Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

8th October, 2015

My house is haunted, but not in the ways you might think. Normally when you think of a house being haunted, there’s some sort of ghost or creature, either corporeal or not, wreaking havoc on your space to taunt you. This was… very different from that, although I still think I was being taunted. I’ll start from the beginning, though. My name is Elouise Thomas. I am a criminal defense lawyer, which actually kept me away from talking about this for quite a while. I am NOT easily swayed by flights of fancy or bouts of paranoia like this. I’ve made a business of professionalism for myself, which is why I had to confirm with your secretary that none of this information would be made public. Anyway, I suppose I’m getting a little off topic.

My career really started taking off about 2 years ago. For a while things were great, I was happily engaged to my fiancee, Ronald, and was doing quite well for myself. That is, until Ronald and I started looking for a house. It wasn’t like we were struggling for money or fighting about random cosmetic house things like “vinyl vs wrought iron fences” and whatnot. We actually agreed on most fronts about what we wanted. Ronald was relatively easygoing, and we did well with compromise. It was one of the reasons I wanted to marry him, after all. 

We had met a lovely realtor by the name of Helen Richardson who made the process as smooth and as painless as possible. She found us a lovely older Victorian home in Oxford, and once we secured it, we began the moving process almost immediately. I was actually quite surprised to find that Ronald didn’t have much. By that, I mean he informed me on video call that he had packed his two singular boxes on moving day. I’d visited his bachelor flat on multiple occasions before, and while he certainly lived like a bachelor, he wasn’t a minimalist or frugal by any means. When I questioned him, he told me he wanted to “start fresh,” and to be honest? That didn’t seem out of the ordinary for him. He was more of a dreamer whereas I was more logical. I actually found it sweet how he was treating this new chapter of life.

I didn’t start to realize something was very wrong until he told me he rented a van to move his things. I almost laughed at that. “You have a car, and surely those totes don’t take up that much space?” I said. He raised an eyebrow, like he was confused by that. This was our first real “fight” of the move, which was to be expected. No two people could ever agree on ALL fronts.

“I know I’m not bringing much, but this takes up a lot more space than you think. I feel just a bit like you’re being facetious with me. But don’t fret, love, I’ll drive the van over to the house tonight and help unpack.”

I kept trying to convince myself that Ronald was trying to make me feel crazy, but the sincerity of his tone told me he wasn’t. Still, my eyes flitted back over on my tiny phone screen to the two boxes beside him, and the otherwise empty flat surrounding him. I wondered if maybe it was an optical illusion? Maybe these boxes that, to me, couldn’t have been larger than a bowling ball, were actually further away than I thought they were on screen. Or maybe those two boxes were going to go into much larger boxes with other things that were off screen. I didn’t want to cause problems, or suddenly seem paranoid and crazy over bloody BOXES, so I let it be.

Unfortunately, Ronald never made it to the house. I got a call from the police around 2 o’ clock in the morning that a van had been found on the edge of the nearby bridge, the swinging back doors wide open and facing the railing.

The detective couldn’t decide whether to rule it a suicide or a missing person’s case, so it has remained unsolved since, but I know there has to be more to it and I think she does too, though she won’t return my calls about it. No body was ever recovered and the body of water below isn’t that large or deep. At least… I didn’t think it was, but now I don’t know anymore. Ronald wouldn’t just jump, or run away. He wasn’t like that, I know he wasn’t. The other reason I know that is because the only item found in the van was Ronald’s wallet with his ID. No boxes. They checked his flat, too, and came up with nothing.

I don’t mean to just make this a sad story about my estranged fiancee, but I swear it’s important. I let myself mourn in the following months, it’s hard to lose someone especially under such circumstances, but after a while I bounced back and kept pushing on. I am not one to believe in ghosts. I never once thought Ronald was going to appear to me in my dreams or something of that nature. Like I said, I’m practical. It wasn’t a ghost haunting the house. It was… the house itself. The house itself would… change. I know it sounds crazy, and I’m sure I’ll be written off by your institute as “that one crazy lawyer,” but it’s true. It didn’t matter the time of day, how tired or well-rested I was, the house continued changing. I know how this is going to sound, but… it was getting bigger. More open. Walls that once separated rooms had disappeared. I don’t know how to describe the feeling of having a lack of privacy in your own house FROM your own house. I had definitely started to think I was going mad for a while, went to therapists and doctors and the like, but everything else in my life was perfectly normal. It wasn’t until I’d come home from work and step foot in that goddamn house that the fear set in again.

