Chapter 2: The Print on the Floor

Chapter 2: The Print on the Floor

Time ceased to have meaning. Alex remained frozen before the window, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The glass was cold and empty, reflecting only the dim, chaotic reality of his unpacked apartment. But the afterimage was burned onto his retinas: the skeletal frame, the bone-white skin, the two devouring pits of blackness where eyes should have been. And the silent command that still echoed in the hollows of his mind. Shhh.

He didn't know how long he stood there before his legs, acting on some primal instinct to flee, finally unlocked. He stumbled backward, tripping over a box of kitchenware with a clatter that sounded like a gunshot in the oppressive silence. He scrambled away from the noise, crab-walking on the dusty floor until his back hit the opposite wall. His eyes, wide and unblinking, stayed locked on the window, expecting the pale face to reappear at any moment.

It didn't. The night outside remained stubbornly, terrifyingly normal.

His sanctuary had been violated before he’d even spent a full night in it. This wasn’t a fresh start; it was a new kind of prison. His breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. He needed a defensible space, a final barrier.

The bedroom.

With a surge of adrenaline, he pushed himself to his feet and sprinted the few feet to the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him. The old wood shuddered in its frame. His fumbling fingers found the lock, a simple brass turn-bolt, and twisted it home with a satisfying thunk. It wasn't enough. He looked around wildly, his gaze landing on the single heavy box he’d labeled ‘Reference Books.’ He dragged it with a groan, wedging its weight against the bottom of the door. Still not enough. He grabbed his flimsy wooden desk chair and jammed its back under the doorknob.

He backed away, his chest heaving, until he was pressed against the far wall, sinking down to the floor. He drew his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them in a useless attempt to make himself smaller. He was trapped. A cornered animal.

“You’re pathetic,” Mark’s voice sneered in his memory, cold and cutting. “Scared of your own shadow. You need me to protect you.”

“No,” Alex choked out, the word barely a whisper. He didn’t need Mark. He needed this to not be real. He needed to wake up.

The apartment fell silent again. The only sounds were his own frantic breathing and the frantic thumping of his pulse in his ears. Minutes stretched into an eternity. He listened, straining for any noise, any sign that the thing was gone.

Then it came.

Scritch. Scritch-scratch.

Not from the window.

From his bedroom door.

Ice flooded his veins. It was right outside. The sound was different here, muffled by the wood but somehow more intimate, more menacing. It was a dry, insistent scraping, right at the level of the lock. It knew where he was. It had followed him.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block it out, but the sound seemed to drill directly into his skull. The scratching stopped. A new sound replaced it, a sound that was infinitely worse.

A whisper.

It was thin and sibilant, like the rustle of dead leaves or the hiss of sand being blown across a tombstone. It slithered through the crack beneath the door, a physical presence in the air.

“...let me in...”

The voice was not male or female. It was ancient and dry and utterly devoid of anything resembling human emotion. It was the sound of relentless, patient hunger.

“...so cold out here... let me in...”

Alex clapped his hands over his ears, but just like the command at the window, the words seemed to bypass his senses and manifest directly in his mind. He began to tremble uncontrollably, a low whimper escaping his lips. The voice was a hook, baited with a twisted mockery of pity. It wanted him to open the door.

“...I know you’re alone... Alex... open the door...”

It knew his name.

That single fact shattered the last of his composure. A sob tore from his throat. How could it know his name? Was this a part of his mind finally breaking? Had the trauma from his past finally conjured a monster to finish the job?

The whispering and scratching continued for what felt like hours, a relentless, torturous assault on his sanity. Alex stayed huddled on the floor, rocking back and forth, lost in a storm of terror. He didn't sleep. He didn't move. He just listened to the monster at his door, waiting for the wood to splinter.

Slowly, agonizingly, the first hint of dawn began to bleed through his bedroom window. Muted greys softened the harsh blacks of the night, gradually warming into a pale, watery blue. With the arrival of the light, the sounds from the hallway ceased. The silence that followed was absolute.

He waited, every muscle tensed, until the sun was fully up, casting long, reassuring stripes of light across the floor. The apartment was just an apartment again. The morning traffic began its distant rumble. Birds chirped somewhere outside. The world was sane.

He felt hollowed out, exhausted, but a fragile seed of rationality began to sprout in the daylight. A waking nightmare. A stress-induced hallucination. The old building’s pipes were probably just weird, and his terrified mind had filled in the blanks, projecting his fears and even his name onto random noises. It had to be. The alternative was unthinkable.

Driven by a desperate need to prove it, he shakily un-barricaded the door. The chair screeched as he pulled it away. The heavy box scraped against the floor. His hand trembled as he twisted the bolt. He pulled the door open and peered into the living room.

Empty. Sunlight streamed through the large window, illuminating dancing dust motes. The curtain swayed gently in a draft. Everything was still. Everything was normal. He walked through the small apartment, checking the front door—still locked and chained from the inside. He checked the window again, running his hand over the cold, solid glass. Nothing. No marks, no cracks. Just a grimy window in a cheap apartment.

A wave of dizzying relief washed over him. It wasn't real. He had imagined it all. He let out a shaky laugh that sounded more like a sob. He was just exhausted, traumatized, and alone in a new place. Of course his mind had played tricks on him.

He returned to the bedroom, the relief making him feel almost giddy. He would make coffee, take a hot shower, and force this night into a dark corner of his memory where it could be forgotten. He bent down to pick up a shirt he’d dropped on the floor in his haste the night before.

That’s when he saw it.

In a patch of sunlight on the dark, polished floorboards, just a few feet from the foot of his bed.

It was a smudge. A dark, greasy mark that didn’t belong. He knelt, his heart starting to hammer against his ribs again, the fragile relief beginning to crack. It wasn't just a smudge. It had a definite shape.

Five long, unnaturally thin fingers. A narrow palm.

It was a handprint.

It was small, like a child's, but the proportions were wrong, elongated and spidery. It was made of a damp, dark, muddy substance that looked like wet soil mixed with something blacker, like ash. A faint, cloying smell rose from it—the smell of damp earth, of decay, of a grave recently opened.

His mind reeled, frantically trying to find a logical explanation. But there was none. The front door had been locked and chained. The windows were shut. He had been locked in this very room all night.

The print wasn't from something that had been trying to get in.

It was from something that had been in the room with him the entire time.