24 Feb The Sleeper’s Omen

Part I

Simon Fletcher awoke in a house that wasn’t quite his own. The shape of it was the same—the same furniture, the same walls, the same layout—but something had shifted, something small and almost imperceptible, like a photograph that had been retouched in ways only the subject would notice. The house looked like 312 Sycamore Street—and yet, he knew it wasn’t.

He sat up slowly in bed, ears straining against the quiet. The silence was unnatural, a deadened void where even the wind outside should have been. There was no distant hum of the refrigerator, no creaking of the old wooden beams settling in the cold.

Then, the whispering began. It was soft and indistinct at first, the murmur of voices layered on top of one another, too blurred to separate, too distant to grasp. Simon’s skin prickled as the sound wove through the room, surrounding him. He turned toward the bedroom door, and though it was closed, the whispers slipped through like mist, curling around the edges of the frame.

The voices grew louder. Before long, words began to take shape. A warning, desperate and breathless—

“Don’t let him in.”

* * * * * *

Simon bolted upright, the dream snapping apart like brittle glass, leaving only its echo in the stillness of his bedroom. He fumbled for the lamp on his nightstand, fingers clumsy in the dark. When the light flickered on, it revealed the familiar: the navy comforter tangled around his legs, the bookshelf lined with titles he’d packed and unpacked himself, the suit jacket draped over the chair by the window where he’d left it the night before.

But the house felt colder. He reached for his phone. 3:13 AM.

The dream clung to him in ways that ordinary nightmares didn’t. It was the kind that stayed behind when the world around it insisted it wasn’t real. He rubbed his face, the ghost of those whispers curling around his ears.

“Don’t let him in.”

There had been no him in the dream. No face, no form—just that door, closed tight against something unseen.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, pressing his feet against the floor. The wood was cool beneath his soles. In the dim glow of the bedside lamp, nothing looked out of place. But something still felt wrong.

Standing, Simon padded out of the bedroom, following the habitual path toward the kitchen. He filled a glass with water, the sound of the tap the first real noise he had heard since waking. He took a slow sip, trying to settle the gnawing unease. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the front door. The deadbolt was undone.

He set the glass down too hard on the counter. He was certain he had locked it before bed. The motion had been automatic, part of his nightly routine—checking the doors, making sure the windows were latched.

Hesitantly, Simon moved closer. He touched the lock, feeling the weight of the metal beneath his fingers, and pressed it back into place with a muted click. For a moment, he stood there, listening. Everything was quiet.

Just a mistake, then. A lapse in memory. He had been tired when he got home—maybe he had turned the lock but never secured it fully. There was no real reason to think otherwise.

But the dream—the whisper, the warning—lingered. “Don’t let him in.”

Simon shook his head and left the door behind. Tomorrow, the dream would be a curiosity, something to reflect on, a passing oddity tucked into the strange folds of the subconscious. That was all it was. He returned to bed, stretching out beneath the comforter, feeling the warmth seep back into his skin. His body, at least, was willing to let sleep take him. But the mind was slower to follow.

As he lay in the quiet, waiting for rest to pull him under, his thoughts circled back to the same thing. The dream had been wrong. The house had been wrong.

And in the dream, the door had been locked.

* * * * * *

The second dream came two nights later.

Simon was standing in his bedroom, but it wasn’t his bedroom. Not exactly. The proportions were wrong—the walls stretched taller, the corners sharper, the shadows deeper than they should have been. A strange hush filled the space, dense and unnatural.

He turned toward the window, and outside, something moved. A figure, tall and motionless, stood just beyond the glass.

Simon’s stomach coiled. The thing had no distinct features—just an absence where a face should be, as though someone had taken an eraser to its head and left only the suggestion of a shape. The longer he looked, the more the shadows around it seemed to ripple.

Then the whispering started again, from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. The same layered voices rose and fell, pulling at him, but this time, one voice—a woman’s—emerged from the rest, desperate and pleading: “Don’t let him in. If you do, you won’t wake up.”

The figure outside pressed a hand to the glass—and the dream snapped apart.

Simon woke in a violent lurch, his body jolting upright before his mind had even caught up. He gasped for breath, his eyes darting to the window, but to his surprise, there was nothing there. The curtains hung still. The glass reflected only his own pale, drawn expression in the darkness of the room.

His phone screen glowed beside him. 3:13 AM. Simon ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply. Two nights apart. Two dreams, both warning him about something unseen outside.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a long time, his hands clasped between his knees. He told himself it was just a coincidence, that he was still adjusting to the new house, and that his subconscious was pulling from whatever scraps of unease had taken root since the move.

