I spent the night in lockup, nursing what I strongly suspected was a broken nose.

None of it made any sense to me. I’d tried telling the cops that’d brought me in what happened until I was blue in the face, but it’s hard to communicate effectively when you’re borderline hysterical. On an intellectual level, I knew I should have shut up and demanded a call to my lawyer. Unfortunately, “calm-headed reason” wasn’t even in my lexicon right about then.

It took me a few hours after they’d processed me, but I eventually reached the point where the tears stopped flowing and I sat on the floor of my cell, numb to the entire world. My mind was reeling from the torrent of horrible shit that’d hit me all at once, and I was flailing for some explanation for it all. But I didn’t have one, and that was the worst part.

There were really only two options that made any kind of sense at all. The first was that a neighbor had heard some sort of commotion or Lynn’s screams and called the cops, and when they arrived, they’d assumed I was the one responsible. If that was the case, then this would all get sorted out in the morning, once my lawyer did some legwork and made some calls. The second scenario was the one that worried me the most: someone had set me up.

The timing of the police response was a little too coincidental for my liking, and it was suspicious as hell that I’d arrived mere minutes after someone killed my wife, and yet whoever had done it was nowhere to be found. If I was being framed for the murder of my wife, I had to admit that it might be more difficult to prove my innocence than I’d have liked.

I was known to have a hot temper, get angry, and break shit. I’d been erratic since Tim’s death, and there were several complaints filed against me over the last few weeks. My last interaction with Lynn had been a lot of me yelling, throwing shit, and then finally storming out of the house. None of it looked good, and it was all my own damn fault.

There was just one glaring issue: who would have the motivation to murder my wife and frame me for it? I didn’t have any enemies that I could think of; no jealous lovers, no gambling debts, no… nothing.

I puzzled through it for hours, racking my brain over and over again for some clue that would point me toward who had killed my wife and why, but I kept coming up empty. The only thing my brain kept coming back to, though, was the feeling of being watched. That, and the eyes I could swear had been watching me through the window.

I reached up and rubbed at my chest. The ache behind my ribcage was the worst it’d been; now a constant, stabbing pain roughly where my heart was. It was to the point where it was a constant distraction, keeping me from focusing on the important things, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have bet money on there being an open wound there. Yet, every time I pulled the front of my shirt down so I could see my chest, nothing but unbroken skin stared back at me.

Sometime a little after 0800, someone came to get me. My lawyer was waiting for me in an interview room, and it wasn’t long before I was frog-marched through the station to an interview room. As we walked past a series of offices, my ears picked up on a haunting, heavy metal tune drifting out from one of them. I recognized it instantly—Spectre, by Judas Priest. Tim had been the metalhead—not me—and that song was one of his favorites. Still, I’d heard it enough, being around him as much as I had been, that I knew it immediately. I wasn’t sure why, but that song, specifically, seemed important at that moment.

Before my conscious mind could figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me about it, though, we turned the corner at the end of the hall, and I lost track of the music. A short two minutes after that, I was seated in an uncomfortable metal chair, wrists cuffed together and chained to a ringbolt in the floor between my feet.

A man in his early sixties sat across from me. From the perfectly combed and styled gray hair to the shiny pair of fancy leather shoes he wore, the guy gave off the air of a consummate professional. His piercing blue eyes bore into mine, at odds with the genial smile on his lips, and he set a briefcase on the table.

“Hello, Mr. Bertalucci. My name is Matthew Roderick. I received a call from your union rep, and he filled me in on the mess you’ve found yourself in.” He opened the clasps on his briefcase and flipped up the top, then withdrew several file folders. “Before I show you the preliminary evidence linking you to your wife’s murder, I’d like you to give me your side of the story.”

That was it. No small talk, no asking if there was anything he could get for me. Just straight to business. I didn’t love it, especially after the night I’d just had, but I could appreciate it. The faster I brought this guy up to speed, the faster he could get me out of here and I could begin tracking down the shitstain that’d killed Lynn.

I went through everything that I’d done the past evening, from the point I’d gotten off my shift until the cops had stormed my house and arrested me for a murder I hadn’t committed.

When I was done, Mr. Roderick sighed heavily. He spread the manilla folders out on the table and opened them up, laying their contents out in orderly rows. I was speechless at the sheer volume of material, but nothing stunned me more than the still images that looked like they’d been taken from a home security camera.

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I stared in utter confusion at no less than a half-dozen pictures of me beating my wife with my fists. First in the entryway of our house, then the living room, then the kitchen. Lynn’s face was a mask of terror, and my own was totally unrecognizable: a rictus of unrestrained fury. I looked like some kind of unleashed demon.

“As you can see, Mr. Bertalucci,” my lawyer said, “The evidence is quite strong.”

