Chapter 08: The Hollow Echoes
Evelyn awoke with a sharp, gasping breath. Her body jerked upward, her hands gripping the bed sheets so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The room around her was eerily silent, the faint hum of the old fan her only company. The oppressive weight that had held her in the dream world was gone, replaced by the suffocating stillness of the waking world. She was back—but was she?
The air in the room was thick, cloying, as if it was filled with something unseen, something that didn’t belong. She could still feel the lingering trace of the creature’s touch—cold, sharp, a mark upon her skin that refused to fade. Her heart hammered in her chest, and every shadow in the room seemed to move in ways that were wrong, unnatural.
Evelyn slowly turned her head, taking in the familiar surroundings of her bedroom, but there was something unsettling about them now. The walls felt closer, the ceiling lower, the corners of the room shrouded in darkness. She could almost hear the whispers again, faint but unmistakable, like a chorus of voices scratching at the edges of her mind.
“Evelyn… come to us.”
Her breath caught. The voice had returned, but this time, it wasn’t a whisper—it was an echo. A hollow, distorted reflection of itself, reverberating in her mind. The voice of the figure, the one that had called her, had followed her out of the dream.
Her heart pounded as she pushed herself from the bed, her legs weak, her body still trembling from the intensity of the dream that felt far too real. She staggered toward the window, her eyes scanning the street outside. The early morning light filtered through the dusty blinds, casting long, thin shadows across the floor.
But the world outside wasn’t what she had expected. The street was empty, eerily so. The familiar houses stood in silence, their windows dark and uninviting. The trees in the yard no longer seemed to sway gently in the breeze; instead, their limbs were twisted and crooked, like skeletal hands reaching toward the sky. The leaves were gray, lifeless, and the air held a heavy stillness as though the very breath of the earth had been stilled.
Evelyn’s throat tightened. She could feel the weight of something watching her from the shadows, just beyond her reach. The nightmare had bled into reality, and she had no idea how to stop it.
The whispering grew louder.
“Evelyn…”
She spun around, heart thudding painfully in her chest. There, in the corner of the room, the shadows seemed to shift again, as though something was slowly moving within them. A figure—dark, indistinct—hovered at the edge of her vision, flickering like a broken reflection.
Her breath caught. She could almost make out the features, but they slipped away the moment she tried to focus on them. Her heart hammered in her chest, a frantic rhythm that matched the ticking of the old clock on the wall.
The figure’s whisper became clearer, more distinct.
“You can’t escape, Evelyn. You belong to us.”
The words seemed to vibrate through her body, like a sudden electric shock, sending a jolt of ice through her veins. She staggered back, pressing her hands against the wall for support. The shadows were closing in on her, the darkness suffocating, filling every corner of the room, pooling around her feet like liquid.
She tried to scream, but her voice was trapped inside her throat. Her hands trembled, her mind racing with desperate thoughts of escape. She had to leave. She had to get away from this house, from the thing that had followed her from the depths of her nightmares.
But as she moved toward the door, her vision blurred, the edges of the room twisting and warping before her eyes. The shadows grew, thick and inescapable, until the room itself seemed to collapse into itself. The walls seemed to pulse with an unseen rhythm, the air thick with the sound of distant whispers, the faintest trace of footsteps behind her. The darkness was alive, and it was closing in.
“No…” Evelyn whispered, her voice a fragile thing. “I won’t…”
The door to the room slammed shut with a deafening bang, trapping her inside. She spun around, but there was no escape. The figure in the shadows was now standing before her, its face still obscured, its presence pressing down on her like a physical weight.
“Why do you resist?” the figure asked, its voice now a cold, mocking thing. “You were always meant to join us. You’ve been a part of us all along, Evelyn. Don’t you see? You were never meant to escape.”
Evelyn backed away, her pulse racing. She could feel the cold creeping through her skin, could hear the ragged breath of something—someone—behind her, closer now.
And then, a pair of hands reached out of the darkness, skeletal and frail, their fingers brushing her skin, sending a shock of freezing terror through her body.
“NO!” she screamed, tearing herself away from their grasp. She turned and ran, her feet stumbling on the uneven floorboards, her mind racing with panic. She had to get out, had to find a way to stop this nightmare before it consumed her completely.
But as she reached the door again, it was locked. No matter how hard she tried to turn the knob, the door wouldn’t budge. The air around her grew colder still, and the shadows seemed to draw closer, their whispers growing louder, more insistent.
“You cannot run, Evelyn.”
She spun around, searching for the source of the voice, but there was no one there. The room was closing in on her, the shadows swallowing her, and she could feel her mind slipping, the thin line between reality and nightmare blurring with every passing second.
As the darkness consumed her, she heard the voice again, a final whisper that seemed to echo through the very walls of the room.
“You belong to the night now.”
And with that, the world went black.
