It started a week ago. It was a Sunday morning like any other. The window washers had come yesterday and gotten rid of the streaks that built up from the rain we had last week.
But when I woke up this morning, there was one, lone handprint - smudged, right in the middle of the floor to ceiling window in my bedroom. It was on the other side of the glass.
On the 38th floor, I didn’t have a balcony, so it was impossible for anyone to get out there aside from the washers yesterday. They hadn’t come back overnight, or this morning… so… I assumed it was from them and they’d somehow missed it yesterday.
Then Monday morning came, and there was another handprint right beside the first one. I knew for sure I would have seen the second one if it had been there on Sunday, but couldn’t be sure. I checked the rest of the window to make sure there weren’t more handprints that I’d missed, but the windows were clean. Not so much as a streak.
Tuesday morning, I woke up to a near heart attack. My bedroom window was covered in dozens of handprints now. They filled the outside of the window. I definitely would have seen them yesterday. They had to be new.
Was it possible the cleaners had done this accidentally? And the oil left over from their skin just took a certain amount of time to oxidize with the air and cleaning products, before becoming visible? Wait, didn’t they wear gloves?
Or were they playing a prank on me? Or was someone else?
I called the super, and asked if he could send the window-washers up today. I lied and said a bird had flown into the window, and there was a bloody impact on the glass that disturbed me. The cleaners were actually on site, and they agreed to come by and give it a clean.
They were as nice as always when they appeared outside my window on their roof-based suspension system, lowering from above. They cleaned the handprints easily enough, but seemed confused as to where the bird had hit the glass. It didn’t matter though, they finished and moved on. And my window was back to being clean and clear.
I still felt weird about it all. The handprints seemed to happen overnight as I slept, so I decided to set up my laptop to record whatever was going on. See if it happened to reappear.
Wednesday morning, I woke up in a sweat after a restless tangle of nightmares. But none of them could have prepared me for my window.
Not only were there more handprints. But they were on the inside of the glass now.
I touched them and felt oil and dirt smudge under my fingers. Someone had been inside my apartment.
I immediately grabbed a knife from the kitchen and checked every room but found nothing and no one. I washed my hands and got out all my cleaning products. I bleached the windows and got rid of the prints. Then I checked my laptop and watched the recording of the previous night.
The handprints slowly appeared and spread over the course of the evening like some infection, but I couldn’t see anyone doing it. The idea that this might be a prank seemed distant now. I decided I didn’t feel safe anymore, and called my sister to see if I could spend a few nights at her house.
I was there an hour later, and already started feeling better. The rest of the day was quiet and uneventful. I’d taken time off work since the… accident… and all I really wanted to do was sleep. I had over a dozen missed calls from my lawyer, needing to discuss my potential court trial coming up. I’d handle that tomorrow though. Everything could wait until tomorrow.
The next morning, I woke up and reached for my glass of water… and saw a handprint smudged around it. One much larger than my own.
I knocked over the glass and it shattered on the floor. I heard my sister yell up to me, but the words blended together. I was too afraid.
I ran out of the room, passing my sister. All I could think was I wanted to get out of here and get somewhere without glass or windows. Downstairs, I grabbed my sisters car keys and took off with her car… her yelling behind me.
I immediately felt uncomfortable behind the wheel. It’d only been two weeks since the accident, and I hadn’t fully recovered mentally.
I just wanted to get to my dad’s old cottage in the woods. I’d always felt safe there. I could break the windows and any glass. There’d be no more surfaces for handprints.
As I pulled onto the highway, my stomach twisted, and I felt like I was back in my old Sedan. Before the accident. Before it was a write-off.
An icy breeze passed through the car.
As I merged into the passing lane, a handprint formed on my left side window. Then… all over it. Handprints slammed against my windshield, spreading across quickly. In seconds, I couldn’t see anything.
I turned on the windshield wipers, but they did nothing.
The handprints were on the inside of the window. With me.
A cold, invisible grip wrapped around my hands, and the steering wheel was jolted away. I felt the car slam into the median and then I was upside down.
Everything went black.
When I woke up, I was back in the hospital. But this time I was worse off. My left leg was in a full cast and the rest of my body looked like it’d been thrown off a cliff. Bruises and stitches were all over my arms. I couldn’t see any other part of my body.
My sister was asleep in the chair to the side of the bed. I tried to whisper to her, but nothing came out.
All I could do was lay there and think. How does someone get in back-to-back car accidents like this?
And worse… be the cause of both of them? I didn’t know how many people had been hurt in this crash… or died. But I knew there were 17 deaths and many more injuries in the pile-up I caused two weeks ago. I’d been texting on my cell on the highway and drifted into the next lane. An 18-wheeler jackknifed and turned the highway into a trauma unit.
The guilt for the deaths in the crash had been staying closely at bay, like a fog ready to roll in when the storm was ready.
But I had a frightening feeling the storm was now here.
A new handprint had appeared on the window beside my sister.
Then another one on my heart monitor.