Still, he didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, he turned on the bedside lamp and reached for his notebook, flipping past lesson plans and lecture notes until he found a blank page.

Dream Log:
March 5th, 3:13 AM – Whispering voices. Warning: “Don’t let him in.” House was abandoned, covered in dust.
March 7th, 3:13 AM – Man outside window. No face. Whisper: “If you do, you won’t wake up.”

The act of writing it down should have helped, or at the very least given him a sense of control. It didn’t. Because now that it was on the page, staring back at him in ink, it felt like something more than just dreams.

* * * * * *

Morning arrived sluggishly, the sky outside swollen with the promise of rain. Simon went through the motions of his routine—shower, coffee, email—though his mind was elsewhere. When he stepped outside to grab the newspaper from the porch, he hesitated. The ground was damp, the air sharp with the scent of earth.

And there, on the wooden boards just beneath the window, were footprints. Bare footprints.

He stared at them for too long, long enough that the coffee in his hand cooled to an undrinkable temperature. He swallowed, kneeling to inspect them more closely. The prints were faint, but unmistakable, and they led up to the window.

The same window from the dream.

A prickle of unease crawled up his spine. Someone must have been out here last night, standing just outside his house, looking in.

The police, if he called them, would ask if he’d actually seen anyone or if he’d heard anything. He hadn’t. They’d tell him it was probably just some kid screwing around, some passing stranger or transient.

He should have believed that, should have let himself believe that. But then he noticed the second set of prints. These were shallower, as though whatever had left them had pressed only lightly against the wood. As though it hadn’t been standing—no, as though it had been floating.

Simon straightened abruptly. The rational part of his mind latched onto explanations—illusions, weather, some trick of light and water on the surface of the porch. He stepped back inside, shutting and locking the door behind him.

The house was quiet. Too quiet.

And when he turned away from the window, he could have sworn—just for a second—that something had moved in the reflection of the glass.

Simon didn’t return to the library until later that afternoon. The place was tucked into the center of town, one of those old, squat buildings that had probably started as a courthouse or something equally historical before being repurposed into a public space.

The air inside smelled of books and dust and the faintest hint of something medicinal, like old paper left to decay in dim light. He had been there once before, briefly, when he first moved in, but this time, he wasn’t looking for research materials. He was looking for history.

The woman at the desk, in her mid-sixties, with her gray hair pulled into a severe knot, peered at him over the rim of her reading glasses when he inquired about the house.

“You’re inquiring about 312 Sycamore?” she asked.

He nodded. “I just moved in a couple of weeks ago. I figured I’d get a sense of the neighborhood.”

She hesitated—not much, but enough. A flicker of something crossed her expression before she set her pen down with careful precision. “That house has been around for a long time,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “Not much of a neighborhood, though. No one’s lived in the surrounding lots for years.”

Simon frowned. He had noticed the empty lots, the overgrown patches where houses must have stood decades ago. He had assumed it was just an old development plan that had fallen through. “Has it had many previous owners?” he asked.

“A few,” she replied. “Not many of them stayed long.”

She didn’t elaborate, and Simon didn’t press. Instead, he asked, “Would you happen to have any records on it?”

She studied him for a long moment before nodding. “Give me a few minutes.”

As she disappeared into the back, Simon ran a hand over the worn surface of the counter. He knew small-town sensibilities well enough to recognize when something was being left unsaid.

Ten minutes later, she returned with a worn manila folder and placed it on the desk between them.

The top document was a property record. The first owner listed was from the 1920s. Simon skimmed the page, flipping through successive owners until he hit a name that stopped him cold.

Daniel Rowe.

The name was familiar. His brain took a second to recall why. Then it struck him.

The second dream. The whispering voice. “If you do, you won’t wake up.”

Simon turned to the librarian. “Do you know what happened to him?”

She hesitated again. Then, softly, she replied, “He disappeared.”

A chill moved through Simon’s limbs. “Disappeared? What do you mean, ‘disappeared?’”

She nodded. “It was in the summer of 1956. He lived alone. One day, he just… wasn’t there anymore. The house sat empty for a long time after that.”

Simon swallowed. “Did they find anything? Any evidence of where he went?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, I’m afraid. It was like he just walked out one night and never came back.”

Simon felt the weight of the file in his hands, the papers inside thin and yellowed with age.

The librarian regarded him for a long moment before saying, “It’s best not to dwell too much on that house’s history.”

Simon didn’t respond. He already knew he wasn’t dwelling on history—he was caught in it.

