Chapter 8 - A Polite Knock

Soft. Measured. Gentle.

I don’t move from beside the couch, my cheek pressed against the carpet. The sour stench of vomit sits thick in the air. My throat burns, my mouth is raw, my body still trembles from my uninvited guest.

I should be moving, hiding or even grabbing something to defend myself.

My limbs feel rooted in the ground, heavy and alien. As if once again they belong to someone else, and I’m only wearing them awkwardly. My eyes lock on the hallway stairs, waiting involuntarily.

An unnatural darkness grows from it.

It creeps along the edges of the room, pressing inward until the walls feel far closer than they should.

The air grows dense, harder to breathe, tinged with a faint metallic taste that wasn’t there before.

My chest tightens as my breath stutters in shallow pulls that don’t fill my lungs properly.

Panic. It has to be.

Or too many pills and too little sleep.

My body is finally collapsing under it all.

The knock comes again, softer this time, almost polite.

Like it knows I’m here, but is respectful enough to wait for me.

I don’t answer. I don’t move. If I stay still, if I don’t acknowledge it, maybe it leaves.

The handle turns.

The door opens.

My stomach drops.

I swear I locked the door. Koan, you idiot.

I try to move, even just a finger, but nothing responds. My body stays pinned, locked in place like something has taken control away from me entirely.

The darkness halts its advance, but terrifyingly, it now feels like it is watching me.

“Apologies for the intrusion.”

The voice was just as calm and polite as his earlier knocks.

The tone brought a genuine care that was a stark contrast to the encroaching darkness that covers the walls of my flat.

The air loosens, and the darkness recedes. Almost as if taking a step back after sensing my awareness.

Measured, unhurried footsteps draw closer, deliberate as if the person has endless time.

Someone who isn’t afraid.

I push myself to stand as the man steps into my lounge room.

Black suit. Black shirt. Black tie. All immaculate. Every line precise, every detail in place, as if he were arranged rather than arriving. He moves with quiet certainty, as the room has always been his. The contrast with the messy room is immediately apparent, making him stand out almost more than he should.

He stops when he sees me.

A flicker of surprise crosses his face, brief but real, then it’s gone.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, softer now. “I didn’t expect to find you like this.”

He offers a gentle smile.

“Get out,” I manage to reply, though it barely carries any weight to it.

My voice quivers, laying bare my rising fear.

Pathetic.

He doesn’t move. He studies me instead, calm, composed, as if he’s already decided I’m not a threat.

He doesn’t even pay attention to the smell of vomit.

“I noticed you leaving the hospital,” he says.

My brow tightens. Fist clenches.

You can’t even fight Koan.

“I sensed something was wrong. Something most people wouldn’t be able to comprehend.”

The words take a second to land, sliding into place slowly through the haze in my head.

Then they click.

Interest cuts through the fear, a surge that surprises me.

“How…?” My voice feels distant.

“I’ve dealt with it myself,” he says. “And I’ve helped many others get through it.”

My pulse spikes, but the words are comforting.

Others? Am I not alone with this?

“You really know what is happening to me?” My desperation is exposing me.

His expression softens, not with pity, but familiarity.

“I believe I do.”

Relief hits harder than it should, flooding through me, loosening something tight and painful that’s been building for days. Someone understands. Someone finally knows.

A quieter thought pushes back, from an emotion that is definitely completely my own.

Life is never this convenient for you.

I ignore it.

“I’ve been seeing things,” I say. “Not just hallucinations. Places. People. It’s like I’m there.”

“That aligns with what most experience,” he reassures, his manner pushing me to continue.

“I see through them. Sometimes I’m in them. Sometimes I’m just watching.”

My mouth runs. My mind tries to give a little warning.

You don’t even know who this is. Stop talking.

“And you feel what they feel?” He knows exactly what I want to hear.

I hesitate, throat tightening slightly.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s worse.”

He absorbs that without reaction.

“You previously experienced headaches, perhaps with visual distortions and the occasional sensory bleed?”

I nod.

“Now you feel a gnawing ache in your body as if you are ill?

How does he know this? Am I really not alone in this?

He looks at me sympathetically now.

“This part is the hardest as your body has begun to fail.”

The words land heavier than I expect. I stiffen.

“Not to alarm you,” he adds lightly. “But you appear to be entering what we classify in your circumstance as stage three. The illness of the body.”

Stage three.

It sounds clinical, detached.

But it fits everything that has happened so well.

“I’m not losing my mind?” I ask.

“No.”

The certainty in his voice steadies something in me.

“Please, sit.”

He gestures to the couch, while turning the spare chair to face me and sitting down.

It’s my house.

The thought flickers, but doesn’t hold.

Something about him is calm and grounding.

