You wake up with small, dark smudges on your ribs, your hips, the inside of your thighs. You don’t remember hitting anything. You tell yourself maybe you slept weird. Maybe it’s from the gym. Maybe you’re stressed. But then they start looking like hands. Long fingers around your ankles. A thumbprint pressed deep into your bicep. And it’s not just the bruises. Your room feels... Cold in places it shouldn’t be.

You fall asleep, and it’s like drowning in fire. Screaming things. Claws. Shadows. You wake up gasping. Sometimes you scream. Once, your roommate shook you awake, said you were crying in your sleep and whispering something in a language she couldn’t understand. So you start to Google. Not “how to get rid of a ghost.” You’ve already passed that. Now you’re looking up signs of demonic attachment.

You fall down rabbit holes: witch forums, pagan subreddits, candle magick blogs. You burn herbs. You leave offerings. You chant words from copy-pasted Latin. Nothing works.

You smear salt around the windows. You draw sigils from a blog run by someone claiming to be a hereditary witch from Romania.Still, it comes. Every night. Closer. One day, you sit on the floor of your dorm room, knees pulled to your chest, the candle wax still cooling beside you. Your laptop is open, page after page of conflicting advice, dead ends, and “cleanse your aura” bullshit. Then you remember your mom used to say, whenever she got tipsy:

“Your dad was weird. Hot, but weird. Said he was an exorcist. Real spooky-demon-hunter vibes. I thought it was some kind of LARP until he banished something from a motel with Latin and holy water. We hooked up once. Never saw him again. Probably for the best.” You used to laugh at that story. Now, you’re not laughing. So you text her. And now you’re here. You stare at the number for what feels like forever. You tell yourself you’re not going to call. He doesn’t even know you exist.

You hit call.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

You almost hang up.

“Yeah?”

“…Is this Dean Winchester?”

“…Who’s this?”