Three days after the church incident, Grace Holloway lost nearly six hours.
She remembered leaving work.
Rain on the windshield.
A voicemail from her mother.
The smell of wet wool.
Then -
Music.
Heavy bass, muffled through walls.
Grace opened her eyes while lying on a velvet chaise lounge in a room lit red and gold.
Her head throbbed.
Bodies moved everywhere around her - half-dressed, masked, laughing too loudly, touching without tenderness. Champagne spilled. Someone cried and kept laughing. A man in a suit was on his knees praying or vomiting, or something else entirely.
Grace could not tell which, until she noticed his head bobbing up and down.
No one seemed surprised to see her awake.
Someone passed and kissed her forehead.
“Back from the dead,” he said.
Grace sat upright too fast.
She was clothed, mostly. Expensively, but incorrectly. One heel missing. Blouse buttoned wrong.
Her hands trembled.
There were dark stains on one cuff.
Wine, she thought instantly.
Blood, she the thought somewhere deeper in her mind.
Under her nails -
dirt again.
Packed black earth.
As though she had been digging.
Across the room stood a woman in a silver mask.
“Grace,” she said warmly. “You disappeared after the garden business.”
“The what?”
The woman laughed, assuming a joke.
“You are wicked tonight.”
Grace stood.
The room tilted.
On a nearby table lay a serving tray of white roses.
Their stems were muddy.
She pushed through strangers, down a hallway lined with coats and mirrors.
In one mirror she caught herself.
Lipstick smeared. Eyes bright. Smiling.
Not frightened.
Thrilled.
Grace touched her own face.
The reflection did not.
She fled into the street barefoot in the rain.
At home she scrubbed her nails until the skin split.
In the drain:
soil, blood, and one tiny fragment of white petal.
The next morning there was a package at her door.
Inside:
A new pair of heels.
Her missing one, cleaned.
And a note in elegant handwriting:
Same time next week?
The others adore you.
No signature.
Only two initials:
GH
---
Grace Holloway chose a neurologist whose office occupied the top floor of a converted mansion downtown.
Soft carpets.
Original art.
No crying children.
No televisions shouting daytime tragedies.
The kind of place where illness arrived in cashmere.
Dr. Julian Vale was elegant, silver-haired, and expensive-looking.
He listened without interruption.
Headaches.
Memory gaps.
Episodes of saying things she did not intend.
Periods of waking in unfamiliar places.
Grace omitted the orgy.
She mentioned “a private gathering.”
He did not challenge the phrase.
He asked questions no one else had asked.
Any history of sleepwalking?
No.
Childhood trauma?
Nothing significant.
Substance use?
Socially.
Family history of mental illness?
“Only the successful kinds.”
A faint smile.
Then:
“Do you ever feel watched when by yourself?”
Grace looked at him sharply.
“Yes.”
He wrote nothing down.
More tests followed.
EEG.
Sleep study.
Cognitive assessments.
Grace excelled at them all.
Memory above average.
Attention strong.
Executive function superior.
“Interesting,” he said.
“What is?”
“Most people deteriorate during these events. You appear...organized.”
---
The headaches became savage.
One struck in his office during a follow-up.
Grace gripped the chair arms.
The room blurred.
Dr. Vale’s face seemed to recede down a long tunnel.
Then clarity snapped back.
Grace was standing by his bookshelf.
One of his framed diplomas smashed on the floor.
Her hand was bleeding.
Dr. Vale stood very still across the room.
“What happened?” she whispered.
He answered carefully.
“You told me my daughter hates me.”
Grace stared.
“I don’t know your daughter.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
He began asking different questions.
When you lose time, do you feel relief afterward?
Sometimes.
Do people respond to you differently during episodes?
Yes.
Do you ever find evidence of planning?
What sort of evidence?
He slid a legal pad across the desk.
On it, in Grace’s handwriting:
HE IS IN THE WAY
She had written it ten minutes earlier while discussing migraines.
She remembered none of it.
---
That night Grace searched his name online.
Board-certified. Published. Respected.
One malpractice complaint, sealed.
One wife, deceased.
One daughter, estranged.
At 2:11 a.m., her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A single message:
He sees us.
Then another.
That makes him dangerous.
copyright notice © 2026 Michael C. Metzger
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