He tried to step outside, to buy groceries, to talk to strangers. Some recognized him, most didn’t. That was worse. He’d become the kind of man people forgot even while looking at him. A ghost in plain sight.
Winter came, and with it, a kind of numbness. The house no longer felt haunted, just hollow. He stopped opening the curtains. Days blurred into gray shapes through frosted glass. Sometimes he caught himself listening for footsteps, then laughed bitterly. Even the ghosts, it seemed, had moved on.