The Appointment You Forgot

The letter arrived on a Wednesday — cream-colored envelope, no return address, no stamp. Just my name in careful handwriting I didn't recognize. Inside was a single card, the kind you'd find in a doctor's office: an appointment reminder. My name was printed in the patient field. The date was tomorrow. The time was 3:00 AM. And the address was my own house.

I turned the card over. On the back, in the same careful handwriting: "Please be seated in the living room. The doctor will see you shortly."

I laughed. I showed it to my wife, Karen, who didn't laugh. She turned it over in her hands, running her thumb across the embossed text at the top — a name neither of us had heard before. Dr. Emil Hargrove. Beneath it, a specialty I couldn't quite parse. The font was too small, and when I squinted, the letters seemed to rearrange themselves. I blinked, and they settled into something that almost read "terminal consultations."

"Throw it away," Karen said.

I did. I dropped it in the kitchen trash, buried it under coffee grounds and eggshells, and forgot about it.

Or I tried to forget.

That night, I woke at 2:47 AM. Not gradually — instantly, the way you wake when someone calls your name. The bedroom was dark. Karen slept beside me, her breathing slow and even. Everything was normal. Everything was fine.

Except the living room light was on.

I could see it from the hallway — a thin gold line beneath the closed door. We never closed that door. It didn't even latch properly; you had to lift and push to get it to stay shut. Someone had lifted and pushed.

I stood in the hallway for a long time. The house was silent in the way houses are silent at three in the morning — not truly quiet, but filled with the small mechanical sounds of a building breathing. The refrigerator hummed. A pipe ticked somewhere in the wall. And beneath it all, something else. A sound so faint I wasn't sure I was hearing it at all.

A pen on paper.

Someone was writing.

The rational part of my brain assembled explanations. A draft had pushed the door shut. I'd left the light on myself. The sound was the house settling, nothing more. My hand found the doorknob.

The living room looked wrong.

Nothing had moved, exactly. The furniture was where it had always been — the couch, the armchair, the coffee table with its stack of magazines Karen kept meaning to recycle. But the arrangement now suggested something different. The armchair had been angled slightly, so it faced the couch directly. The coffee table had been pushed aside, creating a clear line of sight between them. And on the armchair's arm, where I usually set my coffee mug, there was a clipboard.

I picked it up. It was a medical intake form. My name was already filled in at the top. Below it, questions I had never seen on any form before.

"How long have you been aware of the presence in your home?"

"When did you first notice the hours missing from your day?"

"Do you recognize the handwriting on this form?"

I stared at that last question. Then I looked at the handwriting — the careful, measured letters filling in my name, my address, my date of birth. All correct. All in my handwriting.

The pen-on-paper sound had stopped.

I became aware, with the slow certainty of a dream, that I was not alone in the room. Not in the way you sense someone behind you — nothing so dramatic. It was more like realizing a piece of furniture you've walked past a thousand times is not a piece of furniture at all. That the shape in the corner has always been wrong, and you have simply trained yourself not to look at it directly.

I looked at the corner.

The coat rack stood where it always stood, draped with jackets and scarves. But there was one too many coats. A long, dark one I didn't recognize, hanging in a way that suggested shoulders, suggested a frame, suggested something standing very still with its back to me.

I didn't move. I counted the coats. I counted them again. The number changed each time — five, six, five, seven — as if the rack itself couldn't decide how many things were hanging from it.

"Karen?" I whispered, though I knew Karen was upstairs.

The coat that wasn't a coat didn't move. But the clipboard in my hands felt heavier, and when I looked down, a new question had appeared beneath the others, in handwriting that was mine and not mine:

"Why did you sit down?"

I was sitting on the couch. I didn't remember sitting down. The armchair across from me was empty, the clipboard now resting on my lap as if I'd been holding it there for minutes, for hours. The living room light flickered — not dramatically, just a brief dimming, the way lights dim when something large draws power elsewhere in the house.

The intake form was nearly complete now. Questions and answers I didn't remember writing, all in my handwriting, all perfectly legible.

"How long have you been aware of the presence in your home?" — "Since before we moved in."

"When did you first notice the hours missing from your day?" — "I haven't noticed yet. But I will."

"Do you recognize the handwriting on this form?" — "It's mine. It's always been mine."

At the bottom of the form, a final line: "Patient signature confirming consent to treatment."

My signature was already there.

The light dimmed again, longer this time. In the half-darkness, I heard the coat rack creak. Not the sound of wood settling. The sound of someone shifting their weight. The sound of someone who has been standing very still for a very long time and has decided, at last, to turn around.

I ran.

I don't remember the hallway, or the stairs, or getting back to bed. I remember pulling the covers over myself like a child, heart hammering, listening to the house settle back into its mechanical silence. Karen slept on. The living room light, visible from the crack beneath our bedroom door, went dark.

In the morning, the living room looked normal. The armchair was at its usual angle. The coffee table was where it belonged. There was no clipboard, no intake form, no cream-colored envelope in the kitchen trash. Karen asked why I looked so tired. I told her I'd had trouble sleeping.

But that afternoon, I found something that made me sit down on the edge of the bed and stay there for a long time.

In my desk drawer, beneath a stack of old bills, there was a folder I had never seen before. Inside were intake forms — dozens of them — all dated on different nights over the past two years. All filled out in my handwriting. All signed at the bottom.

The dates corresponded exactly with the nights I couldn't remember dreaming.

The last form in the stack was dated tonight. It was blank except for the header, which read, in type so small I had to bring it close to my face:

Dr. Emil Hargrove — Terminal Consultations
Follow-up Appointment: Session 97 of 100

I don't know what happens at session one hundred.

But tonight, when I go to bed, I know I will wake at 2:47 AM. I know the living room light will be on. I know the door will be closed. And I know that something wearing a long dark coat will be standing in the corner, waiting for me to sit down.

The worst part isn't the fear.

The worst part is that some mornings — just a few, scattered across the past two years — I've woken up feeling better. Lighter. As if something heavy had been carefully, methodically removed from inside me.

And I'm starting to wonder what will be left when the treatment is complete.