MidReal Story
Whispers of the Shadows
Scenario: scary, dark, and a little bit fantastical.
Create my version of this story
“What do you mean you’re not going to investigate?
That’s the reason we came here.
” I follow Ethan out of the diner and into the alleyway.
His quick pace has me trotting to keep up with him.
He’s been this way since I met him a few months ago, but it still makes me nervous.
I almost feel like he’s angry with me.
“It’s not our job,” he says, turning and pinning me with a hard glare.
I take a step back, nearly losing my footing over a loose piece of concrete.
He’s clearly agitated, and he has a right to be.
I promised him that I wouldn’t get involved in anything mysterious or dangerous this time, and I blew that promise out of the water when the guy at the diner called me.
“Right, it’s not our job,” I agree with him, holding my hands up in an ‘I’m innocent’ gesture.
“We don’t have a job other than writing freelance articles for newspapers and magazines, so we can go wherever we want and investigate whatever we want.
“Not when it gets you killed,” he grumbles and turns away from me.
“We can’t just ignore it.” I follow him back into the diner where Lily is sitting at our usual booth, staring off into space.
The cup in front of her is empty, and she’s twisting her fingers together.
Lily is one of my best friends in the world, and it breaks my heart when she gets like this.
She gets overwhelmed by her visions sometimes—she calls them glimpses—and there’s nothing I can do to help her when it happens.
“Lil?” I slip into the seat next to her and touch her arm gently.
She shies away from me and turns worried eyes on Ethan.
He leans over her and cups her face in his hands.
He has a way of calming her that no one else seems able to manage.
“Do you want to tell us what you saw?”
he asks in a soft voice.
She nods but doesn’t speak.
Ethan raises his hand and snaps his fingers in front of her eyes.
Her pupils are dilated, and she’s not blinking.
Her trance has a tendency to make her look like a deer caught in the headlights.
Ethan gives her another soft shake and she blinks at him.
“Lily, what did you see?”
The concern in his voice almost makes me forgive him for being such an ass earlier.
Almost, but not quite.
There’s nothing he can do to stop me from investigating this thing that’s been happening in our town for the last five years.
Lily takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before she speaks.
“There’s something here,” she says.
“A malevolent entity unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
It doesn’t belong here.
It comes from another realm, and it’s very, very angry.”
Ethan leans back in the booth and stares at her.
He’s a skeptic by nature, and Lily’s ability has always unnerved him.
the action should be in a somber style
“But how would it be able to cross over into our world?”
I ask, knowing that’s one of the things Ethan will want to know.
Lily gives me a small smile and I realize I must have said it out loud.
She has a way of knowing what I’m thinking sometimes, probably because she’s seen my future more times than I care to think about.
I don’t even want to know what kind of mess I’m going to get myself into next.
“I’m not sure,” she admits.
“I’m not even sure it can.
But whatever it is, it’s getting stronger, and if it does manage to find a way to cross over—”
Ethan’s sharp intake of breath has Lily faltering.
She blinks at him and then shakes her head, as though trying to clear it.
“Lily, are you all right?”
She nods but doesn’t speak.
“I think we’d better find out who that guy was,” I say.
Ethan leans back and studies me for a long moment, and I know he’s trying to figure out a way to talk me out of this.
But he also knows me well enough by now to know that I won’t be talking out of this.
Once I set my mind to something, there’s really no stopping me.
“I’ll go with you,” he says finally, “but I don’t have to like it.”
“Whatever you say, Ethan,” I agree with a sweet smile, and he knows better than to argue with me further.
Lily reaches out and touches my arm, and I turn to study her in concern.
There’s a haunted look in her eyes, and I want to reach out and comfort her, but I know there’s nothing I can say or do that will make any difference right now.
“I think he gave me a location,” she says, and I turn to study Ethan, who looks just as stunned as I feel.
Lily doesn’t normally remember anything about her visions once they’re over.
It’s part of what makes them so terrifying for her.
Her mind goes blank and she gets this faraway look in her eyes, which is why she’s always so thankful when they end and she can come back to us again.
But if she remembers the guy giving her a location, maybe this one was different.
“It was just a blur,” Lily admits, “but it felt like a location of some kind.
I think that’s where he is.”
I shake myself out of my thoughts and glance at Ethan, who looks just as confused as I feel.
“Do you remember anything else?”
he asks, his voice a little rough around the edges.
Lily shakes her head.
Ethan sighs and glances back at me.
“If we’re going to do this, we need to hurry,” he says in a low voice, clearly exhausted by everything that’s happened today already.
It’s been a long day for all of us, and it’s about to get a whole lot longer.
“I’ll go start the car,” he says, and then turns and walks out of the diner without another word.
I watch him go before turning back to Lily.
“Are you okay?”
She looks back at me, and for one brief moment, her eyes fill with tears before she blinks them away again.
I’m fine,” she replies in a soft voice, “but I can feel it now, Alice.”
“Feel what?”
I ask in a voice as soft as hers, afraid to hear the answer but needing to know all the same.
“I can feel it getting stronger,” she admits with a haunted look in her eyes.
“It’s like it knows we’re coming now.It knows we’re going to find it, and I think that’s making it stronger.”
I reach out and touch her arm again, wanting to comfort her but not knowing how to do it properly.
She gives me a small smile before reaching out to take my hand in hers, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her fiercely, even though I know that’s not what she’s upset about right now.
She’s upset because this thing is getting stronger, and because there’s nothing any of us can do to stop it from happening right now.
I know how much it bothers her to be able to feel it growing stronger and not be able to do anything about it, but I also know how much worse it is for her when she can’t feel it at all.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”
“Of course,” she replies with a small smile.
“I have to do this.”
Ethan comes back inside then and joins us at our table once more, giving Lily a long look before turning his attention back to me.
“Are we ready to go?”
he asks in a quiet voice once he sees that Lily is okay for now.
I nod and push myself up out of my chair before reaching out to take Lily’s hand in mine once more.
She doesn’t say anything as we leave the diner behind us and follow Ethan outside to where his car is waiting for us all alone in the parking lot.
The sun is starting to go down behind the trees now, casting long shadows across the ground as we pile into Ethan’s car and buckle up for the ride ahead of us.
Lily has given us a location to check out, but she’s never been there before herself, so I give Ethan directions to the place as we drive in silence through the woods, my mind going a mile a minute as I try to figure out what we’re going to find there when we arrive.
Lily’s never seemed scared by her visions before—just tired or upset—but I can tell that this one is different somehow.
She’s scared of this thing and what it might be able to do to us if we let our guard down for even one second around it.
That’s why she wants to get there as soon as possible, so none of us have time to change our minds or back out while we still can.
