Chapter 7: The Night They Arrived
I didn't drink. I didn't spill it either. I just held the glass and looked past it.
The man in black had reset the room without touching anything. He'd stepped back toward the wood paneling after I tipped the glass toward the pillow and the amber liquid stayed level, like it knew. He didn't scold me. He just said, "Take your time," and folded his hands. That politeness felt heavier than a threat. I needed to look somewhere else before my hands started shaking again.
I looked down.
That's when I saw the first mark.
On the front leg of the beige armchair, on the inside near the floor, there were four thin scratches in the wood. Not random. They were short, vertical, grouped together but not evenly spaced. One was deeper and darker, like a nail had dug in. The next was fainter. The last two were almost fresh, pale against the varnish. I stared at them and my breathing slowed. I realized I'd been gripping that same leg with my own thumbnail without knowing it.
"Did someone—" I started, and stopped. The man was watching me from the doorway, calm. The four women in dirty white dresses hadn't moved from behind the chair, but their pale faces were turned just enough that I felt seen.
I shifted my weight and pretended to adjust the rectangular pillow. Under it, the fabric was worn thin in one corner. I lifted it an inch and saw the second trace. On the dark wood panel behind the chair, at the height where a seated person's head would rest, there were faint rings. Four of them. Like water rings from a glass set down and left too long. They overlapped slightly, each a little lighter than the last, as if someone had placed the same tumbler there again and again on different nights. I checked the glass in my hands. The base was dry, but it fit the smallest ring perfectly.
My mouth went dry.
I set the pillow back down and let my eyes drift to the floor. Dust. The living room was immaculate except for a thin line along the baseboard behind the armchair where the vacuum hadn't reached. In that dust there were four bare footprints, narrow and pointed toward the chair, not away from it. One set was smudged at the heel, like the person had hesitated. Another was only the front half, as if she'd been standing on her toes, leaning forward. I understood then that they had all stood where I was sitting now is standing. Watching.
One of the ghosts moved.
It wasn't the group. It was the one on the far left, the tallest. Her long straight black hair didn't swing; it just shifted. She raised her hands the way I'd been holding the glass, both palms up, elbows tucked in. She stared straight ahead at nothing, or at a memory. Her dark eye makeup made her eyes look hollow.
She brought her invisible glass to her lips. She tipped it. She swallowed once, hard, her throat working. Then her hands lowered, empty. She turned her head very slowly toward the man in black, and her expression didn't change, but her shoulders dropped. She stepped back into line. The other three didn't react. They just kept staring.
I felt my own hands tighten around the real glass. The amber liquid moved.
I whispered, "When?"
The ghost who had mimed the drinking looked at me. For a second her face flickered — not a smile, just a loosening around the mouth, like she wanted to answer but couldn't find the words. Then she pointed.
Not at the man. At the scratches. At the rings. At the footprints.
One, two, three, four.
I counted them again and finally saw the order. The deepest scratch, the darkest ring, the most smudged footprint belonged together. The faintest scratch, the palest ring, the toe-prints belonged to the girl who had just mymed. They hadn't arrived together. They'd come one at a time, sat in this same beige armchair, been told "Welcome, please make yourself comfortable, have this drink," said "No, I'm not thirsty" or something like it, and then — at different nights, different months — they had lifted the glass.
And stayed.
The man in black took a small step forward. He didn't need to say anything. The glass in my hands was suddenly cold, as if it had been waiting for me to understand. I realized the horror wasn't that they were warning me. It was that they had each once been me, hesitating with the tumbler in both hands, glancing sideways, thinking they had more time.
May you like
I hadn't set the glass down. I hadn't drunk. I was still in between. But the four marks told me there was no in between that lasted. You drank, and then you stood behind the chair.
I looked at the dark wood door across the room and then back at the four women. I understood the sequence now, and I understood I was next in it.
