3AM

02

Since last night, when he vanished after threatening her without so much as a flinch, Anne couldn’t shake the feeling of being constantly watched. It was as if at any moment, she’d run into him again. It was pure madness. She knew it. She must have completely lost her mind. Things like this didn’t exist. At least, not outside of books. In real life, a ghost who was impossibly HOT—and possibly a murderer—showing up in your house was… well…

Insanity.

Madness.

A f*****g constant hallucination.

Donnie Darko had his damn rabbit, and she…

“Charles,” she said out loud, to no one, just to hear the sound of the name. She took one last drag from her cigarette before tossing it into the sink.

The owner of that name also had eyes as black as the night and hair so red it reminded her of lava flowing down from an erupting volcano. And beyond that… No matter how much she wanted to ignore it, he also possessed a maddening beauty—strong, threatening features that were absolutely magnetic.

If he were real… And as dangerous as he claimed and appeared to be…

Why the hell did she want to stay in that house?

The ghost had made it clear that the house was his. Only his, and even more so, from three to four in the morning.

That was when he took on a physical form. Like magic, appearing out of thin air. How? How was that possible!

It didn’t make sense; it wouldn’t go down her throat, it was…

“Crazy.” Anne bit into the apple with an irritated expression, her brow furrowed in impatience as she chewed.

Defying all the laws of physics and each of her beliefs—well, her lack of them—Charles seemed to have appeared to sever her, once and for all, from society.

Thoughts spun in her head like a raging tornado. Everything she had always disbelieved was being put to the test. All the skepticism that gave her some semblance of courage had evaporated the moment she saw that man standing at the foot of her bed, looking at her with eyes that seemed to hold an entire galaxy.

She couldn’t deny the growing fear as the morning wore on. She took a generous swig of brandy with the remaining bit of apple still in her mouth as she strode out of the kitchen, grabbing the car keys that had been sitting there for two days, the vehicle parked in front of the house.

Opening the door, Anne stepped out wearing pajamas, barefoot. Her hair was loose and slightly tangled, simply because she hadn’t bothered to brush it when she woke up.

She deactivated the alarm on her 4x4 truck. A sedan wouldn’t have made it halfway to this place, and she had actually grown to like it—it was almost like a cherry-colored tractor that required a step to climb into. She opened the back door, and her eyes lit up as she spotted the box, pulling it out with a triumphant smile on her lips.

“Here!” She grabbed the small wooden box from inside the cardboard one and hugged it to her chest, closing the car door and heading back to the house. Her bare feet moved quickly over the gravel, crossing the threshold and stepping onto the polished, gleaming wood of the living room floor.

Her long brown hair swayed as she, fueled by an energetic sensation of happiness, practically skipped up the stairs to the second floor. But that sensation was just the result of a generous gulp of brandy. After two hours… that was the kind of feeling that drinking again caused.

Anne slid across the floor, taking a sharp turn toward the completely silent attic. She was dancing, knowing she was either going crazy, or… he was real.

“Possibly, I’m going insane!” She let the thought that had been screaming in her head escape through her throat, reverberating through the attic.

She couldn’t believe she was talking to a ghost. An entity. And if all of this wasn’t just a figment of her lonely, alcohol-soaked mind, deep down, she didn’t want to feel fear. The wooden box was clutched tightly to her chest as her slender hand opened the heavy door and pushed it in.

“But if I’m not, Charles…”

She wondered where the ghost-man was. If he was capable of doing anything other than watching during the rest of the hours. What did he do during the day? At dusk and in the hours before three and after four in the morning?

Anne had approached this in an unusual way. She was afraid, of course, but after the initial shock, all that fear had morphed into a curiosity that embraced the madness. Was it him, from the beginning, making her feel those sensations? As if the house were both magical and haunted. Was it him moving her glasses, cleaning her rooms, making coffee, watching?

Or was it her, from the start, losing her sanity and detaching completely from reality the moment she set foot in that house?

She looked around the attic, perfectly illuminated by the morning sun’s rays streaming in through the large windows; and seeing them that way, closed, Anne placed the wooden box on the floor and walked over to the first of three old windows, pulling the rusty latch and swinging it open with a jolt.

A thin layer of dust scattered, releasing glittering particles into the air that tickled her nose. After opening all the windows, she found herself in silence once more, listening to the sound coming from outside. It was like a symphony, an orchestra of birds; there were so many different songs that she found herself imagining what their colors, the shape of their beaks, and the size of their wings might be, as her eyes wandered over the details of the room.

Life in the countryside was beautiful, full of secret pleasures she would slowly discover. She needed staff because the place was enormous, but she’d think about that later. It was still too early to bring people inside since all she wanted was to be alone.

Leaning against the window, Anne thought of her mother.

Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, in the black void, she saw her. Her smiling face, in white and opaque lines. Her relationship with her mother had always been turbulent. Full of intense arguments and slaps on the table. But despite all the yelling, the first thing she heard when she imagined her mother was her laughter. And the second thing was the warm, slow, and so comforting way she said, “I love you, daughter.”

Her eyes stung.

“Can you hear the birds outside?” Despite her low tone, her voice seemed to echo throughout the attic. “Can you see me… breaking promise after promise? Or are you already in heaven, far away from all this crap?”

The laugh was desolate and uncomfortable, and she rubbed her face to wipe away the tears.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Ann… The more you dwell on problems, the more they’ll multiply, sweetheart…”

Her lips pressed into a tight line of unhappiness and bitterness. She didn’t want to be so hard on herself by saying that she had probably caused her own mother’s untimely death. Watching her daughter waste away in broad daylight had been… A burden she couldn’t bear for long.

Anne knew how much her mother had suffered because of her addiction, knew how much it made her… disappear even while alive. Fade away, like a wick reaching its end… too quickly.

Leaning against the window, Anne felt that the sill was the only thing keeping her from falling, and perhaps it really was, given how her heart felt like a coal furnace, burning and spewing black, toxic, deadly smoke.

She turned, and almost immediately, sat down, rubbing her face again, utterly exhausted. When she opened her eyes again, her gaze fell like an anchor on one of the holes left by the shots she had fired there. Her eyes widened slightly, and without thinking much, she began to crawl toward it. Her heart nearly stopped as she closed her left eye and focused closely on that small damage and what it had revealed.

Anne bolted.

She reached the kitchen in ten seconds, grabbed the biggest knife she could find, and quickly made her way back to the exact spot where she had been before. Carefully positioning the knife’s tip in the gap between the wooden boards, she searched for a good angle and tried to pry the wood upward.

She needed a hammer.

She pushed harder, and the knife began to bend.

“f*****g s**t!” And completely determined, Anne yanked the knife out of the gap and stood up, walking through the house. She quickly threw on an old sweatshirt, denim shorts, and slippers, took three long swigs from the bottle of bourbon, and got into the cherry-colored truck, speeding toward the town.

Oh, Walch didn’t want an angry ghost in the house. Maybe there was a reason Charles had said little to nothing about that flask.

Twenty miles west, the car stopped at the first hardware store she saw and bought the first hammer she found. As long as she followed the rules, nothing bad would happen, right?

It was there that Walch had an epiphany. If she could fix, glue, or… replace the flask… If… if she could somehow gain that creature’s trust, maybe she could get to know him better and… who knows… write about it all. Maybe that’s where the next pages of her mystery would be written.

She stopped at the exit of the store and went back inside, this time with a mental list.

She needed much more than just a hammer if she wanted to make this work.

(…)

She placed the newly purchased toolbox on the floor, the weight of reality pressing down on her as if daring her to question what was real and what was merely a figment of her unraveling mind. Did such things truly exist, or was she teetering on the edge of madness? With a deliberate motion, she picked up the hammer, its cold metal comforting in her grip. The claw side easily found purchase under the nail’s head, and with a smooth levering motion, she pulled it out. Each nail she removed seemed to echo with the tension that gripped her thoughts. She felt in control, didn’t she? Her actions were deliberate, her mind clear—or so she wanted to believe. Yet, why did it feel like everything was slipping through her fingers?

As the final nail was extracted, Anne carefully pried away the old wooden plank, no more than fifty centimeters long. Her breath caught when she glimpsed the narrow gap it revealed, no wider than ten centimeters. Something was hidden there. The glint of something ancient, a hint of decay, caught her eye.

Her pulse quickened as her eyes sparkled with a mix of dread and curiosity. She reached into the shadowed crevice, her fingers brushing against the rough surface of what appeared to be an old wooden box. It was a small chest, the woven straw lid nearly consumed by termites, giving it a ghostly, skeletal appearance.

Heart pounding, Anne used the hammer to remove two more adjacent planks, widening the gap just enough to pull the chest out. In the dim light of the room, she brought it closer, the faint smell of earth and rot clinging to it. Opening the chest, she found a collection of bottles inside, each one a relic from another time—old medicine bottles, or perhaps vintage flasks. Some were cracked, others shattered, likely victims of the shot from her thirty-eight.

