Chapter 1: The Third Brush

Chapter 1: The Third Brush

The first sound that sliced through the thin veil of Leo’s sleep wasn’t his alarm. It was a drip.

Drip…

A patient, metronomic beat in the pre-dawn quiet of his small apartment.

Drip…

Leo Vance rolled over, pulling the threadbare comforter over his head. Leaky faucet. He’d call the superintendent later. He’d been meaning to for a week. Procrastination was a finely honed skill, one of the few perks of being a freelance graphic designer who answered to no one but the glow of his monitor and the tyranny of his inbox.

Drip… drip…

The rhythm was off now. Faster. More insistent. A nervous tic of a sound. With a groan that was more rust than noise, he pushed himself up. His back ached with the familiar complaint of a cheap office chair. The apartment was a comfortable mess of his own making: stacks of books on typography, a half-eaten pizza box on the coffee table, and the faint, ever-present hum of his computer in the corner, its screen casting a pale blue ghost across the room. This was his sanctuary. His fortress of solitude.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet expecting the familiar dusty chill of the hardwood floor. Instead, they met a slick, shocking cold.

Water.

He flinched back, instantly awake. His eyes, still adjusting to the gloom, traced a dark, glistening trail from the foot of his bed, snaking out of the bedroom and toward the hallway. It wasn't a puddle from a leak. It was a path. A series of perfectly formed, unnervingly clean footprints. They were bare, like his own, but somehow sharper, more defined, as if the water they were made of refused to soak into the old wood, sitting beaded on the surface in defiance of physics.

His heart began to thud a heavy, clumsy rhythm against his ribs. A break-in? He scanned the room. His laptop was still there, his wallet on the nightstand. Nothing was out of place, except for the impossible trail of water leading from nowhere.

The dripping was louder now, a frantic little cascade coming from the bathroom.

“Hello?” he called out, his voice thin and reedy.

Only the dripping answered.

He pushed himself to his feet, carefully stepping around the wet prints. He followed them down the short hall, each step a conscious, deliberate act of will. The front door was visible from the hall—the deadbolt was thrown, the chain still in its latch. Bolted from the inside. Just as he’d left it.

A cold sweat pricked his skin. He reached the bathroom doorway and paused, his hand hovering over the light switch. A wave of humid, unnaturally cold air washed over him. It smelled of deep, stagnant water, like a flooded cellar or a forgotten well. He flicked the switch.

The fluorescent light buzzed to life, harsh and unforgiving. The room was thick with steam, the mirror completely fogged over. The dripping came from the showerhead, a frantic tattoo against the porcelain tub floor. He’d have sworn he’d turned it off completely last night.

His gaze swept the small space. Everything was normal. His towel slung over the rack, his shampoo, his soap. And then he saw it.

In the chipped ceramic holder on the edge of the sink sat his toothbrush. And next to it, the electric one his dentist had shamed him into buying. And next to that… a third.

It was a simple, cheap plastic thing, a startling, vibrant blue that seemed to hum with color in the sterile white room. It was brand new, yet undeniably used. The bristles were dark with moisture, a single drop of water clinging to the very tip, trembling but not falling. It wasn't his. He lived alone. He hadn't had a guest in months.

He stared, his mind refusing to process the object. It was a violation. A quiet, inexplicable intrusion into the most personal corner of his life. Who breaks into an apartment to leave a toothbrush? Who walks through locked doors leaving pristine, watery footprints?

His breath hitched. He was a man who believed in rational explanations. A prank by a neighbor with a key? Impossible. He’d just changed the locks. A sleepwalking episode where he’d somehow bought a toothbrush and brought it home? His wallet was untouched, his clothes dry. Every logical path led to a dead end, leaving him standing on the precipice of an explanation his mind refused to form.

His eyes, wide with a burgeoning panic, drifted up to the fogged-over mirror. Condensation swirled and shifted, a miniature weather system born of the dripping shower. He leaned closer, intending to wipe it clean, to see his own terrified face and ground himself in reality.

But as he moved, he saw that something had already disturbed the fog.

A word.

It was written in the condensation, but not in the way one would write with a finger. There were no smear marks, no trails where moisture had been wiped away. Instead, the letters themselves were formed of thicker, whiter condensation, as if the water vapor had willingly gathered itself into shapes. The droplets that formed the elegant, serif font clung to the glass, bulging outward, refusing to drip down. They defied gravity.

Four letters, forming a single, chilling promise.

SOON

Leo stumbled backward, his hand flying to his mouth to stifle a scream. He slipped on the wet floor, catching himself on the doorframe, his heart hammering like a trapped bird. He stared at the blue toothbrush, then at the impossible word hanging in the air on the mirror.

The dripping from the shower suddenly stopped.

The silence that descended was absolute, heavier and more terrifying than the sound it replaced. In that profound quiet, Leo Vance understood, with a certainty that froze the marrow in his bones, that his quiet, solitary life was over. Something had found the key to his fortress. And it was coming for him.