The Workers in the Walls

***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 psychological 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 then 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 an 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 loose focus on the painting. Noone begins to detail her most recent nightmare, which she remembers in full detail.

She describes how she woke up looking down onto a white cold field, not like the winters she experienced in The Counties. She was in a passageway, looking through a hole in the stone wall down into 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 in the beginning tells 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 climbs down the passageway and immediately beings sliding down an icy wet surface that shoots 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 says she saw an orange glow from a candle, but the light was not strong enough to reach the room's corners. She sees a tiny hole cut out into the stone beside her. Wondering if she would be able to see the snow fall again, she looks  through it. However, all she sees is a room filled with glass jars with light shining through them, the light coming from a doorway on the opposite side. Suddenly, she sees a figure step through the doorway, a huge man wearing a long coat and fishing hat, his face dripped as he watches her. She has trouble remembering the moment and if the man had left the room or stayed.

The Counsellor asks if the man she saw was someone she knew, like her father. As Noone tells The Counsellor 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.

Noone continues the details of her dream. As she turns away from the hole, she sees an exit on the far wall; the clinking sound she heard before was louder in that direction. As she heads towards the exit, she sees the shadow of a child running from the corner. Her attempts to ask him where they are fail as he quietly climbs through the exit. Without thinking, she follows him and ends up in a bigger room, but the child is nowhere to be found. In this bigger room, Noone sees more pulsing passages all over the walls and floors, like living ant tunnels. She sees all kinds of springs laid about, as well as little oil cans and strange tools. She suddenly hears footsteps approaching. The footsteps matched the rhythm of the clinking. She hides in a wooden box as she watches other small shadows entering the room, stepping by each other silently. As most of them pass into different doors, two small shadows stay behind, searching through the springs. Noone discovers they were not children as their bodies remained as shadows even in dim light.

She then goes on to describe how she followed the direction of two of the shadows and found herself on a platform where she could see 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 stop and the giant would break apart stone by stone.

She accidentally makes a noise that alerts the shadows, causing her to flee but accidentally gets her dress caught in one of the gears. The gear lifts her up and throws her on a pipe. Unable to keep a good grip, she falls but lands on another platform below. The fabric from her dress that was caught in the gears is enough to distract the shadows long enough for them to stop pursuing. She then describes descending down a space and peaks through a crack in the stone where she could hear painful cries. As she looks into the crack, she sees 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 is she was certain she could smell them. Noone reminds him he told her she could 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 realizes that she was inside the walls where on the other side was an entirely different world. She describes hearing a ticking sound growing louder and louder, As she feels the urge to give up climbing down, she stops to listen to the ticking and nearly falls asleep. As she looks down, a child with their hair covered in goo appears. Before she could ask what was on the child's hair, the child covers her mouth and points to another crack in the wall, on the other side was a hideous workshop filled with half made projects built from wooden and metal with all kinds of straps and cranks. A tall woman was in the room wearing a dress Noone had seen before, she was building things for hours but enjoyed it none the less, her face was equally young as she was old, her skin stretched back tightly to the point that only her eyes seemed human. She determined that this woman was the reason for the stone giant's functioning. The child with goo pulls Noone, pointing up to show her there is a shadow peering down on them. The shadow worker studies her and reaches out with its wrench. The child with goo pushes Noone out of the way so a light from the crack can shine in, the moment the light touches the shadow, it to flees.

Noone then described how the nightmare shifted to a setting where smoke surrounded her and the child at the bottom of the stone giant, where a pendulum was swinging. The two of them climbed up the swinging pendulum to the top of the machine where there was a white clock face 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 becomes frozen with fear. As the tall woman heads 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 sees the tall womans skin tight face and blackened teeth, she felt as if the tall woman was hungry for something that swelled inside Noone. Just before the woman could do anything, she woke up.

Noone expressed that the workers scared her the most because 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. 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 determined 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

The Sounds of Nightmares – Chapter 1- The Workers in the Walls