The village of Bärenholz nestled deep within the Bavarian Alps, shrouded by pine forests that seemed to whisper secrets with every breeze. Tourists rarely came here anymore. Not after the disappearances. Not after the locals stopped answering questions.
Martin Adler, a journalist for a German folklore podcast, wasn't easily scared. He had come to Bärenholz chasing a rumor—a story passed down through generations of villagers about a creature that fed on dreams, a shadow called Der Alp.
The innkeeper, Frau Weber, had been reluctant to give him a room.
"Tourists don't stay long here anymore," she said, eyeing him carefully as she handed him the key. "If you hear noises at night… do not open your door."
He chuckled nervously. "You mean like wolves?"
She said nothing, only crossed herself and turned away.
That night, the village was quiet, unnaturally so. Even the dogs didn't bark. Martin sat in bed, surrounded by old books and notes, candles burning low. The legends all described the Alp as a shapeshifter—part incubus, part nightmare spirit—that sat on the chest of its victims while they slept, feeding off their breath, terrorizing them with waking dreams.
Sometime past midnight, Martin's candle flickered and died.
He blinked.
The room seemed to grow colder. His breath puffed out in faint white clouds. He reached for the lighter beside the bed—and froze.
There was someone sitting on his chest.
He couldn't move. Couldn't scream. The pressure was unbearable.
It had a face like a shriveled mask, pale and sunken, with deep-set eyes that pulsed red in the dark. It smiