Updated Mar 9, 2026 • ~12 min read
Maya spends all of Wednesday researching.
She should be working—the Rothko assessment is due Friday and she’s barely started—but instead she’s hunched over her laptop in the museum’s research library, typing variations of “Blackwood Apartments Seattle history” into every search engine she can find.
The results are disappointingly normal.
Built in 1923 by architect Theodore Blackwood. Art deco style with Gothic revival elements. Six stories, eighteen units. Historic landmark status granted in 1987. Renovated in 2003 (badly, from what Maya’s seen of the plumbing).
Nothing about the third floor.
Nothing about Julian Cross.
She tries different search terms. “Blackwood Apartments death.” “Seattle apartment building 2019.” “Julian Cross Seattle artist.”
The third search finally gives her something.
It’s an obituary. Short. Impersonal. The kind that suggests no one knew the deceased well enough to write more than basic facts:
Julian Cross, 29, of Seattle, passed away unexpectedly on October 15, 2019. A talented artist specializing in portraiture, Julian was known for his dedication to his craft. No service is planned. No survivors listed.
October 15, 2019.
Five years and two months ago.
Maya stares at the screen, that cold feeling settling in her stomach again. No survivors listed. No family. No friends mentioned. Just a man who died alone in an apartment and was mourned by no one.
She thinks about the voice through her ceiling last night. The raw gratitude in it. Thank you for seeing me.
How long has he been alone up there?
Her phone buzzes. Another text from Patricia: Where’s my assessment?
Right. Work. Real life. Things that matter more than a dead man in vintage clothing.
But when Maya closes her laptop and heads back to her studio, she’s thinking about gray eyes and impossible disappearances and the kind of loneliness that survives death.
Julian appears in her apartment at 11:47 PM.
Maya is on the floor with her laptop, halfway through an article about art deco architecture, when the temperature drops fifteen degrees in three seconds.
She looks up.
He’s standing by the window. Not transparent—that’s the thing that keeps throwing her. He looks solid. Real. Like if she reached out, she’d touch warm skin instead of empty air.
But she knows better now.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Maya says.
“I know.” He doesn’t move from the window. Just stands there, hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t usually… come down here. To other apartments.”
“Why not?”
“Because it hurts.” He says it simply. “Seeing people live their lives. Seeing them do all the things I can’t anymore.”
Maya closes her laptop slowly. “Then why are you here?”
“I don’t know.” He finally looks at her, and there’s something raw in his expression. “I just kept thinking about you. About how you saw me. And I needed to…” He trails off, shaking his head. “This was a mistake. I’ll go.”
“Wait.”
She doesn’t know why she says it. Doesn’t know why she’s not screaming or calling the police or running out of the apartment. Mrs. Kowalski’s warnings are still fresh in her mind. The woman who stepped in front of a bus.
But something about him doesn’t feel dangerous.
Sad, maybe. Lost, definitely. But not dangerous.
“You can stay,” Maya hears herself say. “For a bit.”
The relief on his face is almost painful to witness.
He moves to the center of the room—and Maya notices he doesn’t make a sound. No footsteps. No creaking floorboards. Just silent movement, like he’s not quite here.
“You’re not scared,” he says. Not a question. An observation.
“I’m terrified.” Maya sits cross-legged on her blankets, gesturing for him to sit. After a moment’s hesitation, he does. Or seems to. He lowers himself into a sitting position across from her, but Maya isn’t sure if he’s actually touching the floor or just mimicking the motion. “But I spent my whole childhood seeing things that weren’t supposed to be there. This is just… more of the same.”
Interest flickers across his face. “You’re a medium.”
“I’m an art conservator.”
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“My grandmother was a medium.” Maya pulls her knees to her chest. “Everyone thought she was crazy. I spent years proving I wasn’t like her.”
“And yet here you are. Talking to a dead man.”
“Yeah.” Maya laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Here I am.”
They sit in silence for a moment. Maya takes the opportunity to really look at him. In the dim light from her laptop, he almost looks alive. Almost. But there’s something off about the edges of him. Like he’s slightly out of focus. Like reality can’t quite decide if he’s allowed to exist.
“Why are you still here?” she asks. “Mrs. Kowalski said you died five years ago. Why haven’t you… moved on?”
“I don’t know.” Frustration bleeds into his voice. “I remember dying. I remember the pain. And then I woke up in my apartment, and nothing worked anymore. I couldn’t touch things. Couldn’t leave the building. Couldn’t make anyone hear me.” He runs a hand through his hair—a gesture so human it makes Maya’s chest ache. “Five years. Five years of being invisible.”
“Until me.”
“Until you.” He looks at her like she’s a miracle. Like she’s the impossible thing. “Do you have any idea what it’s like? To watch people walk past you every day, talking and laughing and living, and you can’t even make them notice you? You can’t prove you exist?”
Maya thinks about her grandmother. About the way people would cross the street to avoid her. About the way Maya learned to hide what she could see, because being visible as different was worse than being invisible.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “I think I do.”
Something shifts in his expression. Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
“Tell me about your life,” Julian says. “Please. I want to hear about anything. Everything. I want to remember what it’s like.”
So she talks.
She tells him about her work at the museum. About the delicate process of conservation, the satisfaction of bringing damaged art back to life. About growing up in Portland with a mother who pretended their family was normal and a grandmother who definitely wasn’t. About moving to Seattle for the job, for the fresh start, for the chance to be someone other than “that weird girl whose grandma talks to ghosts.”
Julian listens like her words are water and he’s been dying of thirst.
When she finally trails off, throat dry from talking, he’s smiling. It transforms his whole face, makes him look younger. Less haunted.
“You love it,” he says. “The restoration work.”
“I do.” Maya realizes she’s smiling too. “There’s something about taking something broken and making it whole again. Like you’re giving it a second chance.”
“I used to feel that way about painting.” His smile fades. “I’d spend hours getting a portrait just right. Capturing not just how someone looked, but who they were. The light in their eyes. The weight they carried.” He stares at his hands. “I miss it. The creating. The purpose.”
“What do you do now? All day, up there alone?”
“I pace. I think. I try to remember who I was before.” He looks up at her. “Mostly I listen to the building. To the people living their lives around me. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to join them.”
“That sounds like torture.”
“It is.” He says it matter-of-factly. “But it’s all I have.”
The words settle between them, heavy with unspoken weight.
Maya should send him away. Should take Mrs. Kowalski’s advice and stay far away from the third floor and its tragic, beautiful ghost. Should protect herself from whatever dark fate befell the other tenants who could see him.
Instead, she hears herself ask, “Do you want some tea?”
Julian blinks. “I can’t drink tea.”
“I know. But I can. And maybe…” She stands, moving to her tiny kitchen. “Maybe it would feel normal? For a minute?”
She doesn’t look back at him. Doesn’t want to see his expression, afraid it might mirror the desperate loneliness she’s feeling.
Because that’s the thing she’s starting to realize: she’s just as alone as he is.
She’s just better at hiding it.
They talk until 3 AM.
Maya makes tea she doesn’t drink and sits on the floor while Julian tells her about his life before. About growing up in Seattle, about his sister Catherine who died in the 1940s (which raises about a thousand questions Maya doesn’t know how to ask). About the commission he was working on when he died—a portrait of someone important, though his memories get fuzzy around the details.
“I don’t remember everything,” he admits. “Some days are crystal clear. Others are just… gone. Like my mind is deteriorating along with my body.”
“You don’t look like you’re deteriorating.”
“Don’t I?” He holds up his hand, and Maya sees what she missed before. His edges are slightly transparent. Fading at the extremities like an old photograph. “I used to be stronger. More solid. But five years alone…” He lets his hand drop. “I think I’m forgetting how to exist.”
The thought sends ice through Maya’s veins. “What happens if you forget completely?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I finally move on. Or maybe I just… stop.”
“Stop?”
“Cease to exist. Not living, not dead. Just nothing.”
Maya sets her mug down carefully. “That’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” She says it with more confidence than she feels. “Because I can see you. And as long as someone can see you, you exist.”
He looks at her for a long moment. Then, so quietly she almost doesn’t hear it: “Is that why I’m drawn to you? Because you make me real?”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. But I know that when I’m near you, I feel more solid. More here.” He leans forward, and the intensity in his eyes makes it hard to breathe. “And I know that I haven’t felt this alive in five years.”
The air between them feels charged. Electric. Maya’s aware of every inch of space separating them, aware of how easy it would be to close that distance.
How impossible.
“We should—” she starts.
He reaches for her hand.
It’s instinctive. Automatic. The kind of gesture people make without thinking, when they want to connect.
His fingers pass through hers like smoke.
But Maya feels it.
Cold. Sharp. Electric. Like touching a live wire, if the wire was made of ice and longing and five years of desperate isolation.
They both jerk back.
“I’m sorry,” Julian says immediately. “I forgot. I always forget I can’t—”
“I felt that.” Maya stares at her hand. There’s no mark, no evidence of contact. But her fingers are tingling, and her palm feels frozen. “How did I feel that?”
“I don’t know.” He’s staring at his own hand like it betrayed him. “I felt it too. You were warm. Like sunlight.”
They look at each other.
The moment stretches. Painful and electric and impossible.
“I should go,” Julian says, but he doesn’t move.
“Yeah,” Maya agrees. “You should.”
Neither of them moves.
The silence is different now. Weighted with awareness. With the memory of cold fingers and warm skin and the impossible space where they tried to touch.
Finally—Maya doesn’t know who moves first—they both stand.
Julian backs toward the window. “Will you…” He stops himself. Shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“Will I what?”
“Will you come back? To the third floor?” He looks almost embarrassed asking. “Not today. Not soon. Just… eventually?”
Maya should say no. Should set boundaries. Should protect herself from whatever this is becoming.
“Yes,” she says instead.
The smile he gives her is devastating.
“Thank you,” he says. And then, like last night: “Thank you for seeing me.”
He fades.
Not disappears. Fades. Like someone turning down a dimmer switch, until there’s nothing left but empty air and the lingering cold where he stood.
Maya stands alone in her apartment, staring at the space where a ghost just thanked her for acknowledging his existence.
Her hand still tingles.
She touches her palm to her chest and feels her heart racing.
Oh no, she thinks. Oh no, no, no.
Because she knows this feeling. Recognizes it from college crushes and failed relationships and every romantic disaster she’s sworn off.
Attraction.
She’s attracted to him.
To a dead man.
To a ghost who can’t touch her, can’t leave his building, can’t offer her anything except conversation and loneliness and the inevitable heartbreak of falling for someone who literally doesn’t exist.
Maya sinks back down to her blankets and drops her head into her hands.
“I’m so screwed,” she tells the empty apartment.
From above, like agreement, she hears the creak of floorboards.
He’s pacing again.
And somehow, knowing he’s there—knowing he’s real, that their conversation happened, that the cold touch of his fingers wasn’t imagined—makes it worse.
Because now she knows what it feels like when he tries to touch her.
And she wants to feel it again.
Maya doesn’t sleep.
Again.
But this time, it’s not fear keeping her awake.
It’s the terrifying realization that she’s falling for a ghost.
And she has no idea how to stop.
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