The Workers in the Walls is the first chapter in the audio-fiction series, The Sounds of Nightmares.
Description
Noone, a timid young girl, is committed to The Counties Psychiatric Institute due to her ever-worsening nightmare disorder. She is placed under the care of The Counsellor who has dedicated his life to helping kids overcome their ailments. However, Noone's nightmares aren't like any he's heard before...
Plot
The recording begins with The Counsellor, also known as Otto, recounting his findings regarding his studies on Noone, after their first session. Shortly after sharing his findings, he considers Noone a fine candidate to perform more oneirological studies given she is able to smell things in her dream, but refrains from the idea as her health comes first. Otto rewinds the entire recording of their first session. The recording of the first session begins with the Counsellor recounting his current findings of Noone after looking over her case notes, concluding that she may not be suffering from anything serious when compared to his other patients and could simply be suffering from a nightmare disorder brought about by mild trauma.
The scene switches to The Counsellor preparing to interview Noone directly, deciding to focus their first session on establishing as much trust as possible so she may open up about what goes on in her mind. Noone enters the room and details her recent sadness, she discovered the flower her parents left her had died from aphids. Noone at first is reluctant to open up about her nightmare, but after Otto establishes she is in a space where she can be free to tell the truth, she becomes more willing, revealing she has been waking up in the middle of the night, sweating, her heart beating rapidly. Before talking about her dream, Noone drinks some juice and notices the blurry painting in the room. Otto explains to Noone the painting has a hidden image which can only be seen if a person is unfocussed. Otto suggests she stare at the painting as she talks about her nightmare as it will likely help her lose focus on the painting. Noone begins to detail her most recent nightmare, which she remembers in full detail.
Noone begins narrating her recent dream. She describes waking up, looking down onto a white cold field, but it was not like the winters she experienced in The Counties. She was in a passageway, looking through a hole in the stone wall down onto the snowing field. An odd feeling told her to get up but she couldn't as the ceiling was too low, she could only crawl with a small light to help her avoid any spots she could have fallen in. Upon hearing the sound of clinking from another passageway in the floor, the same odd feeling she had at the beginning, told her she was lost inside a giant, a huge one made out of stone and the only way out was for her to keep moving through its veins. She climbed down the passageway and immediately began sliding down an icy wet surface that shot her out into a new area. Noone pauses to question if the blurry painting in the room is a tiger with two moons, however, Otto explains it is not but that she should keep trying as she continues detailing her dream.
Noone continues, saying she saw an orange glow from a candle, but the light was not strong enough to reach the room's corners. She saw a tiny hole cut out into the stone beside her. Wondering if she would be able to see the snow fall again, she looked through it. However, all she saw was a room filled with glass jars with light shining through them, the light was coming from a doorway on the opposite side. Suddenly, she noticed a figure step through the doorway, a huge man wearing a long coat and fishing hat, his face dripped as he watched her. Noone has trouble remembering the moment, if the man had left the room or stayed.
The Counsellor asks if the man she saw was someone she knew, like her father. However, Noone reveals to The Counsellor that the man she saw was not of their world, The Counsellor is surprised and confused, but Noone cannot elaborate as it is simply the feeling he gave. Although The Counsellor asks her to explain this “feeling." Noone cannot describe it, it is something he would need to experience for himself to understand.
Noone continues narrating the details of her dream. As she turned away from the hole, she saw an exit on the far wall; the clinking sound she heard before was louder in that direction. Heading towards the exit, she saw the shadow of a child running from the corner. Her attempts to ask him where they were failed as he quietly climbed through the exit. Without thinking, she followed him and ended up in a bigger room, but the child was nowhere to be found. In this bigger room, Noone saw more pulsing passages all over the walls and floors, like living ant tunnels. She saw all kinds of springs laid about, as well as little oil cans and strange tools. Noone suddenly heard footsteps approaching, footsteps that matched the rhythm of the clinking. She hid in a wooden box as she watches other small shadows enter the room, stepping by each other silently. As most of them passed into different doors, two small shadows stayed behind, searching through the springs. Noone discovered they were not children as their bodies remained as shadows even in dim light.
She followed the direction of the two shadows and found herself on a platform where she discovered massive turning wheels, but didn’t know what they were until that faraway “feeling” came back and told her they were gears. On the gears, she saw hundreds and hundreds of the little shadow-like children working to keep the mechanism going. Without them, the gears would surely stop and the giant would break apart stone by stone.
