The church was quiet except for the hushed sobs and the soft shuffle of black shoes on old wooden floors. Emily sat in the front row, her heart heavy as she watched her father’s casket rest beneath the stained-glass window. He had been her anchor, her guide, and now he was gone.
She tried to focus on the priest’s words, but something tugged at her attention. At the very back of the church, half-hidden in the shadows, a man stood watching. He wasn’t dressed like the others. His suit was old-fashioned, the fabric worn, his hat pulled low over his face.
Emily couldn’t place him. She knew nearly everyone in her father’s circle, yet this man was a stranger. And yet… there was something hauntingly familiar in the way he held himself.
After the service, Emily hurried to the back, determined to ask who he was. But by the time she reached the spot, the man was gone.
That night, she couldn’t shake the image. Out of restless curiosity, she began digging through her father’s old photo albums. And there—on a yellowed page from decades ago—she found him.
The man stood beside her father in a photograph taken in the 1970s, both smiling in front of a car. But the stranger looked exactly the same as he had at the funeral. No older. Not a single line etched on his face.
Her stomach turned cold. She flipped through more albums. And there he was again—in pictures from the 1980s, the 1990s, even one from her own childhood birthday party. Always in the background, always the same ageless man.
Desperate for answers, Emily showed the photo to her grandmother. The old woman’s hands trembled as she clutched it.
“You’ve seen him too,” her grandmother whispered. “He’s been at every funeral in our family. For generations. Your father once told me he believed the man wasn’t just a guest. He was… a collector.”
“A collector of what?” Emily asked, her voice barely audible.
Her grandmother’s eyes glistened. “Of souls.”
Emily never saw the man again—at least not in life. But sometimes, when she dreams, she finds herself back in the church, her father’s casket before her. And at the very back, in the shadows, the man waits—patient, eternal—watching her now.
