After Philosophy of Mind came a long gap. He used it the same way he always did: sitting alone in the corner of the campus café, back to the brick wall, headphones in with no music playing. Just something to keep people away.
He scrolled half-heartedly through an assigned reading on personal identity theory, but none of it stuck. Not because he didn't understand it—but because it all felt so… pointless.
What did it matter what made a person the same across time?
The only thing that hadn't changed was the dream. The fire. The voice.
Everything else? Just vanish.
His coffee went cold.
By the time his final lecture of the day ended—a required science course he barely remembered signing up for—Ezra was already thinking of the drive home.
He didn't say goodbye to anyone. Didn't wave. Didn't linger.
He just left.
The sky outside was still gray, but the rain had softened to mist. Campus felt like a photograph half-developed—blurry around the edges, color still bleeding in.
Ezra didn't notice the girl watching him from the corner of the quad.
Didn't see her turn away when his eyes passed over her.
Didn't see the flyer she crumpled in her coat pocket as she walked the opposite direction.
All he saw was the street ahead, the parking structure, and the reflection of his own eyes in the Mustang's window as he pulled open the door.
Ezra started the engine and let the hum fill the silence.
The world kept turning.And he kept his distance.
The drive back to Howell was uneventful.
Gray fields. Wet roads. A line of tail lights stretching ahead like embers cooling in the rain. Ezra stayed in the right lane, not in a hurry. He never was. The Mustang moved like a ghost through the traffic in silent.
The rain had stopped by the time he reached the edge of town. Clouds hung low like ceiling tiles sagging with old water. He passed the shuttered movie theater, the diner that only played gospel music, and the hardware store that never changed its display windows.
Ezra parked in the gravel patch behind the rectory. The building loomed as it always did—three stories of dark brick and long windows, sagging in places where time had worn the bones thin. Ivy crawled up one side, as if the earth itself was trying to reclaim it.
He killed the engine. Sat there for a second, hands still on the wheel.
The silence pressed against the car windows.
He thought of the dream again.The shadow.The voice.
You're mine now.
Ezra got out without a sound. Boots crunching gravel. Door clicking shut.
Inside, the house smelled the same as always—old wood, oil, incense. The warmth from the boiler made the air feel heavier than it should have. He dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and kicked off his boots.
Father Hale wasn't in the kitchen. The light was off. A single teacup sat in the sink, ringed with black at the bottom.
Ezra climbed the stairs quietly, skipping the step that creaked. His room was just as he'd left it—spartan, cold, a little too clean.
He didn't sleep that night.
He laid on the bed with his arms crossed over his chest, staring up at the ceiling. No burn marks. Just white paint and plaster.
Around three in the morning, he finally closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the sun was already up.
Thursday came.
Philosophy of Mind again.
Ezra sat in the same seat. Mina arrived three minutes late, her ponytail damp from the rain. She gave him a faint smile as she sat down.
He didn't return it.
Mina bit the inside of her cheek and stared at her notebook, pretending to take notes while her mind kept drifting toward him. He hadn't looked up once.
She didn't know what she'd expected. Some reaction. Some glance. Anything to confirm he knew she was real, not just a piece of furniture in the lecture hall.
She didn't know if he was cruel or playing with her.
Maybe both.
And yet she couldn't stop watching him. Not fully.
Because she'd seen something once. Just a flicker. Last semester. A split second when he'd dropped his pencil, and she'd caught the edge of something on his wrist—something that looked like a burn, too big to be a birth mark.
He'd pulled his sleeve down fast.
Never looked at her the same again.
And now? Now he was even further away than before.
Mina sighed quietly and turned her attention back to the professor, who was now enthusiastically drawing overlapping circles on the board.
Ezra stared at the glass. The reflection of the window behind the professor. Just movement—branches in the breeze.
Except… one wasn't a branch.
Just for a second.
A shape, standing still in the rain. Watching the class through the glass.
Tall.
Faceless.
Gone when he blinked.
Ezra's grip tightened around his pen. But his expression didn't change.
He didn't move.
After class, he took the long way back to his car. Cut through the alley behind the chemistry labs. Past the bike racks and dumpsters.
At the café, he didn't order coffee. Just sat at the same table, headphones in, back to the wall. No laptop. No book.
He just sat there.
Waiting for something.
Or maybe waiting for it to pass.
A girl in a red coat passed by his table, hesitated, then kept walking.
He didn't notice.
Or didn't care.
The barista behind the counter whispered something to a coworker while glancing toward him.