I couldn’t speak. I sat there in complete shock, the cognitive dissonance of what I knew to be the truth warring with the overwhelming evidence in front of me was too much to bear. And that stabbing pain in my chest suddenly intensified, like someone was turning the blade just a little more.

Had I really done this? Was it possible that I’d suffered some kind of psychotic break and murdered my wife? It felt like my entire world was collapsing in on itself, and the surrounding space shrank into a bubble just barely large enough to encompass myself, the table, and my lawyer.

The sheer sense of inescapable dread that crashed over me in that moment will forever be seared into my memory, and my grip on sanity teetered on the edge. The knife in my heart twisted more, and it was as though large portions of my soul were being sucked out through the open wound. A tingling sensation began at the edge of my consciousness, and I sensed hungry eyes descend upon me once again. It was maddening, like some kind of malevolent force, inexorably pressing inward on my will to keep living.

I’d done it. I’d killed my wife. The proof was right there in front of me, and the disgusted face of my lawyer hammered the truth of it home.

No!

No! There was absolutely no way I could have done what those photos showed. I looked up, and my face twisted into a mask of utter defiance.

“Those are fakes,” I snarled. I didn’t know why this was happening or who was responsible for it, but this whole thing was a sham. I was being set up to take a fall in the most terrible way possible, and I was absolutely seething at the injustice of it all. “I don’t give a good goddamn what kind of so-called evidence they’ve given you, but I. Did. Not. Kill. My. Wife!” I practically spat each of those last words, and I put as much conviction behind them as I could muster.

The more I contemplated it, the more certain I became. I was a shitbag, without question. But strike one of my girls? Not a chance in hell. Yes, I yelled; I broke shit; I stormed out of the house like a petulant child and left my devastated wife to pick up the pieces.

But I never hit one of them. That was a line I was physically incapable of crossing–it was hardwired into my DNA.

Those photos were all fake. I’d never been more certain of anything before in my entire life.

The pain in my chest receded, the more certain I became I hadn’t done what they were accusing me of. The ephemeral presence that had hounded me ever since Tim’s death also seemed to shrink back somewhat, and now there was something else in the air—something akin to fear. It was almost like whatever it was realized it’d pushed too far, and now it was afraid I was about to fight back.

And it was goddamn right about that!

Movement at the extreme edge of my vision caught my attention, and my head snapped toward the door. But nothing was there. I stared into my reflection in the mirrored glass window, now more certain than ever before that something strange was going on here. I couldn’t really explain it, but I just knew that if I searched my reflection for long enough, I’d find something.

Then I saw it: a ghostly pair of red eyes staring back at me, over the shoulder of my reflection and just barely real—more like the concept of something being there than actually being physically present. I snapped my head around, expecting to see something behind me, but just as every time I’d done so in the past, I found nothing.

“Did you see that?” I shouted, turning to my lawyer. “Tell me you saw that!”

The man looked shaken. He slowly inched himself back from the table, and I could see what he was thinking in his eyes before he even said it.

“Mr. Bertalucci, I’m going to recommend we have you examined by a psychiatrist.” His brow furrowed, and he made to stand, stopping only to shove the assorted “evidence” back into his briefcase. He quickly shut the lid and secured the clasps. “I’m afraid that you may have experienced some kind of break from reality, due to all the stress you’ve been under.”

“No!” I shouted. I lunged to my feet, but the chain securing my cuffs snapped tight before I was even halfway up. Tugging against my restraints, I desperately wanted to stop the man from leaving. I was so close to understanding what was going on here, but I needed him to help me. “Wait! Please! I’m not crazy, and I didn’t kill my wife! I’m being set up! You have to believe me!”

My lawyer opened the door and bolted out into the hall. It slammed shut a moment later, and I slowly slumped back into my seat. It felt like I was going nuts—like maybe my brain had been irreparably broken when Tim died in my arms.

But then I reflected on all the strange things I’d experienced over the past couple of months through a new lens. Something odd was happening here, and, not for the first time in recent weeks, a little voice in the back of my head was screaming bloody murder at me to… what?

I closed my eyes and thought about all the odd moments I’d experience—from the feeling of wrongness when Tim and I were riding in the Suburban on the way to that apartment complex, to dueling beliefs of both having a family and not having a family, to the red-eyed… something that’d been feasting on my misery.

I looked back into my reflection in the door, narrowing my eyes as I once again sought whatever was doing this to me. I was damn sure that, whatever the hell it was, it was responsible for everything I’d suffered over the past month.

Time froze, and those malevolent red eyes faded into reality behind me. Their gaze bore directly into my own and straight through to my soul. A chill ran up my spine as the two of us stared each other down. Slowly, a mist-like, ephemeral body formed around those two pinpricks of crimson. As the body continued to coalesce, I realized it was taking on the appearance of a ghost, or maybe…

A specter.