I spend the night with my boyfriend, unaware that he died two days earlier—now I’m pregnant with the child of his ghost.
I swear I saw him. I felt his hand. I kissed him. I tasted his mint‑scented breath, just as always. He wore the grey hoodie that always made him look like a “soft‑hearted thug” because it was too big. He felt real. He held me all night, whispering “I love you” into my ear and promising we’ll marry next year. I remember every second: the way his fingers slid down my arm, how he wept when I wept, how he made love with such intensity that I thought my soul would split in two. Then… he vanished.
I wake alone, but I’m not scared. I convince myself I must have gone for a jog, as I sometimes do. His cologne still lingers on the sheets; my skin still burns where he touched me. Something doesn’t fit.
I call. Again. And again.
My best friend, Grace, bursts into my room, pale‑faced and trembling, and I can’t understand why she’s crying.
“Simi…” she whispers. “Don’t you know?”
I laugh. “Know what?”
“Thomas is dead.”
I blink. “Dead how?”
She sobs louder. “He died two days ago in a car crash during the storm night.”
No. No. No.
I shout, I push her, I tell her she’s being cruel, that there’s no joke in this. I show her the text Thomas sent the night before, the voice note that said, “I’m coming over. I miss your body next to mine.” She watches the phone shake.
“Simi… he couldn’t have sent that. He was already in the mortuary.”
The world tilts. My knees give way. I race to the bathroom, pull the damp towel he used, the hoodie he left on the floor, the bite mark on my neck.
He was here. He had to be.
The truth, though, is that Thomas was buried yesterday. And somehow, I made love to him last night.
Days pass. Nights become unbearable. I can’t sleep; every time I close my eyes, I see him—sometimes standing at the foot of my bed, sometimes whispering in my ear. One night his voice says, “Don’t cry, love. I’m still with you.” I try to record it, but I only capture static and my own panicked breathing.
Then I miss my period. Twice. I tell myself it’s stress, grief, trauma. Until I vomit for the fifth time that day. I take a test. Two lines.
Positive.
I collapse. The only person I’ve been with was Thomas. But he’s dead, buried, rotting, gone. Yet something is growing inside me, kicking at night, glowing under my skin when the lights are out. Whenever I cry and say I can’t handle this, I hear a whisper from the shadows:
“You’re not alone. Our child is coming.”
—
I don’t remember falling asleep. I only recall waking in the bathtub, the pregnancy test still clenched in my hand, those two pink lines mocking my sanity. I haven’t spoken to anyone for days—not even Grace. My phone rings dozens of times, her name lighting the screen, but I ignore every call.
How do I explain that I’m carrying a baby from a man who’s been six feet underground for weeks? Who would believe me? Not even I fully believed it—until that night.
Just as I’m drifting back to sleep, something pushes against my belly from inside. It isn’t a normal kick; it feels deliberate, as if trying to get my attention. I bolt upright, gasping, hands on my stomach, and hear Thomas’s voice inside my own head.
“Don’t be afraid, love. I chose you.”
I scream, leap out of bed, pull my shirt aside in the mirror, and swear I see a faint blue pulse just beneath my skin. It flickers, then vanishes. My legs give out; I collapse, sobbing.
The next day I force myself to the hospital. I tell the doctor I became pregnant after my boyfriend visited me. I lie about the dates, about everything—except the symptoms.
“Strange dreams. Skin that glows. Hearing voices of someone who’s not here.”
Her expression shifts from concern to a calm suspicion.
“We’ll run some tests,” she says cautiously. “Stress can heavily affect the mind, especially with pregnancy hormones.”
She presses her stethoscope to my belly, then freezes.
“I can’t… hear a heartbeat. Something’s moving.”
She orders an ultrasound. While I lie on the cold metal table, the technician’s face turns pale as she adjusts the scanner. When I ask what’s happening, she whispers, “There’s a fetus, but… it’s shining.”
