Level 1 – The Velvet Fears

The first time I saw it, I barely noticed it.

Just a feather. Small, clean, bone-white. Sitting on the front step like it had drifted down from the sky.

I glanced up. No birds. No nests. Just the wind brushing through the trees and the porch light buzzing faintly in the early morning haze. I picked the feather up, turned it over between my fingers, then let it fall into the grass and forgot about it.

But the next morning, there was another one.

Same shape. Same size. Same impossibly bright white.

It lay in the exact same place as before—right in the center of the step leading to the front door. As though someone had measured it.

This time, I hesitated before picking it up. I brushed it off like lint from an old coat and tossed it into the trash bin beside the porch.

The third morning, I didn’t find it outside.

I found it just inside my house.

Resting on the hardwood, a few inches in. As if it had been placed there.

The doors had been locked. The windows shut. No sign of tampering. Nothing is missing.

Except maybe… peace of mind.

I didn’t throw this one away.

I flushed it in the toilet.

I didn’t sleep well that night. Not because I was afraid. Not then. But I kept waking with the sense that I’d missed something. That someone had been standing just beyond the door, listening to my breath.

I chalked it up to stress. Too much coffee. Not enough rest.

But the next morning, there it was again.

White.

Perfect.

And placed inside my house, just in front of my entrance door.

I swept the feather into a paper towel and threw it out without touching it.

That evening, I triple-checked the locks. Windows, too. I slid the bolt on the back door and wedged a chair under the handle. Just in case.

I even closed the shutters and the curtains. It felt silly. Paranoid.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

The next day, I stayed home longer than usual. Waited. Stared at the floor just behind the door.

Nothing.

No feather.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

Later that morning, I went to grab the mail. On my way back through the front hallway, my foot caught on something soft—barely noticeable. I looked down.

I had stepped on a feather.

But not outside.

It was inside the house.

Lying in the middle of the hallway floor like it had been waiting there all along.

And it wasn’t white.

It was pale grey.

That night, I didn’t sleep much.

I left the hallway light on, door closed, curtains drawn. I even checked the feather again before bed—as if it might’ve moved.

It hadn’t.

But something still felt wrong.

The house creaked more than usual. Normal sounds. Old wood. Temperature shifts. I told myself that.

But around 2:00 a.m., I heard something else.

Not footsteps.

Not breathing.

Just a subtle, brief tap-tap, then silence.

I didn’t go check.

Not then.

In the morning, I stepped cautiously into the hall, heart pounding even though I tried to laugh at myself for it.

Everything looked the same.

Except this time, the feather was on the stairs.

Perched on the third step.

It was darker now. Grey with streaks of ash-colored black running through the barbs. Like soot had seeped into it from the inside.

I didn’t touch it.

I just stared.

For too long.

Then I backed away and grabbed my phone.

I didn’t call anyone.

I opened the delivery app.

And ordered a small security camera.

I told myself it was just for peace of mind.

That I was being cautious, not scared.

But that night, before bed, I set it up at the top of the stairs—facing the front door, angled to catch the floor and the steps.

I plugged it in. Checked the feed.

Then I went to sleep with the lights on again.

Just in case.

The morning came slower than usual.

I lay in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, listening to the house creak.

Eventually, I sat up, grabbed my phone, and opened the CCTV app.

I remembered the feather clearly—resting on the third step. Still, unmoving, perfectly centered.

I skipped back to the beginning of the recording, expecting to see the feather, but... the stairs were empty.

All night.

No feather.

I watched the footage twice, scrubbing through each hour. No movement. No sound. No flicker of change. Just a still shot of the hallway and the bare steps.

I paused it right before I woke up.

Still nothing.

The feather hadn’t been there.

But I had seen it. I was sure I had seen it.

Phone still in hand, I opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway.

And from the top of the stairs, I saw it.

On the sixth step now.

Not the third.

The feather sat motionless, ash-grey, but… darker. Not black—but no longer the pale color it had been the day before. As if something had soaked into it.

The air in the stairwell felt heavier.

I didn’t move.

I just watched.

And the feather stayed exactly where it was.

I didn’t go down right away.

I stood at the top of the stairs for longer than I wanted to admit, just staring at that sixth step. At the feather that hadn’t been there. At the space around it, that felt somehow… aware of me.

Eventually, I told myself it was nothing. Just nerves. A trick of memory and lighting and exhaustion.

But when I moved, I didn’t step down normally.

I skipped over the third and sixth steps—and over the feather—jumping lightly from the seventh to the fifth and then from the fourth to the second.

