I held my breath, every instinct screaming for me to remain as still as possible. My mind raced, trying to match the voice to a face, a memory, anything, but it was like grasping at smoke. The man continued muttering to himself, his voice a strange echo, as if it came from a place deep within my own history.
“Always leaving your keys everywhere…” he grumbled, as though chiding me.
What keys? My keys were in my pocket. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft from the window. Who was this man? How did he know me so well, yet remain a stranger?
Minutes felt like hours as he moved around the room, picking up items, inspecting them, as if cataloging my possessions. Then, abruptly, he left, his footsteps retreating back down the hallway. I heard the front door click shut, and silence settled over the house once more.
I remained frozen, counting heartbeats, before daring to crawl out from my hiding spot. The room was empty, as though he had never been there. But on the nightstand, where I had heard him drop something, lay a photograph. I picked it up with trembling fingers.
The picture was of my family, taken years ago in front of our old house. My parents, my younger self, and a man standing slightly apart from us. My uncle Henry, who had vanished without a trace when I was a teenager. He had always been the black sheep of the family, his disappearance a mystery we had learned to live with.
Seeing his face brought a flood of memories, his voice now unmistakable—the same cadence, the same inflections. But why now? Why here?
Questions swirled in my mind as I tried to piece it all together. Was it really him, or was my mind playing tricks? And if it was him, why come back now, sneaking through my home like a ghost from the past?
Determined to find answers, I retrieved my phone and dialed my mother. As I listened to her familiar ring on the other end, I glanced around the room, half-expecting him to reappear. Finally, she answered, and I relayed the bizarre encounter, the photograph a tangible link to a past I thought was long buried.
My mother’s voice was a mix of confusion and disbelief, her silence heavy with unspoken fears. “I don’t know, Marcus,” she finally said. “If it really is Henry, maybe he’s trying to tell you something. But be careful. He wasn’t always… stable.”
As I hung up, a resolve settled over me. I knew I had to confront this specter from my past, to understand why he had returned and what he wanted. But as I prepared to face whatever lay ahead, a chilling thought lingered: I was not alone in my own home.