Monday felt fake.
Not in the usual "I hate waking up and breathing air" way. Not the usual school-makes-my-soul-crack feeling. No, this was deeper.
The air was wrong.
August woke up with the sketchbook under his arm, heart pounding like he'd just run a sprint underwater. His shirt was soaked through. The kind of sweat that comes from nightmares you can't remember but your body won't forget.
No dreams.
Or maybe no dreams he could remember.
But the last thing he felt before waking?
Arthur's voice.
"Something else woke up with me."
The phrase echoed in his chest like a knock that hadn't stopped yet. Like someone tapping on the inside of his ribs, asking to be let out.
His mom was making eggs downstairs. The smell drifted up, normal and warm and completely wrong for how the world felt. Reece was already shouting about cereal (someone put the box back empty again). Kira yelled from the bathroom that someone stole her moisturizer. The house was loud.
But August barely heard it.
He sat on the edge of his bed, sketchbook in his lap, and opened to the last page.
The blurred figure was clearer now. Not clear enough to have features, but clear enough to have intent. It leaned forward in the drawing, hands (were those hands?) pressed against something invisible. Like it was pushing against glass.
Like it was pushing against the page.
August closed the book. Got dressed on autopilot. Clothes. Bag. Shoes.
But everything felt like it was happening half a second behind real life. Like reality was buffering.
"You okay, baby?" His mom caught him at the door, spatula in hand. "You look pale."
"Just tired."
She touched his forehead with the back of her hand. "No fever. You sure you're good for school?"
He nodded. Grabbed a piece of toast. Pretended to eat it on the way out.
The walk to school usually took fifteen minutes. Today it felt like hours. Every shadow seemed too dark. Every sound came from the wrong direction. A dog barked, but when August turned, the street was empty. A car honked, but there were no cars.
By the time he got to school, it got worse.
First symptom? Music.
During second period, someone's Bluetooth speaker kicked on in the hallway. Loud pop music. Some overproduced beat about dancing through heartbreak or whatever.
Then it glitched.
Mid-lyric, the singer's voice stretched like a cassette being eaten by a dying radio.
"Dance through the… daaaaaaan… ce… th… rou… gh…"
The sound warped. Deepened. Became something else.
"…through the door he opened…"
Then silence.
Not even static.
The air in the room thickened. Like breathing through wool.
The lights buzzed, then stuttered.
Not off.
Just… almost. Like they were considering it.
August gripped the side of his desk. His knuckles went white. The wood under his fingers felt soft. Pulpy. Like wet cardboard.
Then it all returned.
Music. Light. Sound. Normal.
The teacher didn't even blink. Just kept talking about literary symbolism like the walls hadn't just considered collapsing.
Alex leaned over from the seat behind him. "Yo, you good? You look like you're about to hurl."
August nodded once. Too fast. "Yeah. Just… weird morning."
"Tell me about it. My alarm played backwards this morning. Like, the beeping was reversed. Freaked me out."
August turned to look at him. "What?"
"Yeah, right? Electronics are being weird today." Alex shrugged. "Mercury retrograde or whatever."
But August saw something in his friend's eyes. A flicker of real concern. The kind you try to joke away.
He didn't open the sketchbook in class.
Not because he was scared.
Because he already knew what would be waiting.
Third period was worse. The hallways between classes felt longer than they should be. August counted his steps from English to History. Usually 847. Today he lost count at 1,200 and still hadn't reached the door.
When he finally got there, half the class was missing.
"Where is everyone?" he asked the girl who sat in front of him.
She looked at him funny. "What do you mean? We're all here."
August counted. Twelve students. There should have been twenty-five.
The teacher started the lesson like nothing was wrong. But her voice sounded underwater. Her words came out backwards sometimes. Nobody else seemed to notice.
After school, walking home, the power lines above him hummed.
Low.
Not electricity.
Resonance.
The same hum from the Ashlands. From that place that wasn't a dream but wasn't here either.
He passed by a parked car with the radio on. The DJ was mid-sentence about traffic.
Then the station changed on its own. Flipped from pop, to static, to:
"…if he remembers too much, he'll slip."
August stopped walking.
Stared at the car.
The voice on the radio wasn't a DJ. It was familiar. Tired. Patient.
It was Arthur.
