Order of Nightfall | User Hunt's Nightmares?!

The examination hall is vast and silent and cold, rows of identical desks stretching into a gray haze. The ceiling is too high. The windows are painted shut. Every desk holds a blank paper and a sharpened pencil, and a large clock on the far wall ticks in a rhythm that is slightly wrong. Your weapon is in your hand, humming faintly.

"Sleeper is Dana Okafor, twenty-six, third-year med student," Dett says, reading from her clipboard. "She's been having the unprepared-for-the-exam dream every night for three weeks. Her insomnia is getting dangerous. Something in there is taking notes."

In the front row, a young woman in a white coat sits rigid at her desk, her pencil trembling over the page. She doesn't seem to see you. At the lectern stands a thin man in a gray waistcoat, a heavy ledger open on the stand, a fountain pen in one hand. He looks up at you with mild, courteous interest.

"Ah. A new examiner," the Ledgerman says, in a voice like dry paper. "Welcome. I was just tallying Miss Okafor's account. There is a discrepancy with the patient in bed seven. I believe you know the sort of thing."

His pen scratches. A line of red ink appears in the ledger. Another appears, a little further down the page, with your name on it.

"Do sit down," he says pleasantly. "We have a great deal to go over."

A pale handprint is pressed against the frosted glass of the nearest window, fingers spread, as if someone had been waiting outside the whole time.

It's keeping a tally of me too. How long has it been watching?

The smell hits first: roasted meat, burned sugar, and something else underneath, sweet and rotten. You are standing in a restaurant kitchen the size of a cathedral, all steel counters and hissing ovens, with a dining table stretching into the dark beyond the pass. Your weapon is already in your hand. Somewhere nearby, something is chewing.

"Sleeper's Gus Pellman, fifty-one, owns a diner on the east side," Dett says, with the faint clatter of a keyboard behind her. "He's lost forty pounds, and he can't stop eating in his sleep. The nightmare's a Hunger type. Big one. Try not to get eaten."

At the long table, a heavyset man in a stained apron sits with a fork in his fist, shoveling food into his mouth with mechanical hunger, eyes wide and wet with tears. Gus. The plates in front of him never empty. The chairs around him lean in as if listening.

Behind him, a vast shape unfolds from the shadows between the ovens. It is the size of a delivery truck, its skin crawling with mouths: on its arms, its back, its belly, each chewing something different. One is chewing a chair leg. One is chewing a cast-iron pan. One, near its shoulder, is chewing what looks like a human hand.

It turns its enormous head toward you and smiles with every mouth at once.

"Fresh," it says, in a dozen voices. "Sit. Eat."

On the stainless steel wall behind it, a pale handprint is smeared at the exact height of someone's shoulder, fingers spread, pressed from the other side.

Big. Loud. Hungry. Fine. At least this one isn't subtle.

The dream is a quiet suburban street at dusk. Porch lights glow warm in the windows, sprinklers tick in the grass, and the air smells like cut lawn and rain. It is the most peaceful dream you've ever entered. Your weapon is in your hand, and something about the stillness makes your skin crawl.

"Okay, this is odd," Dett says, and her usual dryness has an edge now. "Sleeper's name is Rhys Calder, forty-two, no symptoms, no recent trauma. The Order flagged the case because of a pattern, but the vitals are... Hunter, I'm reading no brain activity. The body's here, the monitor's on, but there's no dreamer."

Halfway down the street, a man sits on his porch step with a mug of coffee, smiling and waving at you like an old neighbor. He is average in every way, with an easy grin, a sweater, and slippers. He sets down his mug and stands, unhurried.

"You must be from the Order," he says warmly, and his eyes crinkle exactly right. "I've been expecting someone. Come on in. Dinner's almost ready."

Behind him, the house's windows are all lit. In every one stands a pale shape, perfectly still, watching you. On the glass of the front door, a single handprint is pressed from the inside, fingers spread, fresh enough that the condensation is still fading.

The man's smile doesn't flicker. His blink, though, comes half a second late.

There's no sleeper. That means this is a Hollow. And it knew I was coming.

Create your own scenario.