Sean was by no means an active person, he was about as active as his studies allowed him to be. So he was both surprised and half-dead when he reached the apartment. His lungs burned as he gasped for breath, his suffering was short-lived though, as after a short moment, he puked out his breakfast and passed out.

The past few days had been full of anxiety for Stacy as Sean had never messaged her back. She had been roaming in the hallways, to not scare the children. She blamed herself for not stepping up even after knowing their dire straits. She had sent Sean to his death. The food had run out yesterday and it was now up to her to go out there.

' Will I die like all the others?' as she thought of how she had barely survived when they had last gone out to look for supplies, she shivered from top to bottom and spaced out for a while. Sean hadn't gone out with the rest of them due to his poor stamina and had been assigned to look over the children.

Stacy and the others had decided to form several groups to separately gather different resources to quickly end their trip, they had long learned and accepted the supernatural nature of events after hearing her and Sean explain their findings.

They were skeptical at first but both of them were also backed by Ron, after all, the events that had proceeded this discussion were curious enough to not be properly explained by any popular theories among them, coupled with their fear and anxiousness made people quick to jump at anything that mildly explained their situation. They had regressed to the past when religions were formed to explain solar eclipses.

It had been fine for Stacy and Emily, an elderly woman, initially as they gathered the medicines and returned to the agreed-upon spot where they were to tally the supplies to discuss whether another run was needed at a different place to fulfill their requirements. Oddly enough, no one welcomed the duo when they returned. So they started waiting, it would have been impolite to call and disturb someone hard at work. After half an hour though, they finally decided to call the others but no one picked up. It was at that moment when they saw Jeffrey, an office worker who was supposed to tally the supplies, run in their direction, and it looked like he had no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Emily hysterically screamed and pointed behind him and that was when Stacy first saw a wraith, it was by no means a close encounter, as all of it was cue enough for her to turn back and sprint towards her home, the place she subconsciously turned to in her frenzy, didn't guarantee any safety from it but she didn't have enough time to think her thoughts through.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Through some miracle or perhaps due to the sacrifice of her neighbors she had managed to safely reach the building. She didn't bother using the elevator and ran up the stairs till she reached the room where Sean and the kids were huddled together in front of the TV, tears streaming down her face all the time, she ran into the apartment bathroom and locked herself in for three hours. During this a few small kids also started crying, it wasn't every day that they saw a grown-up cry.

All of them were holding back the sadness from losing their parents which made this event enough for the floodgates to open. After calming down the kids he went to the room she had gone to after leaving the apartment and rang the bell. Her apartment was two floors above so he had told the kids that he would be back in a while, for their safety he had still chosen to lock the gates after leaving with a set of keys he had acquired from the guard's office.

After a short while, the gate to Stacy's apartment opened and he was greeted with her pale face. He entered after her and sat opposite her on a chair. For some time no one spoke. Then Stacy started recalling her experiences one after another like a robot and by the end of it, she started tearing up again. Sean didn't know how to react to it, so he offered her a handkerchief to wipe her tears and also as emotional support. Sean wasn't the emotional kind from birth, even if he felt sad, he didn't how to properly express himself and so he had learned from a young age to maintain a calm expression, no matter what internal turmoil he went through. It had ended up turning into a defense mechanism that he often turned to. So, as Stacy calmed down he remained silent.

Then, he grew curious and asked her why she felt that she had to run after just seeing the movement in the fog. It was understandable to run because they expected some form of danger and she had also seen Jeffrey run away from it but her reaction afterward was just too great to be related to just that, even if he was bad at understanding emotions, he found it too odd, not to mention the scream from Emily.

Then Stacy also thought about it and agreed that there was indeed something off about it. Just then, he had a wild idea which mumbled out loud.

" Could it be that the thing that followed Jeffrey caused all of you to suffer from uncontrollable fear?"

Stacy thought about it for a while and then softly said, " Possibly, do you think it followed me back here?"

Sean suddenly stood up and went out of the apartment and into the elevator, he was followed reluctantly by Stacy. Both of them went down to the ground floor and swiftly closed the electric shutter from the guard office. Then they stood hidden at a distance from the entrance to make sure no one came through. After a tense few hours, they went back up to the room to find all the kids gathered at the door.

This short greeting was quickly followed by indignant wails.