Chapter 3: The Silence Follows Home

Three weeks passed before Leo convinced himself it had all been a hallucination.

The breathing outside his window that night? A neighbor's dog, maybe, or the wind through the broken gutter that his landlord refused to fix. The creature at the bridge? Stress-induced psychosis brought on by unemployment and the crushing weight of his failures. Even the unnatural silence could be explained away—his ears playing tricks on him, his mind manufacturing symptoms to match his deteriorating mental state.

Dr. Chen, the therapist his sister had insisted he see, called it a "dissociative episode brought on by acute psychological stress." She prescribed meditation exercises and suggested he find a new job as soon as possible. Structure, she said, would help ground him in reality.

So Leo threw himself into the job search with desperate intensity. He applied to data entry positions, customer service roles, anything that would pay enough to keep him housed and fed. Most applications disappeared into the digital void, but a few companies called him back for interviews.

The breakthrough came on a Tuesday. Meridian Insurance needed someone for their claims processing department—eight hours a day of reviewing accident reports and medical records. The pay was slightly better than his last job, and the supervisor, a tired-looking woman named Janet, seemed more interested in his availability than his work history.

"Can you start Monday?" she asked, barely looking up from his application.

"Absolutely."

"Good. Cubicle twelve. Be here at eight sharp."

For the first time in weeks, Leo felt something approaching hope.

The new routine helped. Wake up at seven, shower, coffee, drive to the office. Eight hours of mindless work that kept his hands busy and his thoughts occupied. Drive home, microwave dinner, watch television until exhaustion took over.

He avoided the industrial part of town entirely, taking a longer route to work that kept him well away from the gravel road and the old bridge. When thoughts of that night crept into his consciousness, he pushed them aside with practiced efficiency.

It wasn't real. Stress hallucination. Dr. Chen explained it all.

The mantra worked, mostly. Leo began to sleep better, and the constant knot of anxiety in his chest slowly loosened. He even started listening to music again, though he couldn't bring himself to use the "Woods" playlist. That one he deleted entirely.

By the end of his third week at Meridian Insurance, Leo had almost convinced himself that he was healing. The creature, the silence, the terror—all of it felt like something from a bad dream, distant and insubstantial.

That Friday, he celebrated his small victory by stopping at the grocery store on the way home. Real food for once, not just frozen dinners and canned soup. He bought ingredients for spaghetti and meat sauce, a bag of salad, even a bottle of cheap wine. A proper meal felt like progress.

The apartment seemed brighter when he got home, though nothing had actually changed. Leo unpacked the groceries, put on some ambient jazz, and began cooking. The familiar rhythms of chopping vegetables and browning meat were meditative, grounding him in the simple pleasure of creating something with his own hands.

As the sauce simmered, Leo opened the wine and poured himself a glass. The evening was warm, and he decided to step out onto his small back porch to enjoy the sunset. The porch was barely big enough for a folding chair and a small table, but it offered a view of the overgrown lot behind his building and a slice of sky between the neighboring houses.

He settled into the chair with his wine and pulled out his phone, scrolling through a podcast app. Something light and funny, maybe a comedy show or one of those conversational programs where people discussed movies. Anything to keep his mind occupied with harmless noise.

Leo selected a podcast called "Midnight Movie Madness" and hit play. The hosts were discussing obscure horror films from the 1970s, their banter easy and familiar. He leaned back in his chair and let their voices wash over him, mixing with the ambient sounds of the neighborhood.

A lawn mower hummed somewhere nearby. Kids played in a yard down the block, their laughter carrying on the evening breeze. A dog barked. Cars passed on the street beyond the houses. The normal soundtrack of suburban life, comforting in its predictability.

The podcast hosts were debating the merits of practical effects versus CGI when Leo noticed the first change. The lawn mower had stopped. No big deal—people finished mowing their grass all the time.

But then the children's laughter faded away.

The dog fell silent.

The cars stopped passing.

Leo's hand tightened around his wine glass as a familiar cold dread began to spread through his chest. The podcast continued playing through his phone's speaker, but the sounds of the world around him were dying one by one, like someone was systematically turning down individual volume controls.

