“The Dark Cell”

“The Dark Cell”

🕳️ 1. The Assignment

It was supposed to be routine.

Officer Caleb Dwyer had worked at Blackridge Penitentiary for almost a decade. A crumbling, half-abandoned supermax in the mountains, it was only kept open because the state didn’t know what else to do with it. The inmates were lifers, the guards were tired, and the walls practically bled history.

On a cold November morning, Caleb was pulled aside by Warden Hensley.

“There’s been… a situation in Cell Block E,” Hensley said, eyes twitching. “We need someone to check it out.”

“Block E?” Caleb frowned. “That wing’s been closed for years.”

Hensley didn’t answer. He just handed Caleb an old iron key and said:
“Don’t stay past dark.”

🚧 2. Entering Cell Block E

Caleb passed through three sealed checkpoints to reach it.

Cell Block E was sealed off after a riot back in the ’80s. Twenty-seven inmates died when the wing caught fire, though the cause was never determined. Some say they locked each other in their cells. Some say they wanted to burn.

No one had entered it in decades.

The air was thick with mold and decay. Paint peeled like scabs from the walls. Light barely reached beyond the entrance. And yet… one light flickered deep inside, like a weak pulse. That’s where the sound was coming from.

A cell door, clanging open and shut.

Again.

And again.

🔒 3. Cell #13

It was the only cell not welded shut. “Cell 13” was scrawled above it in what looked like dried rust — or blood. Caleb approached slowly, flashlight beam trembling.

The door creaked open by itself.

Inside was a narrow room with chains embedded in the walls, the metal still stained and bent. The bed was scorched. The floor covered in symbols scratched into concrete. And in the far corner…

A hole.

Perfectly round. Pitch black. No sound. No echo.

Just… a void.

Caleb leaned closer.

That’s when the whispering began.

👁️ 4. The Whisperers

He turned, expecting a radio malfunction. But the voices came from the cell. Dozens of them, murmuring things that sounded like secrets. Apologies. Laughter. Screaming.

Then a face appeared behind him in the cracked mirror — pale, hollow-eyed, with a torn mouth stretched in a smile.

He spun around. Nothing.

The cell was still empty.

But the voices got louder. Closer.

And the hole…

It was wider now.

🕳️ 5. Into the Dark

Caleb stepped back.

The hole in the floor pulsed, like a heartbeat. Something was breathing in there. Slowly, deliberately. Each breath made the walls vibrate. The symbols on the floor glowed faintly.

He reached for his radio.

It burst into static, then silence.

Then a voice:
“You opened the cell. You let it see.”

His flashlight went out.

The cell door slammed shut behind him.

Locked.

📖 6. The Journal

In total darkness, Caleb stumbled until he found a rotting mattress. Beneath it was a journal, water-damaged and stained. It belonged to Inmate #66613 — Tobias Grinshaw, convicted murderer and self-declared prophet.

The last entry read:

“The dark is not empty. It is patient. It waits to be invited.”
“They locked me here thinking it would keep me from spreading it. Fools. The cell is not mine. I am the cell.”
“When the thirteenth key turns, the door will never close again.”

The air dropped ten degrees.

The breathing from the hole stopped.

Then… something crawled out.

🕳️ 7. The Thing in the Cell

It was human-shaped, but wrong — stretched too tall, limbs too long, skin the color of rotted milk. Its eyes were hollow. Its mouth opened in a slow, gaping yawn like it had just awakened after centuries of sleep.

Caleb froze.

The creature didn’t move toward him. It just pointed.

To the journal.
Then to him.
Then to the hole.

Caleb backed away. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

The creature smiled with too many teeth.

“You do.”

And then he remembered: his dreams. For weeks before this, he’d had them. Dark places. Whispering voices. Symbols. A door with thirteen locks.

He wasn’t sent to this cell.

He was summoned.

🕳️ 8. The Return

The creature lunged — and Caleb didn’t run.

He understood now.

The cell was never meant to contain a prisoner. It was a mouth, a ritual site, a door to the other side. The thirteenth key wasn’t the iron one Hensley gave him.

It was him.

He was the last offering.

The moment the thing touched him, the symbols on the floor blazed white. The ground trembled. The hole swallowed both of them in a soundless implosion.

And then — silence.

🏚️ 9. Aftermath

The next day, Warden Hensley filed the paperwork.

Officer Caleb Dwyer — missing. Presumed AWOL.

Cell Block E was bricked up again. “For safety.”

But at night, in the deepest shadows of Blackridge Penitentiary, guards sometimes hear a cell door open and shut.

Open and shut.

And if you stand close enough…

You’ll hear Caleb whispering from behind it.

“The cell is hungry.”

Want a continuation? A rescue team goes in? Or maybe the dark cell starts appearing in other prisons? I’d love to keep building this world if you’re into it.