The Dream
Brynn didn’t sleep after she left the Colfax.
She went home, sat on her couch, and stared at the wall. The apartment was quiet, but the silence felt different now—heavier, thicker, like the silence before a scream. Corinne was asleep in the bedroom, her breathing soft, her nightmares temporarily quiet.
Kael’s words echoed in her mind.
We’re all prisoners. The only difference is that some of us know it.
She thought about the thing that fed on whispers. The vast, ash-colored body, the lipless mouth, the endless hunger. Was it a prisoner too? Had it been trapped in the dark for centuries, feeding on the forgotten, growing fat on fear?
Or was it something else? Something older. Something that had always been there, waiting for the Colfax to be built, waiting for the walls to fill with whispers, waiting for someone like Kael to open the door.
She closed her eyes.
The dream came immediately.
She was in the white room.
Not the white room from her past — this one was different. The walls were not walls; they were mist, swirling, shifting, alive. The floor was not floor; it was water, dark and still, reflecting nothing. The light was not light; it was a presence, watching her from everywhere and nowhere.
You came back.
The voice was not a voice. It was a vibration, a hum, a pressure against her skin.
We’ve been waiting.
“Who are you?” Brynn asked.
We are the forgotten. The abandoned. The ones who were taken and never found.
“You’re the whispers.”
We are the voices of the forgotten. The whispers are our breath. The walls are our bones. The dark is our home.
“Why did you bring me here?”
Because you are one of us now. You came into the dark. You saw the thing that feeds. You survived.
“I’m not one of you.”
You walked among us. You touched our walls. You breathed our air. You are marked.
The mist swirled. Figures emerged. Ghosts, shadows, outlines of people who had been there too long.
Corinne was among them.
Younger. Sixteen. The age she had been when she disappeared.
She is ours, the voice said. She has been ours for ten years. You cannot take her back.
“She’s my sister.”
She was your sister. Now she is ours.
“You’re wrong.”
We are never wrong. We are the truth. We are the dark. We are the hunger.
The figures reached for her. Fingers of mist, cold and insubstantial.
Stay with us, Brynn.
Stay in the dark.
Stay where you belong.
She woke up screaming.
Corinne was beside her, holding her shoulders, shaking her.
“Brynn! Brynn, wake up!”
She opened her eyes. Her bedroom. The lamp was on. The window was dark. Corinne’s face was pale, her eyes wide.
“You were screaming,” Corinne said. “I couldn’t wake you.”
“They were in my dream. The whispers. They said you belong to them.”
Corinne’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
“They’re lying.”
“Are they?”
Corinne looked away.
They didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
They sat on the couch, drinking tea, watching the sun rise. The city woke slowly, cars filling the streets, people filling the sidewalks. The world was normal. The world didn’t know about the Colfax, the tunnels, the thing that fed on whispers.
“Maybe we should leave,” Brynn said.
“Leave the city?”
“Leave everything. Move somewhere far away. Start over.”
“Kael would find us.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he found me once. He’ll find me again. He’s like the whispers. He doesn’t give up.”
“Then we fight.”
“How?”
Brynn didn’t have an answer.
But she knew one thing: she couldn’t run anymore. The whispers were in her mind, in her dreams, in her blood. They would follow her wherever she went. The only way to escape was to face them.
“I’m going back to the Colfax,” she said.
“No.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to understand. What is the thing that feeds? Why does it need the whispers? And how do we stop it?”
Corinne shook her head. “You can’t stop it. It’s been there for centuries. It will be there for centuries more.”
“Then we seal it. Permanently.”
“Kael tried.”
“Kael wanted to keep it alive. He needed it to keep him company.”
Corinne was silent.
“I’m not Kael,” Brynn said.
“I know.”
“Then help me.”
Corinne took her hand.
“Okay.”
They went to the hardware store.
They bought cement, bricks, tools. They loaded them into Brynn’s car and drove to the Colfax.
The building was still sealed, the windows boarded, the doors chained. But they had been there before. They knew the way in.
They climbed the fence. They crossed the courtyard. They entered through the broken window.
The lobby was dark. The air was cold. The whispers were waiting.
You came back.
“We came to finish this.”
You cannot finish what never ends.
“We can try.”