Chapter Text
The yellow cab rattled across the bridge into Brooklyn, the skyline softening into rows of brownstone buildings and leafy side streets dotted with cafés and murals.
Tyler Galpin paid the driver and hauled his single suitcase from the trunk. He paused on the sidewalk, craning his neck to take in the walk-up apartment building that was, somehow, about to be his home.
On paper, the move made absolutely no sense.
He’d taken a significant pay cut, walked away from corporate law in Seattle, and traded glass towers and catered lunches for a cramped office above a community centre. But becoming a youth support lawyer had never been about money. The job paid less than half his old salary, came with impossible caseloads and worse hours, but it was honest. It put him face to face with kids who reminded him a little too much of himself—who he might have been if someone hadn’t stepped in when they did. If he hadn’t been offered court-ordered therapy instead of a stint in juvenile detention.
That had always been the plan. Grind hard in corporate law for five years. Play the game. Build a safety net.
And now, at twenty-eight, he finally had the chance to do something that actually mattered.
Unfortunately, that chance required moving clear across the country.
He still couldn’t quite believe his luck when the realtor had found him a suspiciously affordable fully-furnished sublet in Williamsburg. Multiple bedrooms. Actual living areas. A far cry from his sleek but claustrophobic one-bedroom in Seattle.
The catch? A month-to-month lease and vague references to “unfortunate circumstances” involving the previous occupier…which Tyler had immediately translated as someone was murdered here, because this was New York and that just seemed statistically likely.
He dragged his suitcase up three flights of stairs and fumbled with the alarming number of keys the realtor had dumped into his palm. After an embarrassing amount of trial and error, one finally turned in the lock.
The apartment was enormous.
Tyler froze just inside the door, keys still dangling from his fingers, trying to recalibrate his expectations. He’d been told the place had “character,” which he now understood was a truly heroic understatement.
The ceilings soared. His footsteps softened immediately, swallowed by dark wooden floors. The walls were painted a deep charcoal, broken only by tall arched windows cloaked in heavy velvet curtains.
Cool, I’m living inside a Victorian funeral parlour he thought to himself.
He wandered deeper, passing a sitting room. The furniture remained, but none of it suggested comfort. High-backed chairs angled away from each other as if conversation had been actively discouraged. A long low sofa sat beneath a portrait of a black bird.
He resisted the urge to announce himself like a character in a low-budget horror movie. Hello? New renter here? Please don’t murder me in my sleep?
Then he reached the library. He stopped dead. A library. An actual, honest-to-God library.
He certainly wasn’t in his rundown family home in Jericho anymore.
Not a shelf. Not a wall. A full room dedicated entirely to books. Floor-to-ceiling cases lined every wall, ladders fixed to brass rails, shelves half-filled but meticulously organised. Latin titles. Medical texts. Botany. Gothic novels. Some of the books were clearly old. Others looked newer. Recently used.
A massive mahogany desk sat off to one side. No computer. Just a single black typewriter placed dead centre. It’s keys were worn smooth, as if someone had stepped away mid-thought and simply… never come back.
The hallway stretched longer than seemed necessary. Doors were spaced far apart, shadows collected where the light didn’t quite reach. Every instinct told him this place had been occupied by someone who valued solitude.
Or human sacrifice rituals, a less helpful part of his brain added.
The bedroom at the end was vast and strangely formal. A four-poster bed dominated the space, stripped bare but perfectly made. Black sheets were folded at the foot with sharp precision. The wardrobe doors stood open, revealing rows of empty hangers aligned neatly.
The mirror above the dresser caught his reflection: Tyler paused. He looked younger than he felt—tousled brown hair that never quite stayed where he put it, a faint shadow of stubble along his jaw from too many nights spent working or being out with friends rather than sleeping. His suit jacket was slung over his arm now, creased. All in all he looked very out of place in the room.
He backed out and returned to the sitting area, suddenly very aware of the silence. Not the peaceful kind. The kind that made you aware there was no one to notice if you came home late. Or didn’t come home at all.
He opened a cabinet and found a set of knives, then a taxidermy kit and then a human skull…
…Because of course he did.
“Yep,” he murmured to himself. “Someone was definitely murdered here.”
…
The next few days passed without too much incident.
Tyler settled into his new job easily enough, thanks in no small part to the fact that his friend from school, Lucas Walker, also worked at the firm and had personally dragged him across state lines to fill the vacancy. Lucas was thrilled to have him in Brooklyn.
Every night brought a new bar. A new argument about craft beer. A new insistence that Tyler had to enjoy being single in New York.
“We’re young, we’re good-looking, we’re lawyers, and we’re single in the best city in the world,” Lucas declared more than once. “We can sleep when we’re dead, Galpin.”
Whatever time Tyler wasn’t working or being dragged out drinking, he spent exploring the neighbourhood and picking up essentials the apartment stubbornly lacked: like a television…or an internet connection.
After his initial unease with “the murder house,” as he’d dubbed it, he adjusted. There were a few things that could generously be labelled strange: a light flicking on when he was certain he’d turned it off, the occasional unexplained sound. But, considering it was an old building, and its, character...None of it had been alarming.
That was until Friday night.
Tyler had just returned from another bar with Lucas, mildly buzzed and pleasantly exhausted. He slumped onto the deeply uncomfortable sofa, flicked on the television, and settled in to half-watch baseball while contemplating whether instant noodles counted as an adequate dinner for a 28-year-old.
That was when he heard it…or rather, her.
It was a voice. Clear. Female. And incredibly irritated.
