Part 1

The heat in Chicago that summer was oppressive, the kind of thick, humid weight that sticks your clothes to your skin and makes the air feel solid in your lungs. It was 1904, and the city was bustling, loud, and alive, but in the small second-story room of the bed and breakfast where I was staying, it felt like a suffocating box.

My name is Anna. I was visiting the city for a few days, a trip that was supposed to be filled with the excitement of the new department stores and the vibrant energy of the streets. Instead, I found myself lying awake at 2:00 AM, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, my stomach churning. Maybe it was the minced pie I’d had for dinner—it hadn’t tasted quite right—or maybe it was just the stifling lack of airflow in the room.

The silence of the room was heavy, broken only by the distant, rhythmic clatter of a carriage on cobblestones somewhere far off. I tossed and turned, the sheets tangling around my legs like a trap. Finally, frustration overtook exhaustion. I threw the covers off, my nightgown damp with sweat, and walked to the single window at the far end of the room.

I pushed the sash up. It groaned in the frame, a loud wooden protest in the quiet night. A rush of slightly cooler air hit my face, smelling of coal dust and the dampness of the lake. I stood there for a moment, letting the breeze dry the perspiration on my forehead, watching the gas lamps flicker on the empty street below. It was peaceful. It felt safe.

Satisfied, I turned back to my bed, the darkness of the room feeling a little less hostile now. I lay back down, the fresh air circulating, and finally, my eyes grew heavy. I drifted into that shallow, fragile state between wakefulness and sleep.

But it didn’t last.

Hours later—or maybe only minutes, time feels distorted in the dark—my eyes snapped open. I didn’t wake up slowly; I woke up with a jolt, my heart hammering against my ribs. You know that feeling when you know, with absolute primal certainty, that you are not alone? That primitive alarm bell that rings in the back of your brain?

I lay frozen, my breath caught in my throat. The room was dark, shadowed and still. You’re being silly, Anna, I told myself. You’re just anxious. It’s a strange city.

I sat up slowly, my eyes scanning the corners of the room. The wardrobe. The chair. The washbasin. Everything was normal.

And then I looked at the window.

My blood ran cold, freezing in my veins. Sitting on the windowsill, perched casually with his legs dangling inside my room, was a man.

He wasn’t trying to hide. He wasn’t sneaking in. He was just sitting there, completely motionless. The streetlamp outside cast a faint, sickly yellow glow behind him, outlining his silhouette, but his face was turned toward me. He was staring right at me.

I couldn’t scream. My voice died in my throat. I just stared back, paralyzed by the sheer impossibility of it. We were on the second floor. There was no balcony, no ledge wide enough for a person. How did he get there?

His expression was blank. Dead. His eyes didn’t blink. He looked at me with an intensity that felt predatory, yet strangely patient.

My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. I didn’t cower under the covers. A surge of adrenaline, sharp and electric, shot through me. I leaped out of bed, ready to scream, ready to defend myself, ready to push him out if I had to.

“Who are you?!” I managed to gasp out.

But the moment I moved, he moved. He didn’t lung at me. He didn’t run.

He simply leaned back.

It was the most unnatural movement I have ever seen. He didn’t lose his balance; he let go. He tilted his torso backward, his eyes still locked on mine, and he simply tipped out of the window into the empty air of the night.

“No!” The scream finally tore from my throat.

I rushed to the window, gripping the sill, expecting to see a broken body on the cobblestones below. I expected blood. I expected the twisted limbs of a man who had fallen two stories.

I looked down.

The street was empty.

There was no body. No movement. Just the silent, gray pavement under the streetlamp.

My mind reeled. Did I imagine it? Was I sleepwalking? I gripped the wood of the window frame so hard a splinter dug into my palm. The pain was real. I was awake. I was definitely awake.

I scanned the street frantically. To the left. To the right. And then, I saw it.

Parked directly under the pool of light from the streetlamp, maybe twenty feet away, was a long, dark vehicle. It was sleek, black, and ominous.

A hearse.

The hair on my arms stood up. It looked out of place, idling there in the dead of night, its engine silent. And then, I saw the driver.

He was sitting in the front seat, his posture rigid. As I watched, he turned his head slowly, looking up at my window. The light caught his face.

It was him.

The same man. The same gray hair, the same hollow eyes, the same terrifyingly blank expression. He wasn’t injured. He wasn’t dead. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a hearse, waiting.

As our eyes locked again, a slow, chilling smile spread across his face. He raised his hand, his fingers long and pale, and beckoned to me. A simple, inviting wave.

Come down, the gesture said. Come with me.

I slammed the window shut with such force the glass rattled in the pane. I locked the latch, my hands shaking so violently I could barely work the metal. I backed away, retreating into the farthest corner of the room, grabbing a heavy brass candlestick from the bedside table, clutching it like a lifeline.

I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I sat there, huddled in the dark, listening. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like footsteps. Every rustle of the wind sounded like a hand on the latch.

When the sun finally rose, painting the sky in soft pinks and oranges, I felt foolish. In the light of day, the terror of the night seemed like a fever dream. It was a nightmare, I told myself as I dressed. Just a vivid, horrible nightmare caused by indigestion and heat.

I needed to shake it off. I needed to be normal.

I left the bed and breakfast and headed downtown. I decided to treat myself to a day of shopping at one of the grand new department stores. The place was a marvel—four floors of polished wood, gleaming glass, and beautiful fabrics. The noise of the crowd, the laughter, the ringing of cash registers—it was the antidote I needed.

