The music lulls you to sleep and keeps you company as evening gives way to night, a pleasant undercurrent to not-so-pleasant dreams...

You're in the forest out by Little Rock Lake, where Mathilda Haynes was found. High trees rise up on either side of a winding gravel road, and you see a dark figure standing up the road from you. You can't see its face; it's turned away from you.

"Who are you?" you call. Some part of you knows that you're dreaming, and that's a relief. It makes you bold.

The person—the being—turns around, and you still can't see his face. Where the features of a man should have been, there is nothing but a yawning, dark abyss. He's silhouetted by the moon. At his side glitters a long, wicked butcher's knife.

"Who are you?" you repeat. Your pulse is thrumming in your veins.

The man steps toward you. You stand still, watching him as he approaches you along the gravel road, his booted feet crunching, and you begin to notice familiar things about the man: those work boots, to start with, and the jeans he wears. The black T-shirt. The plaid button-down worn over the top, the sleeves rolled up.

"Wes?" you whisper in your dream, and dream-Wes chuckles, raising the knife.

A movement startles you awake, bringing you up out of the dark dream that held you. In confusion, you become aware of the familiar, shadowed shapes of your bedroom...and one shadowed shape that is less familiar. It's sitting on the side of your bed, and it's that—the weight of it coming to rest, shifting your mattress—that has woken you.

"Were you dreamin' about me, darlin'? I'm flattered." His familiar voice is soft, an obscenely intimate whisper.

You make an animal sound of terror. You raise your hands, but it's all you can do; you're frozen in fear.

"Well, Kendall, I'm glad you woke up." He lifts a hand, and in it, a knife gleams in the glancing light from the street lamp outside your bedroom window. "You wouldn't want to miss this."

The knife streaks down, the only point of light in your darkened room, and it slices across your throat. You reach up with trembling fingers, fumbling to cover the gash as your breath rattles and then gurgles in your throat. Hot blood floods down over your neck, your chest, and your hands. The darkness deepens, reaching out with shadowed wings to swallow you whole.

The last thing you hear is a soft whisper: "Sweet dreams."

ENDING ACHIEVED: Sleep Like the Dead.

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If you want to achieve all 24 endings and need a little help, check out the END NOTES chapter (mild spoilers) for a story map!