A distant sound broke the silence, faint but insistent. Her phone was ringing. But hadn’t she left it behind when she went to town? The thought stirred a deep anxiety within her. Clutching the chest close, Anne descended the stairs, drawn toward the source of the sound, each step weighed down by a growing sense of unease. The further she went, the more the boundary between reality and something darker seemed to blur. She grabbed the phone and noticed 28 unread messages from Dave.

A sigh was inevitable. Anne placed the chest on the table and answered the phone.

“I’m alive, I’m fine, and I can’t talk right now. Bye.”

She hung up on Dave.

The writer returned to the kitchen, where the rest of her purchases still sat in bags.

She looked at the newly purchased vodka bottle and opened it without a second thought.

Today wouldn’t be the day.

Certainly, not tomorrow, either.

Taking a generous sip, she grabbed some bags and headed back to the library.

Those bottles seemed like solid proof of her sanity. Everything seemed lighter now that she was sure she wasn’t staring into a dark room fantasizing about bears nearly two meters tall.

Right?

She smiled to herself, taking another sip as she placed a record on the turntable and sat down, carefully sorting through the shards of glass in different colors that lay inside the old box.

And there, Anne Walch spent the next long hours listening to Lana Del Rey vinyls and meticulously gluing tiny shards of glass, without realizing that as the bottle reached halfway, so did the night, creeping across the sky and bringing with it a devastating drunkenness that, among shards, chords, and fiery sips, enveloped her in a kind of trance.

An energetic, intense, deep vibration.

Lost.

With the sound of the wind, Anne opened her eyes again. She was still right there, in the same spot where she had fallen asleep, slumped over the table in her library.

Hesitant at first, her brain was adjusting to the idea that this was reality. In the first ten seconds of total inertia, with her eyes open in the silent room, illuminated only by the orange light of the chandelier, the thought that time had passed quickly flashed through her mind before disappearing and giving way to a sense of unreality.

Her breathing quickened as she straightened in the chair, looking around. The windows in the living and dining rooms were open.

Wide open.

The curtains she had bought fluttered in the wind, which gusted in, howling and making the windows rattle.

There was still a flicker of doubt, only because of the silence. Her eyes fell on the vinyl, and the record was spinning at the end, emitting an almost mute sound.

Anne was about to get up when she heard the creak of wood in the distance. Her blue eyes darted toward the door as her heart began to race erratically. A strange fear was creeping inside her when the sound came again, louder this time, and Anne stood up at the exact moment the shadow revealed itself, entering the library.

It was a panther.

Completely black.

Her heart leaped, with a massive shiver running down her spine. She felt her feet cemented to the ground and her core freezing. As the sound of the wind whipped through the air, Anne realized…

She stared into those black eyes.

Terrified, her body trembled as that thought hit her. The enormous panther bared its teeth, starting a series of slow steps toward the table. Its fur gleamed in the night’s light, moving coldly; in two seconds, the animal stopped in front of her.

Inevitably, Anne was barely able to breathe. She was petrified.

Feeling her legs knock against the side of the chair when suddenly, the animal lunged. Its heavy paws colliding with her chest, knocking her back into the chair with such force that she was thrown from the seat directly onto the floor. But before she could feel the impact, she felt the earth, and when she blinked, the creature that had leaped onto her had simply vanished.

Utterly terrified, panting, wondering how on earth this could be real, the writer tried to pull herself together. As she began to realize what was happening, her blue eyes darted around the space she could see, and she confirmed that she was alone.

Anne heard the sound of the wind passing through the foliage of the tall trees. The damp ground and the cold easily seeped through her flannel pajamas.

Then she heard branches snapping.

She turned, her chest heaving.

Something was wrong.

The fear lingered, sharp and unyielding, like a predator's gaze fixed on its prey. An instinctive sense that she was being hunted, toyed with, filled the air with a suffocating tension. And then, like a snake coiling around its victim, two hands suddenly gripped her sides. The sensation was electrifying, sending a jolt of adrenaline coursing through her veins, leaving her on the brink of fainting.

Long fingers traced a slow, deliberate path from her hips to her neck, their touch rough, as if they were trying to tear into her flesh, to rip her apart with a cruel precision. The scrape of those fingers against her skin was violent, the kind of pressure that would have drawn blood if they had claws.

But instead of pain, a strong chest pressed firmly against her back, pinning her in place. Heavy, heated breaths swept through her hair, brushing against her nape like a promise of something darker. The wind howled, branches snapped outside, and every creak of the floorboards echoed like a warning as he pulled her closer, tighter.

A quiet, almost inaudible gasp escaped her lips, a sound swallowed by the oppressive silence. Her mind spiraled into paralysis, caught between terror and a strange, seductive pull as a rough hand slid over her shoulder. The rasp of a beard scratched her fair skin, and with a single, forceful tug, the buttons of her flannel pajamas popped, the fabric parting like a wound.

