***Author's Note: This was supposed to be a short story based on a dream I had the other day. But it took on a life of its own as I leaned into the story's horror. I hope it gives you a fright, as it did me writing it.***

Chapter 1: Sweet Dreams Are Made of Screams
I remember the dreams—so vivid, so real, I could taste the fear on my tongue—of that nightmare house where my own family hunted me through endless, creaking corridors. In those dreams, the walls bled shadow and the air was thick and cold, heavy with the scent of dust and something sour lurking beneath. My heart pounded against my ribs, each beat a frantic drum as I pressed myself into corners, hiding behind moth-eaten curtains or beneath the warped banister, breath held so tight my chest ached. My family’s footsteps echoed through the hallways, slow and deliberate, as if they enjoyed the chase. Sometimes I’d catch glimpses of my mother’s twisted smile flickering in the candlelight, or my father’s silhouette looming at the end of a hallway, his hands curled into claws. Every muscle in my body would tense, my fists clutching the bed sheets in desperate hope that I might somehow wake up before they found me. Even as a child, I knew that if they caught me, I wouldn’t wake up at all.

That was the first time I remembered it clearly—the night that dream spilled into waking life and shattered the boundary between the two. One second, I was running for my life; the next, I was awake, slick with icy sweat, my screams tearing through the stillness of my bedroom.

My mother always described that night in frightened whispers, her hands wringing each other as she recounted how my screams shattered the peaceful dark. I remember jolting upright, throat raw, my voice slicing through the walls—so wild and desperate that the neighbors dialed 911. When the police arrived, I was still trembling, eyes darting around the room as if the nightmare might crawl out from under the bed. My frantic mind could only blurt out the truth as I knew it: my dad was trying to eat me.

Except, of course, my father was nowhere near my room. He was downstairs in the living room, hunched over on the sagging couch, a bowl of chips balanced on his knee. The television flickered blue and white shadows across his face as he munched absentmindedly, utterly oblivious to the chaos unfolding above him.

The police stood awkwardly in the living room, their radios crackling with static, trying to reassure my flustered parents that nightmares weren’t crimes. My mother hovered near me, her hands fluttering at her sides, while my father rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks burning with embarrassment. I just sat on the edge of my bed, knees pulled to my chest, shivering and staring at the floorboards, certain that the nightmare house was still waiting for me somewhere in the shadows.

That was twenty-one years ago. For the last two decades, the nightmare house has haunted my sleep like a parasite, burrowing into my subconscious and refusing to let go. Each night, I return to its warped halls, the air thick with mold and secrets, and the dread that coils around my chest like a living thing.

I’m twenty-eight now, and I’ve lost count of how many different ways I’ve died in that same monstrous house—stabbed, strangled, drowned, burned, torn apart—all at the hands of my parents and older sister. Not the ones I love in waking life, but their dream doubles: twisted reflections wearing my family’s faces, their eyes empty, their voices both familiar and utterly wrong.

Every single night, my mind drags me back through those endless corridors, forcing me to relive a thousand deaths. Sometimes it’s my father’s heavy footsteps pounding behind me, the air vibrating with the weight of his pursuit. Other times, my mother glides after me, her hands reaching out, fingers curling in anticipation, her smile a cold crescent in the gloom. Jessica, my dream-sister, stalks me with a predator’s patience, her blade-tipped fingers tracing lines in the wallpaper as she sings nursery rhymes off-key. I run, I hide, I beg, but it never matters—the house always swallows me whole.

Well, almost every night. On rare occasions, my exhausted mind grants me mercy—a blank stretch of darkness, a night without the nightmare’s grip. On those mornings, I wake up with my sheets still cool beneath me, heart steady, body loose instead of rigid with remembered fear. I feel, for a little while, like a real person again. But the reprieve never lasts. The house always calls me back.

Over the years, I’ve cycled through therapists’ offices the way some people cycle through apartments, each one eager to press a diagnosis into my hands like a cold, clinical offering. I’ve sat across mahogany desks and on soft couches in sunlit rooms, watching their pens move as they scribbled furiously in notepads. Sometimes they’d tilt their heads and nod with practiced empathy, their eyes flickering with curiosity or concern, their fingers steepled beneath their chins. One therapist, a silver-haired woman with kind eyes, leaned forward so far her perfume—lavender and something chemical—filled the air between us. Another drummed her nails against a manila folder, her lips pursed in frustration when I described the dreams for the fifth time. They offered labels: trauma, anxiety, parasomnia, childhood repression, and the ever-popular generalized nightmare disorder. But none of them, for all their gentle words and careful listening, could banish the house from my sleep. Their voices always faded at the bedroom door, leaving me alone with the dark.

In the end, all their well-meaning theories blurred together, and I was still left staring at my bedroom ceiling in the blue-gray hours before dawn, waiting for the next nightmare to drag me under. The dreams remained—untouched, undefeated, and as real as ever.

