Jeff learned early that leaving could sound like love.
The ceiling fan clicked like an impatient clock as his mother folded his clothes with ritual care. She did not cry. Crying invited questions, and questions invited hesitation. Jeff sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded, nodding whenever she said, "Only for a while," because words made pain louder.
When the hostel gate closed behind him, the sound echoed too long. Jeff felt it then—attention without form. Something leaned toward him, curious, as if a door had been opened and never shut. That night he dreamed of a corridor lined with doors, each marked with his name. None would open. Something behind him waited, breathing without lungs.
Jeff moved through hostels the way others moved through seasons. Some removed mirrors after boys screamed at their reflections. Others never had mirrors at all. At night, beds creaked even when no one turned. Sometimes Jeff felt the mattress dip, as if another child lay beside him, listening. He never looked. One boy screamed at 2:11 a.m. By morning, his bed was empty. The mattress was warm.
Maggie arrived like noise breaking glass. She talked too much, laughed too loudly, and refused to whisper.
"You always look like you're apologizing," she told Jeff once.
"I am," he said.
"For existing?"
"Sometimes."
She laughed, fearless. With Maggie around, the walls stayed quiet. Jeff slept better. That was when it noticed her.
On her last day, Maggie hugged him too tightly. "If you hear me laugh later," she whispered, "don't answer. Promise."
Jeff laughed nervously. "You're being dramatic."
She didn't laugh back.
That night, laughter crawled through the pipes—wrong, stretched, learning. Jeff buried his face in his pillow and stayed silent. The laughter paused, as if listening.
His father's voice disappeared the day Jeff chose his mother's religion.
"You chose her god," his father said. "Live with it."
The line went dead. That silence felt deliberate—an offering. Jeff dreamed of hands clapping slowly in the dark, applauding his obedience.
Jeff kept moving. Schools, rooms, contracts that lasted weeks. In one hostel, chalk symbols appeared overnight. Jeff wiped them away. They returned thicker. One morning the chalk spelled a date he had not lived yet. Another time it spelled WAIT. The walls creaked approval.
When he reached the city, it did not welcome him. It watched. Buildings leaned closer than necessary. Windows reflected him a second too late. Jeff worked until his hands shook and studied until letters slid off the page. Exhaustion thinned the wall between thought and sound.
At 3:17 a.m., the floorboards began to speak.
"Jeff."
He answered once.
"Who are you?"
The voice paused, pleased. "I am what you leave behind."
Love found him when he was weakest. She said his quiet felt safe. In stairwells, lights flickered. Once she froze and asked, "Did you hear that?"
Jeff said no.
Behind him, footsteps stopped.
The wedding happened quickly, like a ritual performed incorrectly. In the photographs, shadows filled spaces where guests should have been. On the twenty-first night, Jeff woke alone. The bed dipped anyway.
"You're not my wife," he whispered.
Something brushed his cheek. "I know."
She left at dawn. The ring stayed warm. After that, the shadow wore Jeff's face more often—in dreams, then in reflections, then briefly in crowds. Loss came faster: jobs, friends, sleep.
"You endure so well," the presence said.
Jeff began receiving messages from an unknown number.
Why didn't you answer when I laughed?
He saw Maggie once on a train platform, wearing the same yellow dress from school, unchanged by time. When he blinked, she was gone. He understood then—she hadn't left. She had been taken.
His mother's letters arrived smelling of incense and smoke.
We were not always poor, one said. We were hiding.
She wrote of a thing that fed on endurance. Of prayers spoken aloud as weapons. Of silence as surrender. Jeff began talking to empty rooms. They listened.
When he finally returned to his father's house, it smelled of dust and old prayers. His father sat alone, eyes sunken.
"It followed you," his father said.
"You knew?" Jeff whispered.
"Your mother escaped it," his father said. "I stayed quiet. That's how it feeds."
Jeff's rented room began to breathe at night. Walls pulsed. He pressed his palm to them. They were warm. Debt collectors knocked politely and always knew his name. Their shadows lingered after they left.
Introverts listen. That is how it learned everything about him—his fears, his prayers, his name.
One night, it stepped fully into the light. It wore his failures like skin.
"Why me?" Jeff asked.
"Because you never screamed," it replied.
Jeff remembered his mother's voice raised in prayer. Maggie's laughter before it broke. Himself, before silence became survival. He spoke. He shouted. He screamed his name into the dark.
The thing recoiled, unraveling, screaming with his voice.
Silence followed.
Real silence.
Jeff still stands.
But sometimes, at 3:17 a.m., the floorboards creak—as if remembering.