No. Not again. This isn't happening.

But it was happening. The unnatural silence descended like a heavy blanket, muffling everything except the voices from his phone. Even the whisper of wind through the trees went quiet, leaving the evening air unnaturally still.

Leo forced himself to remain seated, though every instinct screamed at him to run. This was just anxiety, he told himself. A panic attack triggered by the memory of that night at the bridge. Dr. Chen had warned him about this—how trauma could create false symptoms, phantom sensations that felt absolutely real.

The podcast hosts launched into a discussion of a film called "The Changeling," their voices now the only sound in a world gone mute.

Then, from somewhere behind him in the overgrown lot, came the breathing.

Leo's wine glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the porch floor, dark liquid spreading across the wooden boards. But he barely noticed. All of his attention was focused on that sound—heavy, labored panting that he recognized with sickening certainty.

It's not real. Auditory hallucination. Stress response.

But his body didn't believe his rational mind. His heart hammered against his ribs as he slowly turned in his chair to look back toward the lot.

The overgrown space behind his building was a tangle of weeds and volunteer trees, punctuated by the rusted hulks of abandoned appliances and old car parts. In the fading light, shadows pooled in the deeper recesses of the vegetation, creating pockets of absolute darkness.

The breathing came from one of those dark spaces, rhythmic and deliberate.

Leo stood up so quickly that his chair tipped over backward, clattering against the porch railing. The sound should have been loud in the silence, but it seemed muffled, distant, as if the air itself was absorbing all noise except for that terrible panting.

Movement in the shadows. Something shifting between the twisted branches of an old oak tree, barely visible in the growing darkness. Leo squinted, trying to make out details, but the thing remained just at the edge of perception—a suggestion of pale flesh and tattered fabric, there and gone again.

The breathing grew closer.

Leo stumbled backward toward his apartment door, his hands fumbling for the handle. The podcast was still playing on his phone, but the hosts' voices sounded tinny and distant now, as if coming from another world entirely.

His fingers found the door handle and he yanked it open, practically falling into his apartment. He slammed the door behind him and immediately turned all the locks—the deadbolt, the chain, even the flimsy privacy lock that wouldn't stop a determined child, let alone whatever was out there in the lot.

Leo pressed his back against the door and listened. The silence was complete now, even inside his apartment. The refrigerator had stopped humming. The clock on his wall had ceased its steady ticking. Even his own heartbeat seemed muffled and far away.

But the breathing continued, now seeming to come from just outside his door.

Leo grabbed his phone and ended the podcast, plunging the apartment into complete silence. He held his breath, straining to listen.

Nothing.

Slowly, the normal sounds of the world began to return. The refrigerator kicked back on with a mechanical wheeze. The clock resumed its patient ticking. From outside, he could hear the distant sound of traffic and the bark of a dog several blocks away.

Leo approached one of his windows and carefully lifted the edge of the blind to peer out at the lot. In the darkness, he could make out the familiar shapes of discarded junk and overgrown vegetation. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.

But he knew what he'd experienced. The silence, the breathing, the sense of being watched—it had all been exactly the same as that night at the bridge.

Leo sank into his couch and buried his face in his hands. Dr. Chen had been wrong. This wasn't a stress hallucination or a dissociative episode. The creature was real, and somehow it had followed him home.

His sanctuary was gone. The bridge had been compromised weeks ago, but now his apartment—his last refuge from the world—was no longer safe either.

The thing knew where he lived.

Leo picked up his phone with trembling fingers and scrolled through his contacts. He needed to call someone, tell someone what was happening. But who would believe him? The police had already dismissed him as a drug addict. His therapist would increase his medication and talk about managing his "symptoms."

He was alone with this knowledge, alone with this terror.

Outside his window, the normal sounds of the neighborhood continued their evening chorus. But Leo knew it was temporary. The silence would return, and when it did, the breathing would come with it.

The creature wasn't just a guardian of forgotten places anymore. It had expanded its territory to include Leo's entire life.

And there was nowhere left to run.