By late afternoon, I had completely convinced myself that the man in the window had never existed. I was happy. My arms were full of packages. I was on the top floor, ready to head down and go home.

I walked toward the elevators. A crowd was gathering, everyone eager to get down to the street level. I stood near the back, humming a tune, waiting my turn.

The elevator arrived with a heavy mechanical clank. The metal grate slid open. The car was crowded, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with shoppers.

“Going down!” a voice called out from inside the car.

I stepped forward, ready to squeeze in.

“Room for one more?” the voice asked.

I looked up. I looked past the hats and the shoulders of the passengers. I looked at the elevator operator.

He was wearing a uniform, a cap pulled low. But he lifted his head. He looked straight at me.

The blood drained from my face so fast I felt dizzy.

It was him.

Part 2

The sound wasn’t what I expected. You imagine a crash to be a singular, booming explosion, like a cannon firing or thunder cracking directly overhead. But it wasn’t one sound. It was a series of them, layered on top of each other in a sickening, mechanical harmony that I will hear in my nightmares until the day I die.

First, there was the snap. It sounded like a whip cracking, high above us in the shaft—a sharp, violent pop that echoed through the hollow throat of the building. Then came the screech, the terrible, high-pitched scream of metal grinding against metal, sparks likely showering down in the darkness of the shaft, though we couldn’t see them.

And then, the silence.

It lasted only a heartbeat, a fraction of a second where gravity took hold, and the heavy car, packed with people holding their shopping bags and their children, began to freefall.

The final sound was a dull, heavy thud. It wasn’t a crash. It was a crunch. It was the sound of a heavy tin can being crushed by a giant’s boot, muffled by the depth of the basement four floors below.

The screams didn’t stop immediately. They were cut off.

I was standing three feet from the elevator grate. The gust of wind that shot up the shaft from the displacement of air hit me in the face, blowing my hair back, carrying with it the smell of ozone, grease, and something ancient and dusty—the breath of the building itself.

For a moment, the fourth floor of the department store was completely silent. The ladies at the hat counter had frozen, their hands hovering over silk ribbons. The floor manager, a stout man with a mustache who had been directing traffic, stood with his mouth open, his whistle halfway to his lips.

Then, the chaos erupted.

“Oh my God!” someone screamed, a shrill, piercing sound that broke the spell.

“The elevator! It fell! It fell!“

People began to run. Not away from the shaft, but toward it. Human curiosity is a dark and powerful thing. They surged forward, a wave of bodies pressing against my back, trying to peer through the iron grate into the abyss below to see what had happened.

I was crushed against the cold metal bars of the gate. I couldn’t breathe. My hands gripped the ironwork, my knuckles white. I stared down into the darkness. I couldn’t see the bottom. All I could see was a rising cloud of dust, thick and gray, billowing up toward us like smoke from a fire.

“Get back! Everyone back!” The floor manager had finally found his voice. He was pushing through the crowd, his face beet red. “Give them air! Make way!“

I couldn’t move. My legs felt like they had turned to water. My mind was stuck on a loop, replaying the last ten seconds.

The face.

I closed my eyes, and I saw him. The elevator operator. The cap pulled low. The uniform. But the eyes—those dead, hollow eyes that had stared at me from my windowsill the night before. And the voice.

“Room for one more?”

He had looked right at me. He had waited for me. He knew I was there. And when I stepped back, when I refused his invitation, he hadn’t been angry. He had smiled. A small, knowing smirk, as if to say, Not this time, Anna. But soon.

“Miss? Miss, are you alright?“

A hand grabbed my shoulder, shaking me roughly. I snapped my eyes open. A young shopgirl, her face pale and dotted with freckles, was holding me up. I hadn’t realized I was sagging toward the floor.

“I…” My voice was a croak. “I almost got on.“

The girl’s eyes widened. She looked at the empty shaft, then back at me. “You… you were standing right there.“

“I almost got on,” I repeated, the reality of it hitting me like a physical blow to the stomach. “He asked me. He asked if there was room for one more.“

Nausea surged through me. I pulled away from the girl and stumbled toward a display of mannequins, leaning against the wooden counter to keep from vomiting. Below us, from the bottom of the shaft, the sounds of the aftermath were drifting up. There were no screams from the passengers anymore. Just the shouting of men, the clamor of rescue, the frantic calls for doctors.

I knew, with a chilling certainty, that there would be no need for doctors.

The next hour was a blur of flashing lights and shouting voices. The police arrived, whistling and clearing the building. They herded us toward the stairs, treating us like cattle, moving us away from the scene of the tragedy.

I moved with the crowd, a ghost in the machine. I walked down the marble staircase, my hand trailing along the polished wooden banister. On every landing, I looked at the elevator doors. On the third floor, they were closed tight. On the second floor, they were slightly askew.

When we reached the ground floor, the lobby was a war zone. Stretchers were being rushed in from the street. Police officers were setting up a perimeter. I saw the manager of the store crying openly, his face buried in his hands.

I tried to leave. I just wanted to get out into the sun, to feel the heat, to convince myself I was alive. But a heavy hand landed on my arm.

“Not so fast, Miss.“

It was a police officer. He was a large man, sweating profusely in his wool uniform, his face grim. “We need statements from everyone who was near the shaft on the top floor. The floor manager said you were right in front of the gate.“

I nodded, unable to speak.

He guided me over to a makeshift station they had set up near the perfume counter. The air smelled sickeningly sweet—roses and lavender mixing with the dust of the crash. He took out a notepad.

