The night before our wedding, I awoke to a sound that did not belong in the quiet stillness of our shared room. It was a low, rhythmic moan, a sound of profound and private pleasure. At first, I thought it was a dream, a manifestation of my own anticipation for the night to come. But when I turned to my side, the space in the bed beside me was empty. Elara was gone.

The sound was coming from the bathroom.

An uneasy curiosity pulled me from the bed. I moved silently, the old floorboards cool beneath my feet. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, a sliver of pale light cutting through the darkness. I peered through the opening, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. What I saw made no sense.

Elara was sitting on the closed toilet seat, her legs slightly apart, her head tilted back against the wall. A faint, serene smile graced her lips. And she was moaning. Slowly. Repeatedly. It was the sound of someone being touched, caressed by an expert, invisible hand. But there was no one else there. No phone, no toys. Just her, lost in a solitary ecstasy.

The moment I shifted my weight, causing a floorboard to creak, her eyes snapped open. The smile vanished. Her expression became a blank, composed mask, as if a switch had been flipped. She didn’t say a word, didn’t even meet my gaze. She simply stood, flushed the toilet for no reason, and walked past me, her movements stiff and silent, as she returned to bed.

I stood there in the cold doorway, my mind reeling. The scene was deeply disturbing, not least because it was Elara herself who had insisted we remain celibate until marriage. For a year, we had respected her wishes. We had showered together, slept in the same bed, shared a deep and intimate affection, but she had never once shown this kind of raw, physical desire. Now, on the very eve of our union, I had witnessed a side of her I couldn’t comprehend, a secret life that unfolded in the dark.

The next morning—our wedding day—the strange, unsettling atmosphere continued. She entered the room, already dressed, and spoke without looking at me. “I would like to have my own private bedroom after the wedding,” she said flatly, the words a command, not a request.

I was stunned. “Elara, we’re getting married in a few hours. Why on earth would we sleep in separate rooms?”

Her mood darkened in an instant. Her face, usually so gentle, became a thunderous mask. “This is not a negotiation. If you cannot respect my need for privacy, then perhaps this marriage should not happen at all.”

I pleaded with her, desperate not to let our perfect day be ruined by this inexplicable demand. She eventually relented, or at least pretended to, and we went ahead with the ceremony. But as I stood at the altar and watched her walk towards me, a beautiful vision in white, a cold knot of dread tightened in my stomach. I was marrying a stranger.

Our wedding night was a portrait of surreal disappointment. After the celebrations, filled with hope and a nervous excitement to finally be with my wife, I dressed in the silk pajamas she had bought for me and quietly approached her new, separate bedroom. The door was locked.

I knocked gently. “Elara? My love? It’s me.”

There was no response. The silence from within the room was absolute.

I knocked again, a little louder this time. Still nothing. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, a fool in silk pajamas, locked out of his own marriage. Was she asleep? Was she angry? Or was she simply ignoring me? Eventually, I gave up, the shame and confusion a bitter taste in my mouth. I returned to my own room, convincing myself she was just exhausted from the long day.

When she emerged from her room the next morning, I froze. Dark, ugly bruises mottled the skin on her face and arms, stark against her pale skin.

“My God, Elara, what happened to you?” I cried, rushing to her side.

She smiled, a casual, almost flippant expression that didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, it’s nothing. I was clumsy. I fell while trying to take off my shoes last night.”

I wanted to believe her, but the explanation felt thin, hollow. Later that day, as she turned to get something from her handbag, the collar of her blouse shifted. And that’s when I saw it. A long, deep, red mark slashed across the delicate skin of her back. It wasn’t a bruise. It was a welt. It looked as if she had been struck with a whip.

“Are you sure it was just a fall?” I asked again, my voice now laced with a deep, chilling worry.

She glanced at me, her eyes unreadable, and laughed. The sound was brittle, unnatural. “Yes, David. You worry far too much.”

That evening, I tried again. I invited her to my room, hoping we could finally share the moment we had been waiting for, to consummate our marriage. But from the moment I tried to kiss her, she was evasive, shifting her head away, dodging my lips, avoiding my touch as if I were a stranger.

“You know we’re married now, right?” I asked, my frustration mounting as I stared into her distant eyes.

