Chapter 2: Echoes on Set

Chapter 2: Echoes on Set

The morning light, thin and grey, did little to dispel the oppressive atmosphere of Elkwood Asylum. It merely traded the menacing shadows of night for the stark reality of decay. Elle woke with the phantom sensation of falling, her muscles aching as if from a long run. For a blissful, fleeting second, she believed it had all been a nightmare. Then she looked at her wrist.

The sigil was still there.

In the daylight, it was fainter, a delicate, silver-blue tracery just beneath the surface of her skin, like a tattoo made of captured moonlight. She scrambled out of the cot and into the small, grimy washroom, scrubbing at her wrist with a coarse bar of soap until her skin was red and raw. The glowing eye remained, mocking her frantic efforts. It was a part of her.

She pulled the sleeve of her dark jacket down tight, concealing the mark. Her desire was simple, primal: she wanted to erase the last twelve hours, to walk onto set and be the professional actress Liam needed, the one who could carry his film. She couldn't do that if she was losing her mind.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Liam noted, not looking up from his shot list as she grabbed a stale bagel from the craft services table. He was already in director mode, a headset around his neck, his focus absolute.

“Just a bad dream,” she mumbled, her throat tight. How could she even begin to explain? I met a shadow monster in a dream dimension and it gave me a magic tattoo. He would either think she was trying to get out of the shoot or he’d call a psychiatrist. Both options were career suicide.

“Use it,” he said, finally glancing up. His intense gaze swept over her, clinical and assessing. “You look haunted. That’s perfect for Catherine. Let’s not waste it.” He clapped his hands together, his voice booming through the cavernous hall. “Alright, people! Chapel! Let’s make a movie!”

The chapel was at the heart of the asylum, a place of last-resort faith for the hopelessly lost. Dust lay thick as snow on the splintered pews. Light struggled through a large, shattered stained-glass window, casting a kaleidoscope of broken colors across the floor. It was beautiful and deeply unsettling.

“Okay, Elle,” Liam directed, positioning her at the far end of the central aisle. “This is the turning point for Catherine. She’s been in Elkwood for a week, the isolation is getting to her. She comes here seeking solace, but instead, she feels the asylum’s true nature. She feels it watching. Hunting.”

Elle’s blood ran cold.

“There’s a prop knife on the altar,” he continued, oblivious to her internal panic. “She picks it up, a reminder of her past trauma. The weight of it, combined with this place… it breaks her. She turns, she runs. I want raw, primal fear. I want the audience to feel her terror. Got it?”

She nodded numbly, her gaze fixed on the long, shadowed aisle. It was too similar. The impossible, stretching hallway from her dream superimposed itself over the chapel. The obstacle wasn't just remembering her lines; it was keeping her own very real terror from consuming her performance entirely.

“Action!”

Elle walked forward, her boots echoing in the unnatural silence. Her character, Catherine, was supposed to be hesitant, afraid. Elle didn’t have to act. Every creak of the floorboards, every rustle of wind through the broken window, was the slithering, dragging sound from her nightmare. The camera dolly, rolling smoothly beside her, was the patient advance of the shadow creature.

She reached the altar. The prop knife lay on the dusty velvet. It was supposed to be lightweight rubber, but when her fingers closed around the hilt, an impossible, biting cold seeped into her bones. The weight of it was all wrong—heavy, solid, real. A jolt of pure, undiluted fear shot up her arm. This wasn't a prop. She knew, with a certainty that defied all logic, that this blade was lethally sharp.

Her carefully constructed composure shattered. A genuine gasp escaped her lips. Her eyes, wide with terror, darted towards the chapel doors, expecting to see the formless, swirling darkness manifest there.

She dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor with a heavy, metallic ring that was definitely not rubber. Stumbling back, her heel caught on the hem of her jeans. She fell, catching herself on the edge of a pew, her breath coming in ragged sobs. She improvised, channeling the raw panic that was threatening to drown her.

“It’s here,” she whispered, her voice trembling, looking directly into the camera lens. “It’s real.”

“Cut!” Liam’s voice was electric with excitement. “My God, Elle, that was perfect! That was it! The stumble, the line—genius! Don’t move a thing, we’re going again from the top. Let’s get another take with that exact energy!”

She stared at him, bewildered. Her moment of absolute terror, her brush with something dangerously real, was being praised as a brilliant performance. The chasm between her reality and theirs had just become terrifyingly wide. She was completely, utterly alone in this.

During the break, while the crew reset the lighting, the tension in Elle’s body refused to subside. She leaned against a cold stone pillar, rubbing her wrist through her jacket, the sigil beneath a constant, tingling reminder.

Suddenly, a clatter of metal echoed through the chapel. Ben, the lanky sound engineer, had dropped his boom pole. He was staring at his headphones, which he’d ripped from his head, his face pale.

“Ben? You good?” the cinematographer asked.

“The whispers…” Ben stammered, his eyes wide and unfocused. “I heard them. In the static. Something… something hungry.” He clutched his temples, stumbling sideways. “And the shadows… they’re moving when I’m not looking. They’re crawling up the walls.”

He let out a strangled cry and collapsed, his body convulsing on the dusty floor. His screams were choked, terrified pleas, his eyes rolling back in his head as he thrashed. “No, no, get it away! The dark! It’s so hungry!”

Chaos erupted. The crew rushed forward, someone yelled to call a medic, and Liam began shouting for everyone to give him space. But Elle was frozen, her blood like ice in her veins. She recognized this. She recognized the words, the frantic, soul-deep terror in his eyes. It was her nightmare, leaking out into the waking world. He had been targeted, too. This wasn't just about her anymore.

As Liam knelt beside Ben, his own face now a mask of fear and concern, Elle’s vision flickered.

The world dissolved for a moment into a haze, and the familiar, translucent blue screen materialized before her eyes, visible only to her. New text typed itself out with clinical indifference to the human drama unfolding just a few feet away.

[Alert: Threat Contagion Detected.] [Analysis: Entity of Somnus is marking additional hosts.] [Multiple synaptic pathways compromised.] [Recommendation: Quarantine protocol advised.]

Contagion. The word struck her with the force of a physical blow. This was a disease, spreading from mind to mind through their dreams. She looked from Ben’s twitching form to the concerned faces of her friends, her colleagues. She looked at Liam, who was trying to keep Ben from hurting himself.

They were all just batteries, waiting to be plugged in. And she was the only one who could see the warning.