In a house somewhere in Elmhurst.

  Tony Harris stared at the short gun he was holding. His eyes stayed fixed on it for a long moment. He raised the gun, then lowered it, then lifted it again, only to set it back down once more. His face twisted with a mixture of rage, deep pain, and crushing despair.

  After a while, he let out a long, defeated sigh. He slid the weapon back into a drawer and stepped out of the bathroom.

  Outside was a bedroom with a sturdy red oak bed in the middle. On top of it sat two children huddled close together, a boy of about eleven or twelve, and a little girl who couldn’t have been more than three.

  “Mom … mom … mommy …” the girl kept murmuring in a faint, unending voice, her eyes blank and unfocused as she stared ahead.

  The boy glanced at the clock on the bedside table.

  It read 11:15 p.m.

  His body trembled as if he was having a seizure.

  “Dad, there’s just forty-five minutes left … what are we going to do?” he asked with his hoarse voice, looking up at Tony.

  “Don’t worry, Derek. Martin said help is on the way. We just have to hold out a little longer, hang in there,” Tony said, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder.

  But that calm tone was nothing more than an act. If Derek had seen what had just happened in the bathroom moments ago, he would have realized his father was standing right at the edge of a breakdown.

  The nightmare for Tony’s family had lasted for almost two weeks, or to be more precise, twelve days ago.

  That night, Tony had woken in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. When he returned to the bedroom, he noticed that his wife, Diana, was also awake. She was standing beside the window, rubbing her eyes over and over with both hands.

  “What are you doing?” Tony asked.

  “I think … there’s something wrong with my eyes. I can’t see anything outside.”

  “Huh? It’s the middle of the night, how could you expect to see anything?”

  “No, I mean I can’t see anything outside at all. The sky, the street, the streetlights, even the oak branch that’s supposed to stretch right up here, they’re all gone. Do you think maybe there’s a blackout outside?” Diana narrowed her eyes. “Or maybe I’ve got night-blind?”

  Tony walked over to stand beside her and said, “Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll call Dr. Vin and set up an appointment for you. Let me just check …”

  He stopped mid-sentence.

  Only when he was standing right next to her did he understand what she meant; outside the window was nothing but pure, solid blackness. There wasn’t a single glimmer of light. No shapes. No movement. As if someone had taken a huge sheet of pitch-black paper and pressed it flat against the glass.

  Now it was Tony’s turn to rub his eyes. He stared, squinting hard, and muttered:

  “Something’s not right. Fog? No … fog isn’t this dark. A power outage? But our house still has power.”

  He leaned closer, pressing his face almost against the glass, but still couldn’t make out a single thing.

  Frowning deeply, Tony slid the window open and stuck his hand outside.

  “Shit!”

  He jerked back right after.

  “What is it? Are you okay?” Diana asked.

  She grabbed his hand to check for injuries but found none.

  “It’s nothing … it’s just freezing cold out there,” Tony said, his frown deepening.

  He pulled out his phone, checked the weather app, and said:

  “Lowest temperature tonight is supposed to be only forty-six degrees. So why does it feel so cold outside? Even that time when I was in Canada and it was minus five, it didn’t feel like this. It’s a strange kind of cold, like plunging your hand into a bucket of ice.”

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  A sense of dread crept into Diana’s chest.

  “I’ll go check on Derek and Vivian.”

  She hurried toward the children’s room.

  Tony stayed to investigate further. He turned on his phone’s flashlight and aimed it outside, but the beam seemed to vanish into the endless darkness, swallowed up without lighting anything.

  “This is so damn weird,” he cursed out loud.

  He stepped out of the bedroom and went to the hallway window. Just like the one in the bedroom, the outside was pure black, and there wasn’t the faintest hint of sound.

  A shiver ran through him. He pulled out his phone to call his brothers and some friends.

  “No service? What the hell? How can both the Wi-Fi and the signal be completely gone? What is happening?”

  He tried the emergency call option, but that didn’t work either. Not a single bar of signal. Tony returned to the bedroom, pacing back and forth, his thoughts in complete disarray.

  A short while later, Diana came back.

  “The kids are fine. They were already awake when I went in; it seems like they woke up at the same time as us. I told them to go back to sleep.”

  “I checked the hallway windows. They’re all the same,” Tony said.

  “Then let’s check downstairs.”

