The Constant Pinch

When the pinching started, I assumed it was a laundry tag or an allergic reaction to the new detergent. But it wasn’t long before I felt the sensation on bare skin, in the shower, when I was alone. It was a sharp, deliberate pinch, like a crab’s claw, always on the same spots: my shoulders, my thighs, the tender skin of my inner arm. I went to Dr. Ellery, who ran tests, declared my nervous system a marvel of modern medicine, and suggested I see a therapist. I laughed, but it came out hollow.

I began to catalog the pinches. They came at odd hours: 3:33 AM, 11:11 AM, 4:44 PM. I noticed a pattern, a rhythm to them, like a Morse code I couldn’t decipher. I started to feel watched, a constant pressure at the back of my neck, as if someone was standing just over my shoulder. When I turned, nothing was there. But the pinches continued, sometimes two or three in a row, like angry footsteps.

Then came the orbs. At first, I thought they were dust motes catching the light, but these were solid, milky white, and they moved with a purpose. I would catch them in my peripheral vision, darting across the room, or hovering near a doorway. They never stayed in my direct gaze, but I grew familiar with their presence. They felt like observers, curious but not hostile. I told my friend Mira, who dabbles in the occult, and she said they might be ‘fetches’ or ‘harbingers.’ I didn’t ask what they were harbingers of.

The day everything changed was my niece’s birthday. I took dozens of photos of my sister Rachel and her ten-year-old, Ellie, as they twirled in their costumes. Rachel was in a vintage velvet dress, Ellie a fairy princess with a tinsel wand. After the party, I flipped through the images on my camera. Most were typical, blurrs and red-eye, but one photo stopped me cold. It was a shot of Ellie mid-twirl, but in the background, visible through the open doorway to the basement stairs, there was a figure. It was a man, tall and thin, wearing a dark suit, and his face was a smear of white, like a photographic blur, but I froze because my camera’s memory card had been empty that day. I had taken every shot, and I hadn’t seen anyone come in, let alone go down to the basement. I zoomed in, and the figure’s head was tilted just so, as if he was looking directly at the camera, at me.

I confronted Rachel, and she said nobody had been downstairs; the basement door was always locked. I showed her the photo, and she turned pale. She said, ‘That’s the man from my dreams.’ She told me she’d been having nightmares for weeks, dreaming of a man who would stand in the corner of her room, pinching the air, pinching her arm until she woke. She showed me marks on her forearm, little red crescents that matched the pinches I’d been getting. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me, that the orbs were not the main attraction. They were the scouts.

The next morning, I gathered all the photos I had ever taken, and I started to find the figure in them. In a picture from years ago in my old apartment, there he was, standing in the hallway. In my college dorm photo, he was at the edge of the frame, watching. He had been with me for years, a silent constant, growing bolder. The pinches were his way of testing, of drawing my attention, but I had written it off. I began to see the pattern, the times, the orbs were like anchors, drawing his image into the physical world.

I did research, I talked to mediums, I even tried to burn the photos, but he appeared in new ones. I took a selfie, and he was there, just behind my left shoulder, his white face now partially resolved, a wide grin stretching across it. My sister started sleeping with lights on, and my niece refuses to go near the basement. The pinches have multiplied, a constant rain of jabs, and the orbs swarm like gnats. I have started to record everything, hoping to find a way to break this connection, but I fear it’s too late. He is no longer just in the background. In my latest photo, he stands facing the camera, not ten feet behind me, and his eyes are open, dark like voids. The print in my hand is warm, and I can feel a ghost of a pinch on my neck, as if he is reaching out. This is my story. I don’t know if it will help anyone, but I need to write it down before I become just another snapshot in his collection.