mark just sat back in his chair, exhaled, and said, "That's not normal."
Relief crashed over her so hard it almost made her dizzy.
Someone believed her.
"Have you gone to the police?" he asked.
She nodded. "They said there's nothing they can do. No threats, no proof, just a 'persistent prank caller.'"
Mark's jaw tightened.
"Bullshit," he muttered. "That's not a prank, Emma. That's?" He trailed off, rubbing his hand over his mouth.
She swallowed. "I don't know what to do."
Mark was silent for a long time.
Then, finally, he said, "Then we'll figure it out."
Not you.
We.
She almost cried.
For the first time in weeks, she wasn't completely alone.
But deep down, Emma knew,
Even he couldn't save her.
Mark was the kind of person who made life easier just by being in it.
He wasn't loud, or flashy, or particularly outgoing, but he had a quiet confidence to him,a way of making people feel safe in his presence. He was steady. Dependable. The type of guy who never raised his voice but could command a room just by speaking.
Emma had always appreciated that about him.
At work, Mark was one of the few people who never got caught up in office politics, never whispered behind people's backs. He did his job, did it well, and then went home. He was efficient without being robotic, smart without being arrogant.
Unlike the others, he never made her feel like she was just another employee, just another cog in the corporate machine.
That was why they got along.
That was why she trusted him.
Physically, Mark was broad-shouldered and tall, but not in an intimidating way. He carried himself with an easy, relaxed posture, like someone who was comfortable in his own skin. His dark brown hair was always slightly messy, no matter how often he tried to smooth it down, and his stubble had a habit of creeping in by the end of the workday. His eyes,green, sharp, always observant,had a way of seeing through people, like he knew when someone was lying before they even opened their mouth.
He dressed simple,button-ups with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, dark jeans when he could get away with it. Nothing about him screamed for attention.
But people liked him.
People trusted him.
So did Emma.
Because if anyone was going to believe her, it was him.
Later that night
Emma knew it the moment she woke up,abruptly, violently, as if something had yanked her from unconsciousness. Her skin was slick with sweat, her sheets tangled around her legs. The air in her apartment felt thick, humid, unnatural, like something had been breathing in the room with her for hours.
Then,
Her phone vibrated violently on the nightstand.
The glow of the screen sliced through the darkness, casting long, twisting shadows across the ceiling.
Emma's stomach dropped.
UNKNOWN.
She stared.
The numbers on the screen blurred, her mind sluggish with sleep-deprivation. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, panicked gasps as she reached for the phone with trembling fingers.
She knew she shouldn't answer.
She knew what waited on the other end.
And yet, he had to.
The silence stretched, taut and suffocating, as she lifted the phone to her ear.
She didn't speak.
She didn't have to.
Because the moment the call connected,she heard it.
The breathing.
Wet. Heavy.
The kind of sound you might hear in a room filled with rot, where something swollen and wrong was taking in too much air, too greedily, too hungrily.
She gripped the phone tighter, her knuckles burning white.
The sound squelched in her ear, thick and organic, something too close to chewing,or swallowing.
Then, the whisper:
"I'm getting closer."
Emma jerked away, sucking in a sharp, trembling breath.
The voice was inside her skull, seeping through the receiver, wrapping around her like invisible fingers.
She threw her phone across the room.
It hit the wall hard, dropping to the floor with a dull thud. The screen flickered once before going dark.
But the damage was done.
The silence that followed was too thick.
Her bedroom wasn't empty anymore.
Something was here.
Watching.
She could feel it,a shift in the air, a change in the atmosphere. The room felt smaller, like the walls were pressing inward, like she was trapped inside a closing fist.
Her breath came in sharp little gasps, barely contained, too loud.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Maybe if she stayed still, if she didn't move, didn't breathe, it would go away,
The closet door creaked open.
Just a sliver.
Just enough.
Her entire body locked up.
Her gaze flicked toward the dark gap between the door and the frame, and she felt it,a presence.
Not seen.
But felt.
Her mind screamed at her to look away.
