In the quiet town of Ash Hollow, where the fog clung to the streets like a shroud and the nights stretched longer than they should, people whispered about the Dream Collector. No one knew who—or what—it was, only that it came when the nightmares grew too heavy, too real. It was said to be a savior of sorts, a shadowy figure that slipped into your mind and plucked the terrors away, leaving you with a dreamless, peaceful sleep. But the whispers also carried a warning: the Dream Collector didn’t work for free. There was always a price.
Clara Henshaw hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Her nightmares were relentless—visions of a crumbling house with endless corridors, where something wet and unseen dragged itself behind her, its breathing ragged and close. She’d wake up gasping, her sheets soaked with sweat, her hands clawing at the air. She’d tried everything: pills, therapy, even a priest. Nothing worked. The nightmares grew worse, more vivid, until she could smell the mildew of that rotting house and feel the cold slime of whatever pursued her brushing against her ankles.
One night, desperate and delirious, Clara muttered into the darkness of her bedroom, “Please… someone take them away. I can’t do this anymore.” The air grew thick, and a faint scent of ash crept into the room. She thought she’d imagined it, but then she heard it—a low, resonant hum, like a voice stretched thin across a vast distance. “I can take them,” it said. “But you must give me something in return.”
Clara froze, her heart hammering. The voice wasn’t in her ears—it was inside her skull, vibrating through her bones. “Who… who are you?” she stammered.
“I am the Dream Collector,” it replied. “I take what torments you. I keep it safe. But I need a piece of you to hold its place. A memory. A feeling. Something small… at first.”
Clara didn’t care about the cost. She just wanted the nightmares gone. “Take it,” she whispered. “Take whatever you want.”
The room darkened, as if the shadows themselves leaned closer. She felt a sharp tug—not physical, but deep inside, like a thread being pulled from her soul. Then, silence. That night, she slept without dreams, without terror, for the first time in months. It was blissful.
But the next morning, something was wrong. Clara couldn’t remember her mother’s voice. She knew her mother had died years ago, knew they’d been close, but the sound of her laughter, her gentle scolding—it was gone. She tried to shrug it off. A small price, she told herself. Worth it for the peace.
The nightmares stayed away for a week. Then they returned, worse than before. The house in her dreams was closer now, its walls pulsing like flesh, and the thing chasing her had a shape—long, spindly limbs and a face that was almost human but not quite. She begged the Dream Collector again. “Take it away. Please.”
It came, as before, with its ashen scent and humming voice. “Another piece,” it said. “Something bigger this time.” Clara agreed, and the tug came again, sharper, deeper. The nightmares vanished once more.
This time, when she woke, she couldn’t feel joy. She looked at the sunrise, at her favorite coffee mug, at the stray cat she fed every morning—and felt nothing. No warmth, no contentment. Just a hollow space where those emotions used to live. She cried, but even the tears felt empty.
The pattern repeated. The nightmares grew darker, more grotesque—a labyrinth of flesh and bone, a creature that whispered her name in a voice that wasn’t its own. Each time, the Dream Collector returned, its price escalating. First, it took her sense of taste. Then her ability to love. Then her oldest childhood memory, leaving her unsure of who she’d even been. With every visit, Clara became less herself, a shell stumbling through a gray, muted world.
One night, as the thing in her dreams pinned her to a wall of living meat and pressed its eyeless face against hers, she screamed for the Dream Collector. It appeared—not just a voice now, but a figure. Tall, cloaked in tattered black, its face obscured by a veil of shifting shadows. Its hands were long and skeletal, clutching a burlap sack that writhed as if alive.
“This is the last time,” it said, its voice a chorus of whispers. “I’ll take it all—the nightmare, and what’s left of you. You’ll sleep forever. No dreams. No pain. Nothing.”
Clara hesitated. She was barely a person anymore—just a husk of fear and exhaustion. But the alternative was worse. “Do it,” she said.
The tug was unbearable this time, a rending that tore through her mind and soul. She saw flashes—her mother’s face, her first kiss, the smell of rain—all spiraling into the sack in the Dream Collector’s hands. Then, darkness.
When her neighbors found her the next day, Clara was still in bed, eyes open, staring at nothing. She wasn’t dead, not quite. Her chest rose and fell, but there was no life in her gaze. The doctors called it a coma. The townsfolk whispered otherwise.
And in Ash Hollow, the whispers grew louder. The Dream Collector was real, they said, and it was hungrier than ever. People started noticing their own nightmares shifting—wet footsteps in their dreams, a house that shouldn’t exist, a voice calling their names. The Collector wasn’t just taking nightmares anymore. It was planting them, spreading them like seeds, waiting for the next desperate soul to beg for its help.
Because the truth was, the Dream Collector didn’t just steal nightmares. It collected people, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to take.