The Platform’s Other Side

I’d been back in Port Blaine for barely six hours when the dream hit. My parents’ house sat on a bluff overlooking the harbor, and my old room still smelled of salt and cedar. I’d returned from college for a long weekend, and after a dinner of my mother’s overcooked lasagna and my father’s stories about the fishing boats, I’d fallen into a restless sleep.

Lucid dreams were rare for me, and usually a treat—a chance to fly over the breakwater or dive into the cold green water. But that night, the dream was a nightmare of pursuit. Something vast and shapeless hunted me through a labyrinth of rusted shipping containers. I jumped through doorways that led to staircases, climbed endless flights, always hearing the wet slap of footsteps behind me. Finally, I leaped onto a raised platform—a stage in an empty theater—and jolted awake.

Relief flooded me, so intense it felt like a physical wave. I lay there, heart hammering, grateful to be back in my childhood bed with the familiar creak of the house settling and the distant foghorn. But then I turned my head to the right, and the relief curdled into ice.

Five inches from my face, on the floor beside my bed, sat a dog. Not a real dog—a silhouette, blacker than the deepest shadow, its shape solid yet somehow without detail, like a hole in the world. It was the size of a Labrador, but its head was angled upward, and I could feel its gaze despite having no visible eyes. It was perfectly still, as if it had been waiting for me to notice it. And when I did, it smiled—a slow, deliberate widening of a mouth that had too many teeth, all too sharp.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. Every muscle locked. The thing didn’t move, just held that smile, daring me to acknowledge it further. I squeezed my eyes shut, counting to ten, convincing myself I was still dreaming. When I opened them, it was gone. But I knew—I knew with a certainty that settled into my bones—that it wasn’t a dream, and that it wasn’t finished with me.

The next morning, I told my parents I had a bad night, blaming the strange bed. But I couldn’t shake the image. I started seeing the dog everywhere—in the periphery of my vision, at the edge of the market, under the pier when I walked to the end. It never moved when I looked directly, but it was always there, a patient shadow that seemed to grow more distinct with each sighting.

My mother noticed my agitation. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said, handing me a cup of tea. I laughed it off, but she gave me a long, searching look. ‘There’s something in this house,’ she whispered, ‘something that came with the previous owners. They said their son used to sleepwalk. They’d find him standing by the window, talking to something in the yard.’

Her words burrowed into me. That night, I lay in the dark, listening to the house groan, waiting for the dog to appear. Instead, I heard a sound from the hallway—a soft padding, like claws on hardwood. I held my breath. The padding stopped outside my door. Then, a low growl, so deep it vibrated through the floorboards.

I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight, and threw the door open. The hallway was empty. But on the wall, written in what looked like ash, was a single word: ‘PLATFORM.’ My heart stopped. That was the word I’d thought in my dream, when I’d leaped onto that raised stage. The thing had heard my thought, and it had marked me.

I couldn’t sleep after that. I spent the night in my parents’ living room, lights blazing, trying to rationalize. Maybe it was sleep paralysis, a vivid hallucination. Maybe the ash was just residue from the old furnace. But in my gut, I knew I was being hunted by something that had found a crack in my mind and crawled through.

The next day, I decided to confront it. I walked to the end of the pier, where the harbor met the open sea. The sun was high, the water glittering, and I felt foolish. But when I turned to leave, there it was—the black dog, sitting between me and the shore, blocking my path. This time, it was clearer, its fur like smoke, its eyes two smoldering coals. It opened its mouth, and I heard a voice, not from my ears but from inside my skull, dry as autumn leaves: ‘You left the platform. Now you must return.’

I didn’t ask what that meant. I ran, past it, stumbling on the wooden planks, not looking back until I reached the safety of the street. When I looked back, the thing was gone, but the air where it had stood shimmered like heat.

I called my old roommate from college, a guy who dabbled in occult stuff. He listened, then said, ‘Sounds like a fetch. It’s a shadow that latches onto you when you dream of places it can reach. It feeds on fear, but it can’t cross water. Stay near the ocean, you might be safe.’ But I was already near the ocean, and it had followed me onto the pier.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on the porch, watching the black water, feeling the thing’s gaze on me from the shadows between the streetlights. My father came out, wrapped in a blanket. ‘Can’t sleep, kiddo?’ He sat beside me. We didn’t talk, just watched the tide. Then he said, ‘When I was your age, I had a dream about a platform too. A stage, in the old theater downtown. I woke up, and I saw a black dog under my bed. I never told anyone because I thought I’d lose my mind.’

I stared at him, stunned. ‘What did you do?’
‘It went away after a while,’ he said. ‘But I always had this feeling, like it was still there, just waiting. When you were born, I had a dream that you standing on that same platform, and the dog was sitting at your feet, looking up at you. I woke up crying.’

I didn’t know what to say. My father couldn’t have known about my dream. But maybe this thing was hereditary, passed down like a curse. I slept with my lights on that night, and I didn’t dream. Or if I did, I don’t remember.

I left Port Blaine the next morning, promising to visit again soon. But as my train pulled away, I saw, in the reflection of the window, the outline of a dog sitting on the platform beside the tracks. It was watching me with that patient smile. And I knew, in that moment, that no distance would stop it.

Now, months later, I haven’t seen the dog again. But I still feel it, like a cold draft in the back of my mind. Sometimes, when I’m alone, I hear a soft padding in the hallway at night. And when I close my eyes, I see that platform, and I know that one day, I’ll have to step onto it again—and this time, there might be no waking up.