Chapter 1: The First Drop
Callum woke to a sound that didn't belong in his room.
At first, he thought it was the rain - Manchester loved to ruin his mornings - but the window was shut, and the night outside was dead still. He lay there, half tangled in his duvet, listening.
Drip.
He frowned into the dark. "Oh, piss off," he muttered, rubbing his eyed. It was too early for plumbing problems. Too early for anything really.
He sat up, blinking blearily at the familiar mess of his room: clothes on the floor, half-finished homework on the desk, a mug he definitely should've washed three days ago. Nothing looked wet. Nothing looked broken.
Drip.
This time it came from the wall beside his bed.
"Brilliant," he whispered. "Just what I need. A bloody leak."
He leaned closer, squinting. The wall looked normal - boring off-white paint, a bit scruffed from where he'd kicked it once during a maths-induced meltdown. But then he saw it.
A tiny black dot. No bigger than a freckle. Sitting there like it had always been part of the wall.
Callum frowned. "What the hell...?"
He grabbed his phone and flicked on the flashlight. The dot didn't shine like water. It didn't look fuzzy like mold. It was just... black. Perfectly, unnervingly black.
He moved the light closer.
The dot quivered.
Callum jerked back so hard he smacked his head on the wall behind him. "Shit-!"
Heart hammering, he stared at the spot. It wasn't dripping. It wasn't running. It was growing. Slowly, like it was breathing.
"Nope. Absolutely not." He grabbed a tissue from his bedside table, folded it twice, and pressed it against the wall. Hard.
When he pulled the tissue away, the wall was clean.
The tissue wasn't.
A thick smear of black streaked across the paper, shiny and wet like fres ink. Callum grimaced. "That's disgusting."
He tossed the tissue into the bin and checked the wall again. Still clean. Still normal. Still pretending nothing had happened.
"Probably just damp," he muttered, even though every hair on his arms stood up like static. "Yeah. Damp. Totally normal. Love that for me."
He climbed back into bed, pulling the duvet up to his chin. He had school in the morning. He had a maths test he was definitely failing. He did not have time for weird supernatural wall goo.
He turned off the flashlight and darkness swallowed the room. For a moment, everything was still. Then, from somewhere above him - soft, patient, and far too close - drip.