I tried for so long to pretend it was a result of grief, of struggling mental health maybe, but about six months ago, I moved out. I just couldn’t live like that anymore, being chased by some demon of, what? Liminal space? The concept of my fiancee’s death or disappearance? I sold that house and moved in with my sister for a while. I had the money to find something new, but… every house, every flat I toured, was still too big. The hallways took ten minutes to cross, the ceilings were so high you almost couldn’t see them, but my sister’s house was safe. I used the excuse of grieving Ronald, that “I couldn’t live alone like this.” It took some time until my mania was over, but I finally found a flat that I could tour that was perfectly normal and proportionate. 

The reason I’m here now is because, two days ago, I received a box at my front door. The package was addressed to me and my new flat, but the return address was… my old house, with no name attached. It was quite heavy. Luckily I’m a bit on the stronger side, so I managed to lift it with minimal strain, but for how small it was, the weight struck me as odd.

Against my better judgment, I decided to open it. And well, you know the rest, but for the sake of having everything written down. It doesn’t end. It’s just that. The box doesn’t end. It was empty but… my hand never reached the bottom of it. I thought maybe if I brought it to you, somehow, that maybe that would finally make it stop. I really hope so. It could just be a trick of the light, but… I think the staircase up to my flat just grew a few more steps.

Chapter Text

12th December, 2010

My name is Peter Hartley, and I am the only lift attendant left working in the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London. You'd be surprised to find that there are still quite a few of us lift attendants in various central London hotels, though. We just don't pick up as many shifts, the demand is not as high as it probably used to be back in the day. I'm not sure about the history, seeing as I got this job straight out of university and have been stuck here ever since.

Did you know the Royal Horseguard is one of the first in Europe to have a lift? Sure, it's been heavily renovated since, but… this place has a history with them. I still think that might explain a lot about what happened that night, but I'm not sure if anything really could explain it.

It's decent work. I tend to spend most of my days greeting stuffy executives and their posh wives, and only have to work the occasional evening shift for a particularly fancy event. Those are my favorites, actually. It may not seem like the most productive way to spend a Friday night, but I enjoy the free entertainment of hearing people's interpersonal dramas. People don't tend to think much of the liftman, and seeing as I'm already looked down upon, I'm not treated like enough of an actual person to care if they talk aloud about money laundering or some racy affair. I get to hear everything, or at least what I can catch from conversations in the span of 1-3 minutes, depending on how high up the resident's room is.

My other solace, and the only reason this "drama" is so worthwhile, is bonding over it with my fellow attendants on Reddit. Like I said, it may be a dying field, but there are still a decent handful of us in central London. Many of the hotels here are older, historic buildings with lavish interiors. Hotels like that can be quite creepy if you're not used to it, people coming up with random ghost stories about some lady in white, but for us in hotel staff, it's pretty standard stuff. It's definitely unsettling at night, but no ghosts. I wouldn't call what I saw a ghost. Well… I don't know what to call it, really.

This particular night shift, a few weeks ago, I remember walking through the lift doors feeling more uneasy about the nighttime than usual. It was a quiet evening, no obnoxious parties of any sort, so I was actually surprised they even had me scheduled at all. Like I said before, I usually only worked nights when there was an event going on with lots of people back and forth, but I hadn't seen anyone for a while.

Eventually, there was the occasional person here and there, some people on work trips finally turning in for the night, some tourists on holiday getting back late from the pub. None of it struck me as abnormal. Not until he stepped into the lift, around 2AM.

Just to be sure I'm not giving the wrong impression of this man, he was perfectly normal, you see. It was… the events that happened around this man that are why I'm here in the first place. I could immediately tell something was… off about him when he entered. I gave him my usual friendly greeting, standard attendant protocol. The air was suddenly cold, colder than usual even for the well-heated building in the winter. And it was as if the man barely registered I was there.

