When the Shadows Call by Olivia Salter | Short Fiction

When the Shadows Call

by Olivia Salter

Word Count: 1,172

The small room, cluttered with papers and half-filled notebooks, flickered in the glow of a single candle. Kylie sat hunched over her laptop, the soft clattering of keys breaking the midnight silence. Her latest horror story, now nearing completion, had consumed her for weeks. She loved writing at night, when the world was asleep and the shadows seemed to deepen, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.

Outside, a storm brewed, the wind whispering against the old wooden house. Kylie had been living alone for months now, ever since the divorce, and this was her sanctuary. Her escape. She poured her heart and soul into her stories, her characters, her monsters. They gave her control over a world where everything seemed to fall apart. In her stories, she could decide who lived, who died, and what lurked in the dark.

Tonight, she was writing about shadows—living shadows that could creep into the real world. As she crafted her final scene, she described the knock: slow, deliberate, three beats that echoed through the walls of an old, forgotten house. Her protagonist had written these monsters into existence, just as Kylie had, and now they were coming for her.

Kylie typed the last sentence, her fingers shaking slightly as she hit the final period. The clock on the wall ticked softly, and the wind outside grew louder, rattling the windows. She glanced at the time: midnight. Her candle sputtered, casting twisting, grotesque shadows on the walls.

Then, as if pulled from the very pages she had written, came the knock.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound was soft at first, a gentle tapping that seemed to echo through the room. Kylie froze, her fingers suspended above the keyboard. She hadn’t imagined it—she knew she hadn’t. The knock came again, louder this time, more deliberate, as if something on the other side of the door was mimicking what she had just written.

Her breath quickened. She pushed back from her desk, her chair scraping against the floor. The wind outside howled, the shadows in the room stretching, shifting as the candlelight flickered. Kylie’s heart pounded in her chest. She stood slowly, her legs trembling beneath her, and took a step toward the door.

“Hello?” Her voice cracked as she called out, but the house answered only with silence.

She swallowed hard, her throat dry. It was ridiculous to be afraid, she told herself. She was alone. The knock was probably just the wind playing tricks, or a branch tapping against the door. Yet her pulse raced, and the air in the room felt thick, suffocating.

The door stood only a few feet away, its edges lined with shadows that twisted and squirm. With a shaking hand, Kylie reached for the doorknob. Her palm rested on the cold metal for a second before she turned it, slowly pulling the door open.

Nothing. The hallway beyond lay empty, dimly lit by the faint glow of the storm outside. She stepped back, her pulse still racing. But as she closed the door, something caught her eye—a movement in the corner of the room. A shadow, darker than the others, clung to the wall, watching her.

Her breath hitched. The shadow stretched and shifted, peeling itself from the wall like black ink spilling across the floor. It wasn’t attached to anything, wasn’t cast by any object or person—it was alive.

Kylie stumbled backward, knocking into her desk. The candle flame flickered wildly, and the shadow stretched taller, its form twisting into something grotesque. She watched, paralyzed, as it grew eyes—two burning embers that stared back at her with an intensity that made her skin crawl.

“You gave us life,” it whispered, its voice like dry leaves scraping against stone. “Now we demand yours.”

Kylie gasped, her heart slamming against her ribs. The room closed in around her, the shadows shifting, moving, becoming alive with each flicker of the candlelight. Her mind raced, trying to grasp the impossibility of it. She had written this. She had written them into existence, and now they were here, standing before her, demanding something she couldn’t give.

The shadow took a step forward, its form fluid and monstrous, twisting and elongating as it moved. Its eyes burned brighter, and Kylie could feel the cold radiating from it, seeping into her bones.

“No,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “You’re not real.”

The creature’s smile widened, jagged teeth forming out of the inky blackness. “Oh, we’re real,” it hissed. “And we are many.”

As the words left its mouth, the shadows around the room began to thrash, pulling themselves free from the walls, from the corners, from every place the light didn’t touch. One by one, they came to life, eyes blinking open, glowing with the same malevolent fire. They surrounded her, their whispers growing louder, more insistent.

Kylie’s knees buckled. She scrambled to her desk, her trembling hands fumbling for the laptop. She could rewrite it, she thought desperately. She could write them away, erase them, just as easily as she had created them. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, but the screen flickered, the words disappearing before her eyes.

The shadows closed in, their shapes towering over her. Their voices filled the room, a cacophony of hisses and whispers.

“Too late, Kylie,” the first creature whispered, its breath cold against her skin. “You can’t undo us. We live now, just as you wrote. And now, we take what you owe.”

Kylie screamed, her voice drowned out by the howling wind and the rising roar of the shadows. They swarmed around her, their forms tangling and twisting, growing darker, denser, until the room was consumed by them. She felt their cold hands on her, pulling her down, suffocating her.

Her vision blurred, her lungs burning as the darkness closed in, pressing down on her chest, wrapping around her like a vice. Her mind raced back to the story, to the final scene she had written—the knock, the shadows, the inevitable end.

But this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was the writer. She controlled the story. She decided the ending.

With a final burst of strength, Kylie reached for the candle. Her fingers closed around it, the wax hot and soft beneath her touch. She lifted it, preparing to hurl it into the shadows, hoping that maybe, just maybe, light could save her.

But the flame sputtered and died before she could throw it.

The room fell silent. The shadows, now thick and suffocating, consumed every inch of space. Kylie’s screams were swallowed by the darkness, and then, nothing.

The storm outside raged on, but within the house, there was only stillness. The shadows, once alive with movement, returned to their places on the walls, their forms no longer twisting, no longer watching. The house stood quiet, as though nothing had ever disturbed it.

The clock struck midnight, the final chime echoing through the empty room.

In the darkness, the faintest of whispers lingered: “We are real.”