5. Patterns in Dust
Chapter five
Patterns in Dust
Morning rays slip through the windows, making the dust in the air visible.
I’ve been awake for hours, still shaken by last night’s storm and the shadow I spotted on the roof.
My leather journal sits open next to me, its pages filled with hurried notes from last night.
My Canon camera feels heavy in my hands; the display is still cracked from when I dropped it three apartments ago.
The lens is fine, ready to capture whatever happens next.
I start in the front lounge, where weak sunlight makes pale rectangles on the floorboards themselves.
I tilt my head, raising one eyebrow. There’s a pattern in the dust that looks too intentional to be random.
I crouch down, my knees popping. I’m only twenty-nine, so why do I sound so old?
That thought disappears as I stare at a perfect spiral spreading from a central point.
It’s maybe eight inches across. Every contour is so precise it makes my skin crawl.
There are no footprints, not even mine. How is that possible?
The spiral is just there, as if the dust arranged itself while I slept.
Someone or something has been here. It must have.
I point my camera at the spiral, my hands shaking.
“North corner,” I whisper, attempting to steady myself.
The shutter clicks, and I exhale. My journal feels like my sole anchor as I jot down notes.
Am I really measuring a dust pattern while something might be in the house with me?
But what else can I do? Run? Where would I even go?
I need these details—the size, the location—to feel protected.
My handwriting gets smaller, as if making it tiny could shield me from whatever’s watching.
In the dining room, I find two more spirals—one under the china cabinet, another by the fireplace.
I take photos, measure them, and write everything down, trying to act like I’m not scared.
I push my fingers into my journal so hard I leave dents in the leather.
What am I even doing? By the time I reach the library, I’ve found seven spirals, each one looking more intentional than the last. Whoever or whatever is making them seems to be getting better, or maybe just bolder.
This isn’t random dust. This isn’t a coincidence.
Something is trying to communicate with me.
I take the thermometer out of my bag and turn it about in my hand. Am I really doing this? Playing ghost hunter in my own house. The library feels normal, about 20°C, nothing unusual. I walk around taking readings, feeling more foolish with every step. What am I even hoping to find?
Then I reach the window seat, and the temperature drops so quickly I almost think I imagined it.
The numbers can’t be right. 4°C? That’s cold.
How is that possible? It’s like winter arrived in this one spot while the rest of the room stays warm.
There’s nothing here—no drafts, no vents—to explain it.
I scribble something about the temperature drop by the library window seat, watching my breath cloud in front of me.
The cold seems to reach for me, encircling my wrists as I hold the thermometer.
My pen hesitates above the paper. What am I even supposed to write?
“Ghost made an ice cube by the window.” I settle for “No logical explanation” and immediately hate how inadequate the words look on the page.
The study hits me with another cool area.
God, it must be about 6°C, hovering around my grandmother’s writing desk like some invisible ghost sitting there.
And the basement door? It’s as if walking through a wall of ice, maybe 4°C at its centre.
I keep taking pictures, scribbling measurements, and noting everything like the scientist I pretend to be.
What am I even doing? No amount of data collection explains this.
My fingers are practically blue now, and I catch myself frantically rubbing them together between readings.
The blood coming back feels like countless tiny needles under my skin.
The drawing room’s dust spiral is impressive.
It branches into smaller swirls that look like something between fern leaves and those frost formations that appear on windows in winter.
I drop to my knees, angling my camera to catch all the details.
On the screen, it pops—dark dust against the pale floor, weirdly mathematical but also…
alive? I’m so lost in getting the focus just right that when a floorboard groans behind me, I freeze like a deer in headlights, every muscle in my body suddenly concrete.
The temperature plummets. My breath clouds in front of my face, and the thermometer on the floor beside me flashes: 3°C.
My heart hammers against my torso as I pivot on my heels, camera pressed to my chest like a shield.
Nothing. Empty space greets me, the doorway vacant, the hall beyond still.