He was a tall young man with glasses and long, curly blonde hair that he kept out of his face. Despite his tallness, he seemed to make effort to take up as little space as possible. He was dressed smartly, though not in the way most businessmen who stayed here were. He had on a sweater vest and corduroy bell bottom trousers

I would have left well enough alone, but thing is… he looked terrified. I have seen plenty of people afraid of this lift before. I know I said there have been renovations since its original construction, but this building is still quite old. It's likely more sturdy than the piece of shit foundations that "modern" homes and buildings are made of now, but I understand it can make people feel a bit unsafe. The lift, though well-maintained and in the best shape, feels a bit rickety at times. But this fear I saw in his face, it seemed nothing to do with the lift or the structural soundness of the hotel at all. I know it's strange to say, but it felt almost as if he were waiting for someone to pull open those lift doors and follow him in.

I asked him if he was alright. I wasn't meant to talk to hotel patrons much unless they were feeling chatty, but I'm sure you can't blame me for being worried. Not only that but… well, it's silly now, but he seemed around my age, if not a bit younger, and I thought he was rather fit.

He seemed to jump a bit when addressed, but he turned to me and softened a bit, as if sensing the familiarity of another person again.

"Yes, yes. I apologize. I'm usually not out this late, you see…" He spoke very quietly, as if speaking louder would… disturb things somehow.

I tried to keep casual conversation, mentioning the weirdos of the night scene. He seemed a bit more calm now and I technically would be breaking some sort of employee rule or violation if I asked him out, but at least I could try to make a semblance of a move. Is that bad of me to say? I know he was scared, but… at the time, I really thought it was just because of the pub creeps and maybe he felt safer being in a familiar place.

He didn't seem to go for it, though, just nodding a bit. I noticed he was still rather scared, though he tried to keep it to himself more after our brief exchange. I realized with a start that I had yet to ask for his floor number, and we had just been still for several minutes. He gave it to me and I was pleased to find he was on floor 9, the highest floor. Even if he wasn't much for conversation, at least I had a bit longer with him.

I pressed the button and felt the mechanics of the lift whir to life. The smartly dressed man breathed a sigh of relief at this, like the dangers had suddenly disappeared, and I really wish I could say they had.

The lift moved normally, and he didn't seem to notice it, but I see this same view nearly every day, so when things are off, I catch them immediately. The digital screen at the top, the one with the red blinking numbers as we ascended, was all wrong. The screen seemed to have glitched. We somehow started on floor 5, then down to floor 2, then up to floor 8, before stopping on a blank screen. I chalked it up to some sort of machine error.

Except… when the doors opened, there was complete and utter blackness. I wondered if there had been an electrical problem at first on the floor, but this wasn't your usual power outage. Even the light in the lift didn't seem to illuminate out into the expanse of black nothingness. The man started to step out before realizing it too, but before he could react and step back, I watched a hand reach out from the darkness for him. It was unnaturally sharp with unnaturally long, multicolored fingers. I didn't get a good look at it, but it certainly didn't look human.

I have to admit, I was impressed with my reflexes in that moment. I quickly pressed the button to close the doors and reached out for the man just as the hand swiped for him. I grabbed him rather harshly by the arm and pulled him to me, watching as the hand retreated behind the closing doors.

The man clung to me frightfully, panicking and mumbling to himself. I couldn't make out much of what he said, though I did catch the name "Ryan."

It took me a moment as my adrenaline died down to recover, trying to soothe the man I was now holding in my arms. I had no idea what would happen when I pressed another button on the lift, or how to keep this man safe from the disembodied too-long hand that may or may not have been Ryan. I finally thought to press the emergency button instead, and eventually my handheld radio buzzed to life, a service technician informing me it'd be a half hour of maintenance and rescue. Turns out we were stuck somewhere between floors, and they needed to assess the situation before retrieving us safely.

Finally, once he had settled into shaky, but quiet breaths, I asked him if he knew what that was. If that was the "Ryan" he was mentioning.

He said "yes," though it sounded more like a question, like he almost wasn't sure. He took a deep breath and started explaining a lot more than I thought I would ever learn about him in a previously short lift ride, though based on the thing we had just experienced together, it made sense to hear. I won't go into my own introduction or the unimportant details, but he said his name was Michael Shelley. He explained that Ryan was his boyfriend. Well, used to be his boyfriend. Apparently they'd broken up months back, as Ryan had gotten into psychoactive and hallucinogenic drugs.

