This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/kaladee_stallion on 2025-07-05 23:29:42+00:00.

My name was Diana. I'd like to share my story here because I know many of you are believers of things that most would never think twice about. I don't know where I go from here or what I truly am. I am terrified of what this means for you all. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm sorry. This is my story, I'll start at the beginning.

The first voicemail came at 3:12 am. I didn't even hear the phone ring.

The number was completely unfamiliar, unlisted and when I checked it was also untraceable. I sat down on my bed and listened to it, thinking maybe it was a mistake. Maybe a grieving mother or some drunk lonely man. The voice on the other end was eerily calm. Measured even. It was familiar in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

"Hey. It's okay. Just wanted to let you know that we're ready. We're safe now. You did so good. You can come back."

The voice on the other end paused.

"We miss you". Click.

I sat for a long time with my phone in hand, replaying the message. The voice was like something out of a dream. Like it was just known but couldn't be placed but you recognize it in your bones. She said my name. Not Diana or Ana. The way my mother used to call me when she needed to talk, to hear my voice. She had the exact cadence. Like she knew exactly who I was.

And even stranger still for a woman that doesn't cry, I couldn't help the strangled sob that escaped my lips.

I cried myself to sleep and when I woke the next morning I wrote it off as a prank. Someone had just got a lucky guess, maybe a friend doing too much.

I couldn't shake the way it made me feel. Like homesick for a place that I don't remember.

So I deleted the voicemail.

It was back in my notification window by lunch.

The next few days, things got weirder. Small things then bigger, things I couldn't' ignore or write off.

My favorite coffee tasted like nothing. Like my taste buds stopped working.

The streetlight outside my house started blinking in a pattern I became convinced was Morse Code. When I transcribed it though it spelled nothing. Or maybe it was something I just couldn't understand. Each night the the spaces in the pattern got longer.

One night I came home from work to find a dark bruise on my left shoulder. It was tender but undeniably old. Weeks old. I didn't remember any pain or any way I could've bruised myself like that. Then there was the scratches. Faint lines, symmetrical, like something with precision had grabbed me. Or adjusted me.

I checked my sleep app of course, there were no disturbances. Just completely uninterrupted rest, it was recorded as deep sleep. Every night. I have insomnia, it was too perfect.

Then the dreams began.

Vast, black tunnels beneath a burning sky. A council of faceless shapes waiting in silence. I stood before them all, tall, alien and beloved. I remember speaking, but not the words. Just a feeling of great importance. Of command. And one singular phrase that lingered even after waking.

"Death is just the body ending. Memory is the real self."

The second voicemail came a week later.

This time, the voice on the other end sounded different. Pained and pleading.

"You told us to wait. But it's been so long. Some of us didn't make it. Some forgot you completely. But we didn't. Not all of us. You said you'd come back when it was safe. It's safe now. Come back. Please."

My hands shook like leaves as I played it. Something inside me shifted as I heard it. Like a gear clicking back into place. When I opened my eyes again, the light in my apartment was wrong. The angle was off. It was slight but definitely different.

The TV moved several inches to the left on its mount on the wall.

That night when I went to bed, a note waited for me on my nightstand.

In my own handwriting, I live by myself.

"Do not answer if they call again, don't listen to those voicemails. You are not supposed to remember. You are not stable. Stay asleep."

I ran to the bathroom and burned the note in the sink searing the wretched thing from this world. I didn't sleep a wink that night.

The days that followed I began seeing people who weren't... real. I don't know how else to explain it. Their movement were to precise. Their faces too still. The way they blinked with rhythm. And they watched me, but only when they thought I wasn't looking at them. In the corner of my vision, shapes loomed and flickered.

And the sky, was unexplainable, the blue was wrong. Too heavy, like it had been painted over something else.

I looked into the mirror one morning before work and my reflection smiled first.

I went to my doctor demanding scan after scan. A full workup. But the doctor. He smiled too much, asked questions that had nothing to do with my checkup.

"Do you remember your point of entry Diana?"

"What year did you say this was again?"

"Does it still hurt when you wake up?"

I left the doctor feeling more delusional than when I went in. That night I turned my phone completely off.

At 3:12 am, it rang anyway.

There was no ringtone. Just vibration. Low and steady. Like the hum of something deep underground.

I didn't answer it.

When I looked up my window was no longer facing the street like it should be. It faced another window..

In the window I saw myself. She was thinner, taller. Her eyes were too dark and she was staring back. Smiling.

I went to bed that night and when I woke up my bed was gone.

The air was different. Thicker, Like breathing underwater. The walls glistened like sweaty skin. It was organic. The room was the size of a cathedral but it pulsed like a lung. And across the chamber stood something. Almost human but not.

Too many eyes. No mouth, but when it spoke, it was with the same voice from the voicemails.

"Welcome back, Instructor."

Behind the being was rows of them. Students, followers, whatever they are, they stood waiting.

"We kept the memory intact as long as we could. You asked us to. Was it peaceful? The dream?"

I couldn't speak. I wanted to scream. Or run. But something ancient in my blood told me. No. This is real. The rest was a dream.

The creature stepped forward. She placed a hand- smooth, glowing, wrong- on my shoulder.

"They need you again, we all do."

Like a chorus of warbled nonsense they all spoke at once.

"You've always been here."