Page 4

Four

Sleep didn’t come easily.

I kept shifting, pulling my blanket higher only to shove it down again seconds later. My body felt restless, too warm and too cold at the same time, my skin prickling with something I couldn’t name. Every time I thought I was finally slipping under, a noise—too faint to truly exist—would drag me back up. A whisper of movement. A sigh where there shouldn’t have been one.

I told myself it was nothing.

I had spent too much time thinking about them. The dolls. That was all it was—an overactive imagination feeding on exhaustion. I had let them get into my head, turning my apartment into a stage for paranoia.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my body to relax. My muscles ached from the tension I refused to acknowledge.

Just sleep.

But just as my thoughts began to unravel into dreams, I felt it.

That weight—not heavy, but present—pressing down at the edge of my bed.

My breath caught in my throat. My entire body went rigid.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe.

Something was there.

I wanted to believe I was still drifting between waking and sleep, caught in that hazy space where the mind played tricks. But the mattress beneath me dipped, just slightly, like someone had settled at my feet.

A shiver crawled down my spine.

Slowly, cautiously, I opened my eyes.

Darkness pressed against the room, stretching shadows across the ceiling. The air felt thick, charged with something I didn’t understand. My heart pounded a slow, measured beat, each thump hammering against my ribs.

I didn’t look down. I wouldn’t look down.

But I could feel it. The presence. The quiet expectancy of something watching.

Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then longer.

Nothing moved.

Finally, I swallowed hard, my throat dry and tight. I forced myself to shift, just enough to make my intent clear.

I wasn’t playing this game.

Whatever was here—real or imagined—I wouldn’t feed into it.

I rolled onto my side, pulling the blanket up, keeping my breathing even despite the way my pulse raced. I squeezed my eyes shut.

I wasn’t afraid.

I wasn’t afraid.

I wasn’t?—

A hand brushed my ankle.

Not a gust of air. Not the fabric shifting. A hand.

Cold. Gentle. Deliberate.

My breath hitched, my entire body stiffening, but before I could react, the world tilted.

I was no longer in my bed.

The shift was seamless, like stepping from one thought to another, yet everything around me had changed. I stood beneath a sky too dark, too vast, the stars distant and watching. The air carried a soft chill, brushing against my skin like whispering fingertips.

Ahead of me stretched a landscape of silver fog, rolling in slow waves over uneven stone. The ground beneath my feet was cool, smooth, and impossibly endless.

A dream.

I knew it was a dream.

But I couldn’t wake up.

I turned, searching for something familiar, something to ground me. Instead, I found him.

Moon.

He stood just beyond the mist, silver light catching along the cracks in his porcelain skin. His eyes, dark and depthless, regarded me with quiet intensity, as if he had been waiting. As if I had wandered somewhere I wasn’t meant to be, and he was the only thing keeping me from falling deeper.

“You’ve come far,” he murmured, his voice like silk dragged across marble—cool, smooth, and meant to be felt more than heard. “Further than you should.”

My pulse fluttered, a war between fear and curiosity unraveling in my chest. “Where am I?”

Moon tilted his head, considering the question like it amused him. “Somewhere between waking and wanting.”

The words sent a ripple through the air, as if the dream itself had acknowledged them. I shivered, hugging my arms to myself. “I didn’t want to be here.”

He stepped closer, his presence a cool tide washing over me. “Didn’t you?”

I opened my mouth—to argue, to deny—but the words died on my tongue as the fog around us shifted. Scenes bled into the mist, fragmented and fleeting.

A bedroom. A broken mirror. A locked door. A hand over my mouth, silencing my screams.

Familiar wounds and forgotten fears.

The mist shifted again, revealing something different—a spiraling staircase leading nowhere, a door floating in midair without walls, a river of whispers murmuring beneath our feet. Shadows slithered in the corners of my vision, never fully forming.

Moon lifted a hand, and with a mere flick of his fingers, the staircase cracked and twisted, the door swung open without a frame. “You’ve forgotten so much,” he mused. “But I remember.”

I staggered back. “Stop.”

Moon’s gaze softened, though his expression remained unreadable. “You bury things,” he murmured, reaching out with one long, porcelain finger. “But buried things don’t stay forgotten.”

His touch never landed, but I felt it—cold, seeping into my skin, wrapping around my ribs like the fingers of a long-lost memory.

The dream stretched further, deepening, and the mist gave way to something else. A vast, celestial abyss that swallowed everything. I felt weightless, suspended between stars, and Moon was the only thing keeping me anchored. His hand hovered near my wrist, his voice a whisper threading through my thoughts.

“You are not alone.”

The ground beneath us trembled, the sky overhead flickering between starless black and something deeper, something consuming. I gasped, gripping my arms, the weight of the dream pressing in on all sides.

I wanted to run. I wanted to wake up. But Moon stepped closer, his presence curling around me like silk, like shadows that wanted to pull me under. His lips parted, and the words that fell from them were softer than before, almost gentle.

“You can’t escape me.”

The words wrapped around me like a lullaby, a promise, a curse.

“I want to wake up,” I whispered.

Moon smiled, soft and knowing. “Then wake.”