The house in my dreams is always the same—an oppressive presence that presses down on me the moment I arrive. Its silhouette rises out of the darkness like a jagged crown, windows staring blankly, the front doors yawning wide as if eager to swallow me whole.

It’s enormous, a sprawling Victorian monstrosity—its brickwork blackened by age, turrets clawing at the sky, and ivy crawling up the walls like veins. Inside, the air is stale and impossibly cold. Hallways spiral and double back, twisting in ways that defy logic, and each corridor is lined with faded, peeling wallpaper stained a deep, rusty red. My footsteps echo across warped floorboards, and sometimes the ground seems to shift beneath me, as if the house is breathing. Staircases wind upward to nowhere, or collapse into suffocating dead ends. Around every bend, I expect to find another trap: an open pit, a swinging blade, or a staircase that turns slick and treacherous beneath my feet.

Everything is dark.

Not completely dark. That would be merciful.

Candles, flickering gas lamps, and the occasional chandelier cast just enough light to show me whatever horrible thing is about to crawl out of the shadows.

And lurking within this labyrinth are the figures that wear my family’s faces—my father, my mother, my older sister—all waiting, always hunting. But in these dreams, they are not my family, not really. They are monstrous versions stitched together from nightmare logic, their bodies half-shrouded in shadow, their eyes glinting with hunger and malice. My father’s lumbering stride shakes the walls. My mother’s voice slithers along the ceiling, sweet and chilling at once. My sister, elegant and deadly, trails her blade-fingers along the wallpaper, carving little patterns as she moves. Every gesture, every tilt of the head or curl of a finger, is wrong: too fluid, too deliberate, too eager for the hunt.

My loving, wonderful, perfectly ordinary family.

They smile with too many teeth, and their voices echo down the hallways, calling my name in tones that should be loving but instead curdle my blood. No matter how many times I try to hide, their shadows always find me, stretching long and thin beneath the flickering candlelight. In the dream, I know with absolute certainty: these aren't my real family, but nowhere else to run.

My father is a towering brute of a man, so massive that even in this warped dreamscape, he’s forced to turn sideways and shuffle to wedge his shoulders through the narrow Victorian doorways. His breath gusts out in damp, snorting clouds as he lumbers after me, the floorboards creaking and groaning beneath his weight. In one huge, meaty fist, he clutches a butcher’s cleaver the size of a fire axe—its blade stained and glinting in the candlelight. Whenever he catches me, his lips peel back in a grin that shows every crooked, yellow tooth, and he swings the cleaver down with the casual, practiced violence of a man chopping wood. If he gets me, it’s always the same: the world shatters into a flurry of steel and pain, and I’m hacked into quivering, bloody pieces, my screams echoing off the wallpaper.

Mom, somehow, is even worse—her monstrous form a marriage of human and arachnid nightmares. Her lower body is a glossy black spider, huge and bristling, each leg arching and clicking as she scuttles effortlessly up the walls and across the ceiling. From the spider’s thorax rises her human torso, pale and elegant, her arms folded neatly or reaching down to beckon me closer. She’s always smiling—wide and constant, a crescent of dagger-like teeth gleaming beneath eyes that never once blink. Her voice glides through the corridors, sweet and inviting, promising warmth and comfort, but every syllable is laced with hunger. When she finds me, it’s with a gentle caress of her spindly legs before she strikes, fangs descending, and I wake up feeling phantom webs tightening around my limbs.

Imagine a spider the size of a minivan, give it a woman's upper body, and then attach my mother's smiling face to it. She moves along the walls and ceilings, calling my name in that pleasant voice she used when dinner was ready.

Except I'm usually what's for dinner.

Then there’s Jessica, my older sister. In real life, she’d tease me until I wanted to scream, but the dream version is an entirely different horror. She glides through the halls with unnatural grace, her skin bone-pale, her hair like drifts of dead leaves, and her eyes a milky, unseeing white that somehow always find me in the dark. Her hands are the worst—each slender finger ending in a surgical blade that flashes as she trails them along the wallpaper, carving little X’s every time she passes. Jessica sings nursery rhymes as she hunts, her voice drifting on the cold air—soft, high, just off-key enough to twist my stomach with dread. She smiles as she stalks me, lips stretched too wide, and sometimes she dances down the corridor, blades glinting, her movements both beautiful and deadly. I hate nursery rhymes now. I hate spiders, butcher’s cleavers, and every inch of Victorian architecture.

She was a nightmare when we were kids, but the dream version takes sibling rivalry to an entirely new level. She's a pale, beautiful woman with long black hair, completely white eyes, and fingers that end in surgical blades.

She likes to sing nursery rhymes while she hunts me.

I hate nursery rhymes.

