The Sixth Hour

I’ve always been a skeptic, even while my best friend, Lila, devoured every ghost story she could find. We’d spend weekends in her grandmother’s dusty attic, reading about shadowy figures and cold spots, but I never truly believed. That changed on the morning of October 14th, in a house that backed onto the old Pemberton Cemetery.

That Saturday, I rose early, as usual, to wake my father for his weekend shift at the mill. It was 7:30 AM, and the autumn light was pale through the curtains. I knocked on his door, pushed it open, and found him already sitting up in bed, staring at the wall with a puzzled expression.

‘Morning, Dad,’ I said, stepping inside. ‘You’re up early.’

He turned to me slowly, his brow furrowed. ‘Did you come in here a few minutes ago?’ he asked, his voice rough with sleep.

‘No, I just got up,’ I replied, confused. ‘Why?’

He shook his head, rubbing his temples. ‘I could have sworn you came in, sat on the edge of the bed, and asked me to come downstairs for breakfast. You said you’d made pancakes. But when I opened my eyes, you weren’t there.’

I laughed, thinking he’d had a dream. ‘Must have been a good one.’ I went to make coffee, dismissing the incident.

But later that day, while Lila and I were out back, overlooking the cemetery’s weathered headstones, the memory resurfaced. Lila was rambling about some legend she’d read about ‘echoes’ when I interrupted.

‘Hey, weird thing happened this morning,’ I said. ‘Dad thought I came into his room, but I didn’t.’

Lila’s eyes widened. ‘Like a doppelganger?’ She leaned in, excited. ‘Or maybe someone else?’

I shrugged. ‘Probably just a half-asleep dream.’

But Lila wasn’t letting it go. She started asking questions: Did I have a twin? Had anyone else been in the house? I told her no, and she grew quiet, staring at the cemetery with a strange intensity.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Something about the incident nagged at me. I got up around 2 AM to get water, and as I passed my father’s room, I froze. The door was ajar, and I saw a figure sitting on the edge of his bed, illuminated by the dim nightlight. It looked like me—same hair, same build, wearing the same pajamas. It was leaning over him, whispering something too low to catch.

I felt a chill race down my spine. I tried to call out, but my voice caught in my throat. The figure turned its head, and for a split second, I saw its face—my face, but with empty black eyes and a grin that was too wide. Then it vanished.

I staggered back to my room, my heart pounding. I didn’t sleep that night, and the next morning, I told Lila everything. She was pale, but not surprised. ‘It’s the cemetery,’ she said. ‘The dead are restless. They try to take the place of the living. You saw a mimic.’

We decided to investigate, and Lila pulled out an old newspaper article from 1982. It mentioned a similar phenomenon in a town a few miles over: residents seeing themselves, being led to a nearby graveyard, and later found wandering in a daze. The article called it ‘The Sixth Hour,’ because it always happened at around 6 AM or 6 PM, when the veil between worlds was thinnest.

I felt sick. My encounter had been at 7:30, but close enough. We realized that whatever this mimic was, it was trying to lure my father away. But why? I had to stop it.

That evening, I stayed awake, watching the clock. At exactly 6 PM, I heard a creak from my father’s room. I crept outside my door and saw the mimic again, this time more solid, leading my father toward the back door. My father’s eyes were glazed, his movements robotic. He was following the mimic without a word.

I shouted, ‘Dad, stop!’ But he didn’t respond. The mimic turned, grinned, and walked through the back door, heading toward the cemetery. I ran after them, grabbing a flashlight and a rusty garden spade we kept in the shed.

The gate to the cemetery was unlocked, and I saw them among the tombstones, the mimic leading my father to a freshly dug grave—no, not dug, but open, as if waiting.

I ran up to my father, shaking his arm. ‘Dad, wake up!’

He blinked, looked around, and gasped. ‘Where am I? What’s happening?’

The mimic stood at the edge of the grave, its smile widening. It pointed at me, then at my father, and mouthed, ‘One of you.’

I understood: it needed a life to cross over. It wanted me or my father. Without thinking, I thrust the spade into the earth, breaking the ground at the grave’s edge. The mimic screeched and turned to dust, leaving only a faint, cold wind.

My father and I stumbled out of the cemetery, shaken. We never spoke of it again, and we moved away a month later. But sometimes, I catch a glimpse of myself in a window reflection, and for a split second, my reflection grins back at me before I look away. I don’t know if it’s the mimic, or if a piece of it followed me. But I’ve started sleeping with the lights on, and I haven’t told anyone that the reflection’s smile is always a little too wide.