Chapter 5: The Silent Vigil

Jane woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, her eyes snapping open to the thin wash of moonlight stretching across the room.

Something felt wrong.

She frowned in the dark. Since she had opened her eyes, he hadn’t changed position once. Not a hand. Not a shoulder. Not even the slow shift people made in their sleep without knowing it.

She waited a minute, then another. Still nothing.

A nervous laugh almost slipped out. “You must be exhausted,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

She leaned a little closer, searching his face for the smallest sign that he was asleep. A twitch beneath his eyelids. A tiny wrinkle across his forehead. Anything.

There was nothing.

Her smile faded.

“You’ve got to be sleeping,” she murmured softly. “Are you still asleep?”

The words disappeared into the heavy silence.

No answer.

That was when uneasiness began creeping into her chest.

The room was quiet. Too quiet. It felt heavy and lonely, and it made Jane feel uneasy. Moonlight came through the dirty window, showing him lying flat on his back, not moving a single inch.

Jane couldn’t even help it. Her heart stopped pounding for a second, then started beating fast and hard. Her stomach dropped with a cold, sick feeling.

It was 2:00 AM. The house was completely dead. There was no wind outside, no cars passing, and no pipes making noise. Just a heavy quiet that made every breath she took sound too loud.

A little voice inside her told her to move closer. She wanted more. She wanted him again. She just wanted to feel him. She slid across the bed, moving right up next to him in a hurry, her hand reaching out to touch his chest to wake him up for another round right now.

“You’re still awake, aren’t you?” she whispered into the dark, her fingers pressing right against his skin. “Don’t you want me again?”

Nothing. He didn’t move at all.

The room was pitch black. She tried to shake his arm in a hurry, her fingers digging in, but his body was stiff as wood. Her heart skipped a beat, and she ran her hands higher, trying to push him a little, but his muscles wouldn’t budge. Not even a twitch.

First she felt mad, then confused, and then a cold, creeping fear took over.

Jane slid closer, her cheek brushing his bare arm. Goosebumps covered her skin all over. His skin wasn’t just cool; it was frozen, hard like stone. It felt like touching something buried under winter ice.

Her breath caught in her throat. She pushed herself up on her elbows in a rush and stared down at him. In the pale light, his face looked too perfect, and scary. He hadn’t shifted even a tiny bit since they fell asleep hours before.

Wanting to prove she was just losing her mind, Jane dropped her ear right against his chest. She stayed dead still, holding her breath to listen.

No thump. No beat. Just silence.

Shaking all over, she pressed her fingers under his jaw in a panic, then slid them down to his wrist: zero pulse. She put her nose right under his mouth and waited ten long seconds to feel his breath, her hands slipping and sliding. No warm air hit her skin. Nothing.

She was scared now, really scared. Her heart pounded, and she started shaking so hard her teeth clicked together, her brain going crazy. In the dark, she squeezed her eyes shut and started praying in her head over and over, mixing everything up: God please help me, God please help me, what is happening?

She reached out with shaking fingers and tried to lift his eyelid to see what was going on, but his eyes were sealed shut, locked tight like a dead person’s. The truth hit her hard and fast: whatever was sharing this bed wasn’t breathing, and yet it wasn’t dead either.

The room felt like it was shrinking, the walls pressing in. The big house didn’t feel like a home anymore. It felt like a tomb. She wanted to bolt, to pull the door open and run until her lungs burned, but her legs wouldn’t listen. A sick, scary curiosity kept her stuck in the same spot, telling her that looking away might get her killed.

So she stayed. She watched shadows crawl on the ceiling, her eyes darting everywhere. The time dragged on and on. Out of the corner of her eye, dark shapes moved near the corners of the room, vanishing the second she tried to look at them.

Finally, she got too tired. Her burning eyes got heavy, and even though every part of her wanted to stay awake, sleep pulled her under.

She had no idea how long she slept. Minutes or hours?

A heavy, ice-cold hand grabbed her shoulder out of nowhere.

Her eyes snapped open, heart hammering against her ribs. Gray morning light peeked through the curtains. The clock read 6:00 AM.

He was sitting upright, staring straight down at her. His dark eyes were wide and steady. Not a single strand of hair was out of place, and his clothes looked completely untouched by a whole night of sleep.

Jane was frozen in place, stuck right where she lay. She wanted to ask him what happened last night. She wanted to ask him why his body was like ice and why he hadn’t been breathing. The words were right there in her mouth, but she was too scared to say them.

He didn’t look at her with any of the warmth or care he showed last night. He looked at her like she was a total stranger.

“Get dressed,” he whispered in a rough, quiet voice.

He didn’t explain anything. He didn’t make up any excuse. He just watched her with that quiet, blank stare, as if he had known every second she spent listening for a heartbeat in the dark.

Too terrified to fight back, Jane jumped up and started grabbing her clothes, her hands still shaking and fumbling with everything in a hurry to fix herself. Sitting there in the cold morning light, she knew her old life was gone. She had walked right into a trap, and whatever lived behind those eyes was only just starting to wake up.