My dying mother promised her guardian angel would protect me. I've seen it now, and I don't think it's an angel.
She was at peace with it. That was the strangest, most difficult part. While I was a tangled, screaming knot of grief and anticipatory loss, she was serene. On her last day, when her breathing was shallow and her voice was a dry, rustling whisper, she pulled me close. Her eyes, which had been cloudy and distant, were suddenly crystal clear.
“Don’t be sad, my love,” she whispered, a faint, tired smile on her lips. “I’m not afraid. I’ve never been afraid. He’s always been with me.”
“Who, Mom?” I asked, my voice thick with tears.
“My guardian,” she said, her gaze shifting to a point just over my shoulder. “My protector. He was a gift from my own mother when she passed. He’s kept me safe my whole life. He’s never let any real harm come to me.”
I didn’t know what to say. My mother had always been a little… spiritual, in a vague, non-denominational way. I just assumed it was the morphine talking, a final, comforting delusion. I squeezed her hand.
“When I go,” she continued, her eyes locking back onto mine with a startling intensity, “he will pass to you. He has to. He needs someone to watch over. You will be safe now, always.”
“Mom, don’t talk like that,” I choked out.
“You won’t believe me at first,” she said, ignoring me, her voice gaining a strange, final strength. “But you’ll know. There will be ten marks. Ten signs, after I’m gone. When you’ve seen the tenth, you’ll know he’s with you. And then… then you will see him.”
She recited the marks to me then, her voice a low, rhythmic chant. “A coin returned. A silent bell. A path cleared. A saved fall. A warning unheard. A fear answered. A scent of the old earth. A touch of cold fur. A voice not your own. And finally… a gaze returned.”
She finished, and a deep, peaceful sigh escaped her lips. She closed her eyes. And a few hours later, she was gone.
The funeral was a blur. The weeks that followed were a suffocating fog of grief and paperwork. I was just going through the motions, a ghost in my own life. I’d completely forgotten her strange, final words. They were just the ramblings of a dying woman, a final, beautiful, meaningless piece of poetry.
Then the first mark appeared.
I was at the grocery store, fumbling for my keys in the parking lot, and a quarter slipped through my fingers, clattering onto the dark, wet asphalt. It was late, raining. I looked for a minute, but it was gone, probably rolled under the car. I sighed, wrote it off, and drove home. When I got to my apartment and emptied my pockets onto the dresser, there it was, sitting right in the center of the pile of my keys and wallet. A single, dry, gleaming quarter.
I stared at it. It was impossible. My pockets had been empty. But my grieving mind immediately supplied a dozen rational explanations. I must have had another one. I must have picked it up without realizing it. I dismissed it, but a tiny, cold seed of unease had been planted. A coin returned.
A week later, the second mark. I was walking home from work, taking my usual route past an old, decommissioned church. As I passed its silent, stone bell tower, I heard it. A single, clear, resonant BONG of a great bell, echoing through the quiet afternoon air. I looked up. The tower was still. The great bell was motionless. No birds flew out. No one else on the street seemed to have noticed. An auditory hallucination, I told myself. Stress and grief do strange things to your mind. A silent bell.
The third mark came a few days after that. My work building is old, and the maintenance staff is constantly doing repairs. I was heading to the breakroom, but the hallway was blocked by a huge, wheeled cart full of tools and equipment, left there by a worker who was nowhere in sight. I sighed, annoyed, and turned to go the long way around. I got to the end of the hall, turned the corner, then realized I’d forgotten my wallet at my desk. I turned back. The hallway was empty. The massive cart was gone. The whole process had taken less than thirty seconds. There was no way anyone could have moved it that fast. It had just… vanished. A path cleared.
I wasn’t just uneasy anymore. I was starting to get scared. These could not be just coincidences. They were too specific, too perfectly aligned with my mother’s strange prophecy. I started to feel like I was a character in a story that someone else was writing.
And I started to feel like I was being watched. It was a constant, low-grade, prickling sensation on the back of my neck. I’d be in my apartment, and I’d feel a sudden, intense pressure, as if someone had just walked into the room. I’d spin around, my heart pounding, but there was never anyone there. I started seeing things, too. Flickers of movement at the very edge of my vision. A shadow in a doorway that was a little too tall, a little too dark. When I’d turn to look, it would be gone.
Mark number four happened a week later. I was clumsy with grief, not paying attention. I was walking down the stairs to my apartment’s lobby, I missed a step, and I pitched forward. I remember the sickening, weightless lurch, the flash of the hard, tile floor rushing up to meet me. I braced for the impact, for the crack of bone. But it never came. I just… stopped, a foot from the ground, suspended in mid-air for a split second, as if an invisible, powerful hand had caught me by the chest. Then I was set down, gently, on my feet. I stood there, trembling, in the empty, silent stairwell. A saved fall.
