The Thing That Was Missing

Chapter 1: Furniture

The first thing I noticed was the chair.

It was an old wooden chair that had been sitting in the corner of my friend Daniel’s apartment for months. Nobody ever used it. Nobody even talked about it. It was the kind of furniture people keep because throwing it away feels wrong, even though they have no reason to keep it.

The chair had scratches along the arms and a dark stain near one of the legs. Daniel always covered it with a blanket whenever guests came over, almost like he didn’t want anyone looking at it.

I asked him about it once.

“Old family stuff,” he said.

Then he changed the subject.

At the time, I didn’t think much about it. People have strange attachments to strange things. Everyone carries pieces of their past around with them. Some people keep photographs. Some keep letters. Some keep objects they can’t explain.

I never expected that chair would become connected to the strangest night of my life.

Before that night, I was the person in my friend group who didn’t believe in anything.

Ghosts, spirits, energy, rituals, astrology, all of it sounded interesting as stories, but I never thought any of it was real.