Sleep is one of those things people don't appreciate until it's gone.
You don't notice how much it holds you together until it stops showing up.
Then everything starts slipping.
Your patience.
Your memory.
Your sense of humor.
Your ability to tell what matters and what doesn't.
And for us—
sleep left all five of us at the same time.
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It started with small things.
Hashim forgot his backpack twice in one week.
That doesn't sound important until you know Hashim carried half his life in that bag. Charger, snacks, hoodie, random receipts, things nobody needed but him.
He never forgot it.
Now he stood outside the school doors patting his pockets like somebody had robbed him.
"You good?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I left my bag in my room."
I stared at him.
"You serious?"
"I walked out my house holding it too."
"That makes it worse."
He laughed a little, but it sounded tired.
Everything sounded tired now.
⸻
Samiya got meaner when she was tired.
Not evil.
Not cruel.
Just sharp.
Every sentence came out with edges.
A teacher asked her to repeat an answer in class and she snapped, "Then listen the first time."
Even she looked surprised after saying it.
She apologized later.
That made it sadder somehow.
⸻
Neems stopped texting as much.
Our group chat used to be dumb stuff. Memes. Random insults. Somebody sending a blurry picture of food and acting like it was gourmet.
Now there were long empty spaces.
Then a message like:
You guys hear that last night?
No one would answer for ten minutes.
Then:
No
Or:
Maybe
Or:
Shut up
That was usually Samiya.
⸻
Sia hid it the best.
But hiding something and defeating it are different things.
Her eyes looked heavier every day.
She'd pause before responding sometimes, like her brain needed an extra second to climb stairs.
Still composed.
Still steady.
Still the one everyone looked at first when things got tense.
But she was running on fumes.
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And me?
I kept hearing things right before sleep.
Not voices.
Not fully.
Just the beginning of them.
Like a sentence trying to crawl through the wall.
Every time I'd sit up.
Heart racing.
Room empty.
Nothing there.
Then I'd lie back down and wait for morning like it was rescue.
⸻
School became harder.
Not because the work changed.
Because concentration did.
I read the same paragraph three times in history and couldn't tell you a single word of it.
Hashim fell asleep during a video in science, snored once, then woke himself up.
Whole class laughed.
He usually would've played into it.
Instead he just rubbed his face and stared at the desk.
⸻
At lunch we sat together in near silence.
Five people at one table sounding like strangers.
Samiya poked at fries she wasn't eating.
Neems kept glancing behind her every few minutes.
Hashim had his hood up indoors.
Sia was writing something in a notebook.
I looked around the cafeteria and thought how insane it was that everyone else got to live normal lives while we were calculating sleep like currency.
⸻
"You guys look horrible," Hashim said.
"That's rich coming from you," Samiya replied.
"No seriously," he said. "We all look terrible."
"He's right," Neems said quietly.
"We know," Sia answered without looking up.
Hashim leaned forward.
"So what's the plan then? Because this whole no-sleep thing is killing me."
Samiya nodded. "I almost cussed out my aunt this morning because she asked me if I wanted toast."
"What'd toast do?" Hashim asked.
That got a real laugh out of all of us.
Small.
Short.
But real.
We needed it.
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Then Sia closed her notebook.
"We need to compare nights."
We all looked at her.
"What?"
"Patterns," she said. "Who slept worst. What time. What happened before bed. What noises. What thoughts. Everything."
Hashim groaned.
"Homework for sleeping?"
"Yes."
"That sentence alone makes me hate this."
⸻
But she was right.
Again.
So we did it.
⸻
That evening we met in Sia's basement.
The board was still there on the wall.
Strings. Notes. Timelines. Pictures.
It somehow looked more serious every time I saw it.
Like it was growing authority.
We sat in a circle on old chairs and storage bins.
Sia stood with marker in hand.
"Start talking."
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Hashim raised his hand.
"This feels hostile."
"Hashim."
"Fine. I woke up at 12:28 exactly. No reason. Just opened my eyes."
Sia wrote it down.
Neems spoke next.
"I heard tapping at my window around one."
"Actual tapping?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"That means no," Samiya muttered.
Neems glared at her.
⸻
Samiya sighed.
"I couldn't sleep until almost three. Every time I closed my eyes I kept thinking something was standing in my room."
Sia wrote that too.
Then looked at me.
"Jamal?"
"I hear almost-voices."
Hashim blinked. "What's an almost-voice?"
"Like… the start of someone speaking. But never enough words."
No one joked about that.
⸻
Finally Sia uncapped the marker again.
"My turn," she said.
She hesitated.
That got everyone's attention immediately.
Sia never hesitated.
"I keep dreaming that one of us is missing."
The room went still.
"Which one?" Neems asked softly.
Sia shook her head.
"It changes."
No one knew what to say after that.
So no one said anything.
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She turned to the board.
"Different symptoms. Same timeline. It's escalating through exhaustion."
Hashim frowned.
"You saying it's doing this?"
"I'm saying we weren't like this before."
Samiya crossed her arms.
"So what, The Listener can stop people from sleeping now?"
"I don't know," Sia snapped—then caught herself.
That was new too.
She took a breath.
"I don't know," she repeated, calmer. "But something is wearing us down."
⸻
We all knew she was right.
Because being tired makes everything weaker.
Your judgment.
Your patience.
Your courage.
Your ability to ignore something that wants attention.
⸻
I stood and walked closer to the board.
There were dates circled now.
The nights things were worse.
The nights the Walker appeared longest.
The nights somebody heard something.
I traced the pattern silently.
Then felt my stomach drop.
"It's syncing."
Everyone looked at me.
"What?" Hashim asked.
I pointed.
"It'd not random. Our worst nights are lining up more often now. At first it was separate. Different houses, different times. Now it's closer together."
Sia stepped beside me.
Read the same dates.
Her expression changed.
"He's right."
Neems looked nervous immediately.
"What does that mean?"
I answered before I wanted to.
"It means whatever this is…"
I swallowed.
"It's learning how to hit all of us at once."
⸻
Nobody moved.
Nobody joked.
Even the basement felt quieter.
⸻
Then upstairs, something thudded in the house.
We all jumped.
Sia's mom yelled from another room asking if anyone wanted drinks.
Normal life calling down into abnormal life.
For a second it almost felt funny.
Almost.
⸻
Hashim exhaled hard.
"I miss being scared of tests."
"Same," Samiya said.
⸻
We packed up later than planned.
Nobody wanted to go home.
Home meant beds.
Beds meant trying to sleep.
Trying to sleep meant listening.
⸻
As I left, I looked back at the board.
At the dates.
At the lines pulling closer together.
And I understood something I wish I didn't.
This wasn't just haunting us anymore.
It was preparing us.
Weakening us.
Making sure when the next thing happened—
we'd be too tired to stop it.
⸻
That night I slept for maybe an hour.
And in that hour, I dreamed of a cave with no entrance.
Just light pouring out of solid stone.
And something behind it—
waiting for us to be tired enough to come in.
⸻
NEXT WEEK:
CHAPTER 15: "The Trail Without Meaning"