But she couldn't.
She had to know.
Her body moved against her will, her head tilting ever so slightly,
Something was there.
Not fully visible. Not in the room, but just past the threshold. Something standing in the darkness, wrapped in the black of her closet, where the light never quite reached.
And it was waiting.
For what?
For her to look long enough?
For her to close her eyes again?
For her to acknowledge it?
The breath hitched in her throat.
Then,
A twitch.
Not her.
It.
A small shift. A barely-there movement, like someone adjusting their stance.
Her lungs seized.
She lunged forward, grabbed her phone off the floor, and sprinted from her bedroom.
From that night on, sleep was a distant memory.
Her apartment became a prison of shadows and whispers.
She tried to tell herself she was imagining things, that she was just sleep-deprived, paranoid.
But the proof was everywhere.
Little things, at first.
Her keys weren't where she left them.
The bathroom mirror had streaks in the steam after she showered,long, thin streaks, like something had traced its fingers through the fog.
Her closet door,always shut, always locked,was open every morning.
She started locking it with a chair.
But somehow,somehow,it always ended up just slightly ajar.
Then came the mirrors.
One night, around 3:00 AM, she found herself in the bathroom, gripping the sink, staring at her reflection.
Her skin was a wasted thing, stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones, so pale it was nearly translucent in the dim glow of the bathroom light. The overhead bulb flickered, washing her in a sickly yellow hue, making her look almost corpse-like. Beneath the surface, faint blue veins webbed beneath the fragile tissue, pulsing weakly, sluggishly, as if struggling to push life through her withering form.
She lifted a trembling hand to her face, pressing her fingers to her cheek.
Cold.
She was so, so cold.
Her hands looked no better,bony, skeletal, her knuckles too sharp, her fingertips trembling as she traced the sharp edges of her own features. She barely recognized herself.
Her eyes were sunken, swallowed by dark, bruised hollows that stretched deep beneath the sockets, smudges of exhaustion and something far, far worse. The once-vivid green had dulled to something murky, faded, like the color had been leeched out, drop by drop, leaving behind only emptiness.
They stared back at her from the mirror,wide, unblinking, too hollow,as if they no longer belonged to her at all.
Something else lived behind them now.
Something else was watching.
Her lips,cracked, raw, bleeding,quivered as she exhaled, her breath misting faintly against the glass. The skin was peeling in jagged strips, splitting at the corners where she had worried them raw in the dead of night, her teeth tearing into her own flesh without realizing.
The taste of iron and salt still coated her tongue, thick and bitter.
She swallowed hard.
It was getting worse.
She could feel it,this thing growing inside her, burrowing beneath her skin, eating her from the inside out.
Her body was failing her.
Her mind was breaking.
Piece by piece, she was unraveling.
And the worst part was,
Something else knew it.
Something that had been waiting.
Something that was already here.
And in the mirror,
It smiled.
The overhead light buzzed faintly.
And then,
A shift.
Not behind her.
Not in the hallway.
Inside the mirror.
Her stomach lurched.
At first, it was so subtle, so small, that she might have ignored it,the tiniest twitch, the barest movement, just enough to make her question if she'd seen it at all.
But then,
It moved again.
Not her.
The reflection.
Something standing just behind her.
She froze.
It was tall. Too tall.
Its arms hung at its sides, longer than they should have been, fingers curling slightly at the ends.
Its face,
There wasn't one.
But it was looking at her.
The scream built in her throat.
She spun around,
Nothing.
The bathroom was empty.
Her chest heaved, breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.
She turned back to the mirror.
The figure was still there.
Closer now.
So much closer.
Right behind her.
Her hands shot out for the light switch.
Darkness.
The next morning, she called the police.
The officer who showed up was young,too young. Maybe twenty-five at most, with sleep-heavy eyes and a polite, practiced patience that told her he had done this before, had listened to stories like hers and dismissed them just as quickly.
She had done this before, too.