He admitted that he wasn't even staying at the hotel and had been instead evading his ex, running into the first open, public building he saw this late at night. He'd worked a rather late shift, realized Ryan had followed him on the train home from work, and he'd been running around London since then trying to throw Ryan off his trail. I finally understood his panic and his well-dressed, yet frazzled appearance when he'd first entered the lift.

The one thing he wasn't sure of was why Ryan looked like that. Of course I also had no idea, and despite trying to seem brave and strong for Michael, I was obviously equally as horrified at whatever we had just seen. Michael explained the drugs had… changed Ryan, though he didn't have the words to explain how. In the last days of their relationship, he'd heard strange sounds of disjointed laughter coming from their shared bedroom, and he swore he'd once seen a similar hand creeping under his front doorframe. He'd told himself he was seeing things in that moment, but after confirming with me that we'd seen the same hand outside the lift door, he admitted he couldn't brush it off anymore.

I stupidly asked him if there was anything I could do to help him. I really didn't need to get further into this situation with a potentially creepy monster, I know, but a small part of me was still thinking about how attractive he was. Not to mention, I really was worried about the poor man. He seemed to ponder this question for a moment, before confessing he'd read somewhere once that a good way to evade an ex was to make them jealous. Before I could argue that this situation was… a bit unorthodox in comparison, he pressed his lips to mine. I didn't pull away. Despite all that had just happened, I didn't want to pull away.

This is the more embarassing part, so I'll leave out the details… but we basically made out until we both realized the technician was prying the doors open and letting us out. Yeah. No one saw us, so at least my job wasn't at risk, but we probably looked quite the sort coming out of that lift.

I didn't even think to check about the end of my shift after that. I simply followed Michael out of the hotel and into the bitter chill of the winter night. He pulled me in close one more time, kissing me and slipping a piece of paper into my back pocket that I assumed to be a phone number before turning to leave.

At this point, I'm still not sure what happened to Michael. Despite reaching out to that phone number, I never heard from him again. I did go back to work after that, though. I never saw him there either, but sometimes at night when there's a lull between the drunk businessmen, the numbers above the lift door will glitch like that again.

Chapter Text

25th August, 2025

I don't know where to begin, really. I'll just share a bit about myself to help paint a picture… pun not intended. I'm an artist, you see, even more specifically, I am a painter. That doesn't much pay the bills, though, so I double as a gallery worker and do the painting part in my free time. I love my job very much, though. I did study curating a bit while I was in university, so I'm quite skilled in the area.

I tend to spend a lot of my time organizing for various exhibitions as they come and go while my boss does fuck all. Sorry. That is maybe a bit cruel of me to say. She is my boss, after all, but… she's not very present. The gallery is completely owned by her and named after her, actually. Jane Doe Gallery.

I shouldn't complain all that much. It's quite nice to not have a superior breathing down my neck every second of the day. Sure, I don't get paid enough for how much I have to interact with the big wig, more posh artists in the seasonal exhibition rotation, but at least it pays the bills. I know it may not sound like it, but I do love my job. I'm not an exhibitor in this gallery, but what art school graduate wouldn't love being surrounded by the very thing they dedicated their life to?

All of this is important context, I swear. Things got… very weird with this gallery, and with my career in general. I've always been drawn to the sense of self and going in the direction of self exploration with art. I recently started on a self portrait series in which I focus on identity and how our features make us who we are. But I'm not here to break down the extreme details of my artwork. Just know it… it will help you understand why I am having a hard time taking in all of this.

About a month or so ago, we had a new exhibitor come round, and I was equal parts surprised and delighted to find she was a portrait artist, much like myself. We don't often focus on paintings or portrait work in this gallery, so it felt like a breath of fresh air… at least, at first.

Really the only difference between the work I did and the work she did is that hers were portraits of other people. Well, they were at first… but I'll get to that later. The difference in mediums wasn't the only thing or even the first thing that was off about this particular artist.

I introduced myself to her as I normally did with new artists, being both confident and polite to be sure I gave a good first impression. However, when I greeted her and reached a hand out to shake hers, she just… laughed and shook her head at me.

"Oh, May, aren't you the practical joker today," she had said. I immediately felt a shiver down my spine at the familiarity of it from someone I was certain I'd never met before. I didn't want to seem rude, but I do think I had a rather clear look of confusion on my face.

