He was following the trace.
It was there, red, thin, almost timid against the black floor. He watched it stretch out ahead of him and tried not to think too hard about what it was or where it came from. He'd figured out pretty quickly that thinking here was useless - the more he thought, the less he understood, and the less he understood the worse he felt. So he stopped. Simply. He pushed his thoughts aside and walked.
It happened sometimes in real life - emptying his head completely, thinking about nothing, just existing for a few minutes. It was restful usually.
Here it was different. Here it was too easy.
His thoughts left. Then the void around him went blurry. Then he couldn't feel his feet on the floor anymore.
He hadn't felt the transition.
There was a light.
Far ahead in the dark - a small warm light, orange, swaying gently. Not like the large motionless light sources he'd seen since the beginning. This one moved. This one was close.
A lantern.
He felt something loosen in his chest. A light that moved meant something was holding it. Something - or someone. He picked up his pace, eyes fixed on it. For the first time since he'd been here he felt like he was walking toward something real.
The lantern stopped.
He stopped too.
It turned toward him.
It wasn't someone. He didn't know what it was - he didn't have the words for it, no category to put what he was seeing into. Just a mass, enormous, holding that lantern and looking at him now. Maybe it had been looking at him from the start. Its eyes - if you could call them eyes - were fixed on him with an intention he felt throughout his entire body before he even understood it.
He took a step back.
The thing moved forward.
- What the-
He ran.
Or he tried to. His legs were moving but something was wrong - his feet were too heavy, too slow, like they'd been cast in something viscous he couldn't see. He knew this phenomenon - sleep paralysis atonia, the brain paralyzing the muscles during REM sleep so you don't act out physically. He knew that. It didn't help.
- I can't run. Why can't I run.
The thing behind him wasn't running either. It just moved forward, steadily, regularly, and the lantern swayed in the dark with each step it took. He turned for a fraction of a second.
It was right behind him.
He didn't have time to scream.
He woke up.
Not gradually - all at once, like a spring snapping loose. He launched off the floor with a force he didn't know he had, landed on his feet, stumbled back three steps, arms out in front of him, breath gone.
Nothing.
The void. The black floor. The motionless lights in the distance.
He stayed like that for a long time, arms still raised, heart hitting too hard and too fast. It took him several seconds to understand he was awake. Several more to understand the thing was gone.
He'd been dreaming. He knew that. But he hadn't felt himself fall asleep -: not for a second, not for a fraction of one. He was walking, he was thinking about nothing, and suddenly he was there with that lantern and that thing staring at him. No transition. No warning.
He sat down on the floor, hands over his face.
Five minutes. He stayed like that for five minutes, waiting for his heart rate to come back down to something reasonable. He tried to analyze the dream, to understand what it meant, why the lantern, why that thing. He gave up quickly. You don't choose your dreams. He'd only had two or three real nightmares in years - the kind that stay stuck to you for a few minutes after waking. This one was different. This one had been so real he'd launched off the floor when he woke up.
He looked down.
The red trace was there. Still there - but different. Less blurry. More visible than before, like it had gained intensity while he slept. He couldn't explain why. He didn't try.
What was occupying him was something else.
If he stopped thinking he fell asleep. Without feeling it, without deciding it. And if time didn't pass here - which he'd figured out pretty quickly given the 6:07 frozen on his phone - then how long could a dream last in a place where time didn't exist? An hour? A year? An eternity?
The thought moved through him like something cold.
An eternal dream. Falling asleep here and never waking up -stuck in that dark, with that lantern, with that thing, forever.
He stood up.
He had to stay awake. He had to keep thinking, keep moving, keep doing something - anything. He couldn't afford to let his head go empty anymore.
He looked at the red trace ahead of him, a little sharper than before.
And he followed it.