Part II

Simon didn’t sleep that night.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. He told himself he would try, that he would ignore the things creeping at the edges of his thoughts, that the dream was just a dream, the footprints just a trick of water and weather. But as the clock inched past midnight, past one, past two, he remained awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling, body leaden with exhaustion.

At 3:13 AM, his bedside lamp flickered. Simon sat up slowly, the air in the room carrying an unnatural stillness. The bulb pulsed once—twice—and then steadied.

His ears strained against the quiet, listening for the thing he was suddenly certain was there. Then the bedroom door creaked open. It was subtle, the shift of wood against wood, but in the silence, it was unmistakable. He turned his head, dread pooling in his stomach as his gaze locked onto the door.

A sliver of darkness peeked through the crack. Something stood on the other side.

Simon swung his legs off the bed, body taut with a fear that had no logic or reasoning. The dream had followed him. It had bled into reality.

His hand trembled as he reached for the bedside lamp. The instant his fingers touched the switch, the light snapped off.

A breath of air moved through the room. Simon lurched backward, his shoulder slamming into the headboard, fingers scrabbling against the wall. In that moment, the darkness seemed impenetrable. And then, from the doorway, he heard a whisper.

“You don’t have to let him in.”

The voice was right there beside him, inside the room.

Simon’s blood turned to ice. He fumbled for his phone, for any light, but his fingers shook too hard, his movements clumsy. And then the whisper changed, mutating into something far more sinister.

“You already have.”

Something shifted at the foot of his bed. The mattress dipped, weight pressing against it, a shape he could not see but could feel.

The whispering turned into something closer to laughter.

The next time Simon blinked, the lamp flickered back on—and the door was shut.

The clock read 3:14 AM.

Simon shuddered. He was alone.

* * * * * *

Simon left the house at dawn.

He didn’t pack a bag or stop for coffee—just threw on yesterday’s shirt, grabbed his keys, and drove with no particular destination in mind.

The morning light should have made the fear feel foolish, but it didn’t. It wasn’t just the dream anymore. It wasn’t just something pressing against his subconscious, lingering in the spaces between sleep and wakefulness.

It was here—and he needed answers.

Ellen Carter met him at the library just after noon.

She had been hesitant on the phone, but something in his voice must have convinced her. Now, as she sat across from him in the back corner of the library, she studied him with the look of someone who had seen men like him before—men with questions, with unsteady hands, with the kind of exhaustion that didn’t come from a single sleepless night.

“You said you’re having dreams,” she prompted.

Simon nodded.

Her fingers drummed against the tabletop. “When did they start?”

“About a week ago.” He hesitated. “They’ve been getting worse.”

Ellen exhaled slowly. “Describe them to me.”

He did. The first dream. The second. The footprints outside. The whispers. And last night.

When he finished, Ellen sat back in silence before finally speaking. “It’s latched onto you.”

Simon tensed. “What has?”

She folded her hands in front of her. “We call it The Midnight Man.”

Something cold curled in his stomach.

“It’s an old story,” Ellen continued. “Most folklore scholars trace it back to European origins, but there are variations everywhere. You’ve probably heard some version of it before—something that gets in when you dream, something you invite in without realizing it.”

Simon clenched his jaw. “I didn’t invite anything in.”

Her gaze flickered, as if she wanted to say otherwise but thought better of it. Instead, she said, “That thing outside your window? That thing in your room? That isn’t just a dream. It’s real. And if you don’t follow the rules, it’ll take you.”

Simon exhaled sharply. “What rules?”

Ellen hesitated. “You can’t acknowledge it.”

He stared at her. “I think I’m past that point.”

Her fingers curled slightly. “It doesn’t exist in the way we do. It exists in possibility. In spaces between waking and sleep. But once you start noticing it, it notices you back. Once you see it—really see it—you become part of its game.”

Simon’s pulse quickened.

“It feeds on attention,” Ellen continued. “The more you focus on it, the more real it becomes. That’s why the dreams escalate. That’s why people vanish.”

Simon stiffened. “People?”

Her expression darkened. “There have been others.”

Daniel Rowe.

His throat tightened. “What happened to them?”

“…They lost.”

Silence stretched between them.

Finally, Simon asked, “How do I win?”

Ellen’s lips parted slightly, but no answer came.

That was the moment Simon realized—she didn’t know.

* * * * * *

The drive back to the house was slow, heavy with the weight of everything Ellen had told him.

He shouldn’t have gone back. He knew that. But the dream had followed him before. Running wouldn’t stop it. If he was already trapped in this thing’s game, he had to find the way out.

