The Hungry Dark
It started with the power outage.
Sarah lived alone in her small, weathered house at the edge of a rural town. It was one of those nights when the quiet pressed in from all sides, thick and heavy, like the world was holding its breath. A storm had rolled through earlier, knocking out the electricity, and the only light came from the pale glow of her flashlight.
She tried to pass the time with a book, but the silence made it impossible to focus. No hum of the refrigerator, no distant murmur of neighbors' TVs—just the faint patter of rain on the windows.
Then she heard it.
A faint sound, like something shifting in the darkness of her kitchen.
Sarah froze, straining her ears. It wasn't the house settling, and it wasn't the wind. It was deliberate. Slow. Like someone dragging their fingers along the walls.
"Hello?" she called, hating how thin her voice sounded.
The noise stopped.
She stood, gripping the flashlight tightly, and stepped toward the kitchen. The beam of light swept across the counters, the sink, the floor. Nothing.
But then, as she turned to leave, she saw it—just for a split second.
A shadow that didn't belong.
It wasn't hers, and it wasn't shaped like anything she recognized. It slithered, dark and formless, across the corner of the room before vanishing into the hallway.
That night, Sarah didn't sleep.
She sat in her bed, flashlight in one hand, kitchen knife in the other. The storm had passed, leaving behind an oppressive stillness. Shadows seemed to pool in the corners of the room, deeper and darker than they should have been.
Around 3 a.m., she heard the sound again—closer this time.
It was coming from the living room.
Her heart thundered as she crept out of bed, the flashlight trembling in her grip. As she approached the living room, the sound grew louder: a wet, slithering noise, like something dragging itself across the floor.
The beam of her flashlight cut through the dark, landing on the sofa.
And she saw it.
A figure crouched in the center of the room, hunched and impossibly thin. Its skin was gray and mottled, stretched taut over jagged bones. Its face—or what passed for a face—was a featureless void, a blank expanse of darkness that seemed to swallow the light.
It turned its head toward her, and though it had no eyes, she felt it staring.
"Get out!" she screamed, hurling the flashlight at it.
The creature didn't move. Instead, it raised one skeletal hand and pointed to the floor.
Sarah's breath hitched. She followed its gesture and saw the shadows pooling around her feet. They weren't just shadows—they were alive, writhing like black snakes, reaching for her ankles.
She ran.
The next day, Sarah tried to convince herself it was a nightmare, a trick of the dark. She bought new locks for the doors, lit candles in every room, and kept her phone within arm's reach.
But the shadows didn't care.
They came back the following night, seeping through the cracks under the doors and windows, pooling at the edges of the room. No matter how many lights she turned on, they crept closer, always out of reach of the glow.
By the third night, the candles were useless. The shadows devoured the light as if it were nothing more than mist. Sarah stayed awake, clutching her knife, but she knew it wouldn't help.
The thing in the shadows wasn't human. It wasn't even alive.
The whispers started on the fifth night.
They came from everywhere and nowhere, soft and insistent, filling her ears even when she pressed her hands over them.
"Sarah… Sarah…"
The voices knew her name. They knew her fears. They knew things she had never spoken aloud.
And they wanted her.
By the seventh night, Sarah was a shell of herself. She hadn't eaten, hadn't slept, hadn't dared to step outside. Her house was no longer hers—it belonged to the dark.
When the final night came, she didn't bother with candles or flashlights. She sat in the middle of the living room, waiting.
The shadows came first, spilling into the room like ink, covering the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Then came the figure, unfolding itself from the darkness like a spider emerging from its web.
It stood over her, towering and shapeless, its featureless face staring down.
"What do you want?" Sarah whispered, tears streaming down her face.
The creature leaned closer, its voice a guttural hiss.
"We want you to see."
The last thing Sarah saw was the void swallowing her whole.
When the neighbors finally checked on Sarah, they found the house empty.
The lights didn't work, and the air was thick with a suffocating darkness. On the living room floor, etched into the wood, was a single word:
"SEEN."
No one ever lived in the house again. At night, passersby claimed they could hear whispers coming from the windows, soft and insistent, calling out to anyone who would listen.