This wasn't the first time she had called. It wasn't even the second. The last two officers had said the same thing,"No real threat," "Prank calls happen," "Nothing we can do unless there's proof." She hadn't expected much this time either, but she had hoped,hoped that this time, someone would listen.
Because this time, it was different.
This time, she had seen something.
"You said you've been getting threatening phone calls?" the officer asked, pulling a small notepad from his pocket, his voice neutral, detached,like this was just another routine annoyance.
Emma sat hunched over on her couch, her hands knotted in her lap to hide the tremor. Her eyes burned, raw from too many nights spent awake, from too many moments spent staring at her phone, dreading the inevitable vibration that always came.
"Yes." Her voice cracked. "Every night. Always from an unknown number."
The officer barely glanced up as he jotted something down. "And you changed your number?"
"Twice."
He gave a slow, unimpressed nod, flipping to the next page in his notebook as if she had just told him her WiFi was down.
"Do you have any idea who it could be?"
Emma hesitated.
No.
She didn't.
But it felt like they knew her. Like they could see her. Like they were always watching.
Her throat tightened. "No? But it," She swallowed. "It feels like they know me."
The officer sighed.
That long, weary exhale that people gave when they thought you were overreacting.
She felt her stomach tighten.
She had told him about the messages.
She had told him about the breathing on the line.
She had told him about what she saw last night,the shadow in the corner of her room that wasn't a shadow, the thing in the mirror that shouldn't have been there.
And he didn't care.
He snapped his notepad shut. "Ms. Caldwell, I'll be honest with you. Calls like these,especially from an unknown number,are almost impossible to trace. Could be a scam. Could be a prank. Best thing you can do is ignore them."
Emma felt her stomach sink, cold and heavy.
She already knew that was what he would say.
But she had called anyway.
Because she was scared.
Because she was so, so scared.
Her voice came out small. "I can't ignore them."
The officer stood, slipping his notepad into his pocket.
"Try," he said, offering her a sympathetic, meaningless smile. "If it escalates, call us again."
And that was it.
That was all.
No protection. No real concern.
She was alone.
Again.
That night, Emma sat curled on her couch, knees drawn to her chest, a kitchen knife clutched so tightly in her fist that her knuckles ached.
The apartment was silent.
Too silent.
Even the hum of the fridge, the distant traffic outside,everything felt too still. As if the entire world was holding its breath.
Her phone lay face-up on the coffee table, the screen dark, but she could feel it,the weight of it, the threat of it.
Her pulse thudded in her ears.
Then,
Ring
She flinched.
The screen glowed against the darkness.
UNKNOWN.
Her fingers dug into the handle of the knife, pressing deep.
She let it ring.
Let it go to voicemail.
A minute passed. Then another.
Then,
A text.
The notification pulsed softly on the screen, waiting.
She stared at it for a long time before finally reaching out, her fingers trembling as she unlocked the phone.
One new message.
Why won't you pick up, Emma?
Her breath caught.
Her stomach curled in on itself, twisting into something sharp and sickly cold.
She blocked the number.
Her hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped the phone.
Another vibration.
Another message.
From a new number.
That won't work. You know that.
A sharp, choking sound crawled up her throat.
Then,
A shift.
A flicker of movement in the corner of the room.
Her head jerked up.
Her breath hitched.
Her grip tightened on the knife, her knuckles bloodless.
Something had moved.
She was sure of it.
So sure.
Her eyes darted wildly across the dim apartment. The shadows stretched, pooling in the corners, too dark, too deep, as if something could be lurking inside them, watching her.
She forced herself to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
She was losing her mind.
She had to be.
But as she stared into the corner of the room
It stared back.
A shape without form. A presence without substance. It didn't move, didn't breathe, yet she felt it watching.
The air thickened, pressing against her lungs, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe.
Then, the light shifted. The shadow dissolved. And she was alone again.
But the feeling never left her.
She tried to tell herself it was nothing. Just her mind playing tricks. Stress. Exhaustion.
No one would believe her anyway.
No one except Mark.
Mark had always believed her.
And that was why he came that night.
Why he died that night.
