There’s something in my room. Something is breathing when I breathe. I can’t explain how I know… but I know I’m not alone in my room.
Jordan woke up and smacked his phone screen until his finger found the snooze button on his alarm. If only he could fall back into that deep sleep for five more minutes. But he knew it was useless.
Instead, he flopped over to his back to stare at the ceiling for the five minutes before his alarm went off a second time. And in those five minutes he fought and lost an argument with himself about if he really, truly needed to get up and go to class.
And when the blaring alarm started up, he turned it off and dragged himself out of bed.
Something about that five-minute snooze had been different the last few days. Used to be he’d sit and stare at the ceiling and contemplate what he had to accomplish that day and maybe think about what he would wear if it was important enough. But lately, it was like he was listening for something instead.
It had all started with a creak of the floorboard.
It doesn’t sound like something that important or even something that should have caught his attention. But it had. It wasn’t like just the house settling, or someone moving around on the floor above him. It had been a very distinct creak, like someone was standing in the corner of his room and had shifted their weight from one foot to the other.
And even though he’d only heard it once, Jordan waited to hear it again every morning since. Because something in the back of his brain told him whatever had made that noise was still there.