MidnightScreams

Full Story:

I. The Lighthouse Beckons

The sea had always spoken in whispers, but that night, it screamed.

Harlen Cade never wanted to come here. He had spent his life among the dead, burying the lost in shallow graves, and keeping his head down. But the book—God help him, that thing—it had led him to the lighthouse. A weathered, decrepit monolith standing against the crashing waves of a world long since decayed.

The whispers started the moment he pried open the book’s rusted clasp. Pages of ink that slithered, letters that seemed to shift when he blinked. A child’s voice—no, a woman’s—whispered in his ear: Come to the light.

Now, with a hurricane raging outside, he was trapped in the lighthouse, staring into the abyss of a lantern room that flickered when no wind passed. And he wasn’t alone.

II. The Ritual

The child appeared just before the storm reached its peak. A small girl, no older than seven, wearing a dress that was impossibly clean for the ruined world outside. She didn’t speak at first, just watched Harlen with knowing eyes.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” she finally asked.

Harlen frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She pointed to the book in his hands. The wind howled outside, rattling the lighthouse windows. “You opened it. That means he heard you.”

Something moved in the lantern room above. A scraping sound, slow and deliberate, like nails dragging against metal.

Harlen swallowed hard. “Who?”


“The one who wears your face.”

III. The Doppelgänger

Harlen saw it for the first time when he passed by the lighthouse’s rusted mirror.

It wasn’t his reflection.

The thing that stared back at him had his face—but wrong. The mouth was too wide, the eyes too black. It smirked at him, something he never did. Then, without him moving, it raised its hand and tapped on the glass.

Behind him, the girl whispered, “He likes to play with his food.”

Harlen’s breath turned to mist. “What is he?”

“A curse.” The girl’s voice barely rose above the wind. “He was born the night the sea swallowed the first keeper of this lighthouse. He’s been waiting for someone to open the door.”

Harlen backed away from the mirror, but the reflection did not move with him. It tilted its head, cracking its neck in slow, unnatural jerks. Then it whispered, “Let me in.”

The glass shattered.

IV. The Locket’s Secret

Harlen ran. The staircase wound down endlessly, the walls narrowing, suffocating. He reached into his pocket and clutched the locket he had found among the lighthouse keeper’s remains.


The photo inside had changed.


It was him. But his eyes were gone, replaced by bleeding voids. His mouth was open in a silent scream.

The girl appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “He’s coming.”

The whispers were louder now.

Harlen turned. The doppelgänger was standing right behind him.

V. The Final Choice

“You can’t kill it,” the girl said. “It isn’t real.”

Harlen’s hands shook as he lifted the book. The whispers surged, a chorus of voices pleading, crying, laughing.

The doppelgänger grinned. “You know the way out.”

And he did. He had known all along.

The only escape was to become it.


The storm outside faded. The whispers silenced. And when Harlen looked into the cracked mirror on the wall, his reflection finally matched.

His lips curled into a smirk. The same smirk that had once haunted him.

The girl watched in silence as Harlen—no, the thing wearing Harlen’s face—walked toward the lighthouse door.

He placed his hand on the knob.

And opened it.

VI. The Last Message

Morning came. The storm had passed.

The lighthouse door stood ajar, swaying in the breeze. The book lay on the ground, its pages blank, as if nothing had ever been written inside.

On the wall, scrawled in blood, were Harlen’s final words:

“Whatever you do, don’t open the door.”