Fearful Things

Nightmares

Every night I had a different dream.

That's not that strange, right? People rarely have the same dream twice. However, it was weird that I dreamed every night. Every single night. Maybe to some that isn't strange either, but it was for me. I used to not dream that often, and even then I rarely remembered them. Lately, though, my mind has been plagued with fantasies each night without fail. There was nothing remarkable about the dreams themselves, either—just your average nonsensical hallucinations made from random snippets the brain extracts from your memories. So why was I bothered by it?

Because every dream ended in exactly the same way.

As whatever story my mind had decided to show me drew to a close, an intense whispering would assault me. I could hear not one, but an orchestra of voices all overlapping and murmuring over each other. It began quietly, crescendoing until the roaring forcefully ripped me from sleep. I woke alone in my dark room, sweating with a pounding headache. At first, I hadn't even been able to recognize the sound, but as the restless nights followed one after another, the insane mutterings became clearer, yet always a step away from discernibility. It came to the point that I figured there was only one more night until I could hear the voices' words.

That was last night. But I didn't get the chance to listen.

As my dream ended, the whispering began. It was no more than a hum. The volume rose into a whirlwind of noise in my head. But before the whispers were loud enough to form coherent words, either by chance or for a reason I will never know, I woke up.

The whispers peaked.

My eyes shot open.

Sharp intakes of breath.

Silence.

It pressed in heavily to fill the space their cacophony had left, and I was not alone. A dozen figures stood all around my bed. They were bent over me, staring intently. They had the basic shape of a person, but they were made of inky black shadows. No features adorned their faces except for white, pupiless eyes. As soon as I registered their presence, I blinked, and they were gone.

I have never told anyone about these experiences, and I desperately want to believe it was a case of sleep paralysis—that my brain had still been asleep and showed me fragments of a nightmare. But I don't. I don't know what happened, what I saw.

But I know one thing.

After that night, the whispering stopped.