The sirens were still echoing between the buildings when she arrived.
Maya barely remembered how she got there. One moment she had been sitting in her apartment, half-watching a movie, annoyed that Daniel wasn’t answering his phone. The next, her best friend Chloe was at the door, pale and shaking, whispering the words that split her world open:
“There’s been an accident.”
Now she stood in the middle of Maple Street, barefoot, her coat thrown over her pajamas, hair unbrushed and wild around her tear-streaked face. Red and blue lights flickered across shattered glass and twisted metal. A motorcycle lay on its side like a broken animal. The smell of gasoline hung heavy in the cold night air.
And Daniel—her Daniel—was lying in the middle of the street.
Motionless.
A white sheet had been pulled over him, but it wasn’t enough to hide the terrible stillness of his body. One of his hands was exposed, palm up, fingers slightly curled as if reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Maya screamed his name.
She didn’t care that officers tried to hold her back. She didn’t hear the paramedics speaking softly, telling her they had done everything they could. She dropped to her knees beside him, clutching his cold hand, her sobs tearing through her chest.
“Daniel, please,” she choked. “Please don’t do this. Wake up. Please.”
The world narrowed to that patch of asphalt beneath her knees. The flashing lights blurred into streaks. The crowd of onlookers faded into shadows. All that existed was the unbearable silence coming from the man she loved.
A paramedic gently pulled the sheet back just enough for identification.
His face was pale but strangely peaceful. Too peaceful. A thin line of blood traced from his temple to his ear. His lips were slightly parted.
Maya leaned closer, her tears falling onto his cheek.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”
The wind picked up suddenly, colder than before. It cut through her coat and sent a shiver down her spine. The streetlights flickered once, then twice. Somewhere nearby, a car alarm began wailing for no reason.
And then it happened.
Daniel’s lips twitched.
At first, Maya thought it was her imagination—her desperate mind playing tricks on her. But then his mouth curved upward.
He smiled.
Not a wide smile. Not warm. Not loving.
It was slow.
Deliberate.
Wrong.
Her sobbing stopped mid-breath.
The paramedic beside her gasped. “That’s not possible,” he muttered under his breath.
Daniel’s eyes—eyes that had been dull and empty—rolled upward beneath his lids. Then, with a sickening slowness, they opened.
They were not the soft brown she knew.
They were black.
Completely black.
Maya’s heart slammed against her ribs. She tried to pull her hand away, but his fingers snapped shut around hers with impossible strength.
The grip was ice cold.
“Daniel?” she whispered, her voice trembling.
The crowd around them fell silent. The flashing lights seemed to dim. Even the wind stopped.
His smile widened.
And then he spoke.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
The voice was his—but layered with something else. Something deeper. As if two voices were speaking in perfect unison.
Maya tried to scream, but no sound came out.
The paramedic stumbled backward, crossing himself. An officer dropped his flashlight, which clattered loudly against the pavement.
Daniel’s body jerked upright in one unnatural motion, as though pulled by invisible strings. His neck tilted at an angle no human neck should tilt.
“You weren’t meant to see this,” he continued, his lips barely moving while the voice echoed strangely around them.
Maya’s mind raced. This couldn’t be real. This had to be shock. Trauma. A hallucination.
But his grip tightened painfully.
“You promised,” she whispered, tears streaming again. “You promised you’d never leave me.”
The black eyes flickered.
For a split second—just a second—the darkness faded, and she saw him. The real Daniel. Frightened. Trapped.
“Maya,” he rasped, his voice cracking into something human. “Run.”
The word echoed like a gunshot.
Suddenly his body convulsed violently. His back arched. A guttural sound tore from his throat, half scream, half growl.
The streetlights burst, plunging the block into darkness.
People screamed.
Maya fell backward, scrambling across the asphalt as Daniel’s body rose slowly to its feet—though his shoes never quite touched the ground.
A shadow seemed to stretch behind him, far longer than it should have been. It moved independently, writhing like smoke.
“You can’t have him,” Maya shouted into the darkness, though she didn’t know who—or what—she was speaking to.
The air grew heavy, hard to breathe. The temperature plummeted. Frost formed on the broken windshield of the car nearby.
Daniel’s head snapped toward her again.
“He opened the door,” the layered voice said. “And now we are here.”
Memories flashed in Maya’s mind—Daniel’s recent nightmares, the way he’d been distant for weeks, the strange symbol she’d once seen carved into his desk but dismissed as nothing.
“What door?” she whispered.
But Daniel’s body suddenly went limp.
It collapsed onto the street with a sickening thud.
The darkness lifted. The streetlights flickered back on. The oppressive weight in the air vanished as quickly as it had come.
The paramedics rushed forward again, trembling. One of them checked for a pulse.
There was none.
His eyes were brown again.
Empty.
Still.
As if nothing had happened.
The police tried to explain it away—mass hysteria, electrical failure, shock. They escorted Maya home hours later, wrapping her in a blanket and speaking gently, cautiously.
But they couldn’t explain the bruise forming on her wrist in the shape of his hand.
They couldn’t explain why every security camera on the block had malfunctioned at the exact same moment.
And they couldn’t explain the message she found the next morning.
On her phone.
A voicemail recorded at 2:17 a.m.—three hours after Daniel had been pronounced dead.
It was only five seconds long.
Static crackled at first.
Then his voice whispered:
“I’m still here.”
Maya dropped the phone, her blood running cold.
Outside her bedroom window, the wind began to howl again.
