The town that haunts me
The wind whispered through the trees as Elena Brooks jolted awake, her heart hammering against her ribs. A thin sheet of sweat clung to her skin, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts.
For a moment, she didn’t recognize her room. The familiar glow of the street lamp outside barely cut through the darkness. Shadows stretched across the ceiling, unmoving, yet they still made her stomach twist. It always took a few seconds to remind herself that she was awake. That the nightmare was over.
She sat up, running a shaky hand through her tangled hair.
It was the same dream. The same town.
At first, it was perfect. Golden sunlight kissed the cobblestone streets, shop doors stood wide open, and the scent of fresh bread being baked from a nearby bakery. People walked past her, laughing, talking—faces that almost looked familiar, but she could never quite place them.
It felt warm. Like something she should remember.
Then, the shift.
The light dimmed. Shadows stretched unnaturally along the pavement, swallowing everything in their path. The laughter turned to screams. The bakery’s windows shattered, glass raining onto the empty streets. The sky turned an ashen gray, pressing down like a storm that would never break.
And then—the figures.
They lurked at the edges of her vision. Watching. Whispering in a language she couldn’t understand. The words were slippery, crawling under her skin, making her breath come faster. A cold weight wrapped around her chest.
She always tried to turn and run—
And always woke up.
Elena swallowed hard, her pulse still racing.
Her phone screen glowed beside her. 3:17 AM. Again.
For three months, she had been waking up at the same time, the dream still burned into her mind. At first, she thought it was just a coincidence. A strange recurring nightmare. But now?
She wasn’t so sure.
With a tired sigh, she shoved her blankets aside and grabbed the sketchbook from her nightstand. If she didn’t draw the details now, they would slip away by morning.
Her pencil scraped against the paper as she sketched the crumbling storefronts, cracked roads, the flickering shadows. Her hands shook slightly as she outlined the figures—hazy, faceless, always just out of reach.
She turned to a new page and scrawled down everything she couldn't draw. The whispers. The dread. The strange, suffocating weight settled in her chest just before she woke up.
By the time she finished, exhaustion pulled at her limbs, but her mind refused to settle.
She stared at the sketch, her stomach twisting.
This place. It wasn’t just a dream.
It felt real.
And she needed to find it.