She explained… or rather, reminded me, that her name was Nicole, though she still seemed convinced I was playing some sort of trick on her pretending to not recognize her. It clicked immediately when she said the name "Nicole" who the woman was, or at least who she was claiming to be. Nicole was one of Jane's long time friends, that I knew for certain, but the woman standing in front of me was not Nicole.

Nicole had long, blonde hair that was always neatly wound into a high bun. This woman's hair was cropped into a stark, black bob. And sure, maybe this woman could have gotten a cut and dye job since I'd seen her a month or so before. I would have believed that, had everything else about her not looked so wrong. Her nose was a different shape entirely, her eyes a bright blue instead of what I thought I remembered to be hazel.

As a self portrait artist, I typically study my own face, but I'd like to think I'm pretty familiar with the way others look and I'm good at recognizing their appearances. Yes, people's looks can change due to plastic surgery, aging, what have you, but… well, I guess that's why I'm here, right? To get a second opinion? I mean, I'm not mad. At least I still don't think so… it's getting harder and harder to tell, considering nobody else has believed me.

I do have other reasons to explain how different she was. You see, Nicole Olsen is a renowned sculptor, not a painter. She always has been since I've known her. I wouldn't judge a change in mediums, if she just decided she wanted to take up painting, but when installing her work, I noticed her signage. Her labels and signage for her work, her bio paragraph, all stated that she had specialized in painting throughout her entire career.

I tried to talk to Jane about this. I even spoke to random gallery patrons, anyone who seemed keen to talking about the artist or was a fan of hers, to see if anyone remembered Nicole the way I did. So far, no one has. I've tried to spend most of my time convincing myself I overreacted or that I've suffered some small brain damage that I didn't recall happening.

My concerns about Nicole and the paintings were reignited just about a week ago, when a man came in just before close to observe her work. He made me uneasy, though I couldn't really describe to you why if I tried. He wasn't a creep or anything like that. He was actually quite respectful and didn't linger past close, given I was a woman working alone in a gallery.

He spoke with an accent I still can't quite place, talking to me about Nicole and her work. Lamenting about the beauty of a portrait and how much it could tell you about a person. The same old stuff I was used to from art critics or fans of art who didn't actually create much themselves, but wanted to sound like they knew what they were talking about.

He asked me a lot of questions about Nicole after that, most of which were more personal than I knew how to answer. I got the impression that maybe, like Jane, he was a old friend of hers. He turned to leave pretty shortly after that, but not before giving me a last word of advice that still makes my hair stand on end. "Don't lose yourself in here."

The man himself was… odd, sure, but once his presence was gone, everything felt suddenly cold. Despite the summer weather, there was a chill radiating through my entire body. I was completely and utterly alone in the gallery, so I chalked it up to that. Sometimes the gallery was more unsettling at closing time. We close in the evening time, but even despite this, it was so… dark outside. The only light came from the dimly lit gallery, which we only keep so dim for the aesthetic. But please know, you have to understand, the paintings each have a spotlight and are very well lit no matter the time of day. I'm not crazy, and I know what I saw when I looked at those paintings.

I didn't think much of it at first, if I'm being honest. I had walked past these paintings hundreds of times now, so I wasn't really giving them much attention. I was doing some last minute cleaning up, taking care of recycling some old boxes, when I walked past the exhibit again and I noticed it, just out of the corner of me eye.

The first painting that you walk past, the very first of the series, appeared to be a painting of… my own face. I had been the one to hang up these paintings. I had been the one to perfectly orchestrate the set-up of this exhibit. I need to make it clear… there had never been a portrait of anyone who looked even remotely close to myself.

All of the people I had seen depicted in this series were quite unique in appearance. I don't mean this to be down on myself, but I'm rather plain as far as features go. I have short brown hair and and a soft face, so it was unexpected to say the least. I nearly thought it was a photograph at first, it was so hyperrealistic. Even down to the mole on my cheek.

I really tried to convince myself that this was a trick of the light. There was just… no conceivable way this painting, that I was pretty sure was originally of a black man with a far more angular face, was now… well… me. I even checked the title piece to the right of it, and clear as day, it read "May Springfield."

