The Gift and the Stranger

Journal Entry – October 19, 1871

He’s back.

I knew it the moment the lamplight dimmed without warning, as if the flame itself bowed to an unseen hand. The air changed — thickened — and the scent of rain-soaked wool crept through the cracks of my door. That same scent from the night of the storm. The stranger.

I found him standing in the hallway outside my room, hat in hand, eyes like river stones — smooth, unreadable, reflecting nothing. He said he’d left something behind. I almost laughed. Of course he had. Men like him always leave pieces of themselves behind.

He asked if I’d opened the clasp. I didn’t answer.

He smiled anyway, the kind of smile that makes you feel watched even when his gaze slips away. He said, “Good. It needed to know you.”

When he reached for the doorknob, the mark on my palm burned so fiercely I gasped aloud. He stopped. His expression softened, almost tender. Then, under his breath — too soft for the words to be meant for me — he whispered: “She’s awake.”

The lamp flickered once, twice, and then steadied. When I looked again, the hallway was empty. But the air hasn’t lost his shape. The mirror still fogs like someone’s standing close behind me. The clasp lies open on the table, its lining darker now — a shade closer to crimson.

I dreamt of him after midnight. Or perhaps he was truly there. His hand brushed mine, and for a moment I could feel her again — the woman I saw in the vision weeks ago. The one marked in blood.

She smiled through his face.

And when I woke, the mark on my palm had spread.

— K.