The feather didn’t move.

I went about the rest of my morning pretending I had a reason to be fine.

Breakfast. Emails. Dishes. Each sound in the house felt louder than it should have. Each shadow felt slightly too long. I kept glancing over my shoulder, expecting to find something behind me.

I told myself it was just leftover tension.

But every time I passed near the staircase, the unease returned.

At one point, I opened the front door to get some fresh air—and found the latch already unlocked.

I was sure I had locked it.

And then, just after lunch, I heard the soft sound of something falling upstairs.

Not crashing. Not tumbling. Just a single thud.

I climbed the stairs slowly, skipping the sixth step again—careful to avoid the feather.

When I reached the top, I paused. My bedroom door was open.

I hadn’t left it open.

Inside, nothing looked disturbed—nothing tipped over, no broken glass, no sign of a break-in.

Except the feather.

It was now lying in the center of my bed.

Not on the floor. Not near the window. Dead center on the comforter I had smoothed that morning, like it had been waiting.

I stared at it.

Then, I turned quickly and rushed back towards the stairs.

The sixth step, once marked by that subtle, ash-grey warning, was bare.

The feather was gone.

The step was empty.

No feather. No trace. Just smooth, worn wood where it had sat moments before.

I stood there for a heartbeat longer than I should have, staring at the step, trying to convince myself I hadn’t imagined it.

But I hadn’t.

And when I returned to the bedroom—just seconds later—it was still there on the bed.

But darker than before.

No longer ash-grey.

Now, almost charcoal, the surface veined with smoke-dark streaks. As if it had been dipped in soot, or ink, or left too long in the shadows. There was something dense about it now. Heavier, even at a glance. Like it wasn’t just there but growing.

I didn’t step closer.

I didn’t need to.

Something about the way it rested—centered, perfect, as though arranged—told me that moving toward it might shift something I wouldn’t be able to shift back.

And it hadn’t stopped moving.

It was slowly turning, ever so slightly, as if caught in a breath of wind I couldn’t feel.

The overhead light flickered once—then steadied.

I turned, heart pounding, and hurried down the stairs.

And I didn’t sleep in my room that night.

I moved a blanket and pillow to the living room couch, dragging them across the floor like I didn’t want to make noise. I set up the spare CCTV camera inside my bedroom, pointed at the bed and the closed door. I wanted proof. A timeline. Something physical I could cling to.

But part of me already knew what I would find.

I stayed up late, lights dimmed, watching the feed crawl across the monitor. The house felt too still. Every creak, every whisper of the walls settling, made me flinch.

The volume was off, but something hummed in the footage, like the kind of sound you only notice after waking from a dream.

When I finally fell asleep, I slept fitfully.

And when I woke, I reviewed the footage with the kind of dread you only feel at the edge of something surreal.

At first, everything looked the same. Like yesterday, the feather didn't appear on the footage.

But then—something strange.

At 3:33 a.m., the bedroom door opened.

There was no one there.

No figure. No shadow. No sound.

Just a door, opening by itself.

I leaned closer to the monitor. Slowed the playback.

Nothing crossed the threshold. But the air inside the room changed. The light shifted—only slightly, like the pixels had distorted for a single frame. The way heat blurs a road in summer. The bed looked untouched, but the corners of the screen were darker now. Edged with something that wasn’t there before.

And then the feather was back.

Resting on the pillow.

No movement. No motion blur. It hadn’t fallen or drifted into frame. It had simply… appeared.

It wasn’t visible before.

But now the camera had caught it.

It hadn’t caught it arriving, but I could clearly see the feather on screen.

I stared at the monitor until my eyes burned.

And then I shut it off.

I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, wrapped in a blanket like armor, with the windows open to let something—anything—else in. I didn’t move much. I didn’t eat. I just sat, waiting for the air to change again.

Waiting for whatever was next.

It came just after sunset.

A single knock.

Not rushed. Not loud.

Firm. Measured.

Final.

I didn’t want to open the door.

But I did.

The porch was empty.

No breeze. No figure retreating into the dusk.

Only the long shadows of the fence and a single object resting on the welcome mat:

A scrap of parchment, yellowed and damp at the edges, folded in half like a forgotten letter.

No name.

No address.

Inside, a message—written in fine, old ink:

“Payment comes in threes. The past returns what was borrowed.”

There was no signature.

No mark of origin.

Just the message, and the weight it carried.

My hands trembled.

And then—something else surfaced.

Not a thought. Not a memory.

A pull.

A knowing.