As he pulled into the driveway, his stomach turned. The house sat still, unassuming in the weak afternoon light, but something about it felt different.

Simon got out of the car, stepping carefully up the porch steps. His fingers brushed against the doorknob.

Then he saw it. The deadbolt was unlocked. Again.

This time, Simon was sure he had locked it. His skin prickled as he slowly turned the knob, easing the door open, and stepped inside.

The door swung shut behind him. And in the silence, a whisper crawled through the dim light.

“You already let me in.”

For a long moment, Simon stood in the entryway, questioning his decisions. Then, slowly, Simon locked the deadbolt, pressing his palm against the cold metal. He lingered there a bit longer, reflecting. Ellen had told him that the Midnight Man existed in possibility. That it only became real when acknowledged. Had he crossed that line?

His fingers twitched against the lock. Just then, a distant creak echoed from the back of the house, and Simon went still.

The sound was subtle—wood shifting, weight pressing against it. But the house wasn’t old enough to settle like that. And he was alone.

Wasn’t he?

He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to move down the hall, past the framed prints lining the walls, beyond the kitchen where the coffee pot sat untouched from this morning.

In the living room, he stopped. The armchair across from the couch had been moved. Not by much—just a few inches—but it was wrong.

Simon’s mouth felt dry. He hadn’t moved that chair.

A memory surfaced—one from days ago. The first time he had woken unsettled, when he had chalked up the unease to stress and bad sleep. The chair had felt… off then, too. Just enough to make him hesitate.

His fingers curled at his sides.

Something had been in the house. It had been there for days.

And he had let it in.

* * * * * *

That night, Simon couldn’t sleep. He sat in the living room, a baseball bat resting across his lap, exhaustion cutting through his thoughts with a sharp edge. He hadn’t planned on arming himself, hadn’t even thought about it until he found himself retrieving it from the coat closet. Now that it was in his hands, he couldn’t bring himself to let it go.

His phone sat on the coffee table, the dream log still open in his notes.

Dream Log:
March 5th, 3:13 AM – Whispering voices. Warning: “Don’t let him in.” House was abandoned, covered in dust.
March 7th, 3:13 AM – Man outside window. No face. Whisper: “If you do, you won’t wake up.”
March 9th, 3:13 AM – Bedroom door opened on its own. Whisper: “You already have.” Something was in the room.

Simon stared at the words, reading them again and again, picking them apart. The progression was undeniable. Each night, the presence had moved closer—first outside, then at the door, and finally inside the room.

He ran a hand down his face. How much closer could it get? The very thought made him ill.

He reached for his phone again, his finger hovering over Ellen’s number. He had texted her earlier, asking if she knew how to stop this, how to make it leave him alone.

She hadn’t answered.

He wasn’t surprised.

She had given him everything she knew, but that knowledge had not included a way out. And deep down, Simon already understood—there wasn’t one. Not anymore.

* * * * * *

At 3:13 a.m., the lights dimmed as if something unseen had draped a veil over them, muting their reach.

Simon sat up straighter, his muscles locking in place.

Then came the whisper.

“Let me in.”

His grip on the bat tightened, his gaze flicking toward the front door. The deadbolt remained in place.

The whisper came again, this time from behind him.

“Let me in.”

Slowly, Simon turned. The hallway stretched before him, longer than it should have been, its edges swallowed by the deepening dark.

Something stood at the end of it. Something tall and thin—and grinning.

The shape was not fully solid—not yet. The longer he stared, the more it took form, its outline sharpening, the darkness drawing inward, sculpting limbs, a torso, and a grotesque, mask-like face.

“You dream of me because I dream of you.”

The voice curled around him, threading into his bones.

Simon’s grip on the bat faltered.

“You already let me in.”

The floorboards shifted.

It took a step toward him.

Simon bolted.

* * * * * *

His feet pounded against the hardwood as he lunged for the back of the house, his shoulder clipping the doorframe. He didn’t know why he ran there—maybe because the basement door was the only one that had remained untouched. Maybe because some part of him knew that if he ran outside, there would be nowhere to go.

The basement door swung open, the darkness yawning below him. He didn’t stop to think.

He descended.

Cold air rushed against his skin as he stumbled down the last step. The scent of dust and dampness filled his nose, thick and stagnant. His breath came unsteadily, his chest tightening with the silence pressing around him.

Then his foot struck something solid. He lost his balance and pitched forward, catching himself against the wall, his hands pressing into rough, uneven brick. The bat clattered to the floor.

Simon turned, and his stomach dropped. Something was sitting there—a body.