I really did everything to convince myself it wasn't real. I blinked over and over, I pinched myself, I tried the lights. But you have to understand that no matter what I've tried, this painting is… well, I guess there's more to it than just that. I can prove that this wasn't just some figment of my imagination.

I tried to ignore it at first and pretend it was, though. I carried on with my cleaning up, intentionally avoided looking at any of the paintings, and tossed the remaining boxes in the bin outside. When I came back into the building the second time, though, it was still there. It was still me.

I decided I had to do it. I had to have a look at the rest of the paintings. I had a strange feeling creeping up my spine of what I would see, and unfortunately, it was so much worse than what I could have imaged. The second painting was nearly identical. I say nearly, because I observed this painting for quite some time. I was horrified, of course, but a part of me couldn't help but be entranced by it all. Maybe it's a bit vain, but I paint myself all the time, so it felt only natural to observe those same features I analyze all the time.

The mole on this painting was missing, one of what I thought was the only more unique aspects about myself. Everything else was just the same as it had been, and the label beside this painting continued to say my name, just as the other had before. So I kept going down the line of paintings, and I found a very similar pattern. Each painting was of myself, yet a feature of my face would be removed each time, until I reached the last one. My name as the title, still beside the final painting, but there were no features at all. I was staring back at a head with no face.

I finally screamed. I mean… of course I did, I think anyone would. I scrambled to the office to find my things, and I'm not even sure if I turned off the lights when I left that gallery. I'm not even sure if I locked up that night at all. Not that it mattered. When I came in the next morning, the lights were off and the door was locked, same procedure as any other morning.

I have tried to put this behind me, really, convince myself this was all a dream. When I look at the paintings, when I've tried to get Jane or Nicole to look, they've convinced me they're the same paintings as ever, but I know they're not.

All of these paintings look like me. They did, anyway. Now they are all that same, blank head with no face. Everyone tells me I look the same, tells me I'm overreacting, but I know what I saw. And I know what I see. When I look in the mirror… I have no face. It started slowly at first, I'd lose one feature after another, until now… there's nothing left. I'm not really sure what you see, what others see. No one's ever been scared of me, or treated me differently, but I know what I see.

I can barely picture myself anymore in my mind. I tried working on my next piece for my own self portrait series, but no matter what I try, there is a painting of a featureless face staring back at me. I should've listened to the man who came in that night. I can't describe it, but it feels like these paintings are waiting to… rebuild me, somehow. I'm only here as my last resort because I hope there's a way to stop it.

Chapter Text

10th October, 2005

I saw a man get buried alive in the sand. I know how that must sound, but it’s true. I’ve tried so hard to get somebody, anybody, to believe me, but there’s no record of this man or this incident existing. Even with what little information I had about him, I've tried to look him up to no avail.

Regardless, I’m here because this is what you guys do. No matter how insane a story may sound to you, you take it all and you put it somewhere so that means you have to listen to me and maybe believe me to some extent. Well, I guess, I'm also here because they're making me too. Still, you guys seem to be the only ones that have sense that I've spoken with so far.

I’ll start with how I got to this point. I was on holiday with my family this past summer. It has been a particularly rough year for us, with some serious death in the family and a job termination, among other things. Despite all of that, we manage to scrape up the funds to go on holiday together. It was myself, my wife, and our two twin daughters. Neither my wife nor the kids saw this… incident. If they had, maybe I wouldn’t be so alone now.

Anyway, we were at Brighton beach on our holiday. Very cliche trip, I know, but I had a friend of a friend that hooked me up with a good deal on a hotel, and for it being one of the busier times of year, I couldn't pass it up.

It started on our second night. We were all relaxing for a bit, myself and my wife sitting on the beach while my daughters built a sandcastle nearby, before deciding to call it an evening and go back to our hotel. Once we had gotten the kids to sleep, my wife and I decided we were quite tired ourselves, so we collapsed for bed pretty much immediately.

Now, I usually am a pretty good sleeper, I would say almost frighteningly so. I tend to pass out right away, and be difficult to wake up at times due to how heavy I sleep. I say this because it’s still shocking to me how much that has changed since that night. I woke up some point in the middle of the night with a start to a tapping on the window of our hotel. I did go and investigate the sound and it seemed to be nothing. Maybe a bird, or some kids causing a stir late in the night, since we were on the first floor.