A name I had never spoken but recognized. A hallway from a home I had never lived in. A pair of hands—mine, but not—reaching toward a figure wreathed in feathered shadows.

Black wings. Haloed in tarnished gold.

Too radiant to be holy. Too calm to be merciful.

And a voice, curling through the air like smoke through time:

“You asked to be remembered. You asked to return.”

I never heard those words.

Not in this life.

But two lives ago—I had.

And now, the creature I’d bargained with had come to collect.

I didn’t pack my belongings right away.

At first, I just stood there, the parchment still open in my hand, reading the message again and again like the meaning might change if I looked long enough. But it didn’t.

It stayed the same.

Three payments.

Something borrowed.

And me—part of the deal, whether I remembered it or not.

When I finally moved, it was with a kind of mechanical. I didn’t think. I just… acted. Grabbed a duffel from the closet. Stuffed it with clothes, toiletries, and cash. As I took my jacket, I knocked over a mirror that crashed on the ground and broke. I left everything like this. I didn’t check the weather. I didn’t lock the windows. I didn’t even unplug the kettle.

I avoided the sixth and third steps on the way down the stairs.

By the time the sun had fully set, I was in my car, engine running, hands white-knuckled on the wheel.

The feather hadn’t shown itself again. But I felt it—close. Closer than ever. As if it was riding in the passenger seat with me.

I drove for hours. Back roads. Highways. Through small towns where everything looked half asleep and the streetlights blinked like tired eyes.

I didn’t stop until the gas light came on.

A faded sign welcomed me to a motel that looked abandoned from a distance. A flickering “VACANCY” buzzed red above the office door.

I checked in with a name that wasn’t mine.

The room smelled of bleach and old carpet. One bed. One lamp. A TV bolted to the wall, playing a channel with no sound.

I locked the door. Pulled the curtains. Left my bag on the floor.

I meant to stay awake.

But the exhaustion hit harder than I expected, and the bed, despite the stale scent and lumpy pillows, was warm.

I fell asleep with the lights on.

And I dreamed.

Not of the house. Not of the feather.

Of something older.

I stood in a vast hall of stone. Columns stretched high into a ceiling veiled in stars. At the center, an altar. And above it, descending like dusk—

The creature.

Black-feathered wings that shimmered with gold at the edges. A face that shifted when I tried to look. Eyes that saw too much.

In the dream, I wasn’t afraid.

I was younger. Arrogant. Smiling.

“I can control it,” I heard myself say. “I’m not like the others.”

The entity didn’t answer.

Just extended a hand.

And I took it.

A bond sealed. A name exchanged.

The dream shattered like glass.

I woke up gasping.

The pillow beside me—

Held the feather.

No longer streaked. No longer veined with smoke.

Solid black.

Perfect.

Final.

It hadn’t followed me.

It had arrived before me.

I jumped out of the bed.

I don’t know why I didn’t grab my bag or my keys. Maybe panic, but I left everything behind and ran.

Out the door. Across the parking lot. Toward the woods that bordered the far side of the motel lot like a waiting mouth.

Branches tore at my arms. Roots snagged my feet.

I tripped once. Then again. Caught myself on bark and thorns.

The trees thinned.

And then—

A clearing.

I knew it before I saw it. The shape of it burned behind my eyes. My breath hitched. My heart stuttered.

There, ruins and at the center stood a familiar stone altar.

And on it—

A single feather.

Not left. Not placed.

Offered.

I stepped forward, barely aware of my feet moving.

The moment I touched the edge of the stone, my memories returned—not in fragments, but all at once. A deluge of knowing. Lives unspooling.

The promises.

The price.

The thing I’d given in exchange for time I hadn’t earned.

And then—fingers on my shoulder.

Not warm.

Not cold.

Just present.

I turned too fast. Lost my footing.

Fell over the altar and the feather.

The world turned inside out.

Feathers—hundreds, maybe thousands—rose in a circle around me, caught in a whirlwind of black and silence.

In the center of it all—descending—

The entity. A beautiful creature that looked like an angel, had the shape of one, but none of the warmth.

Its wings unfurled like shadows blooming. It reached for me.

No words. No warning.

Just a hand around my throat...

And then...

Nothing.

[BREAK]

Local Broadcast, Channel 7 News

“…Authorities are continuing their investigation into the sudden disappearance of an individual last seen at a roadside motel near the Ashgrove Forest. Surveillance footage shows them leaving the premises alone shortly after midnight. A search of the nearby woods yielded no trace. The case remains open.”

Never bargain with what you can't afford to lose because some debts last longer than a lifetime.