This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Roos85 on 2024-10-05 17:40:16+00:00.

Listen closely, because this isn’t a story. It’s a warning.

There’s a place, a town not on any map, tucked away in a corner of the world so secret it barely exists. No one talks about it. Maybe they’ve forgotten. Maybe they’ve learned to forget. But it’s real, and if you find it, you’ll never be able to leave.

I escaped once, but it’s only a matter of time before they find me again. I don’t have long, so listen carefully.

The town didn’t look unusual at first. If anything, it was painfully ordinary. Rows of houses with neat lawns, crooked lampposts lining empty streets, a town square with a statue of a man no one could name. At a glance, it could’ve been anywhere, the kind of place you pass through without a second thought. But the moment I stepped into it, I felt something was wrong. Something thick in the air, like static before a storm.

No one spoke about it, but we all felt it, the silent law. You could hear it in the footsteps that never strayed from the path and see it in the faces that never turned toward the clock tower. The law was never written down, never spoken aloud, but everyone knew it. You didn’t question the town. You didn’t step out of line. And you never tried to leave.

At first, I did what everyone else did. I followed the rules. Nobody knew what the rules were. The only time we knew for sure was when someone broke them.

I lived quietly, kept my head down, and went about my day like nothing was wrong. But the town felt like a trap like the air was watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake. Every time someone broke the law, and it was always something small, something barely noticeable and mundane they disappeared.

I remember the first time I saw it happen. A man I didn’t know, even though we lived beside each other for years, took the wrong step. He didn’t follow the pattern of the street, the long lines on the roads and footpaths that quietly told everyone where to go. The next morning, his body was hanging in the town square. Twisted, broken, like some kind of macabre display. No one looked. No one acknowledged it. The townspeople walked around him like he wasn’t there like it was normal.

I started to wonder who was watching. Who enforced the rules? There were no police, only strange men in white suits, who patrolled the streets. It made you paranoid, made you question every step, every word. You couldn’t trust anyone, not even yourself.

On the edge of the town, there was a dirt path that everyone ignored. It was there, plain as day, but no one spoke of it, and no one dared follow it. They knew better. I should’ve known better.

I couldn’t help myself. The curiosity gnawed at me until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. One night, when the streets were dark and the town was asleep, I decided to follow it. The path twisted and turned, snaking away from the town, but no matter how far I walked, I always found myself moving closer to the town. The further I went, the more I felt the town pulling me back, like a black hole dragging me toward its centre. The road kept bending in on itself, leading me in circles until, finally, I ended up right where I started. That’s when I knew there was no leaving. The town was alive, and it didn’t want me to go.

The next day, someone else vanished. A woman this time. She’d broken another rule, whispered something forbidden, something about leaving and by morning, she was gone. But this time, there was no trace of a body, just her empty house, as if she’d never existed at all.

The town knew I was defying it. I could feel it watching me. The more I tried to understand it, the more desperate I was to escape.

One night, I saw it. Something that no one should’ve seen. The clocktower. Its face was always turned away, like it was hiding something, and the townspeople avoided looking at it as if their lives depended on it. I’d followed that rule too, at first. But in my growing madness, I dared to glance at it. That’s when I saw the truth.

The hands of the clock weren’t moving. They hadn’t moved in years. The town wasn’t bound by time. It existed in a liminal space, outside of everything, pulling in those unfortunate enough to stumble upon it.

When I first heard the footsteps, I knew then I wasn’t just being watched, they were following me wherever I went. I never saw who made them, but they were always there, just behind me, just out of sight. Every corner I turned, they were there, waiting. I knew my time was running out, so I decided to run.

I took the road again, and this time, I didn’t stop. I ran until my lungs burned, until my legs gave out until the town was a blur behind me. And somehow, against all odds, I broke through. I found myself on the other side of the fog, on a highway, cars rushing past me like the world hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

That’s when I started writing this when I started telling my story. I thought if I warned others, if I could just explain what was waiting out there I would be safe.

I tried hiding in the shadows of my newfound freedom. I had nowhere to go, but I thought if I had nowhere to call home, they wouldn’t know where to find me.

I’ve been seeing them again, the terrifying shadows that moved and twisted out of the corners of my eye. As the shadows moved closer, the footsteps got louder, and It was only a matter of time before they found me.

I don’t know how long I was out. When I woke up, I was strapped to a bed, with fluorescent lights burning into my eyes. But I wasn’t in a town. I was in a hospital.

They told me I’d been there for years. Told me I wasn’t well, that I had imagined the town, the laws, the people. They said it was a delusion, a paranoid fantasy my mind had constructed to cope with something I didn’t want to remember.

But they’re wrong. The town was real. It is real. I know it. I felt it.

They tried to explain it away. They said the people I saw weren’t townsfolk, but other patients. The man who was hanging in the streets had managed to escape his room and hanged himself in the common room. The woman who vanished was old and got moved to a more comfortable place. They told me the clock tower was the hospital’s old, broken clock, stuck at the same time for years. The road I walked was just a hall leading to the hospital exit.

The doctors tried to calm me. They said it’s part of my recovery, that my mind is healing. But it’s not. They don’t understand. They can’t. Because the hospital is just another version of the town.

The rules are still there, hidden in the routines they force me to follow. The treatments, the schedules, the silence. It’s all the same. It’s just wearing a different face.

I can hear them again. The footsteps, slow and steady, coming down the street. They’re getting closer. I know what’s coming next.