Chapter 4: Echoes in the Waking World

Chapter 4: Echoes in the Waking World

The waking world ripped him back with the violence of a drowning man breaking the surface. Elias gasped, his body jerking with a convulsive shudder. He wasn’t in the boat. He was in his armchair, the one with the springs that dug into his back. The television was still on, its screen now a hissing field of static snow. Grey light, the color of a dirty dishcloth, filtered through the window. Morning. He had survived the night.

But the stare followed him. He could still feel it, the weight of that unseen, ancient gaze from beneath the cowl. It was a pressure at the back of his neck, an itch between his shoulder blades. He had spent an eternity—or perhaps only an hour—frozen under that silent, terrifying scrutiny before sleep had mercifully released its grip.

He pushed himself out of the chair, his joints cracking in protest. His head pounded from a mixture of exhaustion and cheap caffeine. A wave of dizziness made him grab the arm of the chair to steady himself. He needed to get to his bed, to feel the solid reality of his mattress.

He stopped dead at the bedroom door. A smell, thick and cloying, drifted out to meet him. It was the scent of the oily sea.

With a sense of mounting dread, he stepped into the room. The bed wasn't just rumpled from his earlier panicked awakening. The sheets, where he had been lying, were visibly damp, clinging to the mattress in a dark, wet patch. It wasn't sweat. Sweat dried. This was a slick, greasy dampness that shimmered faintly in the weak morning light.

He reached out a trembling hand and touched the sheet. The fabric was cold and clammy, saturated with a briny, oily fluid that felt revoltingly familiar. It was the same substance that coated his fingers when he’d foolishly tested the blackwater. The same substance that had created the indelible stain on his pajama shirt—the shirt he had thrown into the bin, which he could now smell from across the room.

The nightmare was no longer just leaving marks; it was leaking. The boundary was dissolving, and the foul water of that other world was seeping into his own, soaking into the very fabric of his life.

He spent the next hour scrubbing his hands raw, the phantom slickness refusing to leave his skin. He stripped the bed, bundling the corrupted sheets into a garbage bag and sealing it tight, as if trying to quarantine a plague.

His life, already a threadbare existence, began to unravel. That day at the warehouse was a special kind of hell. The constant roar of machinery, the shouts of his coworkers, the deafening beeps of the pallet jacks—it all served as a buffer against the silence he now feared. But silence, he was learning, was patient.

During his lunch break, sitting alone in the relative quiet of the breakroom, he heard it for the first time. The hum of the vending machine in the corner cut out for a moment as its compressor switched off. In that sudden, perfect pocket of quiet, it came.

Huuuuh… puuufff…

A slow, wet, labored breath. It was faint, seeming to come from just over his shoulder.

Elias froze, his plastic fork hovering over a container of cold noodles. His head snapped around. There was nothing there but a concrete wall and a peeling safety poster. His heart hammered against his ribs. It was his mind. It had to be. A phantom sound, an auditory hallucination brought on by trauma and a severe lack of sleep.

But it happened again an hour later, in a quiet aisle between towering shelves of boxed goods. The air was still, heavy with the smell of cardboard.

Huuuuh… puuufff…

Closer this time. So close he could almost feel the displaced air. He spun around, dropping the scanner from his hand. It clattered on the concrete floor, the sound painfully loud. The aisle was empty. But the feeling of being watched, that intense, focused pressure he’d felt on the boat, was back. It was suffocating.

"Thorne! What the hell are you doing?"

His supervisor, Dave, stood at the end of the aisle, hands on his hips, his face a mask of annoyance. "You look like a ghost. Get it together or go home."

Elias couldn't explain that he was being haunted by the sound of a monster's breathing. He just mumbled an apology, picked up the scanner, and tried to focus. But the fear had taken root. The quiet moments were no longer empty; they were filled with a terrifying presence.

That night, he declared war on sleep. His apartment, his supposed sanctuary, became a fortress against his own biology. He brewed a pot of coffee so strong it was practically sludge and drank it black, the bitter liquid scalding his throat. When that wasn't enough, he drove to a 24-hour convenience store and bought a four-pack of cheap, sugary energy drinks, downing one after another until his heart raced with an unpleasant, frantic rhythm and his hands shook uncontrollably.

He turned on every light in the apartment, trying to banish the shadows where his paranoia festered. He paced from the kitchen to the living room, a caged animal in a cell of his own making. The city noises outside—the distant traffic, a couple arguing in the street below—were a comfort, a shield of sound.

But the city slept. The sounds faded. The deep quiet of 3 a.m. descended.

And the breathing returned.

Huuuuh… puuufff…

It was in the room with him now. A constant, rhythmic presence in the silence. It wasn't just in his ears; it was in his bones, a vibration he could feel in his chest. He clamped his hands over his ears, but it did nothing. The sound wasn't coming from the outside. It was inside his own head, an echo of the Ferryman that had taken up residence in his mind.

He was losing. He could feel the heavy pull on his eyelids, the leaden weight in his limbs. His body was betraying him, crying out for a rest that he knew was a death sentence. Sleep was no longer a gentle tide. It was a predator, stalking him through the long hours of the night, waiting for him to stumble.

He slumped into the armchair, his wired body finally giving way to the crushing exhaustion. His vision blurred. The lamp in the corner seemed to dim and swell with each slow, wet breath that filled his skull. The hiss of the television static faded, replaced by the soft, viscous sound of an oar pulling through an oily sea.

His head fell forward, his chin hitting his chest. He had fought, and he had failed. The predator had won. As his consciousness dissolved, the last sensation he registered was not the worn fabric of his armchair, but the unmistakable feeling of cold, damp wood beneath him. He was going back.