He was called the boy who walked in dreams, though no one could recall where he'd come from or when they'd first heard of him. Parents warned their children to never sleep with the windows open, to always check under the bed, and to make sure they were tucked in tight, as if that would keep the boy out.
The first signs of his presence were always small, hard to notice—footsteps in the hall when the house was silent, doors that creaked open by themselves, the faintest rustle of the bed covers at the edge of the night.
But those who felt it in their bones—those few—knew the truth: the boy was already there, already moving between shadows. He watched, waited, and he took.
The house was always quiet when he arrived, so quiet it seemed to fold into itself. The parents never saw it, never even suspected it. They slept, oblivious, while the boy worked.
It was always at night, always when the child was deep enough in slumber, their breathing steady and soft. The boy slipped into their rooms through cracks too small for anyone to notice, into the world between waking and dreaming.
He wasn't like anything real; there was nothing human in the way he moved. He didn't have a face. The eyes that should have been there had long since gone, replaced with hollow sockets, endless dark.
His mouth, when it opened, didn't make sound—only black smoke, as if even the act of breathing was too much to bear.
There was no struggle. None of the children ever woke. He would lean down beside them, his fingers cold and pale, and touch their skin. His touch was the kind of cold that burned, the kind that made everything else feel distant, as if you were floating far away from your own body.
When he touched them, their bodies would stiffen, eyes opening wide and unseeing. They would be pulled out of the room, weightless, the world folding away like paper. The boy never had to force them. They followed him willingly, as though they were drawn to him like moths to a flame.
Once he had them, they would drift through a place no one could name. Some called it the Dreaming, others the Fold. But it was nothing more than an endless expanse, stretching on and on, full of pale trees and pale skies. A place that promised eternal youth.
He would bring them there, where time did not exist. Where no one aged, no one grew tired, and no one was ever alone. The air was sweet with the scent of something like flowers, yet it never bloomed.
The children would walk for what felt like hours, days, weeks even, but they would never tire. The sun never set, and the moon never rose. It was a place of stillness.
There was nothing for them to do except explore. There were no animals, no people, only the trees. The trees stood like monuments, tall and unmoving, their leaves silken and pale, casting no shadows. When they reached out to touch them, the leaves would crumble into ash and dust.
And yet, the children would never leave. The boy never told them to stay. They simply did.
Over time, some of them began to forget the world they had come from—the homes, the streets, the warmth of a real embrace. They lost the memory of family, of parents who called their names, of the sound of their voices.
All they knew now was the boy. The boy and the world they walked through, forever.
But there were those few, those rare ones who couldn't forget. Who felt the ache of something missing deep inside. They would ask the boy, "When can we go back?" And he would turn to them, his empty eyes darkening. His voice, when it came, was soft and hollow, like wind blowing through dead trees.
"You are here now. And here, you stay."
And the children would be forced to accept it. Some cried, some whispered to each other, but none of them ever left.
There were always more children. The boy never had to wait long before new ones arrived—he would slip into their rooms and bring them to the place where nothing changed, where the clock had no hands, and the passage of time was but a cruel joke.
But as the years passed, the boy began to notice something strange. His own reflection started to fade. He would catch glimpses of himself in the endless pools of water that lay scattered across the land—ripples that would bend and twist, distorting what he saw.
It had started slowly, at first, just a brief flicker of nothing where there should have been something. But over time, the reflection grew more faint, more distant, until it was no longer there at all.
He tried to reach for it. He tried to hold onto it, but it slipped away like sand in the wind.
The emptiness inside him grew deeper, a hollow void that gnawed at him constantly. He had forgotten who he had once been, what he had once looked like, and where he had come from. All he knew now was this strange, unending place and the children who wandered it, forever young.
One evening, as he walked between the trees, his hand brushing lightly against the pale leaves, he heard the soft voice of one of the children—one of the older ones who had begun to understand the weight of their existence.
"When can we leave?" she asked. "We've been here for so long."
The boy froze, the cold in his chest tightening. He turned slowly, his empty eyes meeting hers.
"You will never leave," he said, his voice coming out as a low, rasping sound. "This is your home now."
The girl took a step back, eyes wide. "But why?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Why can't we go back?"
The boy's form flickered like a mirage, his edges blurring as if he were becoming part of the land itself. He didn't have an answer, not anymore. He didn't know why he had brought them here, or what he was supposed to do with them. All he knew was that he couldn't leave. Not now. Not ever.
The child turned away, her small shoulders shaking with tears. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, the boy felt something—a flicker of something deep within him. But it wasn't the warmth of emotion. It was cold, like the hollow space inside him had cracked open.
The boy turned away from her, his heart aching, though he could not feel it. He wandered deeper into the endless woods, searching for something he couldn't name. Something that might fill the emptiness inside him.
That's when he saw it.
A figure—tall, dark, and twisted, standing among the trees. A silhouette that seemed to stretch and warp, a reflection of the boy's own broken self. But this figure was no child. It was something older, something that had seen too much.
The boy felt his legs lock, his breath catching in his throat. The figure stepped forward, slow and deliberate, as if it had all the time in the world.
"You," the figure said, its voice deep and rumbling. "You took them."
The boy opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He wanted to speak, to explain, but there was nothing left inside him but the silence of the world.
The figure smiled, an expression that felt like a thousand years of suffering.
"You will join them now," it said.
The boy's eyes widened. He tried to run, but his legs would not move. His feet were rooted to the ground, bound by something darker than the night itself.
And as the figure reached for him, the boy realized the truth too late: the children had never been trapped. It was him. He had been the one trapped all along, forever and ever in a place without escape.
In a final, desperate moment, the boy screamed.
But no sound escaped his mouth.