If I just listen, maybe everything will finally start to make sense.

I sit on the couch. My body responds quicker now, though movement still lags, as if I’m half a beat behind myself. It might be the drugs, but I can’t be sure.

He leans in, smiling kindly.

“Tell me more, so that I might help.”

And I do.

The words come unevenly at first, but he doesn’t interrupt. He listens, patient, attentive.

I talk about the first dream, of a man in a bed, missing an eye. The gold-eyed creature. The way reality bends now, like it’s losing structure. I talk about that other place, that seems to mirror our own and creatures that hunt whoever I am in there as well.

“I can see through them,” I say. “Other people.”

He nods. Ever patient with my rambling.

My voice falters. My throat chokes up, lip quivering and eyes watering.

He gives me a moment.

Then, calmly, “You are becoming what we refer to as a Possessed Vessel”

I blink.

“What?”

“The world you are seeing is where your counterpart resides, or in your case, where the one you are to possess lives. And later, where your ‘other’, your Alter as we call them, will live.”

“We right now reside in the Overworld. Though anyone who isn’t a Vessel would just see it as Earth. The normal world.”

Sounds impossible.

But it fits everything I have experienced so well. Every piece locking into place to make a picture of my circumstance with sickening clarity.

“So, I’m not insane,” I say quietly.

“No. You are most definitely not insane. Though it may all still feel insane, my words likely still don’t offer you true comfort. We will change that, I promise.”

Relief floods through me again, like a tormented curse has been lifted. I want more of this feeling, so I keep talking. Faster and with less control than before.

I bring up my time in the hospital. That moment. Being there. Watching. And that door that just begged me to open it.

My voice tightens, then stops.

Refusing to say anymore, something deep within is instructing me to stop.

Do you really trust him?

The room notices. It becomes colder. Moving again, subtle, but unmistakable.

The man leans forward slightly.

“Koan.”

The tone of his voice is so familiar now.

“I need your attention now.”

I reflexively flinch, a deep chill seeps into my bones.

My mind scrambles through the haze, pulling at something I don’t want to find.

His voice.

I’ve heard it before.

At the wretched hospital, though not in my body, but in the others, while lying there. Helpless.

Certainty spreads through me.

Slow and tormenting.

He watches me.

And smiles.

Not the same smile.

This one stretches too far, too thin, like it doesn’t belong on a human face.

I don’t move, but something inside me starts to recoil hard enough to hurt.

Recognition flickers in his eyes.

“Ah,” he says softly, with a sense of pity. “That’s most unfortunate.”

Faster than I can even comprehend, the room folds.

Not darkens. Folds.

Space bends inward from all sides, tearing away as darkness pours in from every direction, swallowing depth, swallowing distance until nothing remains to measure.

The couch beneath him stays.

The chair beneath me stays.

Everything else is gone.

We sit suspended in space, impossibly close, as if reality has been stripped back to nothing but this small, fragile spotlighted surface.

The air turns cold, piercing, pressing against my skin from every angle. My breath fogs and disappears instantly, swallowed by the dark.

Fear rises.

But it doesn’t take hold cleanly.

Because beneath it, woven through it, is something else.

Relief.

The same quiet pull from before. The same sense that if I just listen, just trust him, I’ll be okay.

It makes no sense.

My thoughts catch between running and staying, trusting and fearing, none of them settling.

He sits across from me, but he isn’t the same anymore. Something beneath him shows now, not fully visible, but there, distorting the space around him.

His eyes showcase an utterly new personality.

Malice radiates from him, echoing the predatory darkness pressing closer.

“It’s an awful shame you recognised me.”

I can’t respond. My body locks again, tighter than before.

He stands, slow and deliberate. He doesn’t step closer.

He doesn’t need to.

“I do apologise,” he says calmly, but it’s devoid of the pleasantry from before.

“It seems I have an important appointment scheduled.”

My pulse hammers in my ears.

“I could help you. In fact, I may be the only one who can.”

The words sink into the space between us, heavy.

“And soon you will discover that.”

Something in me snaps. Self-preservation takes control.

I move.

The chair scrapes harshly as I stumble back, nearly falling. I don’t look at him again.

I charge into the darkness. Its cold embrace digs into me as I submerge.

It’s so cold.

I reach out, feeling for the door. I find the handle and tear it wide.

My bedroom is lit, unaffected by the dark, freezing shroud.

I slam the door, and the lock clicks.

I press my ear against my chest, heaving, breath tearing in and out.

Wood groans as a withering cold seeps in.

Ice branches beneath the door, overrunning the carpet.

I listen intently, my body's warmth holding off the frost.

Nothing follows.

No footsteps. No knock.

I lean in, and the door shatters into thousands of frozen splinters.

I land hard.

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