Silence.But it wasn't real silence. It was the kind that buzzed, alive, as if the world itself was holding its breath and waiting for me to do something terrible.
I opened my eyes ; or maybe I didn't. It was impossible to tell. The darkness wasn't absence anymore; it had texture. It moved.
Something cold brushed my cheek. I flinched, but the air around me didn't move. That's when I realised… I wasn't breathing.
I tried to scream, and only dust came out. Black dust.
The corridor was gone. So was the knife. So was I, maybe. All that remained was that humming again ; closer now. Louder. The same broken lullaby, looping like a record stuck in the past.
"Who are you?" I said, though my voice sounded wrong.....layered, distorted, like two versions of me speaking slightly out of sync.
A soft giggle answered.Childish. Cruel.
Then the world blinked.
When it came back, I was standing in a room that looked like it had been forgotten by time. Peeling wallpaper. A single light bulb swinging from the ceiling. A metal bed frame rusted with age.
And on the wall ; drawings. Hundreds of them.Crayon sketches of me.
Some smiling. Some crying. Some… with their eyes crossed out.
My pulse kicked. My hands trembled as I stepped closer. Every drawing had the same symbol in the corner...the spiral.
Except for one drawing.The newest.
It showed two figures. Me… and something standing behind me. Taller. Faceless. Holding a knife.
The paper was still wet.
"Stop." I whispered. "Please, stop."
The bulb above me flickered violently, humming like a swarm of bees. For a split second, it lit up the mirror in the corner of the room.
There she was again.The other me.
But this time, she wasn't behind glass. She stood in front of it.
"I told you, didn't I?" she said, her tone strangely soft. "You're remembering."
My throat tightened. "Remembering what?"
Her smile widened; not cruelly, not kindly, just… knowingly. "The night it all started."
The walls began to breathe again. Slow. Shallow. Like lungs full of dust.
I stumbled back as the mirror cracked, spreading like spider veins. Behind the glass was movement ...a shadow shifting, forming outlines of people. Shapes. Faces I'd buried somewhere deep.
"Who are they?" I whispered.
"They're you," the reflection said. "All the times you've died here."
My chest clenched. "That doesn't make sense...!"
"Doesn't it?"
The cracked glass pulsed. And suddenly, I was seeing through it. Not into a reflection, but into a memory.
A hospital corridor. Empty.A flickering light.And me ; running. Screaming someone's name.
Then the image twisted.Blood.The same black liquid spreading across the tiles.A body.My hand clutching the knife.
And written across the wall in that same black substance...three words:"WAKE THE OTHERS."
The reflection stepped closer until her forehead nearly touched mine through the glass. "You weren't the only one who died that night," she murmured. "You just forgot you killed them."
I staggered back. "You're lying."
She tilted her head. "Then why do you still hear them?"
I froze.
Because she was right.
The whispers were back ; louder, clearer now. They weren't random anymore. They were voices.Children's voices.Crying. Laughing. Singing that lullaby.
The floor began to tremble. The drawings on the walls peeled off one by one, fluttering like dead leaves and spinning in the air. When they landed, they didn't show me anymore. They showed doors.
Dozens of them.Each one marked with a different symbol.
"The others are waiting," the reflection said. "You'll need to open them all… before it's too late."
"Too late for what?" I breathed.
She smiled faintly. "For the truth to forget you."
The bulb exploded.Darkness swallowed the room.
And when light returned.....dim, blue, wrong....I was standing in front of a door.One of the ones from the drawings.
Its handle was made of bone.The spiral symbol burned faintly beneath it.
I didn't want to touch it.But something deep inside me ; something older than fear, pushed my hand forward anyway.
The door opened with a sound that didn't belong in this world.
And behind it… was a whisper.
Low. Familiar. Terrified.
"Don't let her in again."
Then the voice changed.Lower. Colder. My own.
"But I already did."
The door slammed shut.
And for the first time, I realized....the thing I was running from…wasn't trying to kill me.
It was trying to take me back.
To where it all began.