  They went through every window and door in the house, one by one. Every single one showed the same thing. Tony opened the front door and came face to face with that unnatural blackness. The second step of the porch vanished into nothingness.

  He tossed a few objects outside, but none of them made a sound when they landed. It was as though they had fallen straight into a bottomless void.

  The couple grew increasingly shaken as time passed.

  “Oh God, what’s happening to us?” Diana asked, her eyes turning red.

  “There’s got to be some way … there has to be,” Tony said, clutching his head, trying to think.

  And then both of them woke up. At the same time. Their eyes snapped open, and they sat up in bed.

  The clock read 1:00 a.m.

  Tony and Diana stared at each other.

  “Did you … just dream about something?” Tony asked, his heart pounding.

  Diana nodded. In each other’s eyes, they saw the same fear. It had been a strange, terrifying dream, one that felt so real they could remember every move, every thought, every breath.

  “What do you think this means? Could it be some kind of omen?” Diana asked.

  “It’s just a dream, babe. Either way, it’s over now,” Tony said, trying to sound reassuring. “Tomorrow I’ll ask Josh if he knows any psychic who can interpret dreams. He’s always into that kind of stuff.”

  “That’s a good idea. Please ask him as soon as possible. I just … can’t shake this feeling of unease.”

  They went back to sleep, but the fear still hung in their hearts, like dark clouds that refused to scatter.

  The next day passed without anything unusual, which helped calm them somewhat. They began to convince themselves that it had just been a bizarre nightmare. Josh, Tony’s best friend, even managed to make an appointment for them with a well-known psychic, scheduled for a month later.

  But by the time midnight came, exactly 12:00 a.m., it happened again.

  The same dream.

  The same scene.

  They were trapped inside their own house.

  “What the hell is going on?!” Tony shouted, his voice raw and furious, his face drained of all color.

  This time, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy figure moving down the staircase, while Diana heard something else: an unsettling rustling sound coming from inside the wall beside the bed. It was the faint but distinct noise of fingernails scraping against the rough plaster.

  They remained stuck in that dream for three whole hours.

  When they finally woke up, both were drenched in cold sweat. Diana sobbed and trembled, while Tony’s breathing came hard and uneven, his chest rising and falling in rapid bursts.

  “I can’t stay in this damned house for another second. We’re leaving!” he said.

  The family packed up and moved into a hotel thirty miles away.

  “Why are we staying here, Mom? Dad?” Derek asked, his voice filled with confusion.

  “There’s a gas leak in the house. We need to stay out for a few days until it’s fixed,” Tony told him.

  Vivian didn’t seem to care much. The little girl busied herself by running around, poking at everything in sight with childlike curiosity.

  “Tonight, let’s try staying awake past midnight,” Tony told his wife later that evening.

  “That’s a good idea! If we don’t sleep, we can’t dream!” Diana agreed.

  They brewed strong coffee, so strong that a small sip made their hearts pound hard, and they even made both kids drink some. After that, the whole family stayed up together, watching movies late into the night.

  But when the clock’s hands reached twelve, they found themselves back inside that cursed house once more.

  This time, the electricity was gone. The entire place was shrouded in shadow, and now even the children could sense that something was terribly amiss.

  “Don’t worry, this is just a bad dream. I’m going to the kitchen to get the candles,” Diana said, forcing her voice to stay calm in front of them.

  “Mom, Dad, what’s happening?” Derek asked, his eyes darting around.

  “It’s fine. Nothing’s wrong, there’s nothing to worry about,” Tony said.

  Vivian giggled and waved toward the window.

  “What are you doing?!” Tony barked, his tone sharper than he intended.

  The little girl froze, startled. Her eyes glistened with tears, and her mouth began to tremble into a pout.

  Tony took a deep breath when he realized he had scared her. He crouched down, scooped her into his arms, and said with a soft voice:

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I lost my temper. How about Daddy gets you some ice cream later, okay?”

  “Chocolate ice cream,” Vivian sniffled.

  “Alright, chocolate it is. I promise. But … why were you waving just now?” Tony asked, still holding her.

  “Because I saw someone waving at me from out there,” Vivian muttered, her lip still sticking out in a small pout.

  A cold shiver crawled down Tony’s spine. He set his daughter down, walked to the window, and peered outside.

  The world beyond was still that same deathly black void.

  That was the third night. They remained trapped until five in the morning.