The Wisp in the Stacks

Since the semester began, I’d noticed a thin, grey tendril of something drifting through the air around me. It looked like the ghost of a cigarette, a wisp of smoke that had no source. It would appear in the corner of my eye, lazily curling near my face, or spiraling around the room’s edges. I’d blink, and it would be gone.

One afternoon, I was in the university’s ancient history seminar, half-listening to Professor Albright drone on about the Peloponnesian War. My friend Maya leaned over and murmured something about a party on Friday. I turned to answer, but my attention snagged on a familiar shape: a faint, grey plume, hovering just above Maya’s shoulder. It hung there for a moment, then drifted toward me, passing directly through my field of vision and dissipating near my ear. I flinched, my heart doing a quick, nervous tap. Maya stopped mid-sentence. ‘You okay?’ she asked. I turned back to the table, meeting the wide eyes of our other friends, Jen and Theo. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked, my voice thin. ‘See what?’ Maya said, frowning. Jen and Theo shook their heads, exchanging puzzled looks. I forced a laugh, ‘Nothing. My eyes are playing tricks.’ But the image of that smoke, so deliberate, clung to me.

The next morning, in a creative writing workshop, I was lost in a collection of gothic short stories, the words forming a comfortable haze. The room was quiet, save for the scratch of pencils and the shuffle of pages. A familiar tickle at the edge of my senses made me look up. There it was again: a thin, grey filament, like a single exhale, drifting in the aisle between the bookshelves. I froze, watching it. It wasn’t moving randomly; it seemed to pause, as if observing me. Then it darted, quick as a fish, toward the ceiling corner and vanished. My heart thumped. I turned to the empty chair beside me, but no one was there. Across the room, a girl with dark hair glanced at me, then looked away. I tried to focus on my book, but the words blurred.

Later that week, I was walking through the library’s basement, a labyrinth of old archives and forgotten texts. Dust motes danced in the dim light from the high windows. My footsteps echoed on the concrete floor. I was searching for a book on local folklore when I saw the wisp again, this time larger, more defined. It emerged from between two shelves, curling like a question mark. It drifted toward me, and I backed away, my hands raised. ‘What do you want?’ I whispered, my voice sounding absurdly loud. The wisp paused, then shimmered, forming a vague shape—a face, featureless but somehow suggesting a mouth open in a silent cry. It lingered for a beat, then dissolved. I stood there, my breath shallow, the silence pressing in.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing that face in the smoke, the way it seemed to reach for me. I got up and opened my laptop, searching for any mention of smoke apparitions in the library’s history. I found an old newspaper article dated 1912: the library had been built on the site of a former textile mill that had burned to the ground, killing dozens of workers. The article mentioned a peculiar phenomenon: ‘the smoke of the dead’ appearing in nearby buildings. I read on, a chill creeping up my spine. One survivor had described a ‘face in the smoke, crying out,’ right before the fire claimed the rest.

A few days later, I was coming home from a late night of study. The campus was empty, the streetlights casting long, distorted shadows. As I passed the old faculty row, I saw the wisp again, but now it was massive, a roiling cloud that blocked out the light from a nearby window. It surged toward me, and I stumbled backward. From within the cloud, I heard a sound—a faint, muffled scream, like a voice trapped in wool. ‘Help me,’ it seemed to say, or perhaps it was just the wind. The cloud swirled, and for a moment, I saw a face formed entirely of smoke, its mouth wide, its eyes hollow pits. It reached out a smoky hand, and I felt a cold touch on my shoulder. Then it was gone, leaving only the scent of burning cloth.

I ran, not stopping until I was safe inside my dorm, the door locked behind me. I slumped against it, my heart racing. I knew then that the wisp was not my imagination, nor a trick of light. It was a remnant, a fragment of a tragedy that had never been fully told. And it had found me, maybe because I was a student of history, or perhaps because I was simply there. I looked around my room, and for the first time, I saw smoke curling from the vent, forming a thin, grey line that drifted toward me. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, it was gone. But I knew it would return. And next time, it might ask more than I could give.