“Name?“

“Anna. Anna Gray.“

“From Chicago?“

“No. No, I’m visiting. I leave tomorrow.” If I live that long, I thought.

“Alright, Miss Gray. Tell me what you saw. Did the cable snap before the car started moving, or during?“

“I… I don’t know about the cable,” I whispered. “The door opened. It was full. People were shoulder to shoulder.“

“And you didn’t get on. Why?“

The question hung in the air. Why?

How could I explain it to this practical, sweating policeman? How could I tell him that I didn’t get on because the man operating the elevator was a ghost? That he was the same man who had fallen out of my window and driven a hearse?

If I told him that, he would lock me up. They would send me to an asylum. Hysterical female tourist. Hallucinations.

“I…” I stammered, my mind racing for a lie that sounded close enough to the truth. “I felt dizzy. The heat… it was so hot in there. And the car looked so crowded. I just… I got a bad feeling. Claustrophobia.“

The officer stopped writing and looked at me. He studied my face, looking for deception. “A bad feeling?“

“Yes.“

“Lucky feeling,” he grunted, scribbling on his pad. “Damned lucky. The whole car went down. Total failure of the braking mechanism. We haven’t got the bodies out yet, but…” He shook his head, sparing me the details.

“The operator,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

The officer looked up. “What about him?“

“Who was he?“

The officer frowned. “Who was he? He was the operator. Old man Miller. Been working these lifts since the store opened. Why?“

My heart skipped a beat. Miller. He had a name. He was a real person.

“Did he… did he look sick to you?” I asked, pushing my luck. “Did he seem strange?“

The officer narrowed his eyes. “Miss Gray, the man is currently at the bottom of a four-story drop under two tons of steel. I don’t know how he looked. But witnesses say he was doing his job same as always. Now, unless you saw someone cut the cable, you’re free to go.“

He dismissed me, turning his back to grab another witness.

I walked out of the store into the blinding afternoon sun. The street was crowded with onlookers. The news had traveled fast. “Tragedy at the Department Store!” newsboys were already shouting, though they didn’t have papers printed yet.

I stood on the sidewalk, trembling. Old man Miller.

If he was a real person, a regular employee, then who was the man in my window? Was it Miller? Had he projected himself to me? Or was the man in the window something else entirely—something that simply wore Miller’s face to warn me?

Or… to taunt me?

I hailed a cab. I needed to get back to the bed and breakfast. I needed to pack. I needed to leave Chicago immediately.

The ride back to the B&B was excruciating. Every time the carriage hit a bump, I flinched. I looked out the window, scanning the faces of pedestrians, terrified I would see him again. Every man in a gray cap, every man with hollow cheeks, made my heart stop.

When I got to my room, it felt different. The safety I had felt that morning was gone. The room felt violated.

I walked to the window—the window I had opened the night before. It was closed now, but the latch looked flimsy. I grabbed the heavy armchair from the corner of the room and dragged it across the floor, jamming it underneath the doorknob. Then I went to the window.

I stared at the lock. It wasn’t enough.

I rummaged through my suitcase and found a small sewing kit. It was useless. I looked around the room, desperate. I grabbed a heavy metal hairbrush and wedged the handle between the sash and the frame, jamming it tight so the window couldn’t be slid up from the outside.

It was irrational. I knew it. If a ghost wanted in, a hairbrush wouldn’t stop him. But I needed to feel like I had some control.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands shaking. I needed to call my family. I needed to hear a voice that I loved. But there was no phone in the room. I would have to go downstairs to the lobby, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the room.

Night began to fall. The shadows in the corners of the room lengthened, stretching out like dark fingers reaching for the bed.

I didn’t turn on the gas lamp. I was afraid that if I lit the room, I would be visible to the outside. I sat in the growing dark, watching the window.

You can’t outrun him, a voice in my head whispered. He invited you. You said no. But the invitation stands.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Stop it,” I whispered aloud. “Stop it, Anna.“

I needed to know. The question was burning a hole in my sanity. Was the man in the elevator really the same man? Or was my mind playing tricks on me? The officer said his name was Miller.

I had to see him.

The thought was morbid, disgusting, and terrifying. but I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave Chicago—wouldn’t be able to sleep ever again—if I didn’t confirm it. I needed to know if the face of the man who died in that shaft was the face of the man who fell from my window.

If they were different, then I was just crazy. And crazy I could deal with. Crazy meant I could go to a doctor, take some pills, and rest.

But if they were the same…

Then the universe was bigger, darker, and more terrifying than I had ever imagined.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the chair, facing the window, clutching my candlestick. I watched the street below. No hearse came. No man appeared on the ledge. The night was silent, mocking me with its normalcy.

When morning broke, gray and drizzly, I washed my face with cold water. I looked in the mirror. I looked ten years older than I had two days ago. My eyes were rimmed with red, my skin pale and waxy.

I dressed in my darkest travel clothes. I packed my bag, leaving it by the door. I was going to the train station immediately after. But first, I had one stop to make.

I went downstairs. The landlady, Mrs. Higgins, was dusting the front parlor.

