The Afternoon Visitor

The afternoon light softly filtered through the blinds when Sarah collapsed onto her bed, exhausted from another twelve-hour shift at the hospital. Just twenty minutes, she'd promised herself.

She woke to silence and shadow.

The room swam in that peculiar descending-light that made it impossible to judge time. Her eyes tracked to the window where the sun bled orange, lower than it should be.

How long have I been asleep? What time is it? she thought.

She tried to reach for her phone. Nothing happened.

Her arm remained numb against the mattress, fingers splayed like a discarded glove. Panic fluttered in her chest as she commanded her body to move—sit up, roll over, anything—but her muscles ignored every desperate signal her brain sent. Only her eyes obeyed, darting frantically around the room that suddenly felt too small, too close.

Then she heard voices from outside her door.

"—shouldn't go in there yet. She's tired, let her get more rest." A woman's voice, gentle and hushed, like someone speaking in church.

"But I want to see." A little girl. Whispered.

“I said, let her rest,” the woman said as something scraped against the hallway wall—fingernails or perhaps a ring.

Sarah's throat constricted. She lived alone in the house.

She tried to scream. Her mouth opened—she could feel it open—but only a thin wheeze escaped, barely louder than breathing. The voices continued their strange conversation, words muffled and distorted like they were speaking with hands pressed over their mouths. Sarah strained to understand, catching fragments: "ready" and "soon" and something that sounded like her name.

Through the open bedroom door, the voices grew clearer.

"She's awake now," the woman said, and Sarah heard the smile in it.

"How do you know?" the little girl asked.

"I felt her."

Sarah's heart hammered against her frozen ribs. She focused everything on her right leg, pouring all her will into that single limb. Move. Please, God, move.

The shadows in her room deepened, dusk creeping across the walls like spilled ink. The orange light through the blinds shifted to deep red, then purple, then something darker. Time was wrong here. Everything was wrong.

The little girl giggled, crystal clear now and confident, as if she stood just outside the door, leaning against the wall by the entrance. "Sarah, he's coming."

The pronoun hit Sarah like a hard slap.

He. Not them. Not the woman and girl. Someone else.

Something else.

Her right leg suddenly responded, sliding off the bed with a graceless thump. Her foot hit the floor, bare sole against cold hardwood, but the rest of her remained frozen in that awkward position—half on the bed, half off, twisted like a broken marionette.

The voices stopped.

The silence was worse than the talking. It pressed against her eardrums, thick and expectant. Sarah's eyes strained to their limit, trying to see the open doorway to her right, but her frozen position kept her staring straight ahead. She could only catch the edge of the doorframe in her peripheral vision.

A shadow appeared there, just a sliver at first in the doorway. It paused. Then grew larger, filling more of the entrance. Half a shadow became whole, then more than whole—darkness that reached her ceiling, that seemed to breathe—a slow, wet rhythm like something ancient learning to use lungs. A breath she not only felt but smelled—a stench—like a dead rodent in the walls.

Sarah's eyes tracked the movement as it crept into her field of vision—something tall, too tall for her doorframe.

It didn't walk. It arrived, suddenly occupying the space at the side of her bed. Sarah's vision struggled to process what she was seeing.

Its eyeless face turned toward her. Just watching. As Sarah continued to gaze back, her jaw quivered.

An uncontrollable quiver.

The quiver spread—through her jaw, down her neck, into her chest until her whole body shuddered once, violently.

Night arrived, and Sarah awoke with her entire body on her bed.

She wondered, was it all a dream?

Then she arose and made her way downstairs, still haunted with doubt. The house felt normal again—her house, with its familiar creaks and settling sounds. In the kitchen, she flicked on the light and reached for a glass of water, her hands only slightly trembling.

The refrigerator hummed. The clock on the microwave read 9:47 PM.

Everything was exactly as it should be.

Then she smelled that odor again.