The Fourth Visit

My friend Marcus has always been a little off. Not in a bad way, but in a way that makes you uneasy. He’s died three times, or so he says. Three separate occasions where his heart stopped, and each time he came back with something new. The first time, he started seeing flickers at the edge of his vision. The second, he could hear whispers in static. The third, he could tell the difference between the living and the dead—except he couldn’t, not always. That’s the part that gets me. He’ll be talking to someone, and then he’ll realize they’re not really there. It’s happened at bars, at his job, even in his own bathroom. He’s learned to play it cool, but I’ve seen him freeze, his eyes going wide just for a second before he recovers.

Last Thursday, he came over to my place. We were watching some horror movie, but we were mostly smoking hookah and shooting the shit. It was a warm night, the kind where the air sticks to your skin. Marcus was telling me about this new ghost that’s been pestering him—a woman in a floral dress who stands in the corner of his bedroom, just watching. He said she doesn’t do anything, just stands there, but her presence makes the room drop ten degrees. He was laughing about it, but I could see he was tense. He kept glancing at the corners of my living room.

Around 12:45, I was nodding off. That was his cue. He stubbed out his hookah coal, patted my shoulder, and said, ‘Get some real sleep, man.’ I remember the front door clicking shut, and then I was out.

The next morning, my phone rang at 6:15. It was Marcus, and his voice was weird—not scared, but like he’d been running. He asked, ‘You awake?’ I grunted, and he launched into it.

He said after he left my place, he decided to walk home instead of driving. It’s about twenty minutes, and the streets are dead at that hour. He was about halfway, passing that old abandoned church on Maple, when he saw a man standing under a streetlamp. The man was tall, wearing a long coat despite the heat, and his face was hidden in shadow. Marcus said he didn’t think much of it—people wait for buses, whatever. But as he got closer, the man didn’t move. And then, just as Marcus was about to pass him, the man spoke. His voice was low, like gravel, and he said, ‘You’re on your fourth life now.’

Marcus stopped. He said the hair on his arms stood up, because no one knew about his ‘lives’ except me and a few close family members. The man continued, ‘You’ve seen the dead, but you haven’t seen the ones that come after. They’ve noticed you.’ Then the man raised his head, and Marcus said his eyes were completely black, not even white around the pupils. The man smiled—a wide, unnatural grin—and said, ‘They’ll come for you tonight. But not the ones you think.’

Marcus said he didn’t wait. He bolted, ran all the way home, and locked his door. He checked every room, every closet, under the bed. Nothing. He sat in his living room with the lights on, trying to calm down. That’s when he heard it—a soft knocking, like knuckles on wood, but coming from inside his walls. It started in the bedroom, then the kitchen, then the hallway, always just ahead of him. He said it was like something was pacing him through the house.

Then the knocking stopped. He stood in his hallway, his heart pounding. And that’s when he saw her—the woman in the floral dress, the one from his bedroom. She was standing at the far end of the hallway, but her head was tilted at an unnatural angle, and her mouth was open, but no sound came out. He said she wasn’t the same as before. Before, she was just a presence. Now, she was solid, and she was terrified. She pointed at the front door, and he said he felt a cold gust of air, and then he heard a voice—not in his ears, but inside his head—saying, ‘They’re not the ones you need to worry about.’

He didn’t sleep. He stayed awake, watching the door, the windows, the corners. Nothing else happened, but he said the whole house felt wrong, like it was watching him back. When morning came, he called me.

I didn’t know what to say. I mean, Marcus has told me crazy stuff before, but this was different. There was a practicality to it, a specific threat. I told him to stay with me for a few days, and he said he’d pack a bag.

But when he hung up, I looked over at my own hallway, and my heart stopped. At the end of it, near the coat rack, there was a tall man in a long coat. He was just standing there, his face still shadowed, but I could feel his black eyes on me. And he raised a hand, slowly, and pointed at me.

I haven’t told Marcus that yet. I’m writing this from my car, in the parking lot of a gas station, because I couldn’t stay in my apartment. But as I was leaving, I heard a soft knock from inside my own walls. And I knew—this thing isn’t after Marcus. It’s after anyone who knows. And I’ve just become its new target.