Darkness thickened as the the lights shattered.
It pressed against my skin like a second body, warm and suffocating, as if the room itself had leaned close to smell my fear. I tried to move. My legs answered late, heavy, wrong. My heartbeat sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else trapped inside me, pounding on the walls.
Then the darkness blinked.
Not vanished.Not lifted.It blinked....and in that instant of dim return, the children were gone.
No whispers.No dangling shapes.No eyeless faces.
Just me.
And the shadow that followed me home.
It stood a few steps away now, taller than before, its outline unstable, as if it hadn't fully decided what shape to wear. Its joints bent at angles that suggested it had studied human movement from a distance and learned it incorrectly. When it took a breath...if it was breathing....the air around it rippled, bending like heat above asphalt.
"You're afraid," it said, calmly. Almost kindly.
I swallowed. My mouth tasted like old pennies and smoke. "You're not real."
The thing tilted its head, slow and deliberate. "That's what you asked for."
The room shifted. Walls slid backwards, peeling away into something larger, older. A vast interior space unfolded around us.....an empty hall with a ceiling too high to see, the floor etched with spirals and symbols that pulsed faintly, like veins beneath skin.
I knew this place.
Not from memory.From avoidance.
"You brought me here," the thing continued. "Every time you closed your eyes. Every time you chose not to remember."
A pressure built behind my eyes. Images scratched at the inside of my skull, begging to be let out. I squeezed my eyelids shut.
"No," I whispered. "I don't want to see."
"That," it replied, stepping closer, "is why they stayed."
The floor beneath my feet shimmered and turned transparent. Below it.....far below...were rooms. Hundreds of them. Each one small. Each one lit dimly. Each one holding a person.
Not alive.Not dead.
People without mouths, their faces smooth and sealed, hands raised as if frozen mid-scream. People missing hands, standing before doors they could never open. People with eyes so dark they swallowed light, staring upward as if they could see me through layers of forgetting.
My chest seized. "Who are they?"
The thing's shadow stretched, touching the glassy floor above the rooms. "What remains."
A memory cracked open.
Not gently.
Violently.
I was younger. My hands were smaller. Shaking. I stood at the edge of the forest, night pressing in from all sides, the air buzzing with insects and something else;something watching. The children were behind me, laughing, trusting, following because they always did.
I remembered the sound of my own voice.Too calm.Too steady.
"Stay close," I'd said. "This is important."
I remembered the symbols. I'd drawn them myself, copying from pages I didn't remember reading, using charcoal and ash, tracing spirals into the dirt until my fingers burned. I remembered thinking it didn't matter if I understood them. Only that I finished them.
I remembered the moment the forest went quiet.
And the moment the dark noticed me noticing it.
The memory lurched. I felt the presence again...behind me, above me, inside my breath. Not attacking. Not threatening.
Listening.
"What do you want?" a voice had asked. Not aloud. Not inside my head. Somewhere between.
I had cried then. Ugly, broken sobs. I'd told it everything. The guilt. The fear. The things I'd done before that night. The things I couldn't undo. The way my own reflection had started to feel like a stranger.
"I want it to stop," I'd begged. "I want to forget."
There was a pause.
"Forgetting has a price."
The present slammed back into place. I staggered, gasping, nails digging into my palms.
The shadow watched me with interest. "You didn't hesitate."
"I didn't know," I whispered. "I didn't know what it would take."
"You asked what it wanted," the thing said. "You didn't ask who would pay."
The hall trembled. From the rooms below, a sound rose.....soft at first, then layered. Not screams. Not words.
Breathing.
Too many breaths. Out of sync.
"I didn't mean for them to-"
"You were meant to be free," it interrupted. "You were meant to be clean. You were meant to wake up without the weight."
It stepped closer, and the temperature dropped. Frost traced the floor where its feet should have been.
"And you were," it continued. "For a while."
I looked down at my hands. Black stains pulsed beneath the skin, moving like something alive. "Then why are they still here?"
The thing's mouth stretched,not a smile, not exactly. "Because you didn't finish the deal."
The floor shattered.
We fell.
Not downward....inward.
I landed hard in a small room. A child-sized room. Crayon drawings covered the walls, layered over older drawings, layered over symbols scratched deep enough to scar the surface beneath. In the corner, a child crouched, rocking slowly.
She looked up.
She had eyes.
Too many memories rushed in at once. The way she'd held my hand. The way she'd trusted me when I told her it would be okay. The way she'd asked if monsters were real.
"I waited," she said quietly. "You said you'd come back."
My legs gave out. I crawled toward her. "I'm here now."
Her eyes darkened....not black, but empty in a different way. Tired. Ancient.
"You don't get to be," she said. "Not without remembering all of us."
The walls split open. Other rooms bled into this one. Other faces. Other shapes. The people without mouths. Without hands. Without names. They pressed close, not touching, not attacking—accusing.
The shadow appeared behind them, towering, patient.
"You took forgetting," it said. "But you left the doors unlocked."
I stood, shaking, turning to face it. "Then finish it. Take whatever you want. Just let them go."
It leaned down, close enough that the darkness of it filled my vision. "I already did."
My reflection stepped out of the wall beside it.
Not smiling now. Not mocking.
Exhausted.
"You gave it your guilt," she said softly. "But guilt grows back."
The people in the rooms began to fade.....not disappearing, but thinning, like smoke pulled through cracks.
"Wake up," my reflection whispered. "Or stay here with them. That's the last choice you get."
The shadow reached for me. I felt it touch my chest;not cold this time, but heavy. Crushing. Like every locked door slamming shut at once.
I screamed.
Not in fear.
In refusal.
The symbols on the floor ignited with dull red light. The rooms below shattered. The breaths stopped. The hall collapsed inward, folding into a single point of blinding pressure.
And then.
I woke up.
For real.
Hospital ceiling. Harsh lights. Alarms screaming. Hands grabbing my shoulders. Someone shouting my name.
But in the reflection of the monitor screen...
Just for a second,
I saw the shadow standing behind the glass, watching me with something that looked dangerously close to satisfaction.
And this time, when it spoke, it didn't whisper.
It smiled.
"Now," it said, "we can begin the part where you live with it..."