"The boundaries are thinning. He needs to—"
The station flipped again. An ad for shampoo. Bright and cheerful and wrong.
August stood there for a full thirty seconds. A woman walked her dog past him. The dog growled, pulling away from August like he smelled wrong.
He walked faster.
Didn't run. Not yet.
Got home. Shut the door behind him. Locked it. Checked it twice.
The house was empty. Note on the fridge: "Took Reece to practice. Leftover pasta in the fridge. Love you!"
Normal. Safe. Fine.
August went straight to his room. Didn't eat. Didn't change. Just sat at his desk and opened the sketchbook.
Arthur was standing again. Sword drawn. Eyes focused on something in the distance.
And in the background?
That same blurred figure.
Much closer now.
Close enough that August could make out its shape. Tall. Too tall. Arms that hung wrong. A head that tilted at an angle that hurt to look at.
It wasn't facing Arthur.
It was facing August.
He stared at the page.
Then whispered (without knowing why):
"What's trying to get out?"
The drawing changed while he watched. Arthur's head turned slightly. Not toward the figure. Toward August. His mouth moved.
No sound, but August read the words on those pencil lips:
"What you never finished killing."
That night, the wrongness spread.
The lights flickered. Not off. Just… wrong. Like they were remembering how to be dark.
August sat at his desk, sketchbook closed, hands braced against the wood like it might tip over. His laptop had frozen twice. Same screen both times: a mess of pixels that almost looked like a face. Spotify wouldn't load past track four. Every song after that was static with something underneath. Something that might have been breathing.
His phone screen glitched once (just once) but enough to show a flicker of something.
A shape.
That same blurred shape.
Standing behind him in the reflection.
He turned. Nothing there. Turned back. Phone normal. Just his apps staring back at him.
He turned it off. Threw it on the bed. Considered throwing it out the window.
The hum came back after dark.
Not loud. But low. Under his floorboards. In the walls. Like something breathing behind drywall. Like the house had developed lungs and didn't know how to use them right.
His mom called him for dinner. He went downstairs. Ate pasta. Answered questions. Smiled when he was supposed to. But the food tasted like pencil shavings. The water tasted like ink.
"You sure you're feeling okay?" his mom asked for the third time.
"Yeah. Just tired. Big test tomorrow."
She bought it. Moms always bought the school excuse.
Back in his room, the hum was louder. Not volume-louder. Presence-louder. Like it was taking up more space.
He pressed his ear to the floor once. Just to make sure he wasn't losing it.
And he heard voices.
Muffled. Distant. But clear enough.
"He's not ready yet."
That was Arthur.
"Doesn't matter. It's already started."
That was… something else. The voice scraped. Like words being dragged over gravel.
"If it breaks through before he understands—"
"Then he becomes the door."
August shot up.
Backed away from the floor like it might open up.
He should've been panicking. Should've been crying or screaming or calling someone.
But deep down, in the oldest part of him (the part that built Arthur from loneliness and need), he knew exactly what was happening.
He was being pulled back in.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
He opened the sketchbook again.
No drawing this time.
Just a single line of text in his own handwriting:
"If it's reaching through, that means you already opened the door."
August whispered, "I didn't mean to."
Another line wrote itself in real time:
"Doesn't matter."
"Doors don't care about intent."
"Only about what walks through."
The lights in his room dimmed again. Not a power issue. The bulbs were still bright. But the light itself seemed tired. Like it was giving up.
His laptop restarted on its own.
And when the screen flashed, Arthur's face flickered across it.
Not drawn. Not illustrated.
Photoreal.
For half a second.
But in that half second, August saw something that made his blood stop.
Arthur wasn't looking at him.
He was looking behind him.
And his expression was pure terror.
The screen went normal. Generic login. Like nothing had happened.
August turned around slowly.
Nothing there.
But the air was colder. And wrong. And waiting.
He looked at the sketchbook again, and this time the page was no longer blank.
It showed a room.
His room.
Drawn from above.
His bed. His chair. His desk.
And him.
In the corner.
Perfectly accurate. Every detail right. Even the way he was hunched, one hand gripping the desk edge.
And just behind him, in the sketch, a second figure.
Not Arthur.
Not clear.
Just… waiting.
Its hand (was that a hand?) was reaching toward August's shoulder. Almost touching. Not quite.
