Chapter 4: Shadows in the Bedroom

"What’s been happening to you?"

"Lately, I’ve had no energy at all. I can’t focus on anything. At night, it’s like I’m half-awake, half-asleep. Even sleeping pills don’t help, and my hair keeps falling out in handfuls. I’m on the verge of a breakdown."

She hadn’t spoken more than three sentences before her voice began to tremble with tears.

She blinked fast, trying to keep it together, but I could tell she was hanging on by a thread. I kept quiet and let the silence stretch, giving her space to breathe. The city noises faded into the background, replaced by the raw edge of her fear.

Her name was Natalie Brooks, 28 years old, a product manager at a cosmetics company. According to her, these symptoms had lasted nearly two months. She’d tried both holistic and conventional medicine, searched online, even consulted the local psychic, but nothing worked.

She pulled out a business card with a fancy logo and handed it to me, almost like she was trying to prove she had a real life outside of all this. But the way she twisted her engagement ring around her finger made me think she was used to covering up anxiety with professionalism. She listed off the doctors and clinics she’d seen, the websites she’d scoured at 3 a.m., the home remedies her mom mailed from Indiana—none of it had made a dent.

Recently, things had gotten worse—her hair was falling out, her cycle was irregular, and she often fainted. It was seriously affecting her life.

She hesitated, her voice breaking when she mentioned fainting spells at work. I could picture her in a sterile office, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, trying to hold herself together while everything felt like it was slipping through her fingers.

Coincidentally, one of her clients had asked me to check their house’s energy, so she was introduced to me.

Small towns and city neighborhoods are like spiderwebs—everyone knows someone who knows someone. Word gets around fast, especially if you’re willing to look where others won’t.

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

I took out my old Farmer’s Almanac, calculating her birth date as I asked.

I flipped through the tattered pages, fingers moving over the Braille I’d added myself, doing the math the way my mentor taught me.

"No. But for the past two months, I keep having a strange dream. In the dream, there’s a man whose face I can’t see clearly, and every night he… um… sleeps with me."

She seemed embarrassed, but there was fear in her eyes as well.

She stared at her hands as she spoke, voice dropping almost to a whisper. I heard the rustle of cars passing outside, but in that moment, it felt like we were in a world apart, with only her confession hanging in the air.

"I’m worried I’ve run into something evil. The local psychic said I was possessed and gave me a cup of holy water to drink, but after that, things only got worse."

She said it like she didn’t quite believe it herself, but desperation has a way of making you try anything once. The look on her face was half hope, half horror.

"You mean, in these dreams, this man—he’s with you? Like, really with you?"

I stopped writing and looked up at her.

There are things people won’t say out loud, but I’ve heard enough stories to know what she meant. The kind of dreams that leave you cold and shaken, like something’s crawled inside your skin and won’t let go.

Natalie’s hands twisted in her lap. I slid a pack of tissues across the table. She took one, eyes never meeting mine.

When spirits and humans have intimate contact, it’s usually female spirits seeking to drain a man’s energy. Such cases aren’t rare.

People talk about haunted hotels and cursed crossroads, but most don’t realize how many stories start in their own bedrooms. You see enough of these cases, you start to spot the patterns.

I’d heard of one case up in Minnesota: a family kept a household spirit—Old Man Lucas, a snake spirit—who once drained a woman’s energy. The victim was the family’s daughter-in-law. She didn’t take it seriously for a year or so, but in the end, she died suddenly in bed. Even more horrifying, after death, she gave birth to a nest of little snakes.

That story still makes my skin crawl. Folks in the north talk about it in hushed tones, warning their daughters not to mess with things they don’t understand. There are always more layers to these tales than people want to believe.

It was truly chilling.

Now, Natalie’s situation sounded all too familiar.

The more she talked, the more I felt that icy thread of recognition—a kind of chill that settles in your bones when you know something’s wrong and you might be the only one who can help.

"Did you bring anything unusual home recently?"

"No."

She shook her head.

She sounded certain, but people forget the small things—a thrift store vase, a hand-me-down, a stray animal. I filed the thought away, just in case.

I frowned. After learning about her situation, I decided to visit her apartment.

Sometimes, you have to see a place with your own eyes—or, in my case, feel it with your own senses—before the pieces fall into place.