Whispers in the Dark

The room is unfamiliar. I don’t know how I got here.  

Cold air snakes along my skin, sending a shiver down my spine. The walls are rough, uneven stone, slick with dampness, as if this place has been swallowed by time itself. The faintest glimmer of light seeps through a crack in the ceiling, illuminating dust motes that dance eerily in the stillness. A deep, suffocating silence clings to the air, thick and unyielding.  

I press my palm against the floor, feeling the jagged edges of cracked tiles beneath my fingertips. My breath is shallow, my pulse a frantic drum against my ribs. Something about this place feels... wrong. There’s an ache at the base of my skull, a dull throb that suggests I was unconscious not long ago. My mind claws for memories, but they slip away like mist in the morning light.  

A whisper.  

So faint I almost convince myself it’s my imagination. But then it comes again soft, curling through the shadows like an invitation. Or a warning.  

I turn, scanning the darkness. The walls seem to shift, closing in ever so slightly, and the air is thick with an unshakable presence. I am not alone.  

I rise to my feet, every nerve alight with dread. My throat tightens as my eyes dart toward the darkness in the corner of the room. Something moved. I am sure of it. My body tenses, every muscle coiled like a spring.  

"Hello?" My voice is barely above a whisper, fragile and uncertain.  

The silence that follows is suffocating.  

a raspy whisper curls through the air like smoke.  

"You shouldn’t be here."  

The chains on the door rattle. The flickering light dims. And the darkness in the corner shifts, crawling closer.  

A slow, scraping sound echoes through the room, metal against stone. I swallow hard, taking a cautious step back. The air is wrong too still, too dense. A pressure builds in my chest, a suffocating weight that tightens like invisible hands.  

The whisper comes again, closer this time.  

"Go back. Before it finds you."  

A sharp prickle runs down my spine.  

"Before what finds me?" I manage to croak, though I’m not sure I want the answer.  

The whisper doesn’t return. But something else does.  

A breath.  

Not mine.  

It’s slow and ragged, emerging from the shadows where the light refuses to reach. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my throat. The air thickens, carrying a scent of damp earth and something metallic, something wrong.  

A shadow moves. Not with the light, but against it. It shifts unnaturally, peeling itself from the darkness like something waking from a deep, unnatural slumber.  

The chains on the door rattle again, violently this time. The metal groans under pressure, like something on the other side is trying to break through.  

My instincts scream at me to run, but my feet are frozen, trapped by terror.  

Then, a new sound.  

A low, guttural growl.  

It slithers through the air, so deep it vibrates in my bones. The shape in the corner grows darker, denser, the edges of it curling like smoke, shifting and expanding. My breath comes fast and uneven.  

I step back, and my foot catches on something.  

A body.  

I barely bite back a scream.  

The corpse lies sprawled across the cold stone, its features twisted in terror. Eyes wide. Mouth open in a silent scream. Dried blood streaks its face, and fingers frozen in agony stretch toward me, as if in a final, desperate plea for help.  

A wave of nausea rolls over me. My vision blurs for a second, then sharpens. There’s something carved into the floor beside the body, deep scratches gouged into the tile. Letters, jagged and uneven. A message.  

"DON’T TURN AROUND."  

My breath catches. My blood turns to ice.  

The whisper returns, right against my ear.  

"Run."  

The light overhead flickers, plunging the room into darkness.  

A breath, hot and wrong, spills against the back of my neck.

I don’t think. I run.

My feet slam against the cracked floor as I launch forward, heart hammering like a drum. My breath comes in ragged gasps, but I don’t dare stop. Behind me, I hear something approaching. Not footsteps, something worse. A slithering, scraping sound, like nails dragging across stone. Like flesh peeling away from reality itself.

The room is longer than I remember, the walls stretching, shifting, closing in. The whispering starts again, but now it’s all around me. Dozens of voices, overlapping in a suffocating murmur. Some pleading. Some laughing. Some screaming.

"Faster."

"It’s coming."

"You won’t make it."

I tear through the dark, adrenaline surging like wildfire in my veins. My body moves on instinct, ducking, weaving, dodging shadows that reach for me. The cold bites into my skin, but I don’t stop.

Then, an impact. Hard. Sudden.

Pain explodes through my shoulder as I crash into something unyielding.

A door. Rusted metal, covered in claw marks. My fingers fumble for the handle, but it won’t turn, it’s stuck, rotted shut. My pulse spikes. It’s coming. I feel it behind me, the air thick with something ancient and hungry.

I throw my weight against the door once. Twice.

A low growl rumbles through the air. Closer. Closer.

On the third slam, the rusted metal gives way. I stumble forward, nearly falling as I burst into a corridor. Dim torches line the walls, flickering weakly, casting jagged shadows. The corridor stretches long and endless, but I don’t stop to think.

I run.

The air behind me shifts. A force so powerful it bends the light, warping the air around it. I hear the walls groan, the stone cracking as whatever lurks in the dark crawls closer.

I push harder, my legs burning, my lungs screaming.

Then, ahead, another door. Larger. Open just a crack.

I surge forward. My body slams into the heavy wood, forcing it open. And just as I stumble through, something lunges.

A hand reaches out and grabs my exposed waist.

Cold. Wet. Wrong.

I scream just as the door slams shut.