The Labyrinth of the Sleeping Wraith

The Story

The Labyrinth of the Sleeping Wraith follows Rafe, a writer haunted by relentless nightmares of a mysterious wraith that has pursued him since childhood. When he meets Marla, a philosophy professor obsessed with the mysteries of dreams, their connection triggers a series of strange events. Rafe’s creative muse, a ghostly presence that once guided his writing, has disappeared. Desperate to reclaim his lost creativity and unravel the mystery of the wraith, Rafe embarks on a surreal journey through dream realms and waking life, guided by a new, enigmatic force—a woman in his dreams who calls herself the Midwife.

As the boundary between dreams and reality begins to blur, Rafe must confront the secrets of his unconscious mind and face the ultimate question: What will happen when the wraith finally catches him?

Author’s Note

Two years after writing Tale of the Eternal Sea and composing an accompanying score for the Frightful Refrains horror-themed compilation album, I was asked to contribute a couple of new songs to Frightful Refrains 2: The ReFrightening.

So once again, I decided I need another short story to provide a framework to give the music some direction. A story to score.

This time, my plan was to keep it shorter. I’d write a mini-short, just 500 words that could scroll slowly on a video with the score playing in the background. But as tends to happen, the project ballooned, and my 500 word short story became a 20,000 word novella, and my two songs became an entire album.

You can hear the full album here.

Excerpt: Keep Running

Keep running.

I remind myself repeatedly. Keep running. Keep running.

I feel the creature’s breath on my naked back. Tears stream down my cheeks, stinging my skin. I feel something sharp scrape across my back and suppress an urge to freeze. I close my eyes and focus on keeping my limbs moving, no longer worried about what’s in front of me. I don’t know what the creature looks like, but I imagine that if I turned around, I would find something both horrifying and amorphous, changing with each moment in ways that amplify my fear. If I stop even for a moment, the thing will catch me. It has chased me most nights for as long as I can remember, and I’ve yet to see what it looks like because I’m too terrified to turn and look. So I run.

My body could run forever, but my mind is exhausted. I consider stopping. My will to continue has slipped, and I find the prospect of death—or whatever this thing has in mind for me—more appealing than running forever. After whatever suffering the thing causes me, perhaps I can finally relax.

My bare feet slap against something soft and wet. I open my eyes and look down to discover that the ground resembles the flesh of some rotting creature turned inside out. On that flesh, a ghastly shadow engulfs my own, too hazy to discern a shape but revealing that the creature is almost atop me. I run desperately, trying to create space between its shadow and mine.

“You’re not fast enough. It’s going to catch you,” says a woman’s voice.

A claw slices deeply into the back of my neck, and pain erupts through my body.

I wake with a start and cry out. Two dozen people turn to look at me. Where am I? I’m on a couch. People are divided into groups, and many hold drinks—the party. I didn’t want to come, but I did anyway and fell asleep.

“Sorry,” I mumble as everyone returns to their conversations.

“Pleasant dreams?” asks a woman’s voice next to me. I turn to look at the speaker and find intensely curious hazel eyes staring back at me. “You’re still not awake, are you?”

Am I?