The fifth and sixth marks came in quick succession, like a one-two punch from this invisible force that was now ordering my life. I was about to get on an elevator at a shopping mall when I felt a sudden, inexplicable wave of pure dread, a silent, internal scream telling me DO NOT GET IN. I hesitated, and let the doors close without me. A moment later, the lights on the floor indicator went dark, and a loud, grinding screech echoed down the elevator shaft, followed by the distant sound of the alarm bell ringing. A warning unheard.
That same evening, I was walking home through the park. A large, barking dog, off its leash, came bounding towards me, its teeth bared. I froze, a jolt of pure, primal fear shooting through me. The dog was a foot away, ready to leap, when it suddenly stopped. It let out a high-pitched, terrified yelp, tucked its tail between its legs, and fled, as if it had seen something standing right behind me. A fear answered.
I was six marks in. And my life was no longer my own. I was being guided, protected, manipulated by an unseen, unknowable force. The feeling of being watched was a certainty now.
I began to see it more clearly, though never directly. In the reflection of my dark TV screen, I’d see a shape standing in the room behind me. It was tall, stooped like an old man, with arms that were too long, their hands almost touching the floor. In the reflection of a shop window as I walked by, I’d see it, a dark, hulking shape, following a few paces behind me, always keeping to the shadows.
The seventh and eighth marks brought it closer, from a visual presence to a physical one. I started to notice a strange smell in my apartment, a smell that would come and go without reason. It was a heavy, musky, animal scent. The smell of damp, rich earth and something else… something like wet fur. A scent of the old earth.
One night, I was lying in bed, the lights on, my nerves a raw, jangled mess. I was drifting in that gray space before sleep when I felt something brush against my outstretched hand. It was a coarse, bristly feeling, like touching a thick, wiry animal pelt. I snatched my hand back with a choked cry, my heart exploding in my chest. I was alone in the room. There was nothing there. A touch of cold fur.
I was nine marks in. The terror was a constant companion now. I knew the tenth mark was coming. And I knew that with it would come the final, terrible reveal. I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: the waiting, or the seeing.
The ninth mark came last night. I had finally managed to fall into a fitful, exhausted sleep. I was woken up but by a voice. A low, guttural, wet sound, whispered directly into my ear. It wasn’t a language I knew, but I felt the meaning of the sound in my bones. It was a word that meant: Mine. A voice not your own.
I spent the rest of the night huddled in a corner of my living room, clutching a baseball bat, watching the shadows, waiting for the dawn.
Tonight, I knew it would end. The final mark. I sat on my couch, the TV off, all the lights in my apartment blazing. The feeling of the presence in the room was overwhelming. It was a physical pressure, a thickness in the air. The musky, animal scent was overpowering. I could feel it, just there, in the dark hallway that led to my bedroom. Waiting.
I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was a year of grief. Maybe it was weeks of mounting terror. But I was done being scared. I was done being the victim in this ghost story. I needed to see it. I needed to face it.
“Okay,” I said, my voice a shaking, defiant whisper to the empty air. “I know you’re here. Show yourself.”
The air in the hallway seemed to shimmer, to darken. A shape began to resolve itself out of the gloom. At first, it was the familiar, stooped silhouette of an old man. It was tall, maybe seven feet, even with its hunched posture. Its arms were long, the gnarled, three-jointed fingers of its hands brushing against the floorboards. Its body was covered in a thick, matted, greasy black fur.
And then, it lifted its head.
And I saw its face.
It wasn't a man’s face. It was the long, narrow, bearded head of a goat. Its horns were thick and curved, spiraling back from its narrow skull. But the worst part, the part that finally, completely, broke my mind, was its eyes. They weren't the dumb, placid eyes of a farm animal. They were a pair of intelligent, ancient, and utterly malevolent yellow eyes, the pupils horizontal slits, like a serpent’s. And they were looking directly at me.
A gaze returned.
The tenth mark. The final sign.
My mother’s guardian angel.
I didn’t scream. The sound was trapped in my throat, a solid, immovable ball of pure terror. We just stared at each other, for an eternity, across the twenty feet of my brightly lit living room. And in its ancient, yellow eyes, I saw it. The same serene, peaceful, knowing look my mother had on her face when she died.
It is my protector. My guardian. It has been with me, a silent, unseen shadow, for the past two months. It cleared the path for me. It saved me from the fall. It frightened away the dog. And now that I have seen it, it no longer feels the need to hide.
I am writing this now from my desk. The sun has come up, but it has brought no comfort. Because it’s still here. It’s standing in the corner of my room, by the door, its stooped, hairy form a black hole in the morning light. It hasn’t moved. It just… watches.
My mother’s final words echo in my head. “I’ve never been afraid. He’s always been with me.”
What do I do? How do you escape a guardian angel? How do you run from a protector that will never, ever, let any harm come to you, but whose very presence is a fate worse than death?
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