The Chant of the Unseen

In the humid summer after my sophomore year, I moved into an off-campus apartment that had a reputation for being drafty and dim. The walls were thin, the floorboards creaked, and the landlord’s face always seemed to hold a secret. My roommate, Derek, was a quiet film student who spent most nights in the editing lab, so I often had the place to myself.

I’d known Marcus since freshman year. He was the kind of guy who wore vintage band tees and talked about energy fields as casually as weather. He swore he could see auras—halos of color around people that revealed their emotional state. And he claimed to see guardian spirits, though he said his own was feeble, fading, and that he’d die young from something otherworldly. I’d always shrugged it off, chalking it up to his flair for drama.

One night, after a long shift at the library, I crashed into bed without even pulling the covers fully up. The room was stuffy, the fan’s blades slicing the air with a monotonous hum. I fell into a deep sleep, but around 3:15 AM, something snapped me awake. My eyes flew open, but my body refused to move. A familiar horror—sleep paralysis. I’d had it before, but never like this. At the foot of my bed, a black silhouette stood, denser than the darkness around it, shaped like a man but wrong in every proportion. Its edges seemed to seethe, and I could feel an intention radiating from it: pure, malevolent hunger.

I tried to scream, but my throat was sealed. The shadow stepped closer, and I felt its pressure like a weight on my chest. But just as it reached the footboard, it stopped, as if hitting an invisible wall. A cold sensation spread through the room, and I sensed, not saw, something else—a presence so faint I almost missed it, like a whisper of static in a quiet room. It stood between us, unseen, but I knew it was there, and it was holding the shadow at bay.

The shadow man didn’t give up. It shifted to the side, moving along the bed, and then to the edge of the mattress, looming over my right shoulder. The pressure intensified, and I felt its sharp, entropic fingers trying to claw into my mind. In desperation, the unseen something began to chant. The words were not in any language I knew—guttural, rhythmic, and yet they resonated deep in my bones, vibrating through the floor and up my spine. The shadow shuddered, let out a soundless shriek, and dissolved like smoke in a gust.

I woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat, my heart pounding. The room was empty, the fan still humming, but the air felt charged, like after a storm. I lay still for a long time, replaying the event. The chant—I couldn’t get it out of my head. It echoed in my memory, a tune I’d never heard but knew by heart.

Days passed. I tried to forget, but the chant lingered. I found myself humming it under my breath, tapping its rhythm on my desk. Marcus, who often came by to hang out, grew pale when he heard me. ‘Where did you learn that?’ he asked, his voice tight. I shrugged, told him about the nightmare. He shook his head, muttering, ‘That’s not a dream. That’s a protection mantra. Ancient. I’ve never heard it aloud, only in whispers from spirits.’ He refused to say more, and I let it go.

A week later, I was walking home from class late at night. A shortcut through an alley. Halfway down, a thick fog rolled in from nowhere, swallowing the streetlights. I heard a breath behind me, and I turned—there was the shadow man again, larger now, its form coalescing from the dark. I froze, but then the chant rose in my throat, unbidden, flowing out of me like a reflex. The shadow recoiled, but before it vanished, it spoke in a voice like grinding stones: ‘You cannot hide forever. The bargain is broken.’

I ran home, and since then, the shadow has not returned. But the chant remains, humming in my mind like an engine. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wake to see the faint outline of a shape at the edge of my vision—no, not a shape, more like a shimmer. And I realize with growing dread that the guardian Marcus saw in me was never a protector at all. It was a warden, bound to me by a pact made long before my birth. And the shadow? It was the collector, come to take what was owed. But the warden chants, holds its ground, because the debt is not yet due. I don’t know when it will be due, or what will happen when the chant ends. All I know is that I am a vessel for something ancient, and the shadow is patient.

I called Marcus, desperate for answers. He told me he’d seen my aura that day, weeks ago—a deep violet with cracks of black. He said, ‘You’re not protected. You’re tethered. You need to find the source of the chant, the original speaker.’ His voice was grave. ‘And you need to do it before the next full moon.’ I asked him what happens then. There was a long silence. ‘The chant can only hold so long,’ he whispered. ‘If it’s not renewed, the shadow will take you whole, and the guardian will become something else—a ghost, bound to prey on the next in line.’

Now, as I write this, I’m sitting in my apartment, the chant humming in my bones. I’ve traced it to an old song my grandmother used to hum. I found an old recording of her, from a family gathering, and in the background, I can hear the same rhythm. I’ve been trying to find her original home, a village that no longer exists on any map, in search of the source. But every night, the shadow returns, drawn ever closer by the fading hum. And I know that if I don’t find the truth soon, the last thing I’ll hear is my own voice, chanting the words that bind, as the dark closes in.