The House of Horror

Episode twenty-ninth

Scene: The Wooden Bench

The villa’s garden was drowned in a heavy silence, a silence resembling the tense stillness that comes before a storm. The trees swayed faintly with the damp evening breeze, while the chirping of insects mingled with the distant hum of a world still awake beyond the property’s walls. There, in front of the small room reserved for the gatekeeper, stood the wooden bench, waiting for someone to sit upon it, as if it were an old witness to secrets that could never be told.

Zafer sat first. It was not the kind of posture one could call comfortable, but rather the stiff stillness of a body that did not belong on the wooden seat. His eyes remained fixed, staring silently into the void as though searching for something caught between folds of air. His body barely moved, as if he were not flesh and blood at all, but a shadow frozen in the shape of a man.

Moments later, Sayed the gatekeeper emerged from his small room. His face carried the familiar fatigue of a man worn down by years of labor, yet he still clung to his daily rituals. He sat beside Zafer on the same bench, unaware that he was not alone. To Sayed, the bench seemed utterly empty except for him.

He muttered in a low voice, barely audible:

— “There’s something strange…”

The words fell from his lips more like a confession to himself than a statement intended for another. He slowly lifted his head, letting his gaze roam across the dim garden, as though trying to examine every corner for an explanation to the uneasy weight pressing against his chest. Something in the air felt unnatural. The breeze was no longer refreshing—it was chilling, exaggeratedly so, like the breath escaping from a dead man’s chest.

Suddenly, Sayed stood up, cleared his throat, and walked a few steps toward the door of his room. He half-turned, his anxious eyes scanning the garden as if to make sure no one was watching him. He did not know that a pair of piercing eyes, swallowed by the blackness of the night, never left him for a single moment.

He entered his room. The creak of the metal door echoed faintly across the garden, then slowly faded. Moments later, the sound of a radio drifted out from inside. The music station had just begun playing an old melody, a song he knew well, carrying with it memories of his distant youth. The singer’s voice was warm, sincere—but it clashed with the ominous mood suffocating the garden. The song was born of life, while the garden was steeped in a hidden death.

Sayed returned once more, his heavy steps carrying him back to his usual place on the bench. He leaned against the cold wood and exhaled, as if trying to rid himself of the unease weighing down on him.

Beside him sat Zafer, silent, unmoving, watching him with eyes unseen by any living soul. He did not approach, nor did he speak, yet his presence was suffocating in its intensity. His gaze was pinned on Sayed, following every subtle motion—the trembling of his hand, the darting of his eyes, the movement of his lips as they shaped scattered words.

Sayed did not know he was not alone. He could not sense that every ordinary action he made, every sigh that escaped his lungs, was mirrored silently in the heart of the figure seated beside him. Zafer did not blink, did not avert his eyes, as though he were trying to penetrate into the depths of the man, to read the fear or confusion hidden within him.

Minutes dragged on, heavy and relentless. The radio song gradually faded, replaced by another, softer tune. Yet nothing changed. The atmosphere remained just as weighted, and the shadow continued to sit beside the living body, watching him as one studies a prey.

The terrifying truth was that the wooden bench was no longer a seat for one, but had become a witness to the meeting of two worlds: the world of the living, to which Sayed belonged, and the world of shadows, inhabited by Zafer.