The Man Who Counts the Dark

The first time I saw him, I thought my insomnia had finally broken me.

3:17 AM. My cramped studio apartment hummed with the static of sleeplessness. The glow of my laptop screen painted everything in sickly blue—except for the hallway. There, where the light didn’t quite reach, stood a man in a moth-eaten waistcoat.

Tall. Too tall. His spine curved like a question mark under the low ceiling.

I blinked sweat from my eyes. "Hello?"

His head snapped toward me with a sound like cracking knuckles. No face—just a black pit where features should be. One skeletal hand rose, fingers twitching:

One. Two. Three.

The hallway light flickered. He vanished.

I didn’t sleep that night.

---

Three nights later, I smelled him before I saw him—wet wool and something metallic, like old pennies.

He stood at the foot of my bed, counting on his fingers. Four. Five. Six. Moonlight bled through the blinds, striping his elongated shadow across my blanket. Where it touched my legs, the fabric grew damp.

"What do you want?" My voice cracked.

His fingers stilled at seven. The temperature dropped. Frost crept up my water glass as his neck creaked downward, that void-face inches from mine.

A whisper: "You’ve been keeping time wrong."

I threw my lamp. It shattered against the wall. He was gone.

But my alarm clock now read 3:33 in blood-red digits.

---

I started documenting the rules:

1. He only appears between 3:00-4:00 AM
2. Every encounter adds three numbers to his count
3. Objects he touches stay damp for exactly 13 hours

The antiques dealer recognized the button I’d found. "Victorian mourning ritual," he said, polishing his glasses. "They’d bury accountants with bone buttons carved with their final tallies. But this…" He squinted at the tiny 16. "This is a count up."

That night, my shower turned on by itself.

Through the steam, I saw his silhouette behind the curtain. One dripping finger drew numbers on the glass:

17. 18. 19.

The bathroom mirror reflected nothing but those digits, glowing like embers.

---

Last night, the rules changed.

I woke to my phone blaring static at 3:29 AM. The counting came through the speakers:

"Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two."

My breath fogged in the suddenly freezing air. The smell of turned earth filled the room. When I reached for my phone, the screen showed my own reflection—except my eyes were gone, replaced by swirling numbers.

Then I felt it: icy fingers closing around my wrist.

His voice slithered into my ear: "Shall we recount?"

My own hand moved against my will, index finger twitching.

One.

---

Now I write this in permanent light.

The counting hasn’t stopped. It’s in the drip of my faucet (26…27…28). In the ticking of the wall clock that now only counts backward.

Worst are the other things I’ve started seeing—pale figures with number-carved teeth lurking at every threshold. They whisper the same phrase:

"The final tally always comes due."

My left eye won’t stop watering. When I wipe it, my fingers come away smeared with ink.

The drops form shapes on the paper.

31. 32. 33.

I think he’s teaching me a new way to count.

And when the lesson ends—

—we’ll both be counting in the dark.