I also hate spiders, butcher's cleavers, and Victorian architecture.

Therapy has been extremely productive.

But the best—or worst—part of all is that no matter how many times I run, no matter how many deaths I suffer, I’m always wearing the same humiliating outfit. In every iteration of the nightmare, I’m stumbling, shrieking, and flailing my arms as I careen through the endless halls in a frilly black and white French maid costume. The skirt is short enough that I can feel the chill of the drafty corridors on my thighs; the white stockings itch and bunch uncomfortably at my knees. My shoes—polished, dainty, and entirely useless for running—click and skid on the warped wooden floors. There’s a little lace headband perched ridiculously on my head, and every time I catch my reflection in a cracked mirror or a polished sconce, I see terror painted on a face that looks nothing like my own. No matter how hard I try, I can never tear the outfit off. I can never wake up before the hunt begins.

The outfit is always the same: a black and white dress with a skirt cut indecently short, flaring out over a stiff, frilly white petticoat. A crisp white apron ties around my waist, the bow digging into my back, and white thigh-high stockings cling uncomfortably to my legs, bunching at the knees or slipping down as I run. On my feet are shiny black Mary Jane shoes—cute, impractical, and utterly useless for escaping monsters. And crowning the whole humiliating ensemble is a delicate white lace headband, perched jauntily atop my hair as if mocking me with its innocence. Every detail is so vivid I can feel the cool brush of the petticoat against my skin, the tightness of the apron, the itchy press of the stockings, and the way the headband sometimes slips sideways as I sprint for my life.

I've brought this particular detail to therapy more times than I can count, hoping someone might have an explanation less embarrassing than the obvious.

One therapist pursed his lips, adjusted his glasses, and gently suggested it might be the manifestation of suppressed desires. I assured him, as politely as possible, that after two decades of endless chase scenes in ruffles and lace, I never wanted to see a dress like that again—let alone wear one in real life.

Another, frowning thoughtfully over her legal pad, mused that it might point to childhood humiliation—some long-buried embarrassment rising up from my subconscious. She tapped her pen on the arm of her chair and asked about schoolyard taunts I barely remembered, but the only humiliation I could think of was being hunted through a mansion in a maid costume.

A third cut straight to the point, eyebrows arched: did I secretly enjoy crossdressing? I told her I’d rather be running for my life in a full suit of medieval armor. The joke landed with a thud; her lips pressed into a thin, unimpressed line, and she scribbled something onto her notepad, probably adding humor deficiency to my growing list of issues.

I told her I would enjoy wearing a suit of medieval armor a hell of a lot more, considering the things chasing me.

She didn't laugh.

Therapists, I’ve learned, rarely appreciate my sense of humor. They always take notes. They never laugh. And I still wake up with the memory of lace and panic clinging to my skin.

But the strangest part of all isn’t the monsters, or even the humiliating outfit stitched from frill and lace. It’s something quieter, something that lurks beneath every frantic chase and desperate hiding place.

It’s the fact that, in all my years running through that house, I have never once tried to leave. There are doors everywhere—some grand and ornate, others narrow and half-rotted, windows that spill moonlight onto the dust-choked carpets. But I never reach for the knobs, never press my palms to the glass. I rush past them, heart hammering, eyes fixed ahead, as if escape isn’t just impossible but unthinkable. The house closes in, the wallpaper pressing cold against my back, but my mind never even whispers the idea of breaking free.

There are doors leading outside. I've seen them. Huge double doors with moonlight shining through stained-glass windows. Sometimes I run right past them.

But I never open them.

I don't even think about it.

Instead, I spend every nightmare searching—room to room, floor to floor, my slippered feet padding across polished wood and creaking staircases. Sometimes I creep beneath flickering chandeliers, sometimes I dart through kitchens full of silver knives or up staircases lined with broken mirrors. My breath hitches as I peer around corners, my hands trembling, the echo of my pursuers always close behind. But I’m not searching for safety or a way out. I’m hunting for something else—something I can never quite name.

For what?

I have no idea.

I just know, with bone-deep certainty, that there’s a prize hidden somewhere inside the labyrinth. The need to find it burns in my chest, urgent and inexplicable. I don’t know what form it takes, or what it will give me if I find it. I only know I have to keep searching.

Whatever it is.

But the dreams always end before I get close. Every time, just as my fingers brush a doorknob, or as I catch a glint of something precious beneath a bed or behind a locked cabinet, darkness falls. I am yanked back into waking life—usually with a scream, my heart racing, my skin slicked with sweat—because one of my family-monsters has found me first and killed me.