Yet the sensation of presence weighs on my skin like an actual touch.
“Hello?” I whisper, the word crystallizing in the air. No response—not that I was really expecting one. The house creaks around me as an old house should. Nothing but my imagination working overtime. The aftermath of too little sleep and too much isolation.
The camera shakes in my grip as I abandon all pretense of methodical documentation, firing off shot after shot in rapid succession.
Each click rings in the quiet like a faint heartbeat.
The researcher in me—the one who came armed with thermometers and journals—dissolves away, leaving only the woman who has felt eyes on her back since the moment she arrived.
Isn’t this exactly what I’ve been searching for?
Proof that these walls harbour more than memories? That when I feel watched, I am?
“I know you’re here,” I say, my voice coming out stronger than my shaky hands as I scribble down the new pattern. “I’m not going anywhere.” It’s half fuck-you, half pinky-swear as I keep mapping every twist and loop of this freaky new pattern, counting spirals like they’ll be on a test tomorrow.
I try to list explanations: maybe it’s just the air flowing through the vents, or the vibration of trucks on the nearby road, or my mind playing tricks after too many nights alone.
Yet something deeper—the same instinct that still jerks me awake at 3AM with the phantom sensation of water flooding my lungs—rejects these comfortable lies.
When I exhale, the house inhales. When I look away, it shifts. When I speak, it listens.
The crunch of tires on gravel pulls me from my trance.
I’ve been staring at the photographs of the altered dust patterns for hours, my eyes stinging from the strain of searching for meaning in their whirls and spirals.
Through the front window, I spot an aged blue truck limping up the driveway, its bed loaded with lumber and what appears to be roofing supplies.
Rafe. The man from yesterday who spoke of the house’s will as if it were a living creature.
Perfect timing. I have questions that need answering, and he seems to know more about this place than he’s willing to admit.
My fingers linger on the journal’s worn cover before I slide it into the desk drawer.
Something stops me from shutting it immediately; the pages of temperatures and dust patterns suddenly feel like secrets not meant for outside eyes.
I push the drawer closed, wincing at the gentle click that sounds too much like I’m hiding the evidence of a crime rather than protecting my research.
I push open the front door to find Rafe already knee-deep in work, hefting lumber from his truck bed with the easy rhythm of someone who’s done this since before I was born.
The wood settles into his grip as it belongs there.
When he catches sight of me hovering in the doorway, he offers a curt nod without breaking stride, as though I’m the visitor and he’s the one who belongs here.
“Morning,” I offer, wrapping my cardigan tighter against the morning chill. “I see you’re making good on your promise to fix the roof.”
He grunts. “Keep my promises.” His eyes barely acknowledge me before shifting to the house around me, measuring its angles and edges like he’s calculating something I can’t see. “Weathered that storm better than most would’ve guessed. Surprised me.”
His words carry an undertone I can’t quite place, and I find myself studying his weathered face.
Does he know about the silhouette I saw through the rain-streaked window, moving across my roof with impossible sureness?
My skin prickles with goosebumps despite the morning warmth.
“The house held up remarkably well,” I say carefully, not breaking eye contact.
“Strange, isn’t it? Almost like someone was up there during the storm, making sure of it. ”
His expression doesn’t change, but his hands are still for just a fraction of a second before resuming their task.
“Old houses have ways of surprising you,” he says, shouldering a toolbox that looks nearly as ancient as he is.
“Going to check that north corner first. Needs reinforcing before the next front moves in.”
I trail behind him into the house, swallowing back all my questions.
My eyes narrow as he moves through the hallway, his body automatically sidestepping the third-floor board that always creaks under my weight, then his head dips precisely two inches before passing under the staircase beam.
Not once does he pause or look where he’s going.
Each fluid movement betrays him. No stranger moves through a house like that.
No repairman who’s visited only once before remembers which boards to avoid, which doorways run low.