The beach was as beautiful against the night sky as it had always been to him. Chris Porter stood barefoot in the sand, and watched silently as a small flock of seagulls flew impossibly close overhead - their loud, yet somehow serene screeching seeming to almost envelope him as they passed. The winds whipped at his clothes as he began to walk, and although he hadn't walked that stretch of seaside since he had been a boy, his dream reproduced it in amazing detail - a fact which would have surprised him had he been aware that he was lost in his own mind's eye. A full moon floated brilliantly over the water, but the beach's visibility could not have been a product of even its brightest illumination.

  Chris was meant to see something. And so he walked.

  A short, white picket fence snaked its way through the patches of sea oats and small sand dunes farther up on shore, and he knew that if he followed it far enough down the beach it would eventually lead him home, just as it had countless times when he was a boy. As the waves crashed onto the sloped sand of the beach, they seemed to spread themselves as far up onto the sands as they could manage before slowly shrinking back into the ocean's body, almost as if reaching for him. Chris walked just beyond their reach - sometimes skipping quickly to avoid the water, but always walking as closely as he could without letting his feet actually meet the water's edge. It was a childish yet amusing game, and he had played it often during his walks in the night long ago. He followed the beach until he could see where the small white fence reached a leveled-out clearing among the dunes.

  He saw the shadow of it stretching out across the sand before he could actually make out the silhouette of its peaked roof against the darkness. The house was three stories tall

  "Three stories, Chris! Can you believe it?" She had turned to look at him, excitement showing in her blue eyes. Eyes that had always fascinated him. "Just wait until we have friends. They'll think we're rich and important. Can you believe how big it is?"

  and in obvious need of some repair work. The two windows facing the water on the first floor had been boarded up, and its last coating of off-white paint had long ago begun to peel. An old wooden swing hung slightly lopsided off to one side of the porch, the rusted chains from which it hung emitting a low creaking sound as the strong winds caused the swing to rock gently. The house had a strange effect on Chris, and he might have been able to stand and simply look at it from the water's edge for an untold length of time had his dream not been leading him to walk on.

  In the way that one can know things only in dreams, Chris knew that the screeching -- barely audible at first, but gaining in strength as it approached him from behind -- belonged to the same flock of gulls that had passed him earlier. They had turned, and were following him. Chris found himself almost wishing they would fly closer. A strange uneasiness had begun to settle over him as he passed the old white house he had once called home. The front door had not been open when he passed, but as he walked farther down the beach - his back to it - he knew, without even turning to look, that the door was now ajar. Something had been watching him from the darkened windows. And so he walked a little faster, until he saw them in the distance.

  His wife was kneeling in the sand, laughing as she watched her children at play. A large mound of sand had begun to roughly resemble something that could have optimistically have been labeled a sand castle, and his two sons were hard at work in their apparent efforts to better it.

  We used to do that. She would bring us out here to build sandcastles in the night, until we were tired enough to be put to bed.

  But something was wrong with the picture in front of him, and Chris found that he was no longer walking towards them. He was running. The flock of gulls had caught up to him, and they were flying not behind him, but around him, almost as if they sensed that something was wrong as well, and were egging him on. Their screeching had become almost frantic, and, combined with the sound of dozens of pairs of wings, was becoming deafening. Whatever had been in the house, in the place that had once been his home, was no longer watching from the shadows. Chris knew that if he turned, he would be able to see it. He also knew that, if he turned then, he might not be able make it to his family in time. Whatever was behind him would get to them first and it

  he'll rip them apart... he won't even think twice, and you know why.

  would hurt them somehow. Chris was as sure of the fact that it would hurt them as he was that it was gaining on him, and quickly. Gulls were flying in from all sides to join those that had already surrounded him, and by the time he could make out his wife's face in the moonlight the small flock had become a huge mass of white motion spotted with hundreds of tiny, black eyes - hundreds of eyes that seemed to be scanning the night for the danger that lurked. His sense of near panic began to fade as he realized that he had reached them before the thing behind him did. He wouldn't have to turn and fight it. He knew somehow that the gulls would protect them. As he grabbed his two sons and pulled them in to form a small circle with their mother, the gulls swarmed around them. And he felt it (him) pass in the darkness, felt the wave of pure terror and the sense of purest hatred that seemed to pass along with it. The gulls' screeching had become almost a single, mutilated scream in the darkness. And then the wave passed. The danger was moving away into the night, and the birds - sensing that the urgency was over - began to calm.

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  Chris looked at his wife then, his joy at having survived the threat turning to confusion as he realized that the expression on her face was still one of pure panic. A strange numbness - a knowing - passed over him as he heard her.

  "Where is Sarah?"

  A sickening dread flooded him as he turned back to look in the direction from which he had just come. Something had been wrong with the picture. His wife and two sons building sand castles on the beach to tire them before bed. But his daughter. Where was his daughter?

  Oh god, please don't let her be in the house. They didn't leave her sleeping in the house. It was in the house. It was watching me from behind the windows. She can't be in the damned house.

  And Chris Porter began to run again.

  Oh god, please don't let me be too late...

  The sand passed beneath his feet with impossible ease - the ease borne of dreams - and it was only moments before he stood at the small gap in the white picket fence. He slowed as he passed through it, his eyes fastened farther up the sand on the house he had once called home. It seemed to loom over him in the darkness, and Chris couldn't remember a time when it had seemed so tall, even as a boy. The sense of dread was almost palpable then. He could feel it screaming from every corner of his mind. Something was wrong. Oh, something was so wrong. He rested his foot on the first of the steps that led up to the porch, and he reached for the screen door's rusted handle. It (he) found her. He found her sleeping inside. He found her sleeping and he whispered to her, didn't he?

  The door creaked loudly as he swung it back and stepped through. He stopped just inside the porch. No more than six feet from him, the home's front door stood open. The darkness beyond it was incredibly thick. He could make out nothing beyond the threshold - almost as if the doorway had been blocked with a wall of darkness. A wall of pitch black, and it seemed that it had been placed there as a dare. It was daring him to step through. It wanted him to step through. Because there was something that he needed to see. Something that he needed to learn.

  Oh yes, you need to learn. A whisper goes a long way, and sometimes it takes a good lesson to teach the fear that one deserves. So step right on through... Because this one's all for you.

  Chris stepped over the threshold, and into his home. Darkness enveloped him, seemed to almost permeate him as he stumbled blindly into what he knew to be the living room. The staircase. I need to find the staircase. I've got to get to her room. My room. But if I'm not too late, why can't I hear her? Sarah, hang on baby. Please hang on. I'm coming.

  But as he took another step into the room, his foot caught on something that shouldn't have been there - something soft yet heavy. And even though Chris Porter couldn't see in the darkness, he saw her as he fell. Saw his daughter's body lying lifeless on the floor in front of the staircase. Felt himself falling over her. Felt the wave of horror and maddening shame - shame that he hadn't been in time. He hadn't saved his little girl. And it

  (he)

  had whispered to her.

  Chris seemed to fall for an eternity before he felt the cold wooden floor break him. And as the dream began to fade, and his thoughts became a crazed jumble of guilt and anguish spiraling into the darkness, a voice followed him.

  Oh yes, a whisper goes a long way...