I sit frozen at the table, my hands gripping the edge so tightly my knuckles have turned white. The shadow is gone, but something lingers in the air. A heaviness that wasn't there before. The coffee in my cup has grown cold, and I realize I've been holding my breath.
My rational mind kicks in. Stress. Grief does things to people. I've seen it in my years as a detective. Witnesses who swear they saw things that weren't there. Suspects who convinced themselves of elaborate lies. The human brain under pressure creates its own reality sometimes.
I release the table and lean back in my chair. The wood creaks softly. Just wood. Just furniture. Just my imagination playing tricks on me because I miss her so much that I'm willing my mind to fill the empty spaces.
But then the air shifts again.
It's subtle. The kind of draft you feel when someone walks past you, except there's no one here. The temperature drops just enough to raise the hair on my arms. I look toward the window, but it's closed. The heating system hums quietly in the background, steady and warm.
I stand up abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. The sound is too loud in the silence. I need to move, need to do something normal. I walk to the kitchen and pour the cold coffee down the sink. The liquid swirls and disappears, and I focus on the simple action. Pour. Wash. Dry. Normal things.
When I turn around, there's someone sitting at the table.
My heart stops.
A man, maybe late twenties, sits in the chair across from where I was sitting. He's wearing a dark jacket and jeans. His hair is brown, slightly messy, and his face has a worn quality, exhausted. He's solid enough that I can see him clearly, but there's something wrong with the edges. The light doesn't quite hit him the same way it hits everything else.
I drop the cup. It hits the floor and shatters, pieces scattering across the tiles. The sound snaps me back to the moment.
"Oh Hell no!" I screamed.
The man looks up at me. His eyes are dark, sad. When he speaks, his voice sounds distant, but clear enough.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."
I stare at him. My training tells me to assess the situation. How did he get in? The door is locked. The windows are closed. But my training also tells me that people don't just appear in chairs. People don't have that strange quality with the light.
"Who are you?" My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
"Marcus." He shifts in the chair, and I notice he doesn't make the same creaking sound the wood usually makes. "Marcus Webb."
I'm standing in my kitchen, talking to someone who shouldn't exist. The broken cup crunches under my feet as I take a step closer. Marcus doesn't move. He just watches me with those tired eyes.
"How did you get in here?"
He tilts his head slightly. "I don't think I came through the door."
The honesty in his voice catches me off guard. There's no deception there, no attempt to explain it away. He seems as confused by the situation as I am.
I walk slowly back to the table. Marcus watches me but doesn't seem threatening. There's something defeated about his posture, something broken. I've seen that look before, on people who've lost everything.
I sit down carefully in my chair. Marcus is real enough that I can see him clearly now. The stubble on his jaw, the wrinkles in his jacket, the way his hands rest on the table. But that strange quality remains, something that tells my brain this isn't quite right.
"Are you..." I pause. The word sounds ridiculous before I even say it. "Are you dead?"
Marcus considers the question for a moment. "Yeah. I think so."
The simple answer hits me harder than any elaborate explanation would have. I lean forward, studying his face. There's no madness there, no attempt to convince me of something impossible. Just a man who seems to be stating a fact.
"When?"
"Five years ago. November fifteenth."
The date hangs in the air between us. I find myself doing the mental calculation automatically. Five years and three months. I think about what I was doing then. Still working cases. Still married. Still living in a world where everything made sense.
"What happened to you?"
Marcus looks down at his hands. "Car accident."
He says it quietly, and there's weight in those two words. Not just the fact of his death, but something more. Guilt, maybe. Regret.
I should be terrified. I should be running out of my apartment, calling someone, getting help. Instead, I'm sitting here having a conversation with a dead man, and it feels almost natural. Maybe grief has prepared me for impossible things.
"Why are you here?" I ask.
Marcus meets my eyes again. "I don't know. I woke up here, at this table. Well, not woke up exactly, but..." He trails off, searching for words.
"How long have you been here?"
"Tonight is the first time. I think I've been other places before this, but it's all fuzzy. Hard to remember." He looks around the apartment. "This place feels different. Calmer."
I think about that. My apartment, calm. It doesn't feel calm to me anymore. It feels empty and hollow and full of ghosts. But maybe that's exactly what makes it right for him.
"Do you know why you can't..." I pause, not sure how to phrase it. "Why you haven't moved on?"
The question seems to hit something in him. His expression changes, becomes heavier. "There are things I need to make right."
The way he says it tells me there's more to that story. Much more. But I don't push. In my experience, people tell you what they need to tell you when they're ready.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. I study Marcus, still trying to process that I'm having a rational conversation with someone who died five years ago. The skeptical part of my mind keeps trying to find explanations. Hallucination. Breakdown. Some kind of elaborate hoax. But the evidence sits across from me, solid and present and impossible to dismiss.
"Are there others?" I ask finally. "Other people who..."
"Who can't move on?" Marcus nods. "Yeah. There are others."
Something cold settles in my stomach. "Do they come here too?"
"Some might. This place..." He looks around again. "It feels safe. Neutral. Sometimes we need that."
I think about my table, the place where my wife and I shared so many meals, so many conversations. The place where we planned our future and discussed our days and fought about small things that seemed important at the time. Now it's become something else entirely. A waystation for the dead.
"What do you need to make right?" I ask.
Marcus is quiet for a long time. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
"I hurt people. Innocent people." He looks at me directly, and there's pain in his eyes that's so raw it makes my chest tighten. "Children."
The word hangs heavy in the air. I feel something shift inside me, the detective instincts awakening. This isn't just a lost soul looking for peace. This is someone carrying the weight of a terrible truth.
"Tell me," I say.
Marcus shakes his head. "Not yet. I need to... I need to understand it first. What really happened that night." He looks at me with something that might be hope. "But I think you might be able to help me."
I stare at him. A dead man, sitting at my table, asking for my help to solve his own case. The rational part of my mind screams that this is impossible, that I'm losing my grip on reality. But the larger part, the part that's been hollowed out by loss and looking for purpose, finds itself nodding.
"I'll try," I hear myself say.
Marcus's relief is visible. His shoulders drop slightly, and for the first time since he appeared, he looks almost peaceful.
"Thank you," he says. "I don't know why I ended up here, but... thank you."
The air in the apartment feels different now. Less empty. Still heavy with sadness, but not just mine anymore. Shared sadness, shared burden. For the first time in months, I don't feel completely alone.
Marcus begins to fade slightly around the edges. I can see through him to the wall behind.
"Are you leaving?"
"Not leaving exactly. Just... fading back. But I'll return." He looks at me seriously. "Is that okay?"
I consider the question. My life has become a series of empty days, meaningless routines, conversations with memories. Now I'm being offered something else. Something impossible, but real.
"Yeah," I say. "It's okay."
Marcus nods and grows fainter. Within moments, he's gone completely, leaving me alone at the table again. But the chair across from me no longer feels empty. It feels like it's waiting.