I have been killed in so many ways by my monstrous family that I could fill a gruesome catalog. My father has chopped me in half, his cleaver flashing through candlelit gloom, the sound of steel on bone ringing in my ears as everything goes red and then black. My mother has wrapped me in silk, her spider legs closing around me in a suffocating embrace, dragging me screaming into the dark, pulsing walls. But the worst might have been the night Jessica, her eyes milky and unblinking, caught me at the top of a staircase. She cornered me, those glinting blade-fingers reaching out as she sang a broken lullaby, and with a single swift motion, she sliced off my head. I still remember the strange weightlessness that followed, the world spinning as my body crumpled, and the last thing I saw was her pale, smiling face.

That particular dream—the one where my head rolled down the velvet-carpeted stairs—stayed with me for weeks. I woke night after night drenched in sweat, heart jackhammering in my chest and my hands clamped to my neck as if I could somehow hold myself together. It earned me six months of sleeping pills, tiny blue tablets rattling in their orange bottle, prescribed by a doctor who promised relief.

They didn’t help. The nightmares slipped around the medication, finding me no matter how heavy my eyelids grew or how thick the chemical fog pressed against my mind. Each morning, I would come awake gasping—sometimes with the taste of blood, sometimes with the echo of Jessica’s song lingering in my ears.

Nothing helped. Therapists, prescriptions, herbal teas, and every trick in the book—all failed to put even a scratch in the armor of the nightmare house. It became a constant companion, lurking on the other side of sleep, waiting for me every night.

Eventually, I learned to live with it—the way some people learn to live with ghosts in old houses, or the constant drip of a leaky faucet. I became an expert at hiding the exhaustion, at folding the terror into the quiet spaces of my day, and pretending that none of it was real until the sun went down and the house called me back again.

I graduated college, tucked my diploma into a dusty drawer, and landed a job in accounting that paid the bills but never quite quieted the hum of exhaustion in my bones. I bought a modest little house, the kind with squeaky stairs and a patchy lawn, and filled it with thrift store furniture and the hum of late-night television. I made grocery lists, paid my taxes, mowed the grass on Saturday mornings while squinting into the sun—doing my best to blend in, to move through the world as if I were just another normal adult, not someone haunted nightly by a parade of familiar monsters.

I even tried dating, putting on clean shirts and nervous smiles, letting myself believe—if only for an hour over coffee or an awkward dinner—that I could have something resembling a regular life. I learned to tuck the shadows under my eyes behind jokes and casual stories, hoping no one would notice the edge in my laughter or the way my hands sometimes shook when I reached for my glass.

But eventually, the truth always came out—usually around the third or fourth night, when I’d wake up gasping, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, a scream clawing at my throat. Explaining to someone new why I bolted upright shouting about monstrous parents and spider-mothers, while wearing a French maid costume in my nightmares, was hardly the stuff of romantic comedies. The first few partners tried to be understanding, sitting up with me in the blue light of dawn, hands hovering uncertainly over my back, their faces creased with concern or confusion. Most didn’t last past the first week. The rest left before the month was out.

One woman, Anna, lasted three months. She was patient, kind, and kept a glass of water on her nightstand for me, just in case. But even she grew weary of the nightly panic, the sweat-soaked nightmares that left me distant and irritable by morning. She started spending more nights at her own apartment, and when she finally left, she did it gently, saying I needed to work on myself.

She meant emotionally—therapy, self-reflection, healthy boundaries, all the things people are supposed to do when they’re broken in invisible ways.

I agreed, though what I really meant was finding a way to make it through a single night without waking up in terror. My priorities were simple: sleep without fear, dream without dying.

She and I had different priorities. Hers involved healing my soul. Mine involved surviving until morning.

I meant finding a way—any way—to get eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. It’s a surprisingly tall order when your mind prefers haunted mansions to restful dreams.

Different priorities, I guess. In the end, loneliness felt easier to manage than another explanation, another midnight wake-up, another set of footsteps walking quietly out of my life while I stared at the ceiling, waiting for dawn.

The day everything changed was October 31st—a date that always made my skin crawl. Halloween, my least favorite holiday of all. The world outside glowed with fake cobwebs and plastic pumpkins, but my own house sat unlit and undecorated, a little black square on the block. I didn't hand out candy, didn't carve a pumpkin, and definitely didn't watch horror movies. Instead, I barricaded myself in with a mug of lukewarm tea and a documentary about deep sea fish, trying to lose myself in the flickering light of strange, impossible creatures that made nightmares seem almost mundane.

It was October thirty-first.

Halloween.

My least favorite holiday.

By the time the last hopeful knock faded from my porch, the only sound in the house was the soft hum of the washing machine and the low, droning narration of the documentary. I let the blue glow of the screen wash over the living room walls, the shadows of anglerfish and gulper eels flickering across my ceiling. It was as far from Halloween as I could possibly get, and that was exactly how I liked it.

It was close to eleven when I forced myself off the couch, stretching stiff limbs and rubbing my eyes. The house felt especially quiet, as if it was holding its breath—no laughter or footsteps outside, just the muted thump of my own heart. I gathered my laundry basket and padded toward the basement door, the floor cold beneath my bare feet.