It was slumped against the far wall, its limbs withered and crumpled. The face, barely recognizable as human, was frozen in a scream. Its skin was dry and peeling, as though time had forgotten it. And its hands were clawed deep into the floor.

A name surfaced in Simon’s mind before he could stop it.

Daniel Rowe.

The realization struck hard: Daniel had never disappeared. He had never left.

A breath of air stirred through the basement, and a whisper curled around his ear.

“Now it’s your turn.”

The lights died.

Part III

The darkness swallowed him whole.

Simon couldn’t breathe. Not because something was strangling him or because panic had seized his lungs, but because the air itself felt wrong—carrying the weight of something that had been waiting, hidden in the quiet rot of the basement, for far too long.

His hand shot out blindly, fingers scraping rough brick. The bat was somewhere near his feet, but he didn’t dare bend down to find it. Not with the whisper curling through the dark.

“Now it’s your turn.”

Simon squeezed his eyes shut. It was a dream. It had to be—except his feet were planted firmly on the concrete. His fingertips burned from where they had scraped the wall.

It was real.

Just beyond where Simon stood, something shifted, unfolding from the edges of the room.

In a frenzy, he searched for anything—a weapon, a light, an escape. His knuckles struck something metallic—a rusted workbench. Useless.

The whisper came again.

“He tried to run, too.”

Simon did his best to maintain his composure. He stepped backward, keeping his hands braced against the wall. The light switch, he recalled, was somewhere near the stairs. He had seen it before in the daylight, and had flicked it once just to test it, bathing the basement in a dim, unreliable glow.

If he could just reach it—

Something brushed against his arm.

Simon jerked, spinning blindly, but saw nothing there. Staggering toward where he thought the stairs were, he reached out, one hand dragging along the wall to keep himself oriented.

Cold air rushed over him. And then, the sound of breathing—deep, rattling, and inhuman—froze him in place. It was right behind him.

His fingers slammed against the light switch. For a moment, he thought it wouldn’t work. Then the bulb overhead flickered—and in the dim, yellow glow, he saw the gaunt, lanky figure standing in the center of the basement. It was grinning, its mouth carved into an unnatural, toothless smile. Its “face,” if it could even be called that, was stretched and warped, sculpted from shadow and space—the product of something poorly mimicking a human visage.

It did not blink or move, and yet Simon knew—it was looking at him. His fingers dug into the wall.

“You already let me in,” it wailed. The voice did not come from its mouth, but from behind him.

Simon twisted again, but as before, nothing was there.

The whisper echoed again.

“I never left.”

Something shifted at his feet. His gaze dropped—and his stomach lurched.

Daniel Rowe’s corpse had changed. The mummified remains that had sat slumped against the basement wall were gone. In their place, something else remained. The fingers were longer. The mouth gaped wider. The eyes were hollow. The hands still clawed at the concrete.

As he watched, the body dragged itself forward.

Simon ran.

His feet slammed against the steps as he lunged upward. As he reached for the basement door, the wood swung violently—and slammed shut. Simon collided with it, pain jolting through his shoulder, but he didn’t stop. His hands scrambled for the handle, yanking and twisting, but it was futile. It was locked.

A whisper crawled against his ear.

“Nowhere left to run.”

Simon choked back a sound, swallowing the fear, anger, and desperation overwhelming his senses, and twisted the handle again.

This time, the lock clicked, and the door burst open. He stumbled forward, barely catching himself as he lurched into the hallway.

The bat—he needed the bat!

He turned and saw the thing standing on the stairs, watching him, a sinister grin stretching across its makeshift face.

The basement door swung closed behind him, and everything went still.

* * * * * *

Simon didn’t leave the house—not because he didn’t want to, not because some part of him wasn’t already planning to—but because he knew it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t let him go. Because this thing—it didn’t live in the house. It lived in him now, and wherever he went, it would follow.

Simon Fletcher had already lost. He was certain it would take him—he just wasn’t sure when. Perhaps not today, he thought. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.

And when it did, no one would ever find him.

Just like Daniel Rowe and the others.

Just like whoever came next.

* * * * * *

Two months later, the house at 312 Sycamore Street was quiet again. The rent was reduced, and a new tenant signed the lease.

That night, she dreamt of breathless, desperate whispers—of a man’s voice she did not recognize.

“Don’t let him in,” it said.

She woke in a cold sweat, her phone screen glowing. 3:13 a.m.

And outside, standing beyond the window, a figure stood.

It looked vaguely human, but even in the dim lit, she could tell it wasn’t.

As she watched, its lipped curled into something resembling a smile.

Then she blinked, and it was gone.