The Silhouette at the Seam

I’ve had night terrors since I was twelve. I’m thirty-six now, and I’ve built my life around managing them. I have a partner, Marcus, who knows the drill: don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, just wait until I come to. I have my own tricks, too. A cool glass of water on the nightstand. A particular blue light in the hallway. A grounding exercise where I count the ridges on the ceiling. I say this so you understand: I am an expert in my own delusions. I know the difference between a nightmare and reality. Or I did.

Our apartment is on the fourth floor of a pre-war building, the kind with tall ceilings and radiators that clank in the winter. The bedroom faces a brick wall from the next building over, so we keep the window open even in the cold, just a crack, to let in the city hum. It’s a reassuring noise, the constant murmur of traffic and distant sirens. Lately, though, the sound seems to thin out at night, leaving a hollow space where the hum should be. And that’s when I see it.

The first time it happened, I woke with a gasp. The room was wrong. I knew it instantly, even before my eyes adjusted. The wall on the left was a soft green, not the cream we’d painted it. The dresser, heavy oak, had shrunk to a child’s toy. And Marcus’s face, the familiar pale features with a beard, was now the face of a stranger, dark-skinned, broad-nosed, with ancient eyes. I blinked, and it faded, but the shadow didn’t. It stood by the window, a silhouette of pure absence, more solid than any of my usual hallucinations. It didn’t move, just watched. I did my grounding, the ridges on the ceiling, the glass of water. The shadow dissolved like smoke, and I was left shaking, the taste of copper in my mouth.

That was the first. Over the weeks, it grew bolder. It would come from the window every night, same door, pause by the dresser or the bathroom door. I began to fight it, the way I had learned to fight the monsters under the bed. I would channel some fierce energy, a white-hot core of defiance, and it would retreat. But some nights, it demanded a toll. I can’t remember what I gave it, only the sensation of something being peeled from me, like a layer of skin. Every morning, I’d find a new item missing: my grandmother’s hairpin, a book I adored, a photograph that meant nothing to me. Marcus didn’t notice. He said I was sleepwalking, that I’d probably just misplaced them. But I knew better. Something was taking pieces of my life.

One night, I woke and the room was perfectly normal. The familiar cream walls, the oak dresser, Marcus’s pale face beside me. But the shadow was there, more defined than ever, and it was gesturing with a long, thin arm, pointing at the bathroom door. I did something I’d never done before. I followed it. The door was ajar, the light off. As I approached, I saw a seam in the tiled wall, a hairline crack that shouldn’t exist. The shadow touched it, and the seam widened, revealing a darkness that was absolute, a black that seemed to breathe.

It didn’t need to speak. I understood. It wanted me to go in. I tried to wake myself, pinching my arm, counting the tiles on the floor, but I was already awake. This was not a dream. And yet, I found myself stepping through, into the void. There was no floor, no up or down. Just a weightless fall, and a whisper of voices, not in any language I knew, but somehow familiar. And I remembered. I remembered every time I had given it something, and what it had taken. Not objects. Moments. Memories. My first kiss, the smell of rain, the face of my childhood dog. It had been feeding on me, and now it was ready for the feast.

I woke screaming, back in my bed, the morning light gray through the window. Marcus was shaking me, his face a mask of concern. The room was normal, the shadow gone. But something was fundamentally wrong. I opened my mouth to tell him, and no sound came out. A deafening silence. I looked at my hands. They were older, wrinkled, with age spots. In the mirror, I saw a stranger: gray hair, deep-set eyes, unfamiliar face. It had taken my identity, my voice, my story. And I knew, with a cold certainty, that it was still there, waiting by the window, ready to come again.

I sat on the edge of the bed, watching the window. The room was silent, but I could hear it, far away, a sound like a thread being pulled. The seam in the wall would reopen, and I would be forced to step through again, to lose another piece of who I was. Marcus was calling my name, but I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t know me anymore. I was just a vessel, a hollow thing, and the shadow was my only companion, the only thing that knew my true name. And I knew, in the deepest part of my fragmented soul, that it would never stop coming, because it was part of me, the part I had tried to banish, the part that had always been there, watching, waiting.

The window rattled, a sudden gust. The shadow was there, at the pane, pressing against it. It wasn’t pointing this time. It was smiling. I smiled back, for I had no other choice. I had become the thing I feared, and the seam in the wall was the only door left to me.