“Oh, Miss Gray! You’re up early,” she chirped. “Did you hear about the terrible accident at the store? Dreadful business. Just dreadful.“

“Yes,” I said, my voice tight. “I was there.“

Mrs. Higgins dropped her duster. “You were there? Oh, you poor dear! Are you alright?“

“I’m fine. Mrs. Higgins, I need to ask you something. It’s… strange.“

She looked at me with concern. “What is it?“

“The man… is there a morgue nearby? Or a funeral home where they would have taken the… the victims?“

Mrs. Higgins recoiled. “The victims? Why on earth would you want to know that?“

“I think I knew one of them,” I lied. “A distant relative. I need to pay my respects before I leave town.“

She softened. “Oh, I see. Well, usually in cases like this, massive accidents… they take them to the City Morgue on Washington Street. It’s about ten blocks from here.“

“Thank you.“

I left the B&B and walked. I didn’t take a cab. I needed the air. The city felt heavy, mourning. The flags on the public buildings were already at half-mast.

The City Morgue was a squat, brick building that smelled of formaldehyde and damp stone. I walked up the steps, my legs feeling like lead.

Inside, the atmosphere was chaotic. Families were weeping in the waiting area. Policemen were arguing with reporters. Doctors in white coats, stained with grim evidence of their work, rushed back and forth.

I approached the desk. A weary-looking clerk with ink-stained fingers looked up.

“I can’t let you in, Miss. Unless you’re family identifying a body, you can’t be back here.“

“I… I am family,” I lied again. The lies were coming easier now. Desperation does that to you. “My uncle. Mr. Miller. The elevator operator.“

The clerk paused. He looked at a list on his desk. he ran a finger down the names. “Miller. James Miller. Identify?“

“Yes.“

He sighed and stood up. “Right this way. It’s not pretty, Miss. You sure you want to do this?“

“I have to.“

He led me down a long, tiled corridor. The air grew colder. We passed rooms with closed doors, muted sobs coming from behind them. Finally, we reached a large room at the end of the hall.

It was freezing inside. Rows of tables were set up, covered in white sheets. The shapes under the sheets were jagged, wrong.

The clerk walked to a table in the corner. He checked a tag tied to the toe of the shape under the sheet.

“James Miller,” he said. “Prepare yourself.“

He reached for the sheet.

I gripped the edge of a nearby table to steady myself. Please be a stranger, I prayed. Please be a fat man with a beard. Please be a young man with blonde hair. Please be anyone but him.

The clerk pulled the sheet back.

I gasped. The sound was sucked out of the room.

It was him.

The gray hair, slightly matted now with dried blood. The sharp nose. The deep-set eyes, now closed forever. It was the face of the man on my windowsill. It was the face of the man in the hearse.

But there was something else.

“He looks… peaceful,” the clerk muttered, almost to himself.

I looked closer. The clerk was right. Despite the violence of the crash, his face was relatively untouched. But it wasn’t just that.

“The Medical Examiner was puzzled by this one,” the clerk said, covering the face back up.

“Why?” I whispered.

“Well, look at him. Not a scratch on his face really. And the autopsy… well, they did a quick check.” The clerk leaned in, lowering his voice. “His neck wasn’t broken from the fall. And his lungs… they weren’t crushed.“

“What do you mean?“

“I mean,” the clerk said, “old Miller didn’t die from the crash. He had a massive heart attack. His heart exploded in his chest.“

I stared at the white sheet. “A heart attack?“

“Aye. The doctors think he had the heart attack before the cable snapped. Maybe even caused him to jerk the controls or something. He was likely dead before the car even hit the ground.“

My blood froze.

If he was dead before the car hit the ground…

“What time?” I asked. “What time did he die?“

“Well, the crash was at 4:15 PM,” the clerk said.

I nodded. But my mind was racing back. Back to the night before. Back to 2:00 AM.

“Did he… did he have a family?” I asked. “Did he live nearby?“

“Lived in a boarding house over on 4th,” the clerk said. “Quiet fellow. Kept to himself. Although…“

“Although what?“

“One of the other drivers mentioned something odd this morning. Said Miller had been acting strange all week. Said he kept talking about a ‘deadline’. Said he knew his time was up.“

I backed away from the table. “Thank you. That’s… that’s all I needed.“

I turned and ran. I didn’t walk. I ran out of the morgue, down the steps, and into the street. I gasped for air, but the city air felt thick and poisonous.

He knew. He knew he was going to die.

And he had come to me. Why? Was he trying to take me with him? Was he trying to warn me? Or was he simply a vessel, a hollow shell that something else had stepped into?

I hailed a cab. “Union Station,” I choked out. “Fast.“

I needed to get on a train. I needed to get out of this cursed city.

The train station was a cathedral of steam and noise. I bought a ticket for the first train heading East. I didn’t care where it stopped. I just needed to be moving.

I sat on a wooden bench in the waiting area, my suitcase clutched between my knees. I watched the clock. 11:00 AM. The train left in twenty minutes.

I looked around at the faces of the travelers. Businessmen reading papers. Mothers scolding children. It all looked so normal. But underneath the surface, I could feel the thin fabric of reality tearing. I had seen behind the curtain. I knew that death wasn’t just an event; it was a presence. It walked among us. It drove cars. It operated elevators.

“Ticket, Ma’am?“

I jumped. A conductor was standing over me, punching tickets.

“Yes. Yes, here.” I handed him my paper slip.

He punched it with a mechanical click that reminded me of the cable snapping. He handed it back.

“Platform 9. Train leaves in ten minutes. Don’t be late.“

“I won’t.“

I stood up and began to walk toward the gate. The crowd was dense here. I had to weave through bodies.

And then I saw it.

At the far end of the platform, standing near the steam engine, was a figure.

He was standing with his back to me. He was wearing a long black coat and a tall hat. He stood perfectly still while the porters rushed around him loading luggage.