Emma didn't call him.
She hadn't called anyone.
She had stopped trying.
Stopped hoping.
Because hope was useless.
The thing calling herstalking her, feeding on her fearit didn't care that she had begged for help. That she had screamed into the phone, into the night, into the void.
No one could save her.
Not anymore.
So, when the phone rang that nightUnknown Caller, 11:58 PMshe already knew.
She answered.
A sharp inhale. Wrong.
Then
A whisper.
"It's time, Emma."
A pause.
"Open the door."
And then
A knock.
Soft. Delicate.
From across the apartment.
Her stomach turned to ice.
Her breath stilled.
No.
She was on the fifth floor. The hallway was empty at this hour. There was no one there.
And yet
BANG.
The knock became a fist pounding against wood.
Her pulse screamed in her ears.
And then, another voice.
A real voice.
"Emma?"
Her stomach lurched.
Mark.
Her body finally snapped back to life.
She ranbare feet slapping against the floor, every instinct in her body screaming No, no, no!and yanked open the door.
Mark stood there, panting, his face creased with worry, his hazel eyes scanning her up and down.
"Jesus, Emma, I've been calling you"
A shadow moved behind him.
Emma's breath hitched.
Her voice broke. "Markget inside."
He frowned. "What? Emma, what's"
She grabbed his wrist, her nails digging into his skin. "Pleasejustget inside."
And because he was Mark, because he was the only one who had ever truly cared, he listened.
He stepped inside.
She slammed the door.
Locked it.
Bolted it.
Her heart slammed against her ribs, every beat like a hammer against bone.
Mark watched her, his brows furrowed. "Emma, you're shaking. You look"
BANG.
Both of them froze.
The sound hadn't come from the door.
It had come from inside.
Mark's gaze flickered over her shoulderinto the apartment.
And then
His face changed.
His expression shattered, twisting into something raw, unfiltered, primal.
His mouth openedas if to speak, as if to scream
Emma turned.
And she saw it.
The thing that had been calling her.
It had no real shape. Just a mass of living darkness, writhing, twisting, shifting like liquid shadow. Its limbs were too long, its body too thin, stretching as it oozed forward.
But its face
Just a gaping, cavernous hole where its mouth should be, a yawning, bleeding void that seemed to breathe, suck, devour.
And it was smiling.
Mark shoved her behind him.
She barely registered the movement before the lights flickered.
The shadows swallowed the room whole.
And then
Mark screamed.
A sound that wasn't human.
Emma tried to move, tried to reach for him, to pull him back, to do something, anything, but her body was locked in place, frozen in terror.
She could only watch.
Mark's body lifted off the ground.
His arms twisted backward, his bones snapping like dry twigs.
His skin stretched, pulled too tight, too thin, like something beneath it was moving, shifting, crawling.
His mouth
Oh, God, his mouth
It ripped open at the corners, widening, splitting his cheeks apart, until it was too big, too empty.
His eyes bulged, veins bursting, pupils dilating into nothing.
And then
The thing devoured him.
Not like a beast.
Not like an animal.
It unmade him.
Dissolved him into the darkness.
One moment, Mark was therecontorted, broken, mouth hanging open in silent agony
And the next, he was gone.
Vanished.
Erased.
As if he had never existed at all.
The lights snapped back on.
The shadows recoiled.
And Mark was nothing.
Not even blood remained.
Just his phone.
Face-up. Cracked.
A notification blinked on the shattered screen.
1 New Message.
Unknown: You can't be saved, Emma.
Her body gave out.
She collapsed, shaking so hard her teeth clattered against each other.
Her fingers dug into her scalp, her nails tearing into her own flesh, but she couldn't feel it.
Mark was gone.
Truly, completely gone.
She was alone.
Again.
And then
Her phone began to ring.
It would never leave her.
No matter how many times she changed her number.
No matter how many times she blocked it.
No matter how many times she begged it to stop.
It wanted her.
And it was coming closer.
The night was cold.