The sensation was overwhelming, a surge of heat from within that seemed to cook her from the inside out. Every inch of her skin buzzed with an unbearable vibration, leaving her feeling more like a puppet in the shadow's grasp, powerless against the intensity that seized her.

Desperate to see his face, to confirm what she feared and craved to know, Anne tried to turn, but he held her fast, unyielding. The strength in his grip was absolute, and it wasn't just physical—it was a control that seeped into her mind, warping her thoughts and flooding her with a bizarre, maddening desire.

This was unlike anything she had ever felt before, more intense than any sensation she had known, and the line between dream and reality blurred until it almost disappeared. Her vision, hazy and unfocused, drifted shut as she reached up, fingers digging into the thick beard, pulling at it with an urgency that bordered on desperation.

She arched her neck back, exposing her throat in a gesture that felt both submissive and defiant. It was pure madness, an indecent, uncontrollable need that she couldn't resist.

This had to be a dream, a creation of her own twisted imagination, a secret fantasy playing out in the depths of her subconscious.

But when his hand closed around her neck, the pressure was real, the sensation unmistakable. The warmth of his breath against her lips as he leaned in, the weight of his mouth descending on hers—it was overwhelming, like being dragged into a searing, invisible ocean where the heat consumed her, leaving her without any semblance of balance or control.

Anne had never experienced anything like this, not in a dream, not in reality. And just as the intensity reached its peak, she was yanked back, as if pulled by an invisible rope, dragging her out of the abyss and into the harsh light of consciousness.

She awoke with a gasp, breathless and trembling, the remnants of the dream still burning through her veins. Disoriented, her chest heaved with the effort to calm the fire raging within.

And there he was, Charles, seated across the room in one of the burgundy armchairs, his presence undeniable, his gaze searing into her with a heat that matched the intensity of what she had just experienced.

His black eyes smoldered with a wildness that sent a shiver down her spine, a dangerous, untamed energy that seemed to promise everything she had felt in that fevered dream and more. The air between them crackled with a tension that was almost tangible, heavy with the unspoken, the unsatisfied. It was as if the dream had crossed the threshold into reality, bringing with it a desire that could not be contained.

By God and all the hells, the raw, primal power in his gaze set her pulse racing anew, her body reacting with an uncontrollable surge of heat. His silence was louder than any words, a dark, seductive force that pulled her in, making her crave the touch that had been so vividly real just moments ago.

Charles was no longer just a figure from her dreams; he was a living, breathing embodiment of her deepest fears and darkest desires. The wildness in his eyes blazed with an intensity that threatened to consume her completely, a primal force that made her heart race and her breath catch. Anne swallowed hard, feeling the raw, untamed energy that seemed ready to pull her into its depths. She felt he knew every one of her thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and desires. She felt that Charles was inside her, watching her with the same eyes as now, while she stifled a scream in her throat.

“Do you want to kill me?” she whispered, stunned.

“Usually…, that’s the last option,” he whispered back.

“It was a rhetorical question.” The writer stared at him intently. “Are you a demon, Charles? Or… a ghost or… what exactly are you?”

And then, right before her trembling blue eyes, Charles vanished. The breath caught in her throat as she stood frozen, scanning the room with wide eyes for two agonizing seconds, only for him to reappear, suddenly so close that the urge to touch him was undeniable. Her hands pressed against his broad chest—hard as steel, yet radiating a heat that felt like it could consume her.

When she looked up, she found his strong face and those piercing, unnervingly dark eyes that made everything around her feel even more sinister.

“I don’t know,” the dark creature murmured, the unexpected softness in his voice sending chills down her spine. “But I know what you are…”

His large hand was so big that it completely covered hers, capturing it, fingers closing over her flattened palm, squeezing with a deliberate, almost possessive force. “An intruder. Someone who doesn’t belong here,” he whispered, his voice dangerously close, so close that she could feel the heat of his breath against her skin. “Someone who needs to leave if she doesn’t want to lose her mind… or die.”

His voice. His hands. The cold, so strong that became fire. The eyes.

The red flags were everywhere, so why couldn’t she just… take the wise advice of that ridiculously hot demon and get out of there?

“I…” Her eyes stung. What was she doing? “Why does everything feel so… intense?” She was honest. “The fear, the curiosity… and… even this.” She referred to the touch, and that made Charles release her immediately.

Because he felt it too.

Like a wave of energy pushing him. Propelling.