I stopped. The noise of the station faded away.

The figure turned slowly.

It wasn’t Miller. It wasn’t the elevator operator.

It was a different man. Younger. sharp features. But the expression…

It was the same. That blank, knowing stare. That look that said, I see you.

He looked at me across the platform. He didn’t wave. He didn’t smile. He just watched me.

And then, he slowly raised his hand and pointed. Not at me. But behind me.

I turned around.

Behind me, a group of men were struggling with a large, heavy crate being loaded onto a baggage cart. As I watched, one of the men slipped. The crate—heavy wood bound with iron straps—tipped.

“Look out!” someone screamed.

I threw myself to the side.

The crate crashed down exactly where I had been standing a second before. The wood splintered, sending shards flying like shrapnel. If I had been standing there, it would have crushed my legs, maybe worse.

I scrambled backward on the dirty floor, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I looked back at the engine.

The man in the black coat was gone.

I sat there on the floor of Union Station, surrounded by concerned strangers asking if I was hurt, and I realized the truth. It wasn’t just Miller. It wasn’t just the elevator.

I had been marked.

I had cheated death in that elevator. I had refused the invitation. And now, death was following me. It was changing faces, changing shapes, but it was there.

I stood up, shaking off the hands that tried to help me. I grabbed my suitcase.

I couldn’t get on that train. A train was a metal tube moving at high speeds. It was a trap. Just like the elevator.

I ran out of the station.

I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know how to escape. How do you run from something that can be anyone? How do you hide from something that can be anywhere?

I found myself walking toward the lake. The water was vast, gray, and endless. I sat on a bench near the water’s edge, watching the waves crash against the rocks.

I needed a plan. I needed to understand the rules of this game I was suddenly playing.

Miller had known his time was up. He had accepted it. And in his final moments—or perhaps in the moments after his death—he had tried to take me with him. Why? Company? Or was it a quota? Did death need a certain number of souls that day?

And because I didn’t get on, the count was off. The ledger was unbalanced.

I stayed in Chicago for three more days. I didn’t stay in a hotel. I slept in the waiting room of a hospital, figuring it was the one place where death was already busy, where maybe I could blend in. I didn’t eat much. I didn’t speak to anyone.

I became a ghost myself, haunting the edges of the living world.

On the fourth day, I found a small library near the university. I went inside, seeking silence and answers. I pulled books on folklore, on the occult, on psychical research.

I read about “Fetch” spirits—ghostly doubles sent to fetch a dying person. I read about “Banshees.” I read about the “Grim Reaper.“

But then I found a small, dusty volume on urban legends and local hauntings. I flipped through the pages, my eyes scanning for anything about elevators or hearses.

And there, in a chapter about “The Omens of the Midwest,” I found a story.

It was dated 1880. A farmer in Illinois had seen a man in his field, a man who looked exactly like his dead brother. The man had beckoned him to come into the barn. The farmer refused. That night, the barn was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The farmer survived. But three days later, he fell into a well and drowned.

The commentary at the bottom of the page read: “To refuse the invite is to delay the inevitable. The Midnight Man does not like to be kept waiting.”

The Midnight Man.

I closed the book. The title chilled me.

I looked out the library window. It was raining now. The streets were slick and dark.

I had refused the invite. I had kept him waiting.

I left the library. I had to go home. I couldn’t live like this, hiding in hospitals and reading dusty books. If my time was up, it was up. But I wasn’t going to cower in a corner.

I walked to the train station again. I bought a ticket.

This time, I didn’t look at the other passengers. I didn’t look at the porters. I kept my head down. I got on the train.

I found my seat. I sat down. I waited for the doors to close.

The whistle blew. The train lurched forward. We were moving.

I let out a breath I felt like I had been holding for days. I was leaving Chicago. I was escaping the city of the hearse and the elevator.

The conductor came by to punch my ticket. It was a different man this time, older, with a kind face and a mustache.

“Heading home, Miss?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes,” I said. “Going home.”

He punched my ticket. Click.

“Good,” he said. “Home is the best place to be.”

He moved on.

I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and watched the city recede. The buildings turned into suburbs, the suburbs into fields. The rhythm of the wheels on the track was soothing. Click-clack, click-clack.

I closed my eyes.

And then, I heard it.

It was faint at first, buried under the noise of the train. A low, rhythmic tapping.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I opened my eyes. It was coming from the window.

I looked out. We were moving at forty miles an hour. The world outside was a blur of green and gray.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

There, keeping pace with the train, floating just outside my window, was a face.

It wasn’t Miller. It wasn’t the man from the platform.

It was a reflection. My own reflection in the glass.

But the reflection wasn’t moving with me. It was staring at me. And slowly, my reflection’s lips peeled back into a smile that I was not making.

My reflection raised a hand and waved.

Come here, it mouthed.

I screamed. I scrambled out of my seat, falling into the aisle.

“Miss? Miss!” The conductor came running back.

“The window!” I shrieked, pointing. “There’s someone in the window!”

The conductor looked. “There’s nothing but cornfields, Miss. You’ve had a bad dream.”

He helped me up. “Come on now. Why don’t you come to the dining car? Get some tea. You look pale.”

I looked back at the window. The reflection was normal again. Just me, looking terrified.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Tea. Just tea.”

I followed him to the dining car. I sat down. I drank the tea. But my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I knew the truth now. The elevator wasn’t the end. The hearse wasn’t the end. They were just the beginning.

I had started a game of tag with death. And I was “It.”

