Chapter 15: Let Me Back In

  Shiro’s night was eerily silent. The hospital of sleep in his mind had long closed, leaving him in a half-awake state where shadows merged with reality. In the dim light of his room, normality had once been a promise—but tonight, even that assurance felt brittle.

  He sat curled beneath a threadbare blanket, every creak of the wooden floor a potential harbinger of something more ominous. For several long minutes, there was nothing but the low hum of his own thoughts, punctuated by the occasional sigh and the steady tick of the clock on the wall. In that deceptive calm, Shiro’s mind clung to the idea that maybe, just maybe, he was safe.

  Then, as if to shatter the silence deliberately, a gentle tapping began at the closet door. At first, it was almost imperceptible—a soft, rhythmic scratch that might have been the wind. Shiro tried to convince himself that it was nothing; the room was empty, the only sound being his own muted breathing. He closed his eyes again, willing the tapping to fade into obscurity.

  But the tapping persisted. Once. Twice. Slowly, each tap took on a measured, almost methodical cadence. A creeping dread began to unfurl at the edges of his mind. The false comfort of solitude began to crumble.

  Shiro’s heart pounded against his ribs as he forced himself to open his eyes. In the dim glow from a stray streetlamp filtering through the window, he could just make out the closet door—a solid, worn barrier that had always provided a safe boundary. Now, however, it seemed to exude a subtle malevolence.

  For a long, agonizing moment, he sat frozen—caught between the rational assertion that it was just a door and the irrational whisper of his deepest fears. His eyes darted around the room until they settled on the mirror across from him. At first, his reflection was normal—a tired, haunted face. But as he stared, the reflection began to waver ever so slightly, as though the glass itself was distorting the truth.

  A sudden chill coursed down his spine. The tapping had grown softer yet insistent, almost as if mimicking a whispered plea. Shiro’s instincts screamed for him to ignore it, yet an internal voice urged him to investigate—to reclaim control over these taunting echoes in the dark.

  He reached out slowly, his hand trembling as he approached the closet door. The wood felt unexpectedly cold under his fingers, as though it were congealing the very warmth of the night. Just then, a faint sound—a whisper, perhaps—brushed against his ear. It wasn’t a shout, nor the clamor of a visible threat; it was as if a long-forgotten voice was returning just to remind him of something lost.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Let me back in…” it breathed, the words sinking into the silence like a slow poison.

  Shiro’s breath hitched. For a moment, he dared to listen, to let the voice linger in his mind. The seconds stretched, filled only by this quiet, insidious invitation. Reality itself seemed to hesitate. The world around him—the steady hum of the hidden appliances, the soft murmur of the distant night—fell mute in comparison.

  Yet, there was something else: a small, almost imperceptible pause, where the atmosphere seemed to hang in balance, as if even time was waiting for Shiro’s decision. In that stolen second, he imagined that perhaps he could dismiss the voice as a figment—a mere hallucination conjured by sleep deprivation and guilt. Maybe it was simply his overworked mind trying to coerce a confession it never wanted to face.

  But as he listened, a cold shiver trickled through him. The voice was too clear, too deliberate to be a stray thought. It was as if the very air had taken on a whispering life of its own. The tapping resumed—subtly, almost reluctantly—marking the passage of a heartbeat, then another, each one a measured countdown to dread.

  In that suffocating moment, as Shiro’s hand hovered inches from the trembling door, he closed his eyes tightly. He tried to conjure the memory of safety: the warmth of his bed, the familiar hum of the everyday world. But instead, he was overwhelmed by an oppressive sense of inevitability. It was no longer about the door. It was about every moment he had spent denying the darkness that crept around his mind.

  With a slow, deliberate motion that both defied his terror and succumbed to it, he reached out. His fingers brushed the rough surface of the door slowly, the sound of his heartbeat drowning out all else. In that contact, the door shuddered, and the soft tapping shifted into an erratic, hurried rhythm—like a desperate plea to be let inside.

  And then, in a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, the door began to open, creaking on its hinges with an agonizing slowness that made each split-second feel monumental. The faint, insidious whisper seeped through the widening gap, indistinguishable yet laden with unspeakable promise.

  Shiro froze, caught between the certainty of what he’d known and the crushing terror of the unknown. His mind screamed to run, to block out the voice—but his body remained a statue, paralyzed at the precipice of horror.

  It was then that he understood: This was not a moment of dramatic reprieve but the slow, deliberate invasion of every deep-seated fear he had tried so desperately to bury. The room, the door—everything had conspired to force him to confront the shadow that had lingered at the edge of his sanity.

  As the closet door creaked further open, a cold tendril of dark mist began to seep outward. The strange, muffled sound of a voice—his own voice, distorted beyond recognition—slipped into his ear, promising that whatever lay beyond was not meant to be forgotten. With that, the last flicker of false security extinguished, leaving Shiro breathless in the suffocating darkness.