August looked at his actual shoulder.
Nothing.
But he felt it. Cold. Present. Patient.
He sat back down. Slowly. Trying not to disturb whatever was almost touching him.
Picked up the pencil with shaking hands.
And wrote:
"What do I do?"
This time, the response came slow.
Letter by letter.
"Keep drawing."
"Or it will."
"And what it draws won't be kind."
August didn't sleep.
He couldn't. The hum wouldn't let him.
It wasn't in the walls anymore.
It was under his skin. In his teeth. Behind his eyes. Like something had moved in without asking and was rearranging furniture in his skull.
He paced the room. Four steps to the door. Five to the window. Breathe. Repeat. The sketchbook sat on the desk like a mouth waiting to speak. Like a door waiting to open. Like a wound waiting to split.
At 2:47 AM, his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He didn't answer.
It rang again.
Same number.
This time he picked up. Don't know why. Just did.
Static. Then breathing. Then:
"You're remembering wrong."
The voice was young. Scared. Familiar.
It was his own voice. At twelve.
"You think you killed me because you were sad. But that's not why."
August's hand shook. "Who is this?"
"You killed me because you saw what was coming. What was following. What was hungry."
"I don't—"
"You do. You're just scared to draw it true."
The line went dead.
August stared at the phone. The call log was empty. No unknown number. No evidence.
At 3:14 AM, he sat down.
Opened to the blank page.
No prompts. No visions. No flickers.
Just white.
It dared him.
He picked up the pencil.
And started to draw.
He didn't plan it. Didn't think.
He let his hand move. Let twelve-year-old August guide the pencil. Let memory blur with whatever was happening now.
Arthur again, but this time, not in a battlefield. Not kneeling. Not solemn.
Standing in the middle of August's room. One foot forward. Sword gone. Head turned toward something just out of frame. But his expression wasn't brave. Wasn't ready.
He looked terrified.
August kept drawing. Added details he didn't remember deciding on. The way Arthur's coat was torn at the edges. The way his hands shook. The way his eyes were wide with recognition of something behind August.
But this time, August added something else.
Himself.
He drew himself sitting at the desk, pencil in hand, face lit by the glow of his desk lamp. But wrong. His shadow was too long. Too dark. And it wasn't shaped like him.
It was shaped like the blurred thing.
He finished the lines.
Then blinked.
Something moved.
Not on the paper.
In the room.
Behind him.
His breath stopped. Ice in his lungs. Every instinct screaming turn around and don't turn around at the same time.
He turned.
And Arthur was there.
Fully there.
Not flickering. Not a dream.
Standing.
Same height. Same shape. Same scar. Same coat. Same terrified eyes.
But more. The air around him folded like heat off pavement. The edges of his silhouette didn't stay still. They bent. Wavered. Like reality was trying to edit him out but he kept refusing.
Arthur didn't speak.
He just looked at August.
Not at his face.
Over his shoulder.
At whatever was behind him.
August stood. Slowly. The chair didn't scrape. No sound. Like the room was holding its breath.
"You're real," he whispered.
Arthur's eyes flicked to his for just a second. His lips moved. No sound, but August read them:
"So is it."
August took a single step forward and the lights cut out.
Not flickered.
Died.
Total black.
But in the dark, August felt them both.
Arthur in front.
And the other thing behind.
Breathing. Waiting. Hungry.
And then a voice. Not spoken. Not heard. But understood. Carved into the inside of August's skull:
"He failed to protect his world. Will you fail to protect yours?"
The lights snapped back on.
Arthur was gone.
But the feeling behind August wasn't.
It was closer now. Not touching. Not yet. But close enough that August could feel its shape. Too tall. Too angular. Too patient.
Sketchbook open.
New drawing on the page.
The same room.
Same desk.
But now there were three figures.
August at the desk.
Arthur by the door, hand on the handle like he was about to run.
And between them, no longer blurred, no longer hidden, the thing August had been too afraid to finish drawing at twelve.
It was smiling.
And underneath it, written in August's twelve-year-old handwriting:
"I remember now. I remember why I killed him. It was the only way to keep IT from getting out."
Then, in fresh ink:
"But you brought him back."
"So now it's here too."
"And it's so, so hungry."
August's shadow on the wall moved.
He didn't.