The Breath Between

November 16, 1871

I no longer trust the spaces between words.

They move when I’m not looking. When I write, the letters inch closer together, their stems twisting, joining into shapes I didn’t intend. Sometimes they rearrange themselves entirely. I tried to copy a prayer from the Kentucky book this morning — a simple invocation for silence — but by the time I finished, the lines had changed.

Not by much. Just enough that the meaning was different. The new words rolled under my tongue like stones when I spoke them. My mouth moved, but the sound wasn’t mine.

The book corrects me now. When I resist, it drags my hand across the page, forcing the pen to finish sentences I don’t remember starting. The ink has taken on a faint shimmer, wet long after it should have dried. Sometimes I wake to find words scrawled across the table or the floorboards — long curling lines that vanish by morning, but leave the scent of myrrh behind.

The voice has grown patient. It doesn’t need to shout anymore. It breathes with me. I feel it when I inhale — a cool pressure, just beneath the ribs. When I exhale, it lingers, as if deciding whether to follow.

Last night, while cleaning the lamp, I saw movement behind my reflection in the glass chimney. Not the stranger this time, but a hand — pale, long-fingered, resting on my shoulder. It looked gentle, almost reassuring, until I realized the fingers ended in small black crescents, like scorched bone.

When I turned, there was no one there. Only the faint smell of myrrh and that sweet undercurrent of decay — like lilies left too long in water.

Then the voice came. Not from the air, but through me.

“You are learning.”

I froze.

“The mouth opens soon.”

The flame in the lamp wavered, bending toward my chest. The mark on my wrist glowed once, and then — silence.

My heart doesn’t beat right anymore. It pauses, falters, catches again, as though trying to remember how to keep time. And when it does start, the rhythm is wrong — not mine.

Sometimes, between those halted beats, I think I hear breathing.

Not from my lungs.

From somewhere deeper.

Like the house itself has learned to inhale.