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“It stayed completely still?”

“It didn’t move a muscle. It didn’t breathe. It didn’t make a sound. It just stood there, and somehow that was worse. If it’d rushed at me or spoken, I think I’d have understood it better. Instead, it just watched.”

“What happened when you looked directly at it?”

“It disappeared.”

“It walked away?”

“No. That’s the thing. It didn’t go anywhere. One second it was there and the next it wasn’t. Like someone had erased it.”

Jack let the silence linger for a moment. “Was that the only time you saw it?”

“I wish it had been.”

“You saw it again?”

“I started seeing them every few months. Every single time, it began the same way. This overwhelming feeling that something was wrong would hit me, and then I’d notice one standing somewhere at the edge of my vision.”

“Them?”

“I don’t know if it was the same one or different ones, but it never felt like I was seeing exactly the same figure.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. That was just the vibe I got.”

“Where would they appear?”

“At the end of a hallway. Across a room. Once, outside in the garden. They never made a sound, never moved while I was watching them, and every single one disappeared the instant I tried to focus on it.”

“Were they always the same distance away?”

Daniel was silent for several seconds. “No.”

“What changed?”

“They got closer. Just like you said in your introduction.”

“Closer? Can you expand upon that?”

“The first one was on the other side of the bedroom. After that, they started appearing in the doorway. Then, at the foot of the bed. Eventually...” He paused again.

“Eventually?”

“I woke up one morning and one was standing beside me.”

“Beside the bed?”

“No. Beside me. Close enough that if it’d been a real person, I could’ve reached out and touched its arm.”

“What did you do?”

“I blinked.”

“And?”

“It was gone.”