She sighed, a sound of profound weariness. “I’m not in the mood, David. Can we please just do this another time?” Without another word, she walked out, leaving me alone in a room that felt colder and emptier than ever. I was a husband with a wife I couldn’t touch, living with a woman who was covered in injuries she couldn’t explain, and I was drowning in questions that had no answers.

One morning, a week later, I decided to surprise her with breakfast in bed. As I approached her locked door, I heard it again. That same, rhythmic moaning. But this time, it was different. It was interwoven with the sound of quiet, desperate sobbing. She was crying and moaning at the same time.

I froze at the door, the tray trembling in my hands. The sound was raw, real. It was the sound of someone in the throes of both pain and pleasure. I knocked gently. No response. I knocked again, louder, calling her name. The sounds inside stopped abruptly.

Worried, I walked away, my appetite gone. But a deep sense of wrongness compelled me to return a few minutes later. This time, I found the door unlocked and slightly ajar. She was lying on the floor, weak and still. Her eyes were open, but her gaze was fixed on a point just behind me, as if she were looking at someone standing over my shoulder. Her eyes held a look of pure, primal terror.

“Elara? What happened?” I begged, kneeling beside her.

Finally, she whispered, her voice a reedy thread of sound, “I wasn’t crying. It was the movie on my phone.” A lie. A blatant, terrified lie. I could see it in her eyes. But the truth I was beginning to imagine was too monstrous to confront.

Later that afternoon, a strange thing happened. As I stood in the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of something in the decorative mirror near the dining area—a pale, indistinct figure walking past behind me. I spun around instantly. The hallway was empty. I shook my head, convinced my stress was making me see things.

Just then, Elara came up behind me, a bright, artificial smile on her face. “David, my love. I want us to sleep together tonight,” she said, her voice unusually warm and seductive.

My heart, starved for her affection, leaped with hope. This was it. This was the breakthrough I had been praying for. I pulled her into a hug, but as I leaned in to kiss her, she flinched, pulling away so quickly it was like she had been burned. There was that look again. Fear. Real fear.

That night, something deeply strange happened. As we prepared for bed in my room, I watched as she began placing red candles in a circle around the bed. She was mumbling something under her breath, a guttural stream of words in a language I couldn’t understand.

“Elara, what is this?” I asked, stepping toward her.

“Relax, baby!” she said playfully, pushing me out of the room. “You’re always in such a hurry. Let me set the mood. I’ve got this.” But her playfulness felt forced, her eyes holding a manic glint. A part of my mind screamed that this was a ritual, a ceremony, but I silenced it. I desperately wanted to believe this was her strange, elaborate way of making our first night together special.

Finally, she invited me back in. As I climbed onto the bed, ready to make love to my wife for the very first time, an unnatural, bone-chilling breeze swept through the sealed room. And just like that, every ounce of desire, every flicker of arousal in my body, vanished. My body simply shut down. Our long-awaited first night ended in a silent, humiliating shame.

In the weeks and months that followed, a creeping horror began to dismantle my life. The night of the candles had cursed me. I was impotent. Completely. Medical tests showed nothing wrong. Physically, I was perfectly healthy. But it was as if my body had died from the waist down.

What made it worse was Elara. Her coldness was replaced by a new, voracious desire. She began begging, pressuring me for intimacy, her touch now feeling predatory. But I couldn’t perform, and each failure was another layer of shame.

One morning, after another failed attempt the night before, I woke up in agony. My entire body ached as if I had been in a brutal fight. As I stumbled to the bathroom, I froze at the sight in the mirror. There, on my chest, was a strange, tattoo-like marking. It was a script, written in what looked like an ancient, spidery handwriting. Staring at it made me feel dizzy and weak.

I ran to Elara, demanding to know if she had drawn it on me. At first, she denied it. Then, her body shook with a violent, unnatural tremor, and she confessed. “I’m sorry… I did it while you were asleep.” But I am a light sleeper. How could she have permanently marked my skin without me feeling a thing? I rushed back to the bathroom and tried to scrub it off. It wouldn’t budge. It was part of me.

Days later, I came home from work, exhausted. Elara smiled and handed me a glass of juice. I drank it gratefully. Moments later, my vision blurred, my limbs went numb, and I collapsed. Just before I blacked out, I saw a shadow detaching itself from her, a tall, man-like shadow, and it seemed to loom over me.

When I woke up, I was on the bed. Elara was standing nearby, her lips moving, but there was no one else in the room. “Babe… were you just talking to someone?” I asked weakly.