"He always sits alone," the other whispered. "Did you remark we never seen him smile."
Ezra stayed until the sky turned to slate, then stood, adjusted his coat, and walked out.
The Mustang's engine rumbled to life.
Same rhythm.
Same route.
Back through the rain.Back through the woods.Back to the place where the walls remembered fire.
At dinner, Hale asked nothing.
Ezra said even less.
They ate in silence while the wind tapped at the window like someone locked out. The old grandfather clock ticked just a little too loudly. Every creak in the floorboards echoed.
Ezra excused himself before dessert. Hale didn't argue.
Ezra's room was colder than usual.
Not in temperature, but in feel like something had left the window open inside his mind and hadn't shut it again.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a while, jacket still on, fingers curled loosely around nothing. The light outside the window was dull and colorless, that in-between tone where evening was still deciding whether it wanted to be night.
He stared at the ceillings.
Just white paint.
Friday morning.
He didn't shower. Just threw on a clean shirt, same dark coat, grabbed his backpack, and left.
The ride to campus blurred past—trees flickering past the glass like a flipbook animation with one frame missing. People walking dogs. People biking. People being people. Ezra didn't blink.
He parked in the same garage as always. Walked the same path. Took the stairs two at a time even though he didn't need to.
Campus was louder than usual. Sunlight had made a rare appearance and everyone decided it was spring again. T-shirts. Music. Laughter. All that noise.
Ezra kept his headphones in. Still no music. Just static silence.
Computer Science 201 was his first class.
He sat three rows from the back. Not so far the professor would notice, not so close anyone might try to talk.
A guy named Rich sat two seats down and always coughed into his hoodie sleeve. The girl behind him chewed gum loud enough to be a percussion instrument.
None of them looked at Ezra.
He didn't expect them to.
He just stared down at the lecture notes without really reading them, tracing shapes on the page—spirals, mostly. Over and over.
A voice broke the pattern.
"Hey."
He looked up.
Not at the professor.
At Mina.
She stood in the aisle, jacket slung over one arm, notebook hugged to her chest. Her eyes were sharp, but hesitant. A strange mix.
He didn't speak.
"I was gonna…" she started, then hesitated. "Never mind."
She turned. Took a step.
Ezra didn't stop her.
He didn't say anything.
Just let her walk back to her seat, same as always.
That night, she'd throw out the flyer she'd saved—some student showcase thing. Music. A few poems. She'd circled the date. Told herself she'd invite him.
She didn't know why.
He never gave her anything but silence.
But there was something about silence that felt less empty with him.
She didn't sleep well that night, either.
Ezra's next class passed like fog over glass. He remembered nothing except the way his pencil snapped when someone's ringtone went off.
He didn't flinch.
Just got up, left early.
Back to the café. Back to the corner seat. Back to the soundless world between walls.
This time, though—he saw her again.
The girl in the red coat.
She wasn't just passing.
She was watching.
She stood at the café counter, one hand on the strap of her satchel, the other holding a drink she hadn't sipped from.
Her eyes were on him.
Ezra didn't return the look. Just glanced past, like he always did.
But something prickled in the back of his skull. A wrong note in the quiet.
When he looked again—she was gone.
No door had opened.
No footsteps.
Just… gone.
The Mustang hissed in the cold as he pulled onto the road again.
Same drive.
Same road.
Same creeping feeling behind the ribs that the trees were leaning in closer.
The sky above Howell was stained with bruised purple clouds, swollen with more rain that hadn't yet fallen. Lightning blinked faintly somewhere behind the hills, but no thunder followed.
Ezra pulled into the gravel lot behind the rectory. Father Hale's truck was there.
The kitchen light was on.
Inside, something smelled burned.
Not like food nor paper.
Ezra pushed the door open slowly.
Hale was standing in front of the fireplace, feeding wood into the chimney.
"You came back early," the old priest said.
Ezra shut the door behind him. "I always came as this hour."
Hale's face was still the same. "I guess im starting to get old."
Ezra stepped forward. "What did you burn?"
"Just some wood, i was getting cold."
Ezra frowned. "Fine, but next time notice me first before doing something like this."
Hale didn't answer right away. Just looked at him with something like guilt—and maybe fear—pulling down his weathered face.
Then finally:
"I will."
A few days later back on the campus, the red-coated girl stood outside the café, watching the glass.
Inside, the barista was closing up.
The girl didn't blink.
Didn't move.
Then, softly, she smiled.