Even with every window shut, every draft sealed, the air inside her apartment felt wrongthick, damp, heavy with something she couldn't name.
She sat curled up on the couch, arms wrapped around herself, her phone clutched in her shaking fingers. The screen was cracked from when she had thrown it.
It had been doing that thing again,ringing when it was turned off.
And she had made the mistake of answering.
Again.
"Did you miss me, Emma?"
A voice like wet, rotting wood scraping against concrete.
She had thrown up in the kitchen sink after that one.
Now, she sat in silence, grieving.
For herself.
For her mind, which was slipping further and further into a pit she couldn't climb out of.
And for Mark.
Her stomach twisted.
She had tried to hold on to his memory, to keep him alive in her mind, but the longer she thought about him, the more distorted he became.
She could no longer picture his smile.
Or the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed.
When she tried, all she saw was his mouth splitting too wide, his body twisting, his skin stretching, his eyes bulging until,
She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop.
She had tried calling his number the next day.
Just to hear his voicemail.
It had disconnected.
Like he had never existed.
Her only friend. Gone.
And she was alone.
A sound broke the silence.
Tap.
She flinched, heart slamming against her ribs.
Tap. Tap.
She whipped around, breath shallow.
It was coming from the window.
Her pulse thundered.
Her apartment was on the fifth floor.
No balcony.
No fire escape.
There should have been nothing there.
And yet,
Another sound.
Tap. Scratch.
Like nails dragging against glass.
Her breath turned to ice in her throat.
She forced herself to move, to twist just enough to glance at the window.
At first, there was nothing.
Just the dark city skyline.
And then,
The shape formed.
A shadowy hand, tipped with jagged, black claws, slowly pressed against the glass from the outside.
Emma stopped breathing.
It was watching her.
It had found her.
Her phone vibrated violently in her lap.
She didn't want to look.
Didn't want to see the screen.
But she did.
Unknown.
Her hands shook so violently the phone nearly slipped from her grasp.
She didn't answer.
She couldn't.
She wouldn't.
A minute passed.
Two.
Then, the call stopped.
And a text came through.
Unknown: Why won't you let me in, Emma?
A sob ripped through her throat.
She squeezed her eyes shut, curled into herself, rocking back and forth. This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real.
Then,
A creak.
The closet door.
Not the window.
Behind her.
Her body locked up.
She had locked that door earlier.
She knew she had.
Her breath came in sharp, shallow bursts as she slowly turned her head.
The door was open an inch.
Nothing but a black void beyond it.
Then, the whisper.
"I see you, Emma."
?
Her vision went black.
Weeks Later
The landlord hesitated before unlocking the door.
Something was wrong.
The air in the hallway had that stagnant, lifeless weight to it,like a place where time had stopped. The usual scents of dust and stale carpet lingered, but beneath it, curling in sickly tendrils under the door, was something else.
Rot.
Not just the musty odor of old food or mildew. This was thick, cloying, wet decay, the smell of something once alive, now long past saving. It wormed its way into his sinuses, coating the back of his throat with a taste that made his stomach churn.
He swallowed hard and fit the key into the lock.
Emma hadn't paid her rent.
Hadn't answered the door.
Hadn't picked up her phone.
And no one,not a single person,had heard from her in weeks.
Some part of him,some deep, primal instinct,screamed at him not to open the door.
But it was already too late.
The lock clicked.
The hinges groaned.
And the moment the door swung open
The smell hit him like a sledgehammer.
Thick. Rancid. Gagging.
A wave of putrid heat rolled out of the apartment, wrapping around him like wet, rotting flesh. His vision swam as bile surged up his throat. He gagged, clamping a sleeve over his mouth, but it didn't help. The smell wasn't just in the air,it was in the walls, the floors, the furniture. A deep, festering corruption that had seeped into every inch of the place.
Then, he saw her.
Emma.
Or what was left of her.
She was curled in the farthest corner of the room, her body twisted into a position no living thing should be in.