Noone accidentally made a noise that alerted the shadows, prompting her to flee into a set of levers, only to accidentally have her dress caught in one of the gears. The gear lifted her up and threw her onto a pipe below. Unable to keep a good grip, she fell, but landed on another platform below. The fabric from her dress that was caught in the gears, was enough to distract the shadows long enough for them to stop pursuing, giving her enough time to run away. Noone grabbed hold of a rod and descended down the space along the wall. She peaked through a crack in the stone where she could hear painful cries. As she looked into the crack, she saw a room filled with chains, three identical nun-like dresses freshly pressed and hanging by a bed, as well as a frail man chained up, whom she distinctly remembered the smell of--like rotten sausages--which puzzled the Counsellor enough to question if she was certain she could smell them. Noone reminds him he told her to be honest about her dream and she is, she could smell the body of the man, but not his heavy breath.
After reassuring her that he was still paying attention, she continued to describe her descent. She realized that she was inside the walls. On the other side was an entirely different world. She heard a ticking sound growing louder and louder. Feeling the urge to give up climbing down, she stopped to listen to the ticking and nearly fell asleep. Upon looking down, a child with their hair covered in goo appeared, giving her a burst of energy to climb down and meet the child. Before she could ask what was on the child's hair, the child covered her mouth and pointed to another crack in the wall. On the other side was a hideous workshop filled with half made projects built from wood and metal, with all kinds of straps and cranks. Noone noticed a tall woman in the room, wearing a dress she had seen before. The tall woman was building things for hours, but enjoyed it nonetheless, her face was equally young as she was old, her skin stretched back tightly to the point that only her eyes seemed human. Noone determined that this woman was the keeper of the stone giant and all that functioned to keep it alive. The child with goo pulled Noone, pointing up to show her there was a shadow peering down on them. The shadow worker studied Noone and reached out with its wrench to poke her. The child with goo pushed Noone out of the way so a light from the crack could shine in, the moment the light touched the shadow, it fled.
Noone recounts the nightmare shifting to a setting where smoke surrounded her and the child at the bottom of the stone giant, where they found a pendulum swinging. The two of them climbed up the swinging pendulum to the top of the machine where they found a white clock face, but with all of the wrong numbers. They then stepped into a courtyard where all she could hear were screams of agony from within the walls that surrounded it. As she looked up, she noticed millions of bodies in cages trying to get free, but before she could react, the other child ran away. As the child ran, the tall woman appeared, who summoned a chain from under her dress to capture the child. She then spotted Noone, who became frozen with fear. As the tall woman headed her way, the only thing Noone could think about was who brought her to this place and why she was made to know so much about its secrets. Noone was horrified to see the tall woman's skin tight face and blackened teeth, feeling as if the tall woman was hungry for something that swelled inside her. However, before the woman could do anything, she woke up.
The Counsellor is in disbelief of the horrors Noone has described, especially in regards to the tall woman.
Noone expressed that the tall woman was not the one who scared her the most, it was the workers. She believed that they symbolized the sickness inside of her that was working to kill her. Just like the aphids that killed the flower her parents left her, no one knew they were there causing damage, just like no one knows the "water sickness" was gradually killing her. The Counsellor calms her down, explaining that there is nothing bad inside her. The Counsellor asks Noone if she has ever heard of "Mutual Dreaming;" sharing dreams with another person. Noone is confused over the possibility that someone else could be experiencing the same dreams as her at the same time. The Counsellor explains Noone's perception of temperature and smell in her dream is thought to be an indication of it, and as much as he has wanted to study a case like her, he has only ever known one other person who exhibited the same situation, his beloved Cici.
At the end of the story, a topic of conversation is brought back, Noone finally determines what the blurry painting on the wall was, a map of stars with two circles around it. The Counsellor describes it as an astrolabe, which is a device used to locate positions in time and space. He then lets her pick her choice of candy, his final words to her as she takes the candy are, "Sweets for my sweet," before walking her back to her room as she requested.
Characters
- Noone
- The Counsellor
- The Candleman
- The Workers
- The Prisoners
- The Tall Woman
- The Child with Gooey Hair
- Cici (mentioned)
Trivia
- Noone describes seeing creatures who fit a similar description to that of the Shadow Kids. She describes them as childlike shadows, things not quite there, as if forgotten, not wanting to be seen, their empty faces revealed they were not very smart, and any shining light would make them run back into the shadows the moment it touched them.
- It's revealed that Noone did not start having nightmares until after she became ill with "The water sickness".
- Noone states that in her nightmares, a strange "Feeling" tells her things, revealing to her where she is as well as other secrets and information.
- This "Feeling" additionally tells her what to do.
- Noone calls bugs "Crawlies"
- Noone describes seeing a man who wears a long coat and a fishing hat, his face dripped. He is the only one she has trouble focusing on when recalling her dream to The Counsellor.
- Noone claims she is able to smell and feel things in her nightmare.
Videos
