The Unseen Guest

I was recovering from a fever in a cramped guesthouse on the outskirts of Hue, Vietnam. My room was a narrow box with two single beds shoved against opposite walls, a small rattan wardrobe between them. The bathroom was directly across from the room’s second door, which opened to the shared corridor. My friends, a group of backpackers I’d met the week before, had planned a night out at a local festival. I, however, was stuck, sweating through my sheets, listening to their laughter fade down the hallway.

I must have faded in and out of sleep. The evening’s heat was oppressive, and the bed’s thin mattress offered little comfort. I recall turning to face the wall, trying to find a cool spot on the pillow. That’s when I heard it: a low, guttural moan, not from the street, but from right beside me. On the other bed. I froze, but my feverish brain rationalized it. Perhaps the pipes, the humidity, the half-dream state. I dismissed it.

The second moan came louder, more insistent, and I felt the floorboards creak as if a weight had shifted. A cold dread began to seep through my chills. I told myself I was being paranoid, that my fever was playing tricks on me. I pulled the thin sheet over my head, my heart pounding.

Then, the third moan was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a mattress compressing, a slow, grinding sigh of springs. I felt the air in the room change, a coolness that had no source. I still did not turn. I clamped my eyes shut and began to whisper a childhood prayer, desperate to convince myself that it was nothing.

My friends returned in the early hours, their drunken chatter filling the corridor. They knocked on my door, calling my name. I did not answer. I did not move. I could not. I was petrified, my eyes locked on the wall, until the door creaked open and one of them peered in.

‘Hey, you okay?’ she asked, her voice fuzzy with beer.

I tried to speak, but my voice was a rasp. ‘There’s something… on the other bed.’

She flicked on the light. The other bed was empty. The sheets were slightly rumpled, as if someone had recently sat on it. She laughed, attributing it to my fever and the oppressive heat. I said nothing more, but as they left, I swore I saw the slight imprint of a body slowly filling back into the mattress, as if something were settling back into place.

That was months ago, and I’ve never been able to shake what happened. I can no longer sleep in a room with an empty bed. And sometimes, in the still of the night, just before I drift off, I still hear that low moan, as if the unseen guest is still waiting for me to turn around.