Chapter 6: Digital Ghosts

Chapter 6: Digital Ghosts

The rhythmic tapping on the bedroom window had stopped. In its place was the frantic, irregular click-clack of Julian’s fingers on his laptop keyboard. The sound was a small, defiant rebellion against the suffocating silence of his apartment. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, bathed in the screen’s cold, blue-white glare. Time had dissolved into a series of desperate search queries.

His phone, which he’d finally retrieved from the living room, lay face down on the desk. It had vibrated itself halfway to the edge with a barrage of ignored calls and texts. A final, angry message from his manager: Don’t bother coming back, Thorne. You’re fired. A worried text from Clara, dripping with the same cautious pity as her phone call: Julian, please just call me back. I’m worried. He ignored them all. His job, his friendships—they belonged to a world that no longer felt real. The only thing that was real was the entity, and the digital ghosts he was now hunting.

He started broad, typing phrases that felt insane even as his fingers formed them. Michael Jackson impersonator that disappears. The search results were a useless flood of fan tributes, conspiracy theories about the singer’s death, and cheesy paranormal investigation videos. He tried again. Glitching man in fedora. This led him down a rabbit hole of “glitch in the matrix” subreddits and creepypastas, stories designed to entertain, not to inform. They were fiction. What was happening to him was not.

Frustration mounted, a coiling knot in his stomach. He was flailing. This thing was too strange, too specific. How could he hope to find a pattern in something that defied all logic? He pushed his hair back from his face, his eyes burning from the screen’s relentless light. He caught his reflection in the dark bezel of the laptop. The face staring back was a gaunt, hollowed-out mask. The asymmetry of his eyes seemed starker now, a permanent brand of the horror he was enduring. His left eye, wide and startled; his right, narrowed and weary. The sight of it sent a fresh jolt of revulsion through him, but also renewed his resolve. This was the entity’s signature, carved into his very flesh.

He changed his tactics. The entity was the variable; the location was the constant.

The Grand Macabre Theater strange occurrences.

This was better. He found articles about the theater's history, its grand opening in the 1920s, a fire in the 50s, a restoration in the 90s. He found ghost stories, but they were the typical, quaint variety: a lady in white in the mezzanine, a shadowy stagehand who died in a fall. Nothing about a dancer. Nothing about a man in a white glove. Nothing with the malevolent, razor-sharp specificity of his tormentor.

He dug deeper, pushing past the first few pages of search results into the digital catacombs of the internet. Archived news sites. Geocities fan pages for the theater that hadn't been updated since 2003. He felt like an archaeologist sifting through digital dust. The hours bled into one another. The city outside his window began to stir, the sky shifting from inky black to a bruised purple, then to a sickly grey. He didn't notice.

His world had shrunk to the glowing rectangle in front of him. He thought of the smile in the mirror, the scent of Jheri curl, the impossible glove on his pillow. These were not the actions of a vague, shuffling spirit. This was a performance. It was targeted. It had happened before. He knew it in his bones. Someone, somewhere, must have tried to scream into this same digital void.

He started searching forums. Old, defunct message boards for city residents, urban explorers, local theater enthusiasts. Most of the links were dead, the domains long expired. But on his seventh or eighth attempt, he found a hit through a web archive service, a cached version of a local arts forum that had shut down years ago. The page loaded slowly, a relic of an older internet with a clunky interface and pixelated banner ads.

He searched the forum for “Grand Macabre.” A few threads popped up. A discussion about the best seats. A complaint about stale popcorn. And one other. The thread title was simple, desperate.

“Help - Is the Macabre haunted for real?”

The post was dated five years ago.

Julian’s heart hammered against his ribs. His fingers trembled as he clicked the link. The original post was gone, displaying only a stark “[DELETED]” message. But the archive had saved it. The text appeared beneath the broken link, preserved like a fly in amber. The username was “ArthurW_Actor.”

The post read:

“I don’t know who else to talk to about this. My friends think I’m losing it, and maybe I am. I’m an actor. I was in the revival of ‘The Crimson Masque’ at the Grand Macabre for the last six months. About two months ago, weird things started happening. It started with the mirrors backstage.

I’d be getting into costume, and I’d see him in the reflection. Just for a second. A tall, thin man. He moves like a dancer. At first I thought it was another cast member, but no one else ever saw him. He’s always just behind me in the glass. I’m calling him the ‘dancing man in the mirror.’

It’s gotten worse. I see him in shop windows now, on my way home. In the screen of my phone when it’s off. He’s following me. He never does anything, he just… watches. And my face… I feel like my face isn’t mine anymore when I look in the mirror. It’s like it’s… shifting. Does this sound crazy? Has anyone else who worked at the theater ever experienced anything like this? Please. I need to know I’m not alone.”

Julian felt a dizzying wave of vertigo. Every word was a chilling echo of his own experience. The dancing man in the mirror. My face isn’t mine anymore. He wasn't the first. He wasn't insane. This was real. ArthurW_Actor had seen it too.

He scrolled down, desperate for more. There were only two replies. The first was dismissive: “Probably just stress, mate. Being on stage is tough.” The second was more cryptic: “The Macabre has a weird energy. Be careful.”

Then there was a final post from the original user, ArthurW_Actor, made two days after his first one. It was short, the text almost breathless.

“Thank you for the replies. I think it’s more than stress. It followed me home. I know it’s here. I can hear him humming a tune in the hallway, one of those pop songs. He left something in my room. It’s getting closer. I don’t know what to do.”

And that was it. The thread ended. There were no more posts from ArthurW_Actor. Julian clicked on the user’s profile. “Last activity: 5 years ago.” He had posted that last message, and then he had vanished from this small corner of the internet forever.

He went back and re-read the first post. There, at the very bottom, after his plea for help, was a sign-off.

“Thanks for listening, Arthur Wynne”

A name. He had a name.

Julian leaned back in his chair, the morning light now streaming fully through his blinds, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. He had his proof. He had his lead. He had a name. It should have been a victory, a moment of triumph in his desperate search.

But all he could feel was a deep, guttural dread. He thought of Arthur’s last post. He left something in my room. He glanced into his own bedroom, where the single white glove still lay on his pillow. I can hear him humming a tune. The phantom melody sung over the intercom echoed in his memory.

Arthur Wynne had been the entity’s last victim. His digital ghost was a breadcrumb trail leading right to Julian’s door. And as Julian sat there, a name finally on his lips, a single, terrifying question screamed through his mind, louder than any song, more frightening than any reflection.

What happened to Arthur Wynne?