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“There once lived a man and his beautiful daughter, the both of them tucked safely away in a large and well maintained home chalked clear to the beams with rare and expensive items. Both of them lived in unbridled bliss, not a care in the world ever managing to touch even the frame of their front door. They were well respected and loved within the community and as far as they were concerned they would live in this charmed life until they passed from this world.

Each day the man would go off to work and leave his daughter to tend to the home, and each evening he would return to her with a large smile and a warm kiss on her forehead. One night when he returned he felt the sudden and rather strange urge to go through and assess the items in his collection, noting each scratch or blemish they contained. This soon turned into a habit and it became a regular part of his nightly routine. So each night he would enter the home, kiss his beloved daughter and inspect each of his valuables.

The day was like any other as he left work to return home but when he walked through the door and greeted his daughter something felt different. It was subtle but evident and enough to motivate him to sort instantly through his belongings, stress pulling down the corners of his mouth as he did so. After hours spent in a room lit only by the sputtering light of a fire he had nearly accepted the sensation as a lack of sleep or a weak constitution, when he held a silver candlestick up to his eyes. He had looked it over enough times to notice that an unsightly dent it had previously harbored was no longer there. Turning it over and over in his hands he searched for that dent until the light of the sun finally began to filter in through his window. Forcing himself to set it aside for further inspection he left for work, thoughts of the now repaired candlestick buzzing in the back of his mind throughout the day.

He had all but forgotten the matter when he stepped through his front door for the hundredth time and greeted his daughter. But, again, as on the previous occasion he felt something amiss and so quickly went to study each of his possessions. This time he noticed a vase that had once been chipped looking as though it were new, and a painting that had shown a minuscule scratch on the bottom right-hand corner appearing flawless. Fear and confusion clutched at his heart as he scrambled through a list of possibilities. Perhaps someone was simply fixing them? Or had he imagined their flaws in the first place? He imagined scenario after scenario until his daughter walked into the room, a look of concern plain upon her face. The girl ushered her father to bed, listening to his ravings and attempting to soothe his worries. “Certainly you are imaging it father, please get some sleep.”

Day after horrid day the man would return home to discover that more of his things had been replaced with perfect replicas. And day after day his daughter and everyone else he spoke to concerning the matter told him he was simply in need of more sleep or that he should go to see a physician. He slowly began to feel as though he were going mad, as though everything he had experienced over the past few weeks was nothing more than the fantasies of a weakening mind.

He began to alienate himself from those whose company he once thoroughly enjoyed and he would occasionally stay home from work to guard his treasures and to catch the culprit. He would hunker down in the center of the home and wait for any suspicious sound, but nothing ever came. This only served to disturb him more as, even on days where he was present the entire time, an item would go missing only to be replaced.

The entire ordeal caused him to be seized by fits of madness and fear where he would run through the house ranting and raving about copies and replicas. As more and more objects were replaced he became more frightened for the wellbeing of his daughter. Constantly he begged her to lock herself away or to find a safe place to hide, but she would only respond by calling the physician to tend to her father.

Exactly a month had gone by since the first candlestick had been replaced and the man had become very ill; his skin had turned pale and his face appeared sallow and sunken in. Each day he would wander through the house, foaming at the mouth and spouting all kinds of insanity until he was forcefully confined to his bed. He was locked in his room and his daughter held the key, all in the name of protecting him from himself and his ravings.

Time moved mercilessly slow as the man stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, his mouth constantly moving as though in speech but no words making their way out. His daughter tended to him at all times, coming in to deliver his meals and to bathe him but even she had begun to fear him now. The objects he and his daughter had once seen as part of their bliss now became a symbol of horror and torment to him.

Moonlight spilled in through a crack in the curtains when a soft sound at the man’s door had his eyes flicking in that direction. The sensation he had felt so many times before once again returned and he clutched his bed sheets so tightly that he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers. The sound soon faded away until the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears, and of the ragged breaths leaving his lungs. The darkness began to close in on him and he felt as though eyes remained hidden and vigilant in every corner of his room.

He attempted to calm himself, to refrain from giving in to the threatening madness but nothing he thought of could explain what that noise was or why he was feeling the way he was. He wanted to rise, to go to the window and allow the light of the moon to quiet his fears by illuminating the darkness, but he was too weak to move. He lay helpless, exposed to the malicious desires of whatever entity haunted him.

As though someone had heard him silently calling out into the darkness the curtains of his window were thrown apart and the room filled with light. The delicate frame of his daughter stood at the foot of his bed, a concerned look knitting her brows as she stared down at him. Putting water in a basin and bringing it over to him she began to wipe the sweat from his brow and coo tenderly at him. All appeared well as he took her hand and smiled up at her, but he was again struck by fear as he stared at her palm. A fear so deep and desperate that it clawed at each of his innards until his whole body was ravaged by it. The cut she had received while preparing his breakfast that morning was no longer visible. Not a trace of the wound was left behind and as he looked up at the sweet smiling face of his most prized possession steadily growing nearer, he knew it was over.”