The next morning, Hale woke to quiet.
Not peaceful quiet—just absence. The kind of silence that sets your nerves on edge because something should be there. His eyes opened slowly. The blanket was still slightly warm at his feet.
But the cat was gone.
He sat up, rubbing his face. The memory of the previous night came back in flashes. The mirror. The reflection. The grin. That... voice. And then—the meow.
He pulled on a hoodie and padded barefoot into the hallway.
No cat.
He checked the living room.
No cat.
The front door was still locked from the inside.
And yet, it was just… gone.
He checked under the couch, behind the curtains, even inside the kitchen cabinets. Nothing. No trail of fur. No scent. No sign that it had ever been there at all.
Except—
The rug in the living room.
There, in the center, where the cat had curled up the night before—was a single short whisker. Thin. White. Curved ever so slightly, like the crescent of a new moon.
He picked it up and held it between his fingers.
Cold.
At school, Hale didn't mention the cat.
Not even to Barney.
He just moved through the day in a haze. Every hallway looked longer. Every voice sounded distant. The sketch in his notebook—he didn't remember drawing it. It wasn't the keyhole this time.
It was a shape. Loosely feline. But twisted.
As if the body was melting into something else.
Something watching.
That night, he kept the whisker beside his bed.
He didn't know why.
But something about it felt like a tether. A reminder. A message.
He lay down, staring at the ceiling.
3:00 AM.
The hour before the veil thinned.
3:07 AM.
His breath was shallow now. Waiting.
Tick.
3:12 AM.
A cold breeze drifted through the room.
But the windows were shut.
He sat up slowly—and froze.
On the wall beside the window, drawn in something like soot, was a symbol. The same one that was forming beneath his skin. But completed. Closed.
A full circle with an eye in the center.
No sound. No warning.
The whisker on his nightstand curled in on itself and disintegrated into ash.
And the room went completely still.
As if something had left.
But not far.