1. Lost in the Dark
Lost in the Dark
Nichole
One moment, I’m standing in the mansion. The next, I’m being dragged into the nightmare room.
My breath catches as an invisible force yanks me downward, the air rushing past me in suffocating silence. There’s no ground, no walls, no sense of direction—just an endless void swallowing me whole.
My arms flail, my fingers stretching for something—anything—to hold onto, but there’s nothing. Only the feeling of weightless freefall and the paralyzing fear that I’m sinking into something I will never escape from.
The darkness around me isn’t just an absence of light—it’s a presence. Thick. Smothering. It clings to me, sliding against my skin like a living thing, seeping into my bones as if trying to make me part of it. My lungs seize. I try to scream, but no sound escapes.
The silence is deafening.
I twist, my body spinning in the void, but I can’t tell if I’m upside down, right side up, or if I’m even moving at all. The lack of sensation is worse than the fall itself. My body should be reacting—gravity should exist—but none of it does.
My pulse roars in my ears, the only confirmation that I’m still alive. But for how much longer?
Then—impact.
It isn’t violent, but it knocks the breath from my lungs. My knees buckle as I hit something solid, the sudden weight of my body returning all at once.
My fingers press against the ground—rough, uneven, real. The sensation of touch floods back, my nerve endings tingling as if waking up from a deep numbness.
I suck in a sharp breath, my heartbeat still erratic. The darkness has changed.
It’s no longer an infinite abyss. It has walls now, a floor beneath me, space stretching into the unseen distance. I’m still surrounded by darkness, but it’s no longer the endless, mind-breaking kind. This is different.
This is somewhere.
I push myself up onto shaky arms, scanning the void around me. It isn’t just dark. It’s a kind of blackness that feels wrong, deeper than anything I’ve ever seen. My body is here, but I still feel like I’m on the edge of disappearing, as if the world itself refuses to acknowledge my existence.
Then a whisper. Soft. Faint. Not mine. My breath halts. My pulse spikes.
I turn toward the sound, but there’s nothing. Just the emptiness pressing in around me.
Then another whisper. Closer.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up.
I’m not alone.
A chill creeps down my spine as the whispers multiply, slithering through the darkness like curling smoke. They move in all directions, shifting, circling—never settling, never stopping.
I strain to make out the words, but they remain just out of reach, spoken in a language I can’t fully grasp. The sounds feel wrong and distorted, as if someone is speaking underwater or from behind a thick pane of glass.
A pulse of ice spreads through my veins.
I turn sharply, my breath unsteady. “Who’s there?” My voice comes out too thin, too uncertain. It doesn’t belong to me in this place.
A rush of air brushes against my arm, cold and fleeting, like fingers barely grazing my skin. I jerk back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
I know this isn’t real. I know I’m in the Nightmare Room. But that knowledge does nothing to stop the way my chest tightens, the way my hands shake at my sides.
Because the problem with nightmares isn’t that you know they aren’t real. The problem is that they make you feel like they are.
The whispers swirl through my mind, sinking their claws into something buried deep inside me. A memory flickers at the edges of my mind—times I’ve felt unseen, unheard, alone. Moments I’ve fought to matter, only for the world to pass me by as if I was never there to begin with.
The whispers laugh.
It isn’t loud—it isn’t even entirely a sound. It’s a vibration in the air, curling around me like invisible chains.
I grit my teeth, forcing the thoughts down before they can take root.
“Shut up,” I whisper.
They mock me.
The laughter presses closer, seeping beneath my skin, coiling around my ribs like something alive.
Then, through the suffocating void, something shifts.
A faint glow. Weak. Flickering. Struggling against the darkness. A single point of light.
My breath catches. It’s far away, blurred and distant, but it’s there. It’s something.
I take a hesitant step forward, then another, moving toward the only thing in this nightmare that isn’t trying to swallow me whole.
Because if I don’t…
The whispers will consume me instead.
I take a step forward, drawn toward the flickering light in the distance. The whispers linger behind me, curling at the edges of my mind, but they don’t follow. They don’t need to. Their words have already taken root, settling into my bones like a sickness.
The closer I get, the more the darkness peels away, breaking apart in uneven pieces. It doesn’t fade—it shatters, like shards of glass dissolving into dust. And behind it, a world begins to form.
A city street stretches before me, muted and hazy, like a memory that isn’t fully intact.
Dim streetlights cast dull yellow halos onto the cracked pavement.
Neon signs flicker overhead, their colors bleeding into the night.
A warm breeze carries the scent of gasoline, damp asphalt, and something faintly metallic.
People walk along the sidewalk, their conversations low murmurs, their faces blurred at the edges. The world is alive, moving, breathing.
But something is wrong.
I take a step back, my breath coming too fast, too shallow. I turn toward the nearest person, reaching for them, but my fingers pass straight through their arm.
The man keeps walking, his expression unchanged, his stride uninterrupted.
I stare, dread clawing its way up my throat.
I take another step forward, reaching again. My hands slip through fabric, through skin, through air. My pulse hammers. My chest tightens. I move faster, grabbing at sleeves, at arms, at anything.
Nothing.
No reaction. No hesitation. They don’t see me.
I stumble back, my heartbeat slamming against my ribs. My voice breaks as I try again.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
No one stops.
The world moves on without me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the nightmare back, refusing to let it consume me.
A voice cuts through the static—deep, familiar, undeniable.
“Nichole.”
My eyes snap open.
The whispers fall silent.
My pulse roars in my ears as I turn toward the voice.
The sound of my name lingers in the air, cutting through the suffocating void that surrounds me. It’s faint, almost distant, but I know that voice. I would know it anywhere.
Damian.
Hope surges through me, a sudden rush of warmth against the cold emptiness of this nightmare.
I whip around, scanning the distorted cityscape for any sign of him.
The world still feels unreal—warped at the edges, the buildings shifting slightly as if they’re struggling to hold their shape—but I don’t care. He’s here.
I take a step forward, then another, my pulse hammering as I search the crowd. The blurred figures move past me in a steady stream, their conversations nothing more than faint murmurs, but I’m no longer paying attention to them. I need to find him.
Then, through the shifting bodies, I see him.
Or at least, the back of him.
Tall, broad-shouldered, his dark hair slightly tousled, his posture rigid. He’s standing just ahead, caught in the middle of the crowd, as if he feels me but doesn’t know where I am.
A lump rises in my throat. “Damian!”
I push forward, shoving through the faceless figures that refuse to acknowledge me. My hands brush against them, but they don’t react. It doesn’t matter. He’s here. I can reach him.
He starts to turn.
Just as I extend my hand toward him, something cold and sharp wraps around my wrist.
A violent yank rips me backward.
I cry out, my body lurching as I stumble, but whatever has hold of me is too strong. The world distorts, blurring, twisting. The ground beneath my feet vanishes.
I’m being dragged back into the dark.
“Damian!” I scream, clawing at the air, trying to break free.
He turns—our eyes meet for the briefest second. His expression flickers with something sharp, something raw, and I swear he sees me.
Then the darkness swallows me whole.
The last thing I hear before I’m pulled under—
His voice, desperate and fierce.
“Nichole!”
And then, silence