Somnambulist's Journal

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March 3rd I woke with ink on my fingers and pages scattered across the floor. The handwriting is mine, but I don’t remember writing any of it. The entries describe places I’ve never visited, conversations I’ve never had, a life I don’t recognize as my own.

March 7th Another entry appeared last night. This one describes a house I visited in my sleep—a house with rooms that rearrange themselves when I’m not looking, doors that open onto different spaces each time. The description is so detailed that I could draw floor plans from it. I’ve never seen this house in waking life.

March 12th I set up a camera to record myself while I sleep. The footage shows me sitting at my desk at 3:17 AM, writing steadily for nearly two hours. My face is blank, my eyes open but unseeing. I don’t recognize the person in the video—he moves like someone possessed, or like someone whose consciousness is elsewhere entirely.

March 15th The entries are becoming more concerning. Last night’s describes a woman who “waits by the window for the sleep-walker to return.” I don’t know any woman who fits this description. I don’t know if she’s real or if my sleeping mind has invented her. The entry says she has been waiting for “three lifetimes.”

March 19th I tried staying awake last night, but my body had other plans. I woke at 7 AM with a new entry describing a garden that grows “memories instead of flowers.” The writing describes walking through rows of plants that bloom with moments from my past—my first day of school, my mother’s face, the moment I met my wife. All things I haven’t thought of in years.

March 23rd The woman from the earlier entry appeared again in last night’s writing. Her name, apparently, is Elara. She has been waiting in the house with the rearranging rooms, waiting for the sleep-walker to remember something he forgot before he was born. The entry says she is growing tired of waiting.

March 27th I found myself standing in front of a building I’ve never seen before—a Victorian house that matches the description in my journal entries. I don’t know how I got there. I don’t remember walking there. But I knew which door to try, which key would work (I don’t own a key to this house), which room to enter once inside.

The room was empty except for a chair and a window. Through the window, I saw a woman watching from across the street. She waved when she saw me, and I knew—somehow knew—that this was Elara.

I fled. I ran until my lungs burned, until I was miles away, until I collapsed on a bench I didn’t recognize and couldn’t identify on a map.

March 30th I haven’t slept in three days. Every time I close my eyes, I feel myself being pulled toward the house, toward the window, toward the woman who has been waiting for three lifetimes. My journal is filling with entries I don’t remember writing, entries that describe what will happen when I finally surrender to sleep.

They say I’m not the first sleep-walker to find this house. They say there have been others, and that each eventually gave in to the need for rest, each eventually walked through the door and didn’t return.

The entry I just found on my desk—the one I don’t remember writing—says that tonight is the night. The entry says that Elara is tired of waiting. The entry says that the house has been patient but that patience has limits.

I’m so tired. I don’t know if I can stay awake another night. I don’t know if I want to.

April 1st This entry is written with steady hands, in handwriting that looks like mine but moves with more confidence than I’ve ever possessed. The body that writes it remembers three lifetimes of waiting, remembers the house before it became a house, remembers the woman in the window before she learned to wait.

The sleep-walker has joined us. The journal is complete. The waiting is over.

If you find this, dear reader, do not seek the house with the rearranging rooms. Do not look for the woman at the window. Do not let yourself become a sleep-walker, for the worlds between sleep and waking are hungry, and they are always looking for new wanderers to collect.

We are here now. We are many. And we are so very tired.