“I do not appreciate squatters.”
Tyler jumped to his feet immediately.
“Holy shit!” Was all he was able to muster.
She stood between the sitting room and the hallway as if she’d always been there.
A girl-no, a woman-dressed entirely in black, from her dress, to her stockings to the polished healed boots on her feet. Her dark hair fell into a braid over her shoulders, not a strand out of place. She regarded him with a look of pure, simmering disdain, black eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
Tyler stared, mouth hanging open.
She stared back.
“What are you doing in my apartment?” she asked flatly, never blinking.
Tyler’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“I...okay,” he managed. “Either I’m drunk, or Brooklyn has gotten way weirder than advertised.”
She stepped closer. Her boots made no sound against the floor.
“You’re sitting on my sofa,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “And you’re slouching all over it. It’s offensive.”
Tyler frowned, glancing down at the sofa before looking back at her. “Pretty sure I’m sitting on my sofa.”
She folded her arms. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here,” she said coolly. “Whether you’re after money, shelter, or simply poor life choices…but you need to leave my apartment. Now.”
“I’m not a squatter,” Tyler snapped, irritation flaring through his lingering shock.
She looked him over slowly. Deliberately. But said nothing.
“I have a lease,” he added. “I’ve paid rent.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Considering I own this apartment and have not leased it out, that’s impossible.”
Tyler dragged a hand through his hair and looked around for his phone. “Okay. Great. I need to call the realtor.”
He jabbed the screen. Straight to voicemail. Thank you for calling— I won’t be back in the office until Monday.
Of course she wouldn’t.
Tyler exhaled sharply and looked back at the woman standing in his living room…unmoved, unimpressed, and very clearly not planning on leaving.
“This,” he said tightly, “is officially the strangest thing that has ever happened to me.”
She tilted her head, studying him now with something that bordered on curiosity.
“I doubt that,” she replied.
She glanced around the room, her expression darkening further as her gaze landed on the television, the empty beer bottle on the side table, the faint impression he’d left on the cushions. She circled around the space like she was inspecting damage after a break-in.
“You’ve rearranged things,” she said.
“I haven’t touched anything,” Tyler replied.
“The sofa cushion is depressed.”
“That’s gravity.”
“Then explain the television,” she said coolly. “It’s vulgar.”
He couldn’t.
She paused her inspection and looked at him. Tyler felt her gaze pass over him, studying his rumpled jacket from a long day at the office, the loosened tie, the boyish uncertainty written plainly across his face.
Tyler realised, distantly, that she hadn’t blinked since she’d appeared. Against his better judgement, curiosity edged out fear.
“What’s your name, anyway?” He asked.
“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” she shot back.
“Got it,” he replied, back to confusion. “What do we do know? There’s clearly been a mistake.”
She responded without a beat. “You leave.”
“I can’t,” he replied, a little helplessly. “I gave up my apartment, my job’s here, and I’ve already unpacked the knives.”
Her gaze snapped to him. “You touched my knives?”
“…Yes?”
That, more than anything else, seemed to enrage her. She turned on her heel and crossed the room in three swift strides, braid swinging against her back. Tyler barely had time to register where she was headed before she reached the sideboard. The knives gleamed, laid out exactly as Tyler remembered: clean, ordered, familiar in a way that felt suddenly dangerous.
She reached for one without hesitation. Her fingers passed straight through the handle. She froze. So did Tyler. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Slowly, deliberately, she tried again…curling her hand, adjusting the angle, as if precision might make the difference. It didn’t.
Her hand slid through the knife like smoke through glass. She pulled her hand back as though burned. She stared at it, flexing her fingers once. Twice. Her face had gone unnaturally still, irritation stripped away to reveal something colder beneath it. Shock.
“That’s… not possible,” she said.
Tyler swallowed hard. His pulse roared in his ears. His mind scrambled for logic, for explanations that didn’t involve what he’d just seen.
“You…didn’t grab it,” he said quietly.
Her gaze lifted to him, sharp and searching. “You saw that.”
It wasn’t a question.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
Something unreadable flickered across her face. Vulnerability, quickly masked. She straightened, shoulders squaring as if sheer will could reassert control over reality itself.
“This changes nothing.”
“That’s debatable,” Tyler said faintly.
Her eyes narrowed, dark and stormy. Every measured inch she had claimed of the room now felt sharper, like a weapon. “You think staying here is acceptable?” she hissed.
Before Tyler could respond, she swung her fist toward him, precise and fast. He flinched instinctively, stepping back…but she passed right through him. His stomach lurched. He stumbled forward.
“What the—?!” Tyler yelped, spinning around to face her.
She froze mid-motion, eyes widening just slightly, irritation twisting into confusion. She flexed her fingers, then jabbed again. Her fist disappeared into thin air as if he were nothing but smoke.
Tyler stumbled backwards, heart hammering in his chest, mouth dry. “Okay… what are you?!”
His mind raced. He felt the room close in, the dark walls pressing on him, the faint chill she carried seeping into his bones. He backed toward the door, swallowing hard, every instinct screaming.
She stepped closer, fists raised again, and he realised fully: she could touch nothing, hurt nothing, yet her presence was undeniably real.
“I… I should… maybe… leave for a while?” Tyler stammered, voice tight, hands shaking.
Feet pounding the hardwood floors, keys jingling in his hand, he yanked the door open and sprinted down the stairs, desperate for air, light, anything solid.
Before he left, he heard her voice from behind him.
“Finally some sense from you.”