Not Him. Not Now

The first time Clara saw the man outside her window, she froze.

It wasn’t just that he looked like someone she had buried six years ago—it was the fact that he looked exactly the same. Same deep-set eyes. Same black coat. Same crooked smile that never quite reached his eyes.

But he couldn’t be there.

Not him.

Not now.

Clara had rebuilt her life after Daniel. After the car accident took him and left her reeling with grief, she moved out of the city, changed careers, and bought a small cottage near the woods in a quiet town where people respected silence. Where no one knew her past.

She lived alone, mostly content with her books and tea and a dog named Milo. That was the deal she made with herself: peace, no ghosts, no men, no past.

So when she saw the man by the tree line—half-shadowed in the fading light of dusk, head tilted the way Daniel used to look at her before telling a terrible joke—her chest tightened in denial.

Milo barked wildly, fur on end.

When she turned to calm him, the man was gone.

She told herself it was stress. Maybe even guilt. Grief was tricky; it echoed in odd places. The anniversary of Daniel’s death had just passed. She hadn’t visited his grave. Maybe that was it.

That night, she locked all the doors, turned on every light, and slept with the radio on.

At 3:07 a.m., the static from the radio turned into a voice.

“Clara...”

She sat up. Milo was growling low at the foot of the bed, staring toward the hallway.

“Clara, I’m cold.”

She unplugged the radio and threw it in the closet.

The next day, she walked into town to speak with Mae, the town’s oldest resident and self-proclaimed historian. Her dusty little bookshop doubled as a place of whispered tales and herbal teas that always tasted slightly of honey and secrets.

“You look pale, child,” Mae said, not looking up from her copy of Witchlore & Woodland. “Sleep bothering you?”

Clara hesitated. “Have you ever heard of... people coming back? Not as ghosts, exactly. But like... they were never gone?”

Mae’s wrinkled hand froze mid-turn of the page.

She looked up, eyes sharper than they had any right to be at her age. “Did you invite him?”

“What? No—what does that mean?”

“If something’s returned, it’s because a door was left open. Or worse—opened again.”

Clara’s throat went dry. “He died, Mae. I saw the body. I buried him.”

Mae leaned forward. “Some things don’t stay dead. Some things wait for the right moment. And if he’s back...” She lowered her voice. “It’s not him. Not really.”

That night, Clara burned sage, repeated every protective chant she could find in Mae’s old books, and drew salt lines across her windows.

But just after midnight, a knock came at the door.

A gentle, familiar knock.

“Clara? It’s me. Open up.”

She backed away, heart hammering. The voice was his—Daniel’s voice, warm and calm. But something was off. Too flat. Like a memory played back on a broken tape.

“I missed you,” he said. “You said you’d never forget me.”

Clara closed her eyes, remembering his funeral. The closed casket. The night she stood by the lake, begging for one more chance to say goodbye. Whispering into the wind: If you’re still out there, come back. Just once.

Had she opened something then?

The door rattled. “Clara. Don’t make me wait.”

She screamed, “You’re not him!”

The voice stopped.

Silence.

And then, from just beyond the window:

“Not him. Not now. But soon.”

The days blurred. She barely ate. Slept only in slivers of light. Mae came by and nailed dried herbs above her door. She muttered something in a forgotten tongue and pressed an old pendant into Clara’s palm.

“Keep this on you,” she said. “If it touches his skin, he can’t stay.”

“What is he?”

Mae hesitated. “Some call them Echoes. Shadows of grief. They feed on longing. You wanted him back—and something listened.”

The final night came with rain. A torrential storm that drowned out every sound—except one.

Footsteps.

Inside the house.

She turned, slowly, to see him. Daniel—or what looked like him—standing in the hallway, soaked, smiling.

“You finally let me in,” he whispered. “We can be together again.”

His eyes were wrong. Too dark. Too still.

Clara reached for the pendant, heart slamming against her ribs. “You’re not Daniel.”

“But I remember everything he did. I remember you.”

She held the pendant out. “Then you’ll remember this.”

She lunged, pressing it against his chest.

He screamed—a sound not meant for human throats—and crumpled to the floor, shape flickering like a dying light. For a moment, she saw something underneath the skin. Hollow. Crawling. Wrong.

Then it was gone.

Clara didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. But the house felt lighter. The woods were silent again. The radio stayed quiet.

She returned to Mae days later, pale but whole.

“It's over,” she said.

Mae only nodded. “For now.”

Clara frowned. “What do you mean?”

Mae sipped her tea. “Echoes don’t truly die. They just wait. For another grief. Another door.”

And as Clara walked home, pendant tight in her hand, the wind whispered softly behind her.

“Not him. Not now. But soon.”