The washing machine had finished its cycle, the last load of the night waiting to be swapped to the dryer. I yawned, balancing the basket on my hip, and swung the door open. Cool, musty air wafted up from the dark stairwell, smelling faintly of detergent and old concrete.

Yes, my exciting Halloween night involved laundry.

Try not to be jealous.

With a sigh, I flicked on the bare bulb overhead and began my descent, the wooden stairs creaking beneath my weight. My laundry basket thumped against my thigh. Shadows pooled in the corners of the basement, the kind that made you want to hurry, even if you told yourself not to be silly.

Halfway down, disaster struck. My socked foot found the edge of a step at just the wrong angle. For a split second, I hovered in that strange, weightless pause—the universe holding its breath—before gravity seized me.

It wasn't dramatic.

There was no mysterious figure lurking behind me, no cold hand snatching at my ankle, no ghostly whisper curling through the dark. Just bad luck, slick socks, and the inevitable tug of physics.

I just stepped on the edge of a stair while wearing socks.

Gravity did the rest, yanking me down the stairs in a helpless tumble. My shoulder slammed into the wall, the basket went flying, and my knee cracked hard against a step. The world spun with each bounce, flashes of pain and panic sparking behind my eyes.

"Shit!" I shouted, the word echoing off the concrete walls as I reached for the railing and missed entirely.

I grabbed for the handrail, missed, and went tumbling forward.

My shoulder hit the wall.

My knee struck a step.

Finally, my head connected with something very hard—maybe the cold concrete floor, maybe the sharp edge of a step. For a moment, everything went white, a burst of light behind my eyelids.

The world flashed white.

In that instant, as consciousness slipped away, a single absurd thought floated to the surface: of all the ways to go, dying in a pile of dirty socks while trying to do laundry on Halloween was the most pathetic ending I could imagine.

Then, mercifully, everything went black.

I woke to the heavy, rhythmic ticking of a clock—each sound slicing through the stillness and settling somewhere deep in my chest. The world felt both strangely familiar and utterly wrong, the air thick with anticipation and something colder beneath.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

It was the old-fashioned sound of a grandfather clock, each tick deliberate and measured, echoing off high ceilings and polished wood. It sounded less like a timepiece and more like a warning, marking the seconds until the next disaster. I flinched with every beat, the noise seeming to vibrate in my bones.

A dull ache throbbed at the base of my skull, blossoming into sharp pinpricks whenever I moved. I winced, pressing a hand to my forehead, and immediately noticed the stiffness in my shoulders and the ache radiating through my limbs.

In fact, my whole body felt battered and bruised, as if I’d been tossed down a flight of stairs—and, all things considered, I supposed that made sense.

I let out a low groan and pushed myself upright, every movement slow and careful. My joints protested, and I had to steady myself with both hands pressed flat against the floor.

The first thing I really noticed was the floor beneath my palms—smooth, polished hardwood, so clean it shone in the dim light. It was nothing like the cracked concrete of my basement.

Dark wooden boards, polished to a mirror shine.

Next was the smell—a dense, unmistakable blend of dust, old perfume, and something sharper, metallic and sour. It clung to the back of my throat, instantly and horribly familiar.

Dust, old perfume, and something faintly metallic.

Blood.

I knew that smell too well. It was hardwired into my brain after twenty-one years of nightmares: the scent of the house, lingering like a warning in every dream and now, somehow, in waking life.

"No," I replied automatically, the word slipping from my lips before I could think. The sound of my own voice stopped me cold. I recognized it instantly—a feminine voice, high and clear, the kind I’d heard shrieking in my nightmares for years. Hearing it in waking life made my skin prickle; it was unmistakable, hardwired into my memory by two decades of terror. It was the same voice that had cried for help, that had screamed in panic, echoing through endless haunted corridors every night.

I opened my eyes, heart pounding with a fresh wave of dread.

Above me hung a chandelier covered in cobwebs. Dozens of candles burned with unnatural blue flames, casting pale light across a ceiling decorated with elaborate plasterwork.

Recognition hit me like a splash of cold water. I stared up at the chandelier—a monstrous, dust-choked thing draped in cobwebs, its candles burning with that familiar, unnatural blue light. Shadows twisted across the ornate plasterwork of the ceiling, every detail so vivid it made my skin crawl. I’d seen it before, countless times, always from the vantage point of a desperate child or a doomed runner. Even now, lying there battered and dazed, I could map every crack, every curl of spider silk, without even trying.

My eyes drifted lower, taking in the ceiling’s elaborate plasterwork—faded flowers and coiling vines, half-obscured by dust. The patterns seemed to shift in the flickering light, just as they always did in my dreams. I felt a chill run through me, like the house itself was watching.