I leave the hospital without waiting for results. That night I dream again. Thomas stands by the old lake we’re used to, his hoodie fluttering in the breeze.
“Our child isn’t like the others,” he says, voice softer than the wind. “He is me… and more.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He only smiles sadly. “You’ll understand soon. You must protect him.”
I wake to find the curtains wide open, despite having locked everything. The hoodie from the dream lies neatly folded on the edge of my bed, still warm to the touch.
I realize the thing growing inside me is real. It’s his, and it’s changing me.
The following day I finally call Grace. I need help. She rushes over, embraces me tightly, and I tell her everything—show her the glowing spot on my belly, the dreams, the voice, the baby. She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t scream. She whispers, “We need to take you somewhere.”
She leads me to an old house hidden behind her grandmother’s church. Inside sits an elderly woman with long grey braids and pallid eyes. She looks at me once, then says,
“You’re not the first, but you must be the last.”
When I ask what she means, her answer chills me to the bone‑deep.
“You carry the child of a bound soul. The baby is both a blessing… and a warning. His father should not have returned. Now a doorway is open, and others are crossing.”
“Taking him?” I ask.
“To take you.”
Lights flicker; a cold draft whistles through the windows. From the shadows Thomas’s voice returns:
“Run.”
—
The room freezes. The old woman’s eyes widen as darkness stretches across the walls like claws.
“He’s here,” she whispers, clutching a rosary made of bone and sea‑glass.
Grace pushes me behind her. I am no longer afraid of Thomas; I fear what the woman warned about—those who come because he broke the rules.
She scatters ash in a circle and tells me to stand inside.
“Don’t leave the circle, no matter what. Hear me? You are now a bridge between life and death, and bridges are crossed both ways.”
I step into the ring. My belly glows with that same unsettling light. The baby kicks harder than ever.
Then I hear dozens of voices—maybe hundreds—shouting, moaning, pleading, laughing, all erupting from the darkness.
“Tari, please,” I whisper. “What’s happening?”
He appears, but his eyes are empty, filled with sorrow and fear.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I never meant to drag you into this. I just missed you so much. I wanted one more night, one more moment. I didn’t know I was opening a door.”
Tears stream down my face.
“Why me? Why the baby?”
He looks at my belly, then at me.
“Because our love was stronger than death. A love like that breaks the laws.”
From the shadows a twisted, half‑faced creature with burning eyes emerges, whistling at my sight. Thomas steps between us.
“You can’t have her!” the monster roars. “You can’t take our child!”
Thomas shouts back, “You broke the rule, spirit. You touched the living. Now we feast.”
The room shakes. The old woman begins chanting in a strange tongue. Grace clutches my hand, sobbing.
“Simi! Stay inside the circle!”
I scream as the monster lunges. Thomas throws himself at it, and the old woman cries out,
“NOW! Choose, girl—life or love?”
Thomas, bloodied and fading, turns to me.
“You must let me go, love. For our child. For you.”
I shake my head, sobbing, “I can’t lose you again!”
He smiles weakly. “You never lost me. I live in him now, in you. If you cling, they’ll take everything.”
The lights explode, the floor cracks, shadows howl, and with every ounce of hurt I cry his name and say goodbye.
In that instant he smiles, then disappears. Darkness recedes, the monster shrieks and dissolves into smoke, silence falling like a blanket. I collapse. The circle fades, and the baby inside me kicks once, then again, before settling.
Nine months later I give birth to a boy. He doesn’t cry like other infants; he looks straight into my eyes, quiet and calm, as if he already knows everything. His skin faintly glows in the dark. Sometimes, when I sing to him at night, I swear I hear a second voice harmonising with mine—Thomas’s voice.
I name our child Thomas‑Elliot, meaning “Thomas belongs to God,” because he was never truly mine.
Before crossing over, he leaves me one final gift—a fragment of himself that no shadow can ever take away.