Part 3

The Siege of Elm Creek

The train ride home was a blur of paranoia and exhaustion. Every time the conductor walked by, I flinched. Every time the whistle blew, it sounded like a scream. When I finally stepped onto the platform at Elm Creek, the small farming town where I had been born and raised, I expected to feel relief. I expected the familiar scent of hay and damp earth to ground me, to tell me that Chicago and its horrors were a world away.

But as I stepped down, clutching my suitcase with white-knuckled desperation, the air felt different here, too. It was heavy. Stagnant. The cornfields stretching out to the horizon didn’t look like sustenance anymore; they looked like a hiding place. A billion rows of green stalks where anything—or anyone—could be waiting.

My brother, Thomas, was waiting for me with the wagon. He was a big man, solid and practical, with hands calloused from years of steering a plow.

“Anna!” he called out, waving his hat. “You’re back early! We didn’t expect you until Sunday.”

I ran to him, burying my face in his rough woolen coat. I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to scream that Death was hitching a ride in the back of the wagon, that I had seen my own reflection smile at me, that a man had fallen from the sky and walked away.

But I couldn’t. Thomas was a man of the earth. He believed in what he could touch, plant, and harvest. If I told him I was being hunted by a ghost, he would think the city had broken my mind. He would call the doctor. And I knew, with chilling certainty, that doctors couldn’t help me now.

“I just… I missed home,” I lied, climbing into the wagon. “The city was too loud.”

“City’s no place for a Gray,” Thomas grunted, flicking the reins. “Glad to have you back, Annie.”

The ride to the farmhouse was silent. I watched the road behind us, my eyes scanning the tree line. The sun was setting, casting long, distorted shadows across the dirt road. A crow followed us for three miles, hopping from fence post to fence post. It never cawed. It just watched.

When we got to the farmhouse, it stood silhouetted against the dying light—a two-story wooden structure that had sheltered three generations of Grays. It had always been my sanctuary. Now, looking at the dark windows upstairs, it looked like a skull with empty eye sockets.

“You take the upstairs room,” Thomas said as we carried my bags in. “Momma’s already asleep. Don’t wake her.”

I nodded. I walked up the creaking stairs, every step echoing in the silence. I entered my childhood bedroom. It was exactly as I had left it—the quilt on the bed, the porcelain dolls on the shelf.

And the vanity mirror.

It stood in the corner, a large oval glass in a cherry wood frame. As soon as I entered the room, I felt the pull. I didn’t want to look at it. I was terrified of what I might see. But my eyes were drawn to it.

I walked over slowly. The room was dim. I looked into the glass.

For a second, it was just me. Pale, terrified, exhausted.

And then, in the reflection, the door behind me—which I had just locked—began to open.

I spun around. The real door was shut tight. Locked.

I looked back at the mirror. In the glass, the door was wide open. And standing in the doorway of the reflection was the man in the black coat. The man from the train station.

He wasn’t in the room with me. He was in the mirror world. He stepped into the room in the reflection, walking toward my reflected self.

I grabbed the heavy quilt from the bed and threw it over the mirror, screaming inside my head. I tackled the glass, wrapping it tight, blinding it.

I spent the next hour covering every reflective surface in the room. The window panes, I covered with spare sheets. The glass over the framed pictures, I turned to the wall. I created a cocoon of blindness.

I lay in bed, clutching my rosary, listening.

The house settled. The wood groaned. And then, at exactly midnight, it began.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

It wasn’t at my bedroom door. It was at the front door of the house, downstairs.

I froze. Thomas slept in the barn loft during the summer to watch the foals. Momma was deaf in one ear and slept like the dead in the back room downstairs.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Louder this time. Insistent.

I crept out of bed. I had to know. I moved to the landing of the stairs. The hallway below was pitch black.

“Thomas?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

No answer. Just the heavy silence of the house.

Then, a voice came from the other side of the front door. It wasn’t a stranger’s voice.

“Anna? Open up, it’s Thomas. I forgot my key.”

My heart leaped. It was Thomas. He sounded cold, impatient.

I took a step down the stairs. Go open the door, my brain said. It’s your brother.

But then I stopped. Thomas didn’t have a key. We never locked the farmhouse door until tonight, when I had bolted it myself. And Thomas slept in the barn; he wouldn’t come to the front door, he would use the kitchen entrance.

“Anna!” the voice called again. “It’s freezing out here! Open the door!”

The tone changed. It wasn’t impatient anymore. It was angry. And underneath the anger, there was a strange, metallic distortion, like a phonograph record skipping.

“You’re not Thomas,” I whispered into the dark.

Silence.

Then, a laugh. A low, dry, rasping chuckle that sounded like dry leaves skittering on pavement.

“Smart girl,” the voice said. It wasn’t Thomas anymore. It was the voice I had heard in the elevator. The voice of Miller. The voice of the abyss. “Room for one more, Anna.”

I scrambled back up the stairs, retreating into my room. I locked the door. I dragged the dresser in front of it.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Heavy footsteps were coming up the stairs.

He hadn’t needed me to open the door. The invitation had been given days ago in Chicago. The door was just a formality. A game.

I backed into the corner of the room, grabbing the iron poker from the cold fireplace.

The footsteps stopped right outside my door. The doorknob turned slowly. The lock clicked. The dresser groaned as weight was applied from the other side.

“You can’t hide in there, Anna,” the voice crooned. It was soft now, intimate. “It’s a long way down. Just like the elevator. Just like the window.”

