Hands in the Dark

DAHLIA’S POV

The hands were everywhere.

Bloodied. Gnarled. Twitching with anticipation as they reached for me from the dark. I was running—barefoot, breath ragged, heart pounding so loud I thought it might drown out the scream I couldn't stop letting out.

The forest blurred around me. Pines clawed at my skin. The fog was thick, heavy, alive. But it was the hands I couldn't escape. They didn’t lunge or grab. No. They chased me with cruel patience. Every time I fell—over a root, a rock, a phantom breeze—they stopped. Waiting. Watching. Letting me rise again like they were enjoying the show.

I stumbled into a clearing.

Dead silence.

A circle, carved into the earth with impossible precision. Symbols I didn’t recognize but instinctively feared glowed faintly along its edges. My breath hitched. I tried to step back, but my heel caught the edge. I stumbled forward.

And just like that, I was inside the circle.

No wind. No sound. Just a suffocating stillness.

I turned. Tried to exit. My hands met something solid. Invisible. Cold.

A wall?

No matter the direction—north, east, west, south—I couldn’t break through. The barrier held. I was caged inside something ancient and cruel.

Behind me, the hands had stopped.

Dozens of them, lined up at the circle’s edge. Still. Quivering.

Then… they began to twist.

Bones cracked. Fingers snapped backward. Skin stretched into sinew. Limbs began merging—elongating—flesh fusing into flesh until a single figure began to form. A silhouette hunched at the circle’s edge, the hands its roots. A head lowered. Shoulders hunched. A body still completing itself.

I couldn’t breathe.

Just as I tried to focus, to make sense of its form, something slithered around my ankle.

A vine.

No—a branch. A gnarled, leaf-laced thing that wrapped tight and yanked.

I hit the ground hard, dragged backward across the forest floor. Screaming. Clawing at the earth. Faceup, the canopy spun above me like a whirlpool. My back hit rocks, sticks, roots—but the branch never slowed.

And just like that, I was back in the circle.

My body limp. Bloodied. Dizzy. My head throbbed and the forest buzzed.

Then… the voices came.

Whispers from nowhere. Chants in a language I didn’t know, but somehow understood. Words that pressed into my skull, into the marrow of my bones.

“She’s here.”

“She’s ready.”

“She belongs.”

I screamed. Nothing came out.

My body lifted—effortless. Limbs dangling like a puppet.

And then I was lowered—gently, almost reverently—onto a stone table in the center of the circle. Cold. Unforgiving. I tried to move, but my arms wouldn’t respond. My legs were dead weight.

I could only blink and breathe.

And then I heard it.

A voice. Low. Inhuman. Like it came from beneath the ground.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Dahlia.”

My name. It knew my name.

Tears blurred my vision. I turned my head side to side, frantic. The forest loomed silent beyond the barrier. The figure at the edge was gone.

And then—footsteps.

Fast. From every direction. Twigs snapping. Leaves rustling. Closer. Closer.

I held my breath.

Then—nothing.

Stillness.

“Hello?” I croaked, my voice cracked and raw. “Who’s there?”

No answer.

Then came the pain.

First a prick. Then a slice. Then—agony.

It felt like claws—long, curved, hooked—tearing into my stomach. Ripping. Digging.

But there was no one there.

I looked down—my shirt was gone. My stomach bare. And bleeding.

Deep, ragged cuts appeared—one after the other—as if something unseen was feeding on me. My body convulsed. I screamed so loud I thought the trees would split in two.

And then—

A sound louder than my scream.

A shrill, constant beep.

I bolted upright, lungs heaving, drenched in sweat.

My living room.

Dim light from the window filtered through slatted blinds. My couch beneath me, still indented from where I had passed out hours ago. The TV screen frozen on a local news rerun.

My phone buzzed violently on the coffee table.

6:45 a.m.

Friday.

The beeping was the alarm.

I blinked, heart still hammering. My shirt clung to me, soaked. My fingers twitched like they still remembered the pain.

I reached down—no wounds.

No blood.