She turned, shock on her face, then forced a smile. “No, my love. I was praying.”

I went to the bathroom, and when I looked in the mirror, the mark on my chest was gone. Vanished without a trace. As I stood there, bewildered, I felt an intense urge to urinate. I relieved myself, and then I looked down. My heart stopped. The toilet bowl was filled with a thick, dark red liquid. It was blood. As I flushed, my body weakened, and I fell to the floor, blacking out just as I heard Elara scream from the bedroom: “David—please don’t pee yet!”

The next time I awoke, it was to the warm scent of wax. I was in bed, surrounded by red candles placed in a triangle. I called out for Elara, but the house was silent. I stood up, a new, cold fear propelling me forward. For the first time since our wedding, I noticed her bedroom door was unlocked and slightly ajar.

I tiptoed closer and peeked inside. What I saw turned my blood to ice. She was standing in front of a tall, antique mirror, her blouse lifted to expose her stomach. She was gently caressing her belly, a soft, maternal smile on her face, like a pregnant woman.

Then she whispered to her reflection, “We’re going to be a family now… my love.”

A family? Pregnant? It was impossible. We had never been intimate. My mind screamed. Who got her pregnant? Or worse—what?

I fumbled for my phone, my hands shaking. I needed proof, something to make sense of this madness. I opened the camera app and aimed it through the crack in the door. And then I saw it.

With my naked eyes, I saw only Elara and her reflection. But through the camera’s lens, a tall, terrifying figure stood behind her. It was a man, gaunt and pale, with two small, dark horns curling from his brow. He was hugging her from behind, his long, shadowy hands caressing her belly along with hers.

I stumbled back, a gasp escaping my lips, and knocked over a vase. It shattered on the floor. Immediately, a frigid, unnatural wind swept through the house, extinguishing the candles in my room. Elara appeared in the doorway. “David, what is it?” she asked, her eyes boring into mine.

“I… I was looking for you and I stumbled,” I stammered.

“Are you sure that’s all?” she asked, her voice dangerously soft.

That was the night she pulled me to her bed, her desire overwhelming. That was the night I finally made love to my wife. Or so I thought. Because as I was with her, I saw him again—that same horned figure. Only this time… he was inside her, his shadowy form merged with hers, his burning eyes staring directly into mine.

The moment it ended, my world changed. I could see things. Figures in the corners of my vision. Shadows that moved when I wasn’t looking. They followed me everywhere.

The final horror came a week later. I was driving home, exhausted and on edge, when I heard a guttural voice speak directly into my ear. “Leave her.”

I slammed on the brakes, my heart seizing. I looked in the rearview mirror—and froze. The man with horns was sitting in the back seat, his face a mask of incandescent rage. Panicked, I spun around. The seat was empty. I looked back at the mirror. He was still there—closer now—his shadowy hand stretching toward me.

I screamed and lost control of the car.

I woke up in a hospital bed, my body aching, but miraculously, I was alive. Elara was sitting by my side, her face a picture of concern. But when I looked at her, I could see his shadow flickering behind her, a possessive hand on her shoulder. He knew that I could see him now. The game was over.

That night, as I lay in the sterile white room, he came to me. Not as a shadow, but in a dream that was more real than life. We stood in a grey, featureless void.

“She is mine,” he said, his voice the sound of grinding stones. “She has been mine since she was a girl. A promise was made. A pact was sealed. You are an intrusion.”

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“I want you to leave,” the entity hissed. “You will walk away from her, from this marriage, and you will never look back. If you do, you live. Your body will be your own again. If you stay, I will erase you. I will crawl inside your flesh, hollow you out, and wear your skin until it rots off the bone.”

I woke up covered in a cold sweat, the entity’s promise echoing in my soul. I was discharged from the hospital the next day. I drove back to the house we had shared, the home that had become my personal hell. I parked across the street and looked up at the bedroom window.

I could see her silhouette moving inside. The woman I loved. Was she a victim? A willing partner? Did it even matter anymore? She was a prisoner, and her warden had just given me my parole.

I sat there for an hour, the engine off, the ultimatum a screaming presence in the silence of the car. I could walk away and live. I could try to get my old life back, pretend this nightmare never happened. Or, I could walk back through that front door, back into his domain, and fight for my wife’s soul in a war I had no idea how to win. The sun began to set, casting long, dark shadows across the lawn, and I knew I had to make a choice.