The wood of the door began to splinter. He was coming in.

I looked at the window—the window I had covered with a sheet. It was my only way out. But we were on the second floor. A fall from here could break a leg, or a neck.

Exactly, I thought. That’s what he wants. He wants me to jump. He wants me to replicate the fall.

The dresser slid an inch across the floor. A hand—pale, gray, with long, unnatural fingers—reached through the crack in the door, scrabbling at the wood.

I couldn’t jump. Jumping was surrender. Jumping was playing by his rules.

I looked around the room frantically. My eyes landed on the oil lamp on the bedside table.

Fire.

The book in the library. The farmer whose barn burned down. Fire was a cleansing force. But it was also dangerous.

I grabbed the lamp. My hands were shaking so hard the glass chimney rattled.

“Go away!” I screamed. “I revoke the invitation! You are not welcome here!”

“The invitation is written in blood,” the voice hissed. The door buckled. The dresser was being pushed aside like it was made of cardboard.

The door flew open.

Standing there, framed by the darkness of the hallway, was the Midnight Man. He didn’t look like Miller anymore. He didn’t look like the man at the station. He was a shifting shadow, a humanoid shape made of absolute void, wearing a tattered black coat. Where his face should be, there was only the pale suggestion of a skull and two burning, yellow eyes.

He stepped into the room. The temperature dropped twenty degrees in a second. My breath misted in the air.

He reached out a hand.

“Come,” he commanded.

I didn’t move toward him. I didn’t move toward the window.

I threw the lamp.

I didn’t throw it at him. I threw it at the floor between us. The glass shattered. The oil spread instantly, and the flame roared to life, catching the old, dry rug.

A wall of fire erupted between me and the entity.

The Midnight Man recoiled. For a moment, the fire illuminated his form, and I saw him flinch. He wasn’t afraid of the heat; he was afraid of the chaos. He represented inevitable, cold order. Fire was wild, unpredictable life.

“You fool!” he shrieked. The sound was like tearing metal. “You’ll burn!”

“Better to burn than to go with you!” I yelled back.

The flames licked up the curtains. The smoke began to fill the room, thick and choking. I retreated to the window, coughing. I ripped the sheet down.

I looked outside. The roof of the porch was about five feet below the window, and three feet to the left. It was a risky jump, but not a straight fall.

The entity tried to step through the fire, but the flames seemed to act as a barrier. He howled, a sound of pure frustration.

I climbed onto the sill. The heat was blistering now behind me. My nightgown was singeing.

I didn’t look back at the monster. I looked at the porch roof.

“I choose when I fall!” I screamed into the night.

And I leaped.

I didn’t fall straight down. I threw myself sideways, aiming for the shingles. I hit the slanted roof hard. The air was knocked out of me. I rolled, grabbing at the gutter. My fingers scraped against the rough asphalt shingles.

I slid off the edge of the porch roof and dropped the remaining ten feet to the soft grass below.

I landed awkwardly on my ankle. A sharp snap echoed in the night, followed by blinding pain. I crumpled to the ground, biting my tongue to keep from screaming.

I looked up.

My bedroom was an inferno. Flames were shooting out of the window where I had just been standing. And there, amidst the fire, stood the dark silhouette, watching me. He wasn’t burning. He was just watching.

“Fire!” I screamed, finding my voice. “Thomas! Fire!”

The barn door burst open. Thomas ran out, still in his long johns, carrying a bucket.

“Anna!”

He dragged me away from the house just as the bedroom window blew out, showering the lawn with glass.

We watched the house burn. The volunteer fire brigade from town arrived too late to save the structure, but they saved the barn. Momma had gotten out—she had woken up to the smell of smoke.

As I sat in the grass, wrapped in a horse blanket, clutching my throbbing ankle, I watched the embers drift up into the night sky.

The Midnight Man was gone. The mirror was melted. The room was ash.

The sheriff asked how it started. I told him I knocked over a lamp. It was the truth, after all.

But as I looked at the smoking ruins of my life, I knew the game wasn’t over. I had won the round. I had survived the night. But I had seen the look in those yellow eyes before the fire consumed the view.

He wasn’t finished. He was patient.

I had cheated him twice now. And debts, in the end, are always collected.

Part 4

The Long Watch

The scars on my ankle healed, leaving a jagged white line that ached whenever it rained. The scars on my mind, however, never faded. They simply hardened, turning into a shell of armor that I wore for the rest of my life.

After the fire, the town of Elm Creek looked at me differently. They whispered that I was cursed. They said the fire was an omen. Even Thomas, my own brother, couldn’t look me in the eye for long. He never asked why I had locked my door, or why I had dragged the dresser across the room. He feared the answer more than the mystery.

I couldn’t stay. The open fields were too wide; there were too many places for a shadow to stand in the distance. And the silence of the country was too loud. I needed noise. I needed crowds. I needed to be one ant in a colony of millions, hoping that the sheer volume of life would confuse the Angel of Death.

So, I moved to New York City.

It was 1905 when I arrived. I found a job as a seamstress in a basement workshop in the Garment District. I chose the basement specifically. No windows to fall from. No elevators to ride. Just stairs. Solid, concrete stairs.

I rented a small apartment on the first floor of a tenement building in the Lower East Side. It was cramped, loud, and smelled of cabbage and coal, but it was safe.

My life became a ritual of avoidance.

I never entered a building higher than two stories. If I had an appointment on a higher floor, I canceled it.

I never rode in a carriage or a car if I could walk.

