They say some rules are unbreakable. Immutable. Woven into the very fabric of existence. Most never get close enough to test them. But I didn’t just test one.
I shattered it.
It started slowly—like a fever you don't know you have until it burns the world around you.
First, I felt them.
At first, it was little things. The sudden temperature drops in rooms with no open windows. The sense of being watched in my sleep, even when the lights were on. The shadows stretching just a little too long across the floor. It felt like the air itself was listening, waiting.
Then I began to feel them—actual contact. Light touches, cold fingers brushing the edges of my skin, pressure on my chest at night. A whisper in my ear when I was wide awake. “See us,” they said, over and over. A hundred voices folded into one.
I tried to ignore it. I told no one. You don't walk into a room and announce, “I think I’m haunted.” Not unless you want to be institutionalized.
But it got worse. And then, it got real.
---
It happened the night the Slipknot ghost came.
He appeared without warning—no cold wind, no rattling chains, no movie clichés. Just suddenly there, sitting on the edge of my bed as if he'd always belonged.
His face was pale, nearly waxen. A deep ligature mark circled his neck—raw, angry, fresh. His head lolled slightly, like the muscles couldn’t quite hold it straight. But his eyes…
His eyes were bottomless.
He didn’t speak in words.
He sang.
Not a song you’d find on any record—this was something older, jagged, primal. His voice was broken glass and thunder. The melody didn’t rise; it sank, as if dragging everything living into a place far beneath thought.
And with that song, the veil tore open.
---
I started seeing them everywhere. Shadows that didn’t belong to anything. People with hollow eyes standing motionless in alleyways. Faces pressed against windows from the inside—even when I hadn’t entered yet. My phone began ringing at 3:16 a.m. every night, but the line was always the same: silence… followed by breathing.
I didn’t leave my apartment. Not because I was afraid of the world, but because the dead followed me. They crowded around, drawn to me like moths to a flame that wouldn’t die. I saw them in glass reflections, in puddles, in the shimmer of screens. Some stared at me with empty reverence. Others clawed at the air, as if they were trying to scream but couldn’t remember how.
Doctors said I was delusional. That I was having “complex visual hallucinations tied to a dissociative episode.”
But I knew the truth:
The dead had found me.
And they wouldn’t let me go.
---
Then, last night, everything changed.
I stood before the mirror—exhausted, hollow-eyed, barely human. The bathroom light flickered overhead as if caught between this world and the next. My reflection was trembling, not matching my movements. And behind me... they stood.
Dozens of them. The Slipknot ghost at the front. Behind him, the drowned girl with moss growing from her eye sockets. The man who burned until his skin crackled. Children with no mouths. A boy who floated inches above the floor with no feet to stand on.
But they weren’t threatening anymore.
They were waiting.
Then, the mirror began to fog from within—like it was breathing.
Words formed, etched by an invisible hand, glowing faintly red:
> “Welcome home, Shepherd of the Broken.”
I reached out. My fingertip touched the mirror’s surface, and it wasn’t glass anymore. It was flesh. It was wound. It was bleeding.
And in that moment, I understood everything.
---
I hadn’t broken the rule.
I hadn’t stumbled into this.
I had been chosen.
The man in the Slipknot—the first ghost, the song-bringer—he wasn’t just a wandering spirit. He had been the last Shepherd. The one who held the line between the living and the lost. And he had taken his life to escape the burden.
That burden had passed to me.
I wasn’t just seeing the dead anymore. I was the bridge. The beacon. The one who drew them, carried them, listened to their screams when no one else could. They needed me. Not to save them. Not to free them. Just to witness them.
I laughed then. Not out of joy, but because I knew there would never be silence again.
---
And here's the twist:
They no longer haunt me.
I haunt you.
Every time you glance at the mirror and see something that shouldn’t be there…
Every flicker in the corner of your eye that disappears when you look straight at it…
That weight you feel on your chest at night, just before you fall asleep?
That’s me.
The new Shepherd.
And one day soon, when you're alone, when you're tired enough to forget what’s real—
I’ll come for you.
Because the veil is thinning.
And someone has to keep the dead company.
So leave the light on if it helps you sleep.
Say your prayers. Lock your doors.
But understand this—no lock can keep me out.
Not anymore.
Because once the rule is broken,
it can never be unbroken.
Not for me.
Not for you.
Sleep well—
if you still can.
The Shepherd is watching.
And the dead...
they're listening.
["Shepherd's Lullaby"
Hush now, close your eyes,
The mirror sees through lies,
Your heartbeat calls us near,
We gather when you fear...
One step, two step, cold on the floor,
You locked your door, but we’re not the door.
Breathing in shadows, crawling through glass,
Sleep while you can, ‘cause this too shall pass...
We remember how you dreamed,
Now you’ll hear us when we scream.
Every silence has its cost—
You’re not alone… you’re never lost.
Tick... tick... the Shepherd wakes,
He walks in time the ticking breaks.
Don't run now—don't pretend—
The song begins… but never ends.]
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