Her back had snapped backward, her spine forming an unnatural arch that jutted her ribcage forward like something had wrenched her body from the inside out. Her arms were wrapped around herself, not in comfort, but in sheer, agonized desperation.
Her fingers, oh God, her fingers.
They were frozen mid-spasm, twisted into jagged claws, as if she had tried to dig herself out of her own body. The nails had splintered and broken away, some torn off entirely, leaving raw, bloody stumps. Dried, dark streaks coated her hands and forearms.
She had clawed at something.
No, not something.
Herself.
Her shoulders, her chest, even her throat bore deep, angry gouges. Torn flesh. Bloodied streaks. As if she had been trying to rip something out of her skin.
But then there was her face.
Oh, God.
Her mouth was open.
Not just open, stretched.
Torn wide in a silent, endless scream, the corners of her lips shredded into deep, raw fissures that carved into her cheeks. The muscles of her jaw had snapped, leaving it unhinged, hanging at a grotesque angle. The ligaments had ruptured, delicate tendons flayed apart like snapped violin strings.
Her teeth
Some were missing. Others broken, shattered into jagged fragments, bloodied at the roots. A few were embedded in her own tongue, driven inward, as if something had forced her jaw open past the limits of human anatomy.
Her eyes.
Wide. Too wide.
The delicate flesh of her eyelids had torn, peeled back in places, as if she had been forced to witness something too horrible to comprehend. The whites were gone, swallowed by a web of black and crimson as the veins had ruptured, leaking blood into her stare.
But it wasn't just the color.
It was the expression in them.
Not just fear.
Not just pain.
Terror.
The kind that seeped into the marrow. That emptied a person from the inside out, leaving behind only a husk of what they once were.
Her skin.
It was wrong.
Not just gray, not just lifeless, but withered, pulled taut over her bones as if something had drained her from within. Her cheeks were sunken, her lips dry and split. She wasn't just dead.
She had been emptied.
Whatever had taken her, it had stolen more than just her life.
It had taken something deeper.
Something worse.
The landlord staggered backward, bile burning up his throat.
His boot stuck to something.
A thick, oozing trail of blackened fluid.
It seeped from the open closet, pooling across the floor in slow, viscous tendrils, leading directly to Emma's corpse.
And then,
A sound.
A low, wet vibration.
Not from the walls. Not from the pipes.
From her hand.
Her phone was still clutched in her grip, her fingers locked so tightly around it that the knuckles had split open, dried blood crusting beneath her nails.
The screen was still on.
Still lit.
Still vibrating.
A call was coming through.
Unknown.
The landlord choked on a breath, his body frozen in horror.
The smell hit them before they even reached the door.
Even with masks, even with the hallway windows open, the putrid stench of decomposition clung to the air, thick and suffocating. Officers exchanged uneasy glances as they stood outside Apartment 3B, none of them eager to be the first to step inside.
Something was wrong here.
They had all worked death calls before,overdoses, suicides, unattended deaths where the bodies weren't found for weeks. They had smelled death.
But not like this.
The lead investigator adjusted their gloves and stepped over the threshold.
The air inside was still. Too still. The usual sounds of an old apartment,creaking pipes, humming refrigerators,were absent. The room felt hollowed out, like something had drained all the life from it, leaving only the stench of death behind.
And then they saw her.
The woman was curled into the corner of the room, twisted into an impossible position. Her back was arched unnaturally, ribcage protruding like something had tried to pull her apart from the inside. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, but not in protection.
In desperation.
Her fingers were stiff, clawed, frozen mid-spasm. Her nails,some missing, others cracked down to the raw, bloody quick,had torn deep gouges into her own skin. Across her arms, her shoulders, even her throat. The scratches weren't from a struggle with an attacker.
She had done this to herself.
One of the forensic techs knelt beside her, hesitating before reaching out to examine the wounds.
"She was trying to dig something out of herself," they murmured. Their voice was hushed, as if speaking too loudly might stir something in the room.
The investigator didn't respond. There were no words.
The apartment was ice cold. The thermostat read 55 degrees, but it felt even colder. The windows were locked. The door had been deadbolted from the inside, the security chain still latched when the landlord arrived.