But my mouth tasted of earth. My feet were scratched. And my palm…

A faint imprint.

A circle. Burned into my skin.

I looked again and it was gone. Maybe I was still dazed by the nightmare.

I sat up slowly, burying my face in my hands.

Just a nightmare. Just stress. That’s all.

My breath was uneven, my heart still pounding like a drum against my ribs. But I knew what this was. I’ve seen it before—in myself, in colleagues, in victims. The body’s way of screaming what the mind refused to say out loud.

You need rest.

I ran both hands through my hair, exhaling hard. The past week had been nothing short of hell—but that was nothing new. The badge didn’t come with peace; it came with late nights, bloodshot eyes, and the ghosts of the cases you couldn’t close. I rubbed at my temples, trying to will the memory of the dream away.

But last night—last night was different.

Last night, after weeks of circling the same dead ends, after watching Gregory Hall slip through our fingers over and over, I’d finally cracked it.

Gregory fucking Hall.

The man was a walking shadow—slick, untouchable. A shadow at the heart of an LAPD nightmare. For the longest time, we couldn’t pin him to the human trafficking circle or the narco routes he was rumored to run. His tracks were always scrubbed. Witnesses vanished. Money changed hands in the dark.

But not this time.

Not after last night.

I found it. The missing piece. A surveillance feed from a warehouse in Carson. It had taken a burner informant and two sleepless nights hunched over camera grids, but there he was. Hall. In frame. Passing off a girl—no older than sixteen—for a briefcase full of bricks. Coke, by the look of it.

And the kicker? The man he met with was already on their radar for another trafficking op across the border. That tied it all together.

No more whispers.

No more loose threads.

Just evidence. Enough to lock him up and throw away the key.

I could already picture walking into the captain’s office and slapping that file down on his desk. Case closed. The bastard finally cornered.

My chest rose and fell in a deep breath. Maybe that nightmare was just my body’s last warning to rest before it all came crashing in. I reached for the remote and turned off the TV, then got out of bed, my bare feet cold against the floor. The bathroom light flickered once before humming to life, and I leaned over the sink, splashing cold water onto my face.

When I came out, towel in hand, my phone lit up on the nightstand. Buzzing.

CAPTAIN MARSHALL.

My heart jumped.

I grabbed it. “Sir?”

“Get to the station,” he said. His voice was clipped. No room for pleasantries. “Now.”

Something in his tone sliced straight through the fog in my mind. My spine straightened, towel forgotten.

“Understood,” I said, voice firm.

The line went dead.

I tossed the towel onto the bed and reached for my clothes—black jeans, fitted tee, boots. My movements were automatic, soldier-fast. My mind, though, was spiraling. The dream still clung to me like cobwebs in the dark. That voice… We've been waiting for you, Dahlia. No matter how much logic I threw at it, the echo stayed lodged deep.

I was shrugging on my jacket when I heard it.

Clatter.

A sharp thud from the kitchen.

Like a stool being knocked over.

My hand froze mid-zip. Every instinct I’d honed over the years kicked in. I reached beneath the nightstand drawer and wrapped my fingers around the cool steel of my Glock.

Silent now. Not even a creak. Not even the hum of the fridge.

Something was wrong.

I moved.

The hallway stretched before me like a tunnel—every shadow threatening, every glint a weapon. I kept my back to the wall, gun raised, safety off.

When I reached the kitchen threshold, I paused.

The stool was down. On its side. Legs tangled like it had been kicked, not bumped.

Then I saw the figure.

Half-hidden behind the kitchen counter. Still. Watching. Maybe unaware I was there.

“Hands where I can see them,” I said, voice cold, calm, lethal. My gun aimed squarely between their shoulders.

The figure didn’t move.

Didn’t flinch.

Just stood there—back to me, body slack like they were testing me.

I tightened my grip, pulse steady despite the pounding in my ears.

“Don’t make me ask twice.”

Nothing.

Not a sound.

Not a breath.

The silence grew thick enough to strangle.

And just as I took a step forward, the lights went out.