I never stood near the edge of a subway platform. When the trains roared into the station, I pressed my back against the tiled wall, squeezing my eyes shut, refusing to look at the windows where a reflection might wave at me.

And the mirrors.

That was the hardest part. A woman in the 20th century is expected to check her appearance. To pin her hat, to powder her nose. I lived without them.

In my apartment, I had no mirrors. I shaved my legs by feel. I brushed my hair by counting the strokes. When I walked past shop windows, I focused my eyes on the pavement, never letting my gaze drift to the glass.

I became known as the “eccentric woman” in 4B. The spinster who walked with a limp and wore hats pulled low. I didn’t marry. How could I? How could I bring a husband into a life where a shadow stood in the corner of every room? How could I have children, knowing that he might be waiting to lean over their cribs?

No. The curse ended with me.

Years turned into decades. The world changed. Horse-drawn hearses were replaced by sleek automobiles. Gas lamps were replaced by electric bulbs. The skyline of New York shot up, higher and higher, a monument to man’s arrogance, a challenge to gravity. I watched the Empire State Building rise, shuddering at the thought of those elevators rocketing into the clouds.

He was still there. I knew it.

I would see him in the periphery. A man in a trench coat standing under a streetlight in the rain. A face in a crowd that looked too pale, too still.

Once, in 1928, I was walking through Central Park. A child’s ball rolled to my feet. I picked it up. When I looked up to hand it back, the child was gone. Standing there was a man in a gray suit. He tipped his hat.

“Not yet, Anna,” he whispered. The wind carried his voice, dry and raspy.

I dropped the ball and ran. I ran until my bad ankle gave out and I collapsed on a park bench, gasping for air.

He was toying with me. He was letting me age. Perhaps the punishment for refusing him wasn’t death. Perhaps the punishment was life—a life lived in constant, suffocating fear.

I grew old. My hair turned gray, then white. My hands became spotted and arthritic. The world moved on to a new war, then another.

Now, it is 1965.

I am eighty-five years old. I live in a nursing home in Upstate New York. I chose this place carefully. It is a single-story facility. My room is on the ground floor. The window opens onto a garden of rosebushes.

I am dying. Not from an elevator crash. Not from a fire. Not from a fall.

I have cancer. It is eating me from the inside, slow and painful. It is a natural death. A boring death.

Or so I hope.

I lie in this bed, listening to the beep of the machines. The nurses are kind, though they think I’m senile because I scream if they try to bring a mirror into the room to groom me.

I am writing this down in a notebook I keep under my pillow. I want someone to know. I want someone to understand that the things we see in the corner of our eyes are real. That the gut instinct that tells you don’t get on the elevator is not just nerves. It is survival.

It is 11:55 PM. The storms are rolling in tonight. Thunder is shaking the windowpanes.

I feel a heaviness in the room. The air is growing cold, despite the heating vent being on full blast.

The nurse, a sweet girl named Sarah, just left. She turned off the main light, leaving only the small nightlight plug-in near the bathroom.

I look at the door.

It is closed. But I can hear footsteps in the hallway.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

Hard soles on linoleum.

They stop outside my door.

My heart, old and tired, flutters in my chest. I am not afraid anymore. I am tired. I have been running for sixty-one years. I have been looking over my shoulder since I was twenty-four.

The doorknob turns.

I sit up as best I can. I straighten my nightgown. I smooth my white hair.

If he is coming, I will meet him with dignity. I will not scream. I will not hide under the covers.

The door opens.

Standing there is not a monster. It is not a skeleton.

It is a young man. He is wearing a uniform from 1904. An elevator operator’s uniform. He looks exactly like Miller, but young, healthy, and vibrant.

He holds his cap in his hands. He smiles. It is not a predatory smile this time. It is a welcoming one.

He steps into the room. He leaves the door open. Beyond the door, I do not see the hospital hallway. I see a lobby. A grand, golden lobby with marble floors and soft light. I hear the distant sound of ragtime music.

He walks to the side of my bed. He extends a hand.

“Good evening, Miss Gray,” he says. His voice is clear and warm. “I believe we have an appointment.”

I look at his hand. Then I look at the window.

In the reflection of the darkened glass, I see myself. But I am not the old, withered woman in the bed. I am young again. I am twenty-four. I am wearing my summer dress.

I look back at him.

“Is it… is it over?” I ask.

“The running is over,” he says. “The waiting is over.”

He gestures toward the door.

“Going up?” he asks.

I let out a breath I feel I have been holding since 1904. Tears prick my eyes.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I think there is room for one more.”

I reach out. I take his hand. It is cold, but strong.

I feel a sensation of lightness. I look back at the bed. The old woman is still there, her chest still, her eyes closed. She looks peaceful. She looks like she is finally resting.

I turn to Miller. I take his arm.

We walk out of the room, not into the hospital corridor, but into the light. The elevator doors are waiting. They are open.

I step inside.

Epilogue

Note from the Administrator of Oak Haven Nursing Facility:

Patient Anna Gray passed away peacefully in her sleep on the night of July 5th, 1965. Cause of death was heart failure. She was found clutching a handwritten journal.

Interestingly, the night nurse reported that at exactly midnight, the main elevator in the east wing—which had been out of order for weeks—suddenly activated. It went up to the roof, opened its doors to the empty sky, and then returned to the lobby.

No one was inside.

Anna’s belongings were few. No mirrors were found in her possession. Just a notebook, and a small, antique piece of metal that looked like a fragment of an elevator gate.