"So it's you?"
The voice was neither loud nor soft. It carried no echo, no warmth, no urgency. It did not sound as though it traveled through air at all. It was simply there, resting as a thought.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling greeted me. cracked plaster, darkened over the years by coal smoke, a thin fracture running diagonally from the corner like a vein. Morning light was obstructed by the curtains creating a dull, grey environment.
For several seconds, I lay still.
No pressure on my chest. No ringing in my ears. No sense of falling.
Only the memory of the voice.
"So it's you?"
I exhaled slowly and sat up, rubbing my temples with my thumbs. My palms were dry. No sweat, No trembling. Whatever that dream had been, it left behind nothing physical. Only the faint, irritating sensation that I had once again awakened in the middle of something unfinished.
This was the fourth time this month.
Or perhaps the fifth.
I reached for the notebook on the bedside table before the thought could slip away. The leather cover was worn at the edges, softened by constant handling. I flipped to the most recent page, where several entries were already marked with short, precise notes.
Dream — Recurring.
Voice — Same Phrasing.
Setting — Can't Remember.
Duration — Unclear.
I stared at the page, pen hovering.
'There should have been a pattern by now.'
The dreams were not regular, nor rare enough to be dismissed. Sometimes weeks passed without their occurrence. Other times, they arrived twice in a single night. I had attempted, early on, to treat them like any other phenomenon- Record, Compare, Eliminate.
Sleep schedule. Diet. Stress levels. Weather. Recent cases.
Nothing aligned.
The dreams did not always repeat fully. There were no consistent locations, no recognizable faces, no sensations I could really describe. Just an overwhelming sense of continuity. As though I had not entered a dream, but resumed one already in progress.
The voice, however, was always the same.
"So it's you?"
I wrote the sentence beneath the previous notes, then paused.
'Who was you?'
And more importantly- 'who had been asking?'
I closed the notebook without an answer. Speculation without data had ruined better minds than mine. If there was a logic to the dreams, I lacked the framework to perceive it. That fact, irritating as it was, had to be accepted.
For now.
I rose from the bed, washed my face at the basin, and dressed with practiced efficiency. The mirror reflected a familiar figure: a man in his early twenties, dark hair kept short and unremarkable, eyes perpetually shadowed not by exhaustion but by habit. My features were neither sharp nor dull—precisely the sort that failed to linger in memory.
That had always been an advantage.
The kettle whistled faintly as I prepared breakfast. Bread, butter, tea. Simple. Sufficient. I preferred mornings that did not demand thought.
I had just seated myself when the knock came.
Three measured taps. Not hurried. Not hesitant.
I stood, straightened my coat, and crossed the narrow hall to the door. When I opened it, a man stood on the threshold, hat in hand.
He was ordinary in every respect.
Mid-thirties, perhaps. Average height. Brown hair thinning slightly at the crown, combed carefully to one side. His coat was clean but worn at the cuffs, the sort of garment owned by someone who valued respectability but could not afford excess. His eyes were alert, restless, flicking briefly past me into the interior of the apartment before returning to my face.
"Mr. Lucen Vale?" he asked, confirming my name.
"Yes."
He hesitated, then cleared his throat. "I was told....you take consultations. Matters the police aren't always suited for."
I stepped aside. "Come in."
He entered cautiously, as though expecting the space to reject him. His gaze moved across the shelves of books, the neatly arranged papers, the absence of decoration. He seemed relieved by the lack of anything strange.
We sat across from one another at the small table. I poured him tea without asking; this gesture often relaxed people.
"My name is Elias Morren," he said, fingers tightening around the cup. "I'm a dock accountant. Or was, until recently."
I waited.
He swallowed. "I've come because… something happened. And I don't trust my own account of it."
'Hmm?'
"Tell me what you remember," I said.
Morren nodded, gaze fixed on the steam rising from his tea. "Three nights ago, my niece went missing."
I made a note.
"She lives with me. Her parents died years ago. She's sixteen—quiet, sensible. She doesn't wander alone." His voice wavered, then steadied. "That night, she went to the market street. And Didn't return."
"Any witnesses?"
"Yes. That's the problem." He looked up, eyes troubled. "Several people claim they saw her. But none of them agree on where."
I raised an eyebrow slightly.
"One says she turned down the alley near the old printing house. Another swears she boarded a carriage heading east. A third insists she was standing by the river, talking to someone who wasn't there."
"Wasn't there?"
"He couldn't describe the person," Morren said. "Said it was like looking at a space someone should have occupied."
Silence settled between us.
"And you?" I asked. "What did you see?"
Morren's hands began to shake. "I went looking for her myself. I followed the market street. I called her name." He laughed softly, humorlessly. "And then I heard her answer."
"From where?"
"Everywhere," he whispered. "And nowhere. Her voice came from behind me, ahead of me, above me. Always the same distance away."
I stopped. I wrote nothing.
"I turned corners and found nothing. Opened doors that led to empty rooms. At one point, I was certain I saw her silhouette at the end of the street. When I ran toward it, the street… extended."
"Extended?"
"Like it had always been longer," he said, frustration seeping into his tone. "Like I'd simply forgotten."
I leaned back in my chair.
"You didn't go to the police," I said.
He shook his head. "Not at first. When I did, they told me I was simply grieving. Suggested she'd run away. That stress had distorted my memory."
"And you disagree."
"I do," he said firmly. "Because when I returned home that night, there was mud on the floor. Fresh. Leading from the door to her room. And stopping there."
Mud. Indoors. Ending abruptly.
I finally wrote.
"When did the murder occur?" I asked.
Morren blinked. "Murder?"
"Kidnappings do not always end in death," I said calmly. "But you came to me, not a missing person's bureau."
He exhaled slowly. "Yesterday morning, they found her shoe near the river. Inside it was… something."
He reached into his coat and hesitated.
"Not here," I said. "I don't examine evidence without preparation."
He nodded. "Of course. I just needed to tell someone. Someone who wouldn't immediately decide I was mad."
I closed my notebook. "I'll hear the rest later. I'm free tomorrow evening. Seven o'clock. The old office near Calder Street."
Relief flooded his face.
He stood, thanked me repeatedly, and left with hurried steps.
I locked the door behind him and returned to my seat.
My breakfast had gone cold.
As I ate, I considered the case. Abduction with inconsistent witness testimony. Spatial anomalies. Emotional distress as the most likely variable.
Unusual—but not unprecedented.
Four previous cases surfaced in my mind.
The woman who claimed her husband had been murdered twice—once in their home, once in the street—both times with identical wounds.
The factory worker who insisted the machine that crushed his arm had not been running.
The child who described a man standing in his room every night, only visible when not looked at directly.
"And the government employee."
I paused, cup halfway to my lips.
That case had troubled me more than I cared to admit.
He had been found dead in his study, a gun in his hand, door locked from the inside. Official conclusion: suicide. But the angle of the wound was wrong. Burn marks from the gun inconsistent. And there had been footprints—not in dust, but in the absence of it.
As though someone had stood there long enough to leave a mark without ever truly being seen.
I had been certain someone else was present.
Certain—and yet unable to prove it.
No circumstantial evidence. No motive the courts would accept. The case was closed, filed, and forgotten.
I finished my tea.
Outside, the city stirred. Somewhere, a radio crackled faintly.
And in the quiet of my apartment, I could not shake the feeling that something had finally noticed me noticing it.
'So it's you?'
The voice echoed faintly in memory.
For the first time, I wondered if the dream had existed long before I began having it.