And then there was the grandfather clock, standing sentinel against the far wall. Its tall, carved body gleamed with old polish, and its brass pendulum swung behind glass. Every detail—down to the scratch on its face and the faint, sour scent of oil—was burned into my memory. I’d spent years running from its slow, relentless ticking.

"No, no, no," I whimpered, my breath coming in short, ragged bursts. My heart hammered against my ribs so violently I thought it might burst free. Panic buzzed in my ears, a shrill, electric whine, and cold sweat prickled at the back of my neck.

My hands shook as I pushed myself upright. Something soft and unfamiliar brushed against my thighs—a shocking, alien sensation that sent a jolt of terror up my spine. My skin crawled beneath the black fabric, and the whisper of white lace scraping my legs made my stomach twist with nausea. The scent of old perfume and musty cloth wrapped around me, thick and suffocating.

I looked down, vision blurring with tears and disbelief. There was the frilly white apron, cinched tight at my waist, and the black dress flaring out in ridiculous ruffles around my trembling thighs. White stockings hugged legs that felt too slender, too exposed, and my toes curled inside glossy black shoes that pinched with every anxious flex.

My hands hovered in my lap—small, delicate, visibly trembling, my nails painted a careful, unfamiliar shade of pink. When I flexed my fingers, they felt too light, too dainty, as if even my bones had changed. My arms were slim, my shoulders narrow, and my pulse thudded wildly in the hollow of my throat.

Then I looked down and saw them—my chest, unmistakably feminine, rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths, the weight of it unfamiliar and terrifying. My lungs seized. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe at all.

The scream that tore out of me was high and piercing, the sound of someone utterly unmoored—a sound of pure panic and disbelief, echoing through the haunted room and making the shadows shudder.

The scream that tore from my throat was a high-pitched shriek—raw, jagged, and unmistakably feminine. The sound bounced off the gilded moldings and polished floor, reverberating in my skull and leaving a ringing panic behind. My breath came in frantic bursts, chest tight and burning, as if I’d just sprinted miles.

I scrambled to my feet, legs entangled in stiff petticoat and swishing lace, and nearly toppled over as my body pitched forward. My balance was utterly foreign—my center of gravity shifted, hips swaying more than I intended, knees knocking together as I staggered. The cold kiss of the hardwood floor pressed through my thin stockings, and my shoes—too delicate, too tight—skidded with every panicked step.

Desperation clawed at my chest. I turned in circles, heart thudding, breath fogging the air. My hands fluttered out, trembling uncontrollably, fingertips tingling as though they didn’t belong to me. I caught sight of a tall, gilt-framed mirror beside a pair of ornate double doors. For a heartbeat I hesitated, dread crawling up my spine, then stumbled toward it, drawn by a need for proof—some anchor in this waking nightmare.

The woman who stared back at me was beautiful in a way that made me want to scream again. Early twenties, petite, skin like porcelain and cheeks flushed with terror. Wide blue eyes stared out of the glass, rimmed with tears, flickering with disbelief. Long blonde hair tumbled in loose, shining waves around her shoulders, topped by a pristine white lace headband. The French maid outfit fit her—fit me—perfectly, the bodice hugging curves I’d never owned, the skirt flaring with pristine, mocking ruffles.

My hands—small, pale, shaking—rose to the glass. The chill bit through my skin. I pressed trembling fingers to my face, watched the reflection do the same. My breath stuttered and caught, another sob clawing its way up my throat.

Why? Why this body, this face, this humiliating costume? Was this some kind of cosmic joke, the universe’s cruel punchline after twenty-one years of dying in this very outfit? The panic rose again, choking, as I realized that this time, there was no waking up.

I reached up with trembling fingers and pressed my palm to my cheek, feeling the unfamiliar softness of skin stretched over delicate bones. In the mirror, the woman’s hand mirrored mine exactly, her blue eyes wide with terror and confusion. My breath caught, a shallow gasp fogging the glass between us. It was impossible—utterly, sickeningly impossible.

“What the hell?” I whispered, my voice cracking, raw from screaming. Panic prickled along my arms, raising goosebumps beneath the lace sleeves. My heart thudded erratically, each beat echoing in my ears like a warning drum. I stumbled back from the mirror, the hard heels of my shoes skittering on the polished wood as I nearly lost my balance. Cold sweat traced a path down my spine. The cloying scent of dust and faded perfume seemed to thicken, pressing in on me from all sides.

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the nightmare to end, but when I opened them again, the vision remained—my reflection, the dress, the haunted house.

Then, without warning, the relentless ticking of the grandfather clock stopped. The silence that followed was absolute and suffocating, pressing against my ears until they rang. Even my shaky breaths sounded too loud, as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting. The air felt suddenly colder, heavier, laced with the electric anticipation that comes just before something terrible bursts out of the dark. I stood frozen, every muscle tensed with dread, knowing—just knowing—that this was the moment in every horror story when something unspeakable crawls out of the shadows.

