The Throat of the Stairwell

The alarm blared at 7:15 AM, a digital shriek that tore through the gauze of sleep. I slapped it silent, groaning, and stumbled into the day. The dream, whatever it had been, dissolved like frost on a windowpane. It wasn’t until I was halfway through my toast, staring at the crumbs, that the first image surfaced: the smell of brine and fried fish, the cry of gulls, the damp cobbles of a harbor town called Port Merrow. I hadn’t thought of that place in years. My sister, Lena, had moved there for a job at a deli, a fact I’d found absurd at the time. But in the dream, I was there, standing in the shop door as rain began to fall, the sky a bruised purple. I told her I needed to get home, and she nodded, wiping her hands on a towel, her eyes oddly vacant. I left, the bell jingling behind me.

The dream shifted, as dreams do, and I was walking through the entrance of a block of flats. Not the one I actually lived in, but a building I knew from somewhere, maybe a film or a forgotten childhood memory. The communal door was heavy, painted a scuffed green, and it swung shut with a click that echoed in the empty lobby. The air was cold, carrying the musty smell of damp plaster and old carpet. I pressed the button for the lift, but it only flickered a dull orange, and the doors remained stubbornly shut. So I turned to the stairs, a steep, concrete throat spiraling upward. As I climbed, I felt it—a pressure at the back of my neck, a sense of being weighed and measured. I glanced over my shoulder and saw nothing, but the shadows between the landings seemed to breathe. On the second-floor landing, a black shape flickered at the edge of my vision, gone when I turned my head. It was like a cutout, a silhouette with no defining features, just a void that absorbed the dim light. I heard a soft scrape, like a shoe on concrete, and the whisper of fabric. I hurried, my footsteps echoing too loud, but the pursuit was patient, always at the edge of sight, disappearing behind corners, between the gaps of the banister.

Then the dream lurched, and I was somewhere else entirely. A small wooden house, all rough-hewn logs and a tin roof, sat in a clearing surrounded by tall pines. The air was crisp with the smell of resin and damp earth, and the sky was a pale, washed-out blue—the kind of light you get in northern countries in late autumn. I was standing on the porch, and Lena was beside me, holding a key. ‘This is it,’ she said, but her voice was flat, unlike her usual warmth. ‘We can make it a home.’ I felt a surge of determination, a fierce need to stake a claim, to plant roots in this alien place. But inside, the shadow had followed. It lurked in the corners of the kitchen, a presence that made the air feel thick. It pushed me, shoving me against the wall, and I stumbled, catching myself on the threshold. It moved objects—a cup slid across the table and shattered, a picture frame tilted, then fell. I tried to ignore it, to act normal, to hang curtains and arrange furniture, but each time I turned, it was there, waiting. I could feel its cold breath on my neck, and a low, guttural sound, like the rumble of a distant landslide, vibrated through the floorboards. I remember looking at Lena, hoping she would see it too, but she just hummed a tune and unpacked a box of mismatched dishes, oblivious. I wanted to scream, to grab her and run, but my legs were lead, and the dream began to fray at the edges.

I woke up with a gasp, my heart hammering, tangled in my sheets. The dream was already fading, but the feeling of that cold presence lingered, a phantom weight on my chest. I tried to hold onto the details, but they slipped like water through fingers. The seaside town, the flat, the wooden house—they all blurred into a single, oppressive atmosphere. The only thing that remained, sharp and clear, was the image of the stairwell, the throat of the building, and the shadow that waited within it. I didn’t want to go to work that day, didn’t want to leave the safety of my apartment. But the bills wouldn’t pay themselves. As I dressed, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. For a moment, behind my own face, I saw a darkness shift, and I felt a cold draft on the back of my neck. I turned, but the room was empty. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed me out of sleep. That it was waiting for me to return to that stairwell, to climb again, and this time, it wouldn’t let me leave.