“Hey Sam” Emma said smiling, a little out of breath still.
“Emma, hi” Samir said motioning her into his house.
He closed the door behind her quickly and they both wandered into his lounge. Samir lived alone and was normally quite tidy, but for some reason he had items strewn across the lounge, as if they were just dropped and forgotten about.
“Looks like you need a spring clean in here” Emma said, “Have you been too busy to clear up?”
Samir looked around them, still looking distracted and sat down at his desk, where his overworked laptop was sitting.
“Yeah don't worry about that” Samir said, “I'm a little busy at the moment, if you want to grab a drink of water or anything then you know where everything is”.
Samir was normally much more accommodating than this, which Emma found a little odd. Why was he still working on a Saturday? That was also unusual for him. She wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. As she walked back to the lounge, she could smell cigarette smoke. Samir never smoked inside the house, this was yet more strange behaviour that she wasn't expecting.
“You smoke inside now?”
“Yeah” he said engrossed in whatever he was typing on the laptop, in between swigs of what she thought looked like a large glass of vodka.
“And you're drinking that at eleven am too? What's going on? What's wrong?” She asked concerned.
None of this behaviour was normal for him, so something serious must be wrong. Why was he furiously typing away on his laptop? Emma walked towards him and glanced over his shoulder to notice that he was in some kind of chat room.
“What are you doing?” she asked curiously. This was all a little unusual and she was desperate to know what was going on.
Samir ignored her and carried on typing. She tried to look at what he was writing; it seemed to be something about shadow figures. What were shadow figures? And who was he talking to? Samir hit the enter key on his laptop and his reply darted back to whoever was on the other end. He waited anxiously for a reply, sipping once more from his glass that was very quickly being drained of liquid. Something popped up on the screen and Samir swore loudly and banged his hand on the keyboard.
“Hey, hey, calm down” Emma said resting her hand on his shoulder, “What's going on?”
She looked at the screen to see what reply made him so angry, whatever it was seemed to be incoherent. Samir took another drag from his cigarette, put it out in the nearby ashtray and rubbed his forehead.
“It's not right, I'm not right, this damned thing isn't right” He said still rubbing his forehead in frustration.
“Ok, settle down a minute and talk to me about it” Emma said.
Samir took another gulp from his glass and then looked at Emma with an almost crazed look in his eyes.
“This is going to sound crazy, it really is, but I keep seeing shadow figures” He said
“Yeah, I saw you typing that, what are they?”
“I'm not sure, that's why I was asking in a chat room about them. I found a paranormal message board and thought someone on there might be able to make sense of them” He said shaking his head, “It started yesterday when I was coming home from work. While I was driving, out of the corner of my eye, I kept seeing what looked like shadows of people, but when I looked in their direction they were gone. I shrugged it off at first, but then when I got home, I kept seeing them. I saw them on and off all night and I had to have half of this bottle just to sleep”
“So, can you still see them now?” Emma asked looking around.
“Not this minute, but I have seen them today. They're always just one glance away; I'm seeing them more frequently. They're shadow-like, but they seem to have some kind of blue veins, I'm not sure what they are”
“And the message board, any luck on there?”
He shook his head.
“I thought I was getting somewhere, but then the replies were getting sinister and weird” He replied.
“Sinister how? Were people threatening you?” She asked.
“No, not as such” He said taking another sip, “They started by telling me that they were always there and had been with us the whole time. Then I got replies saying they were coming for me. After that, any messages just turned into gibberish, a random mixture of numbers and letters”.
“It sounds like someone is messing with you” Emma said concerned, “I would turn the laptop off if I were you; it's just people being dicks. They can tell you're in a bad frame of mind and taking advantage of it. You've just been working too hard”
Maybe she was right thought Samir. He had been doing extra shifts earlier in the week so that might have finally caught up with him. The shadow figures weren't the only problem though; he'd had weird sensations while in bed. It felt as if his body was being dropped from a height at times, and then at other times as if something was trying to pull him sideways. He put it down to the effects of the alcohol he had drunk. This could all be related to that, a mix of that and his tiredness. He took another sip, finishing the remaining vodka from his glass. Emma took the glass away from him.
“This stuff isn't going to help” She said, “You need to get some rest”
Samir knew she was probably right. It was a