Then a voice drifted in from the hallway—soft, sing-song, laced with a sweetness that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “Alice?” My mother’s voice. Or rather, the voice that belonged to my mother in these nightmares. It was gentle, coaxing, and yet carried a pitch-perfect wrongness, as if every note was slightly warped, every syllable stretched too thin.

My body went cold. An icy flush swept over my skin, freezing the sweat that clung to my back and arms. My breath caught in my throat, and my heart thudded painfully slow, as if it, too, was listening.

The voice came again, dripping through the cracks in the door: “Alice, sweetheart, where are you?” There was warmth and affection in the words, but underneath, a lurking hunger—the kind that left me paralyzed with dread as a child cowering under blankets. My hands shook uncontrollably. I stared at the ornate double doors, unable to blink, unable to breathe. For a moment, the world seemed to shrink to nothing but that door and the voice on the other side.

Alice. That was what they always called me in my dreams—the name that meant I was prey, the name that meant the game had begun.

Then, from the other side of the door, came a soft, unmistakable scraping sound. It was slow, deliberate, as if something with too many legs was testing the wood, searching for a way in. The silence pressed in tighter, and every instinct screamed at me to run, to hide, to do anything but stand frozen as the horror of the dream bled into waking life.

Mother’s voice slid through the door again, syrupy and poisonous. “Oh, darling. You shouldn’t keep your family waiting.” The words caressed my ears and scraped at my nerves, each syllable drawn out with a loving menace that made my skin crawl. Goosebumps prickled along my arms. My stomach twisted with a cold, nauseating dread.

I staggered backward, the heels of my shoes clicking frantically on the polished wood as I put distance between myself and the door. My breath came in short, shaky bursts. The air seemed to grow colder, thickening with that metallic, dusty scent that meant only one thing—nightmare.

I knew what was coming. My muscles tensed with the memory of a thousand repetitions, every instinct screaming at me to hide, to run, to do anything but stand and watch. But my legs felt leaden, my body trembling as the ornate double doors began to open, inch by excruciating inch. The hinges shrieked in protest, the sound echoing through the vast, silent hall.

Then she appeared—my mother, or the monster that wore her face. Her smile was impossibly wide, lips stretching to reveal rows upon rows of needle-sharp teeth, each one gleaming wetly in the blue candlelight. Her human torso—elegant, familiar, wrong—rose from the enormous black spider body clinging to the ceiling above the door, her legs splayed out in a grotesque, predatory tableau. The sound of her claws tapping against the plaster sent a shudder through my bones.

“There’s my beautiful girl,” she cooed, her voice lilting with mock affection. She laughed—a wicked, echoing sound that fluttered down from the ceiling and burrowed beneath my skin. My vision blurred with terror.

Pure panic seized me. I turned and bolted, skirts and petticoat whipping around my legs, shoes slipping and scraping as I fled down the corridor. My heart slammed against my ribs, and all I could hear was the thunder of my own pulse and the skittering pursuit of something monstrous behind me.

Behind me, Mother shrieked—a piercing, inhuman sound that echoed through the halls and made the walls tremble. “Alice! Come back here!” The words twisted into a howl, both furious and delighted, reverberating off the plaster ceilings and sending a new surge of terror through my veins.

I ran, the frantic slap of my shoes on the hardwood floor lost beneath the cacophony of her pursuit. My skirts tangled around my knees, petticoat bunching and catching, but I didn’t dare slow down. I rounded a corner, nearly slamming into a narrow side table crowded with dusty porcelain figurines. The edge scraped my hip, sending a jolt of pain up my side, but I barely noticed—my only thought was escape.

The corridor ahead stretched impossibly long, lined with ornate, gilded frames. Portrait after portrait stared down at me—each one a version of myself, twisted into different poses and scenes of death. There I was, eyes glassy and head lolling at an unnatural angle; there, sprawled across a velvet chaise, a red gash blooming across my throat; another showed me reaching out in terror, spider legs curling in the background. My breath hitched at the sight, bile rising in my throat, but I forced myself onward as Mother’s skittering grew louder behind me.

At the very end of the hall, I spotted a door—heavy, carved, looming like salvation. I threw myself at it, shoulder slamming against the wood, and tumbled inside. With shaking hands, I grabbed the cold brass handle and yanked the door shut, the echoing slam ringing through the darkness. For a heartbeat, silence pressed in, broken only by my ragged breathing and the frantic drumbeat of my heart. I pressed my back to the door, every muscle rigid, listening for the scrape of claws and the next nightmare to come.

I pressed my back against the heavy door, chest heaving, and tried to steady my breath. My heart still hammered in my ears, every muscle quivering with leftover adrenaline. Only then did I begin to take in my surroundings.

