The Darkness Abounds: Part 4 - The Possession

Mark's apartment smelled like stale coffee and desperation. James sat hunched at the kitchen table, fingers tracing the edges of the silver medallion around his neck, while his brother paced like a caged animal. The security feed from James's apartment played on Mark's laptop—a grayscale nightmare of empty rooms where shadows moved with sinister purpose.

"You're not going back there," Mark said for the tenth time, pausing to rub his bloodshot eyes. "Not ever."

James opened his mouth to respond when his phone buzzed. A notification from his work email. His stomach dropped as he read the subject line: RE: Urgent - Client Files.

"I didn't send this," James whispered, turning the screen toward Mark.

The email showed as sent from James's account at 2:47 AM—while he'd been sleeping on Mark's couch. The body contained nothing but a single line: "He's almost ready."

Mark snatched the phone and began typing furiously. "Changing all your passwords. Now."

•••

That night, James dreamed of mirrors.

Endless hallways of them, each reflecting a different version of himself—some younger, some older, some twisted beyond recognition. They whispered as he passed, their words slipping through his mind like smoke. At the corridor's end stood his original reflection, the one that had first moved on its own.

"You can't stay here forever," it said, stepping out of the glass. Its fingers brushed James's cheek, colder than death. "We miss you."

James woke screaming.

Mark came running, but stopped dead in the doorway. His face went pale. "Your eyes..."

James scrambled for the bathroom mirror. In the yellowed light, his pupils had nearly swallowed the irises—expanded so wide his eyes looked almost black. As he watched, they contracted back to normal.

"Did you see that?" James gasped.

Mark didn't answer. He was staring at James's left hand, where the fingers twitched in a strange, stuttering rhythm—like something learning to use them.

•••

The changes accelerated.

James would lose time—blinking to find hours had passed, with no memory of what happened. His coworkers texted him about "strange behavior" at the office. His neighbor reported seeing him standing motionless in his old apartment's window at 3 AM, though he hadn't been back since fleeing.

Then came the morning James woke to find his arms covered in strange symbols drawn in what looked like ashes. The bathroom mirror bore the same markings, finger-painted from the other side.

Mark's voice shook when he saw them. "These are opening sigils. It's trying to make a permanent doorway."

James scrubbed at his skin until it bled. The marks returned within hours.

•••

The final breaking point came when James found the recordings.

Mark had set up motion-activated cameras throughout his apartment after the first incident. The footage showed James rising each night at exactly 3:17 AM. He would stand motionless for several minutes before moving to the nearest reflective surface—a TV screen, a window, the toaster's polished surface.

Then he would begin whispering.

Not in English, but in something guttural and wrong that made the audio distort. The camera's infrared showed his body temperature dropping dramatically during these episodes, his breath coming in visible plumes despite the warm apartment.

The worst part? His eyes.

In the footage, they stayed wide open the entire time. Unblinking. Black as the void between stars.

•••

"You need to leave," Mark said that evening, shoving a duffel bag into James's hands. "I've got a friend upstate—former priest. He knows how to handle cases like this."

James stared at the bag, then at his own trembling hands. "What if it's too late? What if it's already—"

"Don't." Mark's voice broke. "Just go. Now."

James made it as far as the parking lot before his body locked up.

It started in his fingers—a sudden numbness that spread up his arms like ice water. He tried to scream, but his jaw wouldn't obey. From some distant place, he felt himself turn back toward Mark's apartment building.

His reflection in the car window grinned at him.

"Going somewhere?" it mouthed.

Then the darkness swallowed him whole.