Stormy Night

Eli Carter stood in the middle of Elm Street, rain pouring down like God’s own wrath, drenching him to the bone. The water hit the pavement so hard it bounced, a million tiny suicides leaping from the sky only to splatter and die. The streetlights flickered, their weak yellow halos barely piercing the downpour. His shoes squelched with each step, and his breath came in tight little gasps.

He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. Minutes? Hours? A lifetime?

He had no memory of how he got here.

A second ago—or maybe an eternity—he had been in bed, tangled in sheets damp with sweat, the weight of a dream pressing down on him like a lead blanket. A dream of movement. Of running. Endless hallways stretched before him, impossibly long, bending at angles that didn’t make sense. The walls, lined with doors, slammed shut behind him one by one, not by his doing but by something unseen, something chasing, something that wanted him. Each door he passed felt like a choice he had already failed to make. Each slammed door a lost opportunity.

His breath had come in gasps. His legs ached from running, but the hallways never ended. Just turn after turn, door after door, the floor shifting beneath his feet like the belly of a great beast. There were no windows, no light except the sickly glow of something overhead that wasn’t quite a bulb, wasn’t quite fire. And in the air, thick as humidity in August, was the hum of something enormous, some deep, resonant sound felt more in his ribs than in his ears.

And then—this.

The dream had ruptured, torn apart like thin fabric, and he had been here.

The rain. The street.

No transition. No waking up. Just one reality swapped for another, seamlessly, cruelly. His mind struggled, clawing for logic where there was none. The downpour drummed against his skull, cold rivulets snaking down the back of his neck, washing away the last frayed edges of the dream. But had it even been a dream?

Because the certainty struck him now, deep and final, a stone

dropped into the well of his gut:

Something was very, very wrong.

A flicker of movement caught his eye.

Across the street, just beyond the yawning black mouth of an alley, stood a man. He was tall and thin, dressed in a suit too old-fashioned to be modern but too crisp to be antique. His face was long, almost horse-like, but his eyes—his eyes were holes. Not black pits. Not deep shadows. Holes, like someone had taken an ice cream scoop to his face and dug them clean out.

Eli took a step back. The man took a step forward.

A chuckle floated through the rain, thin and reedy, like laughter being played backward on an old cassette tape.

Eli turned and ran.

The city around him twisted as he moved, as if reality itself were coming undone, unraveling thread by thread. The buildings groaned, their bones creaking, their very foundations shifting beneath his frantic steps. They leaned in, warping like softened candle wax left too close to a flame, their brick faces drooping, sagging, watching. Windows blinked—slow, reptilian, sluggishly adjusting their focus, black pupils contracting and expanding as if deciding whether to acknowledge him or swallow him whole.

The sidewalks rippled beneath him, no longer solid but something uncertain, something alive. Each step sent out concentric rings through the puddles, distorting his reflection—his face melting, elongating, breaking apart into something unrecognizable. The streetlamps flickered, their light stretching and warping, casting shadows where there should be none, shadows that flickered and darted, mimicking his movements with a half-second delay, as if considering whether they should obey him or something else entirely.

But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop.

His feet pounded against the street, their rhythm desperate, breath hitching in his throat like a song caught on a broken record. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed, but none of it mattered—because behind him, gaining, closing the distance with something worse than footsteps, was him.

No sound. No breathing. Just presence.

Heavy. Dense. A gravity that pressed against the nape of Eli’s neck, thick as storm clouds rolling in, the air charged with something unspeakable. His skin prickled, his instincts screamed—don’t look back. Don’t look back.

But something deep inside him, something ancient and terrified, already knew—

If he did, if he turned to see what followed—

It would be the last thing he ever saw.

He rounded a corner and slammed into something solid. A wall? No. A person. A woman.

She was small, birdlike, with a sharp face and sharper eyes. Her raincoat was red—vivid, almost glowing against the gray world around them. She grabbed Eli by the shoulders, her fingers biting into his flesh like talons.

“You need to wake up,” she hissed.

“I am awake.”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

A roar split the air behind him. Not a human sound. Not even an animal sound. A sound made of nightmare and hunger, of places that existed only in the deepest recesses of the brain, the places humans had long since forgotten how to fear.

Eli turned. The man was closer now, his mouth stretching into an impossible grin, jagged teeth protruding like broken piano keys.

The woman yanked Eli to the side, dragging him toward the nearest door. It wasn’t there a second ago, but it was there now—a rusted metal thing, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, freestanding, no walls to frame it. She shoved it open and pulled him through.

Everything flipped. Inside-out. Upside-down.

Eli hit the ground hard, the breath leaving his lungs in a rush. He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling.

The ceiling of his bedroom.

The rain was gone. The city was gone. The woman, gone. He was lying in his own bed, tangled in sweat-drenched sheets, the room bathed in the cold glow of his alarm clock: 3:47 AM.

A dream. Just a dream.

He sat up, rubbing his face. His hands were shaking, fingers twitching like dying spiders. His throat was dry, a desert of cotton and dust. He needed water—something real, something solid to anchor himself. The lingering weight of the dream—or whatever it had been—clung to him like a second skin, sticky, suffocating.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and froze.

His feet were wet.

Not damp. Not dewy with sweat. Wet, like he had waded through a flooded street, like he had stepped barefoot into the mouth of a storm. His pajama pants clung to his calves, the fabric sodden and heavy, waterlogged with something that smelled faintly of earth and rot. The cold bled into his bones.

Then he saw it.

A tiny river of water, glistening in the dim glow of his bedside clock, winding its way across the floor like a snake slithering home. It led to the bedroom door—no, not just to the door. Through it. And there, stark against the pale wood, were muddy footprints.

His footprints.

Eli’s breath hitched. His ribs felt too tight, his heart slamming against them like a frantic bird trapped in a cage. He reached out with a trembling hand and touched the sheets.

Sopping wet.

The scent of rain clung to them, sharp and electric, the metallic tang of a storm that had no place inside his room. A storm that should not have followed him here.

The air shifted behind him.

The closet door creaked, the sound slow and deliberate, like a sigh from something old and waiting. The shadows inside it gaped, thick and hungry.

And then—oh God—then, from the darkness, came a chuckle.

Thin. Reedy.

A sound that knew him.