No forced entry.
No sign of anyone coming or going.
Yet here she was,broken. Twisted. Emptied.
Cameras flashed, filling the silence with harsh bursts of white light. The medical examiner arrived not long after, a tired-looking man whose hands had seen too many corpses. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt beside the body.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered.
No one disagreed.
Her face was the worst part.
Mouth frozen wide, lips split and torn, jaw unhinged at an angle no human body should allow. The skin at the corners of her mouth had split open in deep, red fissures, exposing raw muscle underneath.
Her eyes,
They were still open.
Too wide.
The lids had retracted so far they looked stretched, as if something had forced them to stay open. The delicate pink flesh beneath them was torn, raw. The whites of her eyes had darkened, consumed by a web of burst blood vessels, staining them red and black.
But it wasn't just the color.
It was the expression.
Terror. Pure, absolute terror.
This wasn't just death.
This was something worse.
The examiner swallowed hard, carefully prying her fingers open. Her hand was locked in a death grip around something.
Her phone.
The screen was still on.
Still lit.
Still vibrating.
A call was coming through.
Unknown.
They transported the body to the morgue.
And in the quiet, inside the cold, sterile walls of the morgue miles away
Jessica had worked the night shift for three years. She had seen bodies in all states of decay,bloated drowners, blackened fire victims, the hollow-eyed suicides, and the ones who had died alone, left to rot in the summer heat until the neighbors complained.
But this?
This was different.
She could feel it in her bones, in the marrow itself.
Something was wrong with this one.
Emma Caldwell.
Young. Healthy. No prior medical conditions. No drugs in her system. No signs of physical trauma.
Yet she had been found curled into a corner, twisted beyond human limits, her face frozen in a scream so visceral it sent shivers up Jessica's spine every time she glanced at her.
The coroner had listed the cause of death as a heart attack.
But that wasn't right.
Jessica had seen heart attack victims before. They didn't look like this.
They didn't die screaming.
Her fingers trembled as she finished filling out the paperwork, the fluorescent lights above buzzing softly, casting sickly yellow light across the stainless steel slab where Emma's body lay.
Jessica avoided looking at her face.
But it was impossible to ignore the feeling.
That watching feeling.
Even with Emma's eyes sewn shut, it felt like something behind them was still staring. Still seeing.
The air in the room was cold, too cold, the industrial refrigerator humming in the background, but Jessica still felt a bead of sweat slide down her spine.
Then
A vibration.
Soft. Muffled.
Jessica stilled.
Her phone?
No.
Not hers.
The sound was coming from across the room.
She turned slowly, heart hammering against her ribs.
It was coming from the locker.
The one containing Emma's belongings.
The buzzing intensified, rattling against the metal like an angry insect caught in a glass jar.
Jessica's stomach twisted as she stepped forward, hand outstretched, the tips of her fingers ice cold as they brushed the handle.
She opened it.
Inside, Emma's phone sat in a clear evidence bag, screen flickering, vibrating violently against the shelf.
Jessica's throat tightened.
The screen glowed in the dim light.
One missed call.
Unknown.
Her breath hitched.
Then.
The screen lit up again.
A new call.
Jessica's stomach clenched as she stared.
Unknown.
The letters seemed to writhe, distorting, twisting,
Rearranging themselves into something else.
EMMA.
Jessica's pulse slammed in her throat.
No. No, that was impossible.
Then,
A sound behind her.
A sharp, rattling inhale.
Jessica froze.
The blood in her veins turned to ice.
Her body screamed at her not to turn around.
But she did.
Slowly.
So, so slowly.
And behind her,
On the cold steel slab,
Emma had moved.
Her jaw, that unnatural, ruined jaw, unhinged even wider.
Her fingers. still curled, still rigid, had shifted just slightly, as if they were reaching.
Jessica's lungs seized, a scream rising in her throat.
Then.
Her phone.
The one in her pocket.
It started ringing.
UNKOWN
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