This room was strange—wrong in a way that set my teeth on edge. I’d haunted every corner of this nightmare mansion for twenty-one years, fleeing through endless halls and chambers, but I had never seen this place before. That realization crept over my skin, prickling like icy fingers.

I scanned the space, nerves taut with unease. It was a bedroom, small but meticulously kept, the air tinged with lavender and the faint, coppery scent of old blood that seemed to linger everywhere in this house. A narrow bed with a faded quilt sat against one wall, the sheets perfectly turned down. A simple wooden dresser stood nearby, its surface dusted and empty except for a delicate porcelain lamp that glowed with a sickly yellow light. A single window was covered with heavy velvet curtains, drawn tight to keep out the night—or anything that might be waiting beyond.

At first, I thought it must be a maid’s quarters, with its plainness and lack of luxury. But then my gaze caught on the massive, gilt-framed piece of fabric hanging above the bed. Embroidered in looping, cheerful letters was a message that made my blood run cold: Welcome Home, Alice.

My knees buckled, and I stumbled backward until I hit the edge of the wardrobe. The words seemed to pulse in the dim light, a mockery of comfort. This was my room. My room. The house had never given me a place before—never offered a sanctuary, only endless corridors of terror. But here it was, waiting, as if it had been expecting me all along.

A frigid dread blossomed in my gut, spreading outward until my hands shook and my lips tingled with fear. I realized, with a clarity sharper than any knife, that this time I wasn’t going to wake up. The nightmare had shifted, become real in a way it never had before. I was trapped. The house was welcoming me home.

A cold certainty settled over me, heavier than the air itself. I knew—I knew with every trembling cell—that I was stuck here. There would be no waking up in my own bed, no blinking away the nightmare with morning light. The house had me now, and the prize, whatever it was, had become terrifyingly real. I could feel the compulsion coil tight inside my chest, urgent and inescapable. I had to find it.

Suddenly, a quiet giggle broke the silence. It was a child’s giggle, high and breathy, echoing from the shadowed space beneath the bed. The sound slithered up my spine and set my teeth on edge. My breath hitched, the hair on my arms standing straight.

“You're late, Alice,” the voice whispered, the words curling around my name like a cold hand. My heart hammered against my ribs as I twisted around, dropping to my knees. The floorboards creaked beneath me. I peered into the darkness under the bed, the air tasting of dust and secrets.

Two eyes stared back—round, unblinking, and glowing an unnatural yellow-green. They hovered just above the floor, their gaze steady and ancient. Shadows clung to the rest of the body, but I could see a crooked, gleaming smile stretching in the gloom.

“Very late indeed,” the voice murmured, sing-song and cruel. “We’ve been waiting so long for you to come home.”

A small, silvery hand—fingers long and impossibly thin, skin glimmering like polished metal—slid out from the darkness. In its palm rested a silver key, catching the lamplight in glints and shivers. The hand beckoned me closer, the key trembling with anticipation.

My body locked in place, a shiver running down my back. The room felt suddenly colder, the air thick with the scent of lavender and something far more ancient. My own hand, shaking, reached out without my permission, drawn by the promise of the prize—and the horror that was only just beginning.

I stared at the silvery hand stretched toward me from the darkness, my breath caught tight in my throat. The fingers, impossibly long and jointed like the limbs of an insect, glimmered in the sickly yellow lamplight. In its palm, the silver key gleamed—cold, perfect, and sharp-edged, as if it would bite if I touched it.

Dangling from the key was a small, yellowed paper tag, the edges curled and stained as though it had been handled by countless trembling hands before mine. The tag swayed gently, catching the faint, musty breeze that seemed to seep from the floorboards, and I watched as it turned, the handwritten words finally coming into focus.

First prize: Your Name.

My stomach clenched, a wave of nausea rising up in my chest. The words seemed to shiver with a life of their own, ink bleeding at the edges, letters crawling ever so slightly as I stared. Goosebumps prickled along my arms and the back of my neck. My skin felt too tight, my nerves singing with dread.

A tremor ran through my limbs. My hands, slick with sweat, balled into fists at my sides. I could hear my own pulse pounding in my ears, the sound loud and frantic in the sudden hush of the room. Even the shadows seemed to lean in, hungry for my reaction.

The eyes under the bed blinked slowly, their glow intensifying. The crooked smile widened, impossibly wide, as if savoring my horror. The key, with its dreadful tag, hovered between us—a promise, a threat, a prize I never knew I’d been competing for.

I took a shaky step backward, my heels digging into the thin rug. The lamp on the nightstand flickered, casting monstrous shapes across the walls. The silence was so deep I could hear the soft scrape of the silvery fingers against the floor as the hand beckoned me again. My name—my very self—had become the prize in this nightmare, and I was terrified to take it, and even more terrified to refuse.