Nothing seemed all that frightening, at least I didn’t think so, but I found myself unable to go back to sleep. I was tossing and turning. I even woke my wife at one point, who complained and grumbled and found herself drifting off again after a moment. I, however, found myself in a panic, and I wasn’t quite sure why. At some point, I'm not sure what time, I did manage to drift at least for a little while.

But when I woke up? I wasn’t in my bed. I was… somewhere on the beach. My feet had certainly been carrying me somewhere, but I couldn’t figure out exactly where. I was clearly some distance from the hotel. Luckily, I had my phone on me and was able to determine my location. I had walked nearly 3 miles from the oceanfront nearest our hotel.

I’ve never been a sleepwalker. I'm not particularly close with my family, but it isn’t something that runs in the family to my knowledge. I’m not entirely sure if sleepwalking is even a hereditary trait or not. At that point, I was less surprised when I woke up a little bit frightened, due to the fact I'd managed to walk almost an hour's distance in my sleep without once stirring.

I, of course, started my walk back to the hotel. I felt a proper mess, my bare feet coated in layers of sand. The bottom of my pyjamas seemed to be musty and damp, as though I had walked towards the low tide at one point, so I just rolled up the legs of my trousers and carried on.

I noticed that, as I made it back to the area of beach nearest our hotel, the sun was starting to rise. I'd never seen the sun rise on the beach before. It was a beautiful sight to behold, perhaps the last memory I can hang onto when things used to be so bright, so warm and inviting. That vast expanse of pink-orange clouds enveloping the light of the sun, almost as though it were peeking out and slowly waking up with everybody else.

Back in the room, I took a shower, rinsed my trousers and hung them to dry. All that time passed and I managed to still be back in bed before anybody else had even woken. Of course, it was only shortly after that everybody was up and ready for the day. Our twins are only 5, so they still have that rambunctious energy to them, and they were very excited for their next day at the beach.

Everything has been perfectly wonderful that day, same as before. This day, we had decided to travel a few miles to a nearby pier, and I noticed something that gave me a start. Somehow, without realizing, I had been walking in the direction of my late-night sleepwalking escapade. Near the pier in the newfound daylight, I noticed there was a rocky area nearby, the entrance to a cave. Just a guess, since I was in a daze and relying on only moonlight the night before, I had almost made it there. I feel it goes without saying, I was innately curious to check it out. I think anyone would be, but between spending quality time with my family and trying to chide myself that I was on holiday to relax, I decided against it.

I found myself in a very similar predicament that night. It had been an exhausting day with a lot of walking and yet, I still couldn’t sleep again. I started thinking about the cave. I wondered if, in my subconscious, I had been drawn to it somehow. I knew it would be stupid of me to go investigate so late in the night with nobody knowing where I was, but still.

Clearly, whatever they say about dreams connecting to whatever you were thinking of before sleep must be true in some way. I’m not sure when I fell asleep again, but the next time I woke up, it was dark and damp. My pyjamas did nothing to protect me from the cold that had made its home in my skin. I hoped for a moment that I was dreaming all of this, that maybe even last night had been a dream too, but my trousers still hanging to dry somewhere miles away over a hotel shower told me otherwise.

I had made it to the cave this time, that goes with that question. I was in a panic again, the same way I had woken the last few times. This time I had more reason to be panicked, given I was in an unknown cave miles away from my hotel. If memory served me, I was at least near civilization. I just had to find my way out. I admittedly was still curious, and wanted to know what had me drawn to it, but I needed to scope out my exit first.

It didn't take much walking before I realized I was relatively deep within this cave, wandering aimlessly through random paths. I'm not much of an explorer, but I figured if I kept walking in one direction, eventually I would be able to find my way out, right? My phone was rather inconveniently dead this time, so I had no way of contacting anybody, but even if I did, I don’t imagine there would’ve been any signal.

There were a lot of sharp rocks surrounding me. I'm not familiar with the differences between stalactites or stalagmites, but I can at least confidently say there were both at every turn. The sounds of dripping water nearby permeated my ears, a constant reminder of where I was. Not to mention the sand. So, so much bloody sand everywhere. Yes, I know, it was a cave on the beach, but I had never in my life felt so suffocated by sand. I felt consumed in the sand and the rocks and the cold, wet expanse of black nothingness.