“I’ve been thinking…” Anne’s voice was hoarse and shaky. Her whole body trembled. “You can’t be arrested, right? Like, by the police…”

The redhead laughed derisively.

“I guess that’s a no.” She shrugged. “So you can kill me, like,… without consequences?”

“Exactly.” With his eyes fixed on hers, Charles had the strange feeling that this woman was manipulating him.

“That’s great…” Anne smiled, feeling relieved.

“What?” The red eyebrows arched as he looked her up and down, perhaps never appearing so intimidating.

Anne’s heart skipped a beat.

“You can kill me without consequences.”

“And how can that possibly benefit you to the point of thinking it’s great?”

“Well, since you’re the new guy around here, let’s just dive right in. I’m pretty sure I’ve already given you the trailer: Mom’s dead, my siblings despise me—well, except for my baby sister, who’s too busy pitying me to hate me properly. My life? Oh, it’s a train wreck in slow motion, mostly because I can’t seem to stop drowning in booze. The media? They’ve turned me into their favorite punching bag, and my reputation? It’s not just in the trash; it’s buried so deep it’s probably fossilized by now. So, if the universe decided to gift me a killer to save me from the hassle of doing the deed myself, well, isn’t that just the kind of cosmic efficiency I should be thanking my lucky stars for?” And somewhat slyly, she smiled.

“You really are crazy, lady.” Charles had a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows. Why did she seem to awaken some kind of… humanity in him?

“So, I was thinking… Could you maybe hold off on killing me until I finish my last book? You know, just a little professional courtesy. I’d hate to be stuck in limbo forever with an unfinished manuscript hanging over my head. Plus, if I off myself, my sister’s going to be a wreck—like, lifelong therapy and a collection of cats kind of wreck. But if I get murdered? She might actually get some closure. You’d be doing us both a favor, really.”

But he disappeared before he could respond, and looking at the clock, Anne realized it was four in the morning. Her eyes fell on the two glued but still shattered flasks since the bullet had pulverized much of the glass.

With her heart galloping in her chest, she collapsed into the armchair.

(…)

The wooden bed, even in pieces—headboard, footboard, and sides—was ridiculously heavy. And those “damn stairs,” as she’d affectionately started calling them over the past half hour, weren’t making things any easier. But hey, progress is progress, right? Only the slats and the mattress left.

Gasping for air, Anne finally reached the highest room in the house, clutching the wooden slats like they were some sort of trophy. Now, just the mattress. Not exactly a comforting thought—more like a reminder that she still had a battle to win. She placed the slats down next to the other pieces, casting a quick, proud glance at the small wooden box she’d safely tucked in the corner.

It was late, already past three o’clock, and the sun would set soon. Anne hurried down the stairs, once again confronting the beast of a mattress like it was a monster taunting her from the guest suite. She grabbed its padded edges and stood it upright, dragging it through the obstacle course of tools scattered on the floor. Reaching the stairs, she realized the obvious: pulling it up was the only option. With a deep sigh, she climbed the first step, lifting the mattress and using every last bit of strength she could muster.

“Damn… weight!” she huffed, cursing her life choices and the existence of gravity after nearly seven minutes of grueling effort.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, she got the mattress to the top, letting it drop with a satisfying thud as she flopped down on it, panting like she’d just run a marathon. Her blue eyes scanned the room, taking in the disassembled bed parts and scattered screws. The open windows let in a cool breeze that felt almost too kind, as she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

The first three buttons of her pajamas had to go—wasn’t that hot outside, but she was pretty sure she was slowly roasting from the inside out. Maybe it was the house. Or maybe it was just Anne, turning into a human oven.

With a mix of stubborn determination and sheer exhaustion, she began assembling the bed. Some hidden genius for this kind of thing seemed to kick in, though she couldn’t resist cursing loudly enough to make a sailor blush. Half an hour later, the bed was finally put together. The room, bathed in the soft, warm light of the setting sun, was starting to cool down, and for a brief moment, everything seemed peaceful.

She threw the mattress onto the slats with the last of her energy, then dragged in a bedside table, a rug, pillows, and bedding. After setting everything up and putting the tools away, Anne stood back, surveying her handiwork. It wasn’t just a bed—it was a victorious battle against the forces of chaos and the cruel gods of heavy furniture. And damn, if that wasn’t the most satisfying thing she’d done all day.

Triumphant but utterly spent, she shuffled downstairs, grabbed whatever food was closest, and downed some guava juice that had been languishing in the fridge since her arrival. It wasn’t until she nearly fainted after raising her arms to stretch that it hit her—she smelled like a coal worker who’d spent sixteen hours in the furnace room.