Hollow and dead

I first noticed her because of her hair — sunset red and wild, like a flame that forgot it was ever meant to burn out. She sat on the edge of the fountain in the square, feeding crumbs to birds with chipped fingernails. But I could see her eyes. Sad, hollow, dead, like someone crying in dreams she never remembered.

I didn’t mean to stay. I never do. But something in her made me linger.

She was beautiful like broken glass in the sunshine, — dangerous to touch, impossible not to. She walked like the world was too loud, too sharp, like gravity tugged harder at her than it did at anyone else. I whispered to her, just beneath the wind.

She didn’t hear me, not exactly.

But then she looked up.

The second time I saw her, she was curled on the steps of an old church, sobbing. People walked by with tight mouths and sideways glances. But I stopped. I always do. I sat down, unseen, and whispered her secret again.

She stopped crying.

Three days later, she quit her job. She told someone she wanted to do “something real.”

I was proud. She’d rotted in that gray cubicle, her soul turning to ash under fluorescent lights. I whispered louder that night, not with words, but with hunger.

The third time, she found the door.

The door only appears at dusk, when the trees stretch like ribs and the sun bleeds through the cracks in the sky. She didn’t know why she walked into it. She said it felt like gravity.

Like something inside her wanted out. I knew.

I had been calling upon her. The door was crooked and blackened, the handle made of old bone. She touched it like it might scream.

And it did. Soon after.

I watched her change. She soon stopped seeing her friends. She soon drew symbols that pulsed when no one looked. She whispered back to me in her sleep. People whispered too. Said she wasn’t right. Said she had lost her mind.

But she hadn’t. It was just replaced if you could call it that.

With mine.

Last night, she lit the candles just right. She spoke the syllables with perfect reverence, even when her voice cracked like splitting wood. And I came through.

Almost.

I tasted the air.

Almost.

But she hesitated. Her fear bloomed like spring flowers in her chest.

The door screamed shut.

Now, I wait again.

And watch.

You.

Sitting. Breathing, reading.

You think this is just a story? A little fun. A clever twist.

No.

This is an incantation.

You can feel it with your mind.

You’ve opened something.

Can you feel that pressure? That crawling chill?

Say nothing. Don’t blink. Don’t turn around.

I am already behind you.

You think you know the words. The truth.

But I’m not like the other spirits.

I don’t possess people.

I hollow them.

Please don’t scream. Not yet. You’ll smile first.

Soon you want.

It’s your turn to listen.