Monday felt fake.
Not in the usual "I hate waking up and breathing air" way. Not the usual school-makes-my-soul-crack feeling. No—this was deeper.
The air was wrong.
August woke up with the sketchbook under his arm, heart pounding like he'd just run a sprint underwater.
No dreams.
Or maybe—no dreams he could remember.
But the last thing he felt before waking?
Arthur's voice.
"Something else woke up with me."
The phrase echoed in his chest like a knock that hadn't stopped yet.
His mom was making eggs downstairs. Reece was already shouting about cereal. Kira yelled from the bathroom that someone stole her moisturizer. The house was loud.
But August barely heard it.
He went through the motions. Clothes. Bag. Shoes.
But everything felt like it was happening half a second behind real life. Like reality was lagging.
By the time he got to school, it got worse.
First symptom?
Music.
During second period, someone's Bluetooth speaker kicked on in the hallway. Loud pop music. Some overproduced beat about dancing through heartbreak or whatever.
Then—
it glitched.
Mid-lyric, the singer's voice stretched like a cassette being eaten by a dying radio.
🎵 "Dance through the—daaaaaaan… ce—th… rou—gh—" 🎵
Then silence.
Not even static.
The air in the room thickened.
The lights buzzed—then stuttered.
Not off.
Just… almost.
August gripped the side of his desk.
Then it all returned.
Music. Light. Sound. Normal.
The teacher didn't even blink. Just kept talking about literary symbolism like the walls hadn't just twitched.
Alex leaned over from the seat behind him. "You good?"
August nodded once. Too fast.
He didn't open the sketchbook in class.
Not because he was scared.
Because he already knew what would be waiting.
After school, walking home, the power lines above him hummed.
Low.
Not electricity.
Resonance.
The same hum from the field in the dream.
He passed by a parked car with the radio on.
The station changed on its own. Flipped from pop, to static, to—
"—if he remembers too much, he'll slip."
August stopped walking.
Stared at the car.
The voice on the radio was gone.
Replaced by an ad for shampoo.
He didn't move for a full thirty seconds.
Then walked faster.
Didn't run. Not yet.
Got home. Shut the door behind him.
Opened the sketchbook.
Arthur was standing again. Sword drawn. Eyes focused on something in the distance.
And in the background?
That same blurred figure.
Closer now.
August stared at the page.
Then whispered, without knowing why:
"What's trying to get out?"
That night, the lights flickered again.
Not off.
Just… wrong.
August sat at his desk, sketchbook closed, hands braced against the wood like it might tip over. His laptop had frozen twice. Spotify wouldn't load past track four. His phone screen glitched once—just once—but enough to show a flicker of something.
A shape.
That same blurred shape.
He turned it off. Just threw it on the bed like it owed him money.
The hum came back after dark.
Not loud. But low. Under his floorboards. In the walls. Like something breathing behind drywall.
He pressed his ear to the floor once. Just to make sure he wasn't losing it.
And he swore he heard a voice.
Muffled. Distant.
"He's not ready yet."
August shot up.
Backed away from the floor.
He should've been panicking. Should've been crying or screaming or calling someone.
But deep down, in the oldest part of him—the part that built Arthur—he knew exactly what was happening.
He was being pulled back in.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
He opened the sketchbook again.
No drawing this time.
Just a single line of text.
"If it's reaching through, that means you already opened the door."
August whispered, "I didn't mean to."
Another line wrote itself in real time:
"Doesn't matter."
The lights in his room dimmed again.
His laptop restarted on its own.
And when the screen flashed—
Arthur's face flickered across it.
Not drawn.
Not illustrated.
Photoreal.
For half a second.
Then it was gone. Replaced by a generic login screen like nothing had happened.
August backed into the corner of his room.
Heart racing.
He looked at the sketchbook again, and this time the page was no longer blank.
It showed a room.
His room.
Drawn from above.
His bed. His chair. His desk.
And him.
In the corner.
Perfectly accurate.
And just behind him, in the sketch—
A second figure.
Not Arthur.
Not clear.
Just… waiting.
August turned his head in real life.
Nothing there.
But the air was cold.
He sat back down. Slowly.
Picked up the pencil with shaking hands.
And wrote:
What do I do?
This time, the response came slow.
Letter by letter.
"Keep drawing."
"Or it will."
August didn't sleep.
He couldn't. The hum wouldn't let him.
It wasn't in the walls anymore.
It was under his skin.
He paced the room. Four steps to the door. Five to the window. Breathe. Repeat. The sketchbook sat on the desk like it had something to say and was waiting for him to shut up long enough to listen.
At 3:14 AM, he sat down.
Opened to the blank page.
No prompts. No visions. No flickers.
Just white.
It dared him.
He picked up the pencil.
And started to draw.
He didn't plan it. Didn't think.
He let his hand move.
Arthur again—but this time, not in a battlefield. Not kneeling. Not solemn.
Standing in the middle of August's room. One foot forward. Sword gone. Head turned toward something just out of frame.
But this time, August added something.
Himself.
He drew himself sitting at the desk, pencil in hand, face lit by the glow of his desk lamp. Slightly slouched. Wide-eyed.
He finished the lines.
Then blinked.
Something moved.
Not on the paper.
In the room.
Behind him.
His breath stopped.
He turned.
And Arthur was there.
Fully there.
Not flickering. Not a dream.
Standing.
Same height. Same shape. Same scar. Same coat. Same eyes.
But more. The air around him folded like heat off pavement. The edges of his silhouette didn't stay still. They bent. Wavered.
Arthur didn't speak.
He just looked at August.
Not angry.
Not confused.
Present.
August stood. Slowly.
The chair didn't scrape. No sound. Like the room was muted.
"…You're real," he whispered.
Arthur didn't nod. Didn't move.
He didn't have to.
August took a single step forward—
—and the lights cut out.
Not flickered.
Died.
Total black.
But in the dark, August felt him.
Still there. Still watching.
And then—
a voice.
Not spoken. Not heard.
But understood.
"It's not just me anymore."
The lights snapped back on.
Arthur was gone.
Sketchbook open.
New drawing on the page.
The same room.
Same desk.
But now the figure sitting in the chair wasn't August.
It was something else.
Blurred.
Smiling.
And underneath it, three words had been scrawled:
"Let it in."