I wasn’t sure how long I walked. I didn’t know how long I was trapped in this cave. I worried about my wife and my daughters, and if they had wondered where I was yet. Would I ever be back? I figured, or at least hoped, it must have still been dark outside. Still, the longer I walked, I had the sinking feeling I had just traveled deeper and deeper within the cave.

Finally, I saw a source of light at the end of one of the diverging tunnels I had just made my way through. The light came from a torch, but not like a torch with batteries. One of those actual flaming torches, like you seen in the movies. Once I got close enough, I could make out the young man holding it. He was tall, with dark hair. It was hard to make out many details about him, even with torch light, but he seemed almost… surprised to see me there.

I didn’t have much time to react or say anything to the man. I wanted to ask for his name, to ask if he knew about the cave, if he was drawn there too, but he yanked my arm to pulled me away from the tsunami of sand that was coming from behind me.

Somehow I had never noticed the sand following me until then, but now both of us were blocked by a wall of sand that stopped inches before me. The man swore, kicking a nearby rock in frustration. He had been trying to go in that direction, which made me think I had been going the wrong way after all.

I started to ask him for more information. Really it probably all came out in a panicked rush of persistent shouting, but the man seemed to realize something else entirely and ignored me. He did cover a hand over my mouth, though, and in that moment I felt like suddenly my mouth was full of that sand. I admit I had to check, there wasn't actually sand in my mouth, but whatever he had done kept my throat tight, raw and silent.

He started heading in the only forward direction now, gesturing for me to follow. I found myself trusting him easily enough. I mean, it couldn’t really get much worse than being trapped, so why not follow the stranger that had the only source of light I had seen so far? He seemed to know where he was going, that or he walked with a confidence enough to make me believe he did.

He was silent the entire way, and I started to have the sinking feeling that there was something we needed to be quiet from. We maneuvered around the jagged rocks well enough, but I didn't want to know the state that my bare feet were in from all the rushing around.

It felt too good to be true when I saw the orangey-pink glow at the end of the final tunnel we had entered, the sunrise of outside on the horizon. The man didn't look happy or in any way relieved, however. He turned to me, and spoke to me for the second time that night, asking "if I'd heard her." I didn't know what he was talking about, so I simply shook my head.

For the first time since meeting, I noticed this man's confidence waver. Seeing his fear—well—he was clearly older than my girls obviously, but he still seemed so young, and it instantly reminded me of the moments where I had to save them from the monsters under their beds. The only difference was, I was relatively certain whatever he'd heard was real.

Same as earlier, there wasn't much time to react to his words because when I turned to look at him, I saw the avalanche of sand hurtling towards us. This time it was me grabbing onto his hand and running, the torch abandoned. I’ve never been anywhere near an avalanche before, but I imagine it would’ve sounded something like this, the sand roaring in my ears, all around me.

I still wish I could have done more in that moment for the man, I really tried. We were both afraid, naturally, but there was something more there, in his panic. The panic was justified when I reached the end of the tunnel and I felt the sharp tug of resistance on my hand. I hadn't looked back at any point—I was too afraid to try—but I turned to find him being pulled away from me.

The sand entombed this man. I don't have a better way to describe it, really, other than it pulled him in like an embrace, and the last thing I saw was the unbridled fear in his eyes before I collapsed into the bed of wet rock directly outside of the cave's entrance.

That's how I was found by paramedics. I was checked for multiple injuries, mostly to my feet, the main story being I went mad and walked along the less public areas of the beach, searching for danger. In a way, I suppose that's not entirely untrue, but they were never able to find the cave and no one believed me that there had ever been a cave there.

I burnt a hole through my savings, just to keep going back to Brighton beach, searching for the cave that doesn't seem to exist anymore. In the past few months I lost my wife, I lost custody of my girls, no longer fit to be a husband or a parent.

I can't say I blame them, really. They're right. The sand has consumed me. Before they sent me away, I would spend my nights on the beach, trying to encase myself in the beds of sand. It never worked, someone always found me before she could, this mystery woman the man had told me about. I tried to explain that I wasn't homeless or anything, but they always stopped me anyway. No one ever understands. Maybe you will, though. Maybe you could convince them to take me with you to the beach. We can go be one with the sand together.