As his vitals slowly decreased, I heard her crying. The plasma monitor blurred as tears swelled up in her eyes. She wiped them away, and then cradled her head in sorrow. Everything that could be done for Dan had been done. Kristen obviously didn’t want him to die alone. It made no difference that he was unaware of her presence.

While I watched, something very peculiar appeared on the screen. A dark, fuzzy image materialized through the wall of the ICU room. I notified the professor of this anomaly and, through the window, saw Kristen become more active. Only the wide straps held her down, preventing inadvertent harm to herself. Dr. Valken commented on her reactions, making verbal observations for the digital recording.

He noted her eyes were no longer vacant. They held real emotion – fear. I saw him hovering over Kristen like a mother hen, but then brought my attention back to the screen again. In Kristen’s memory, she gasped and looked up. The screen displayed a dark specter clearly hovering on the opposite side of her brother’s bed.

This apparition looked partly solid. It was vaguely human-shaped, but more than this I couldn’t discern for a black robe covered its entire body. Kristen released a quiet gasp. From the scanning room, the professor confirmed that her physical self also gasped, trying to speak words that refused to form.

On the memory display monitor, a hood concealed the head of this specter, making it impossible to see facial characteristics in the shadow. With all the lights in the room illuminated this only added to the mystery. The midnight robe seemed to absorb light.

The specter remained on the opposite side of Dan’s bed, saying nothing, doing nothing. Its presence was terrifying. The robe flapped back and forth like a solid shadow blown around by a phantom gust of wind. While I didn’t know if this memory event was real, every sense told her it was real. The doctor noted that the numbers on her vital readout had significantly increased.

From what we knew of her, she was completely sane at that time. There was no reason to believe this might be an illusion. But what was it? Where did it come from? Kristen was paralyzed by fear.

Without warning, the apparition extended a robed arm, revealing a skeletal hand of white bone. A long, dark-wood staff materialized in the hand. A large, curved blade sprouted from the top of the staff and I recognized it as a scythe. Another skeletal hand emerged and gripped the bottom half of the sickle. As it raised the weapon above its head, its hood tilted back far enough to glimpse a bone-white skull with burning embers set in its eye sockets.

In the adjacent room, Dr. Valken was beside himself with worry and concern. It was difficult to hear him through the hands-free radio. No longer in catatonia, Kristen was screaming in a terrified voice that curdled my blood. He administered a sedative, but it had no effect on her. Looking back up to the mental projection screen, I saw the speed of the image feed slow down.

The long handled scythe swept down through Dan’s body. Strangely, no physical injury resulted from the attack. I saw no blood or wounds to suggest that any of this was real. Nevertheless, it felt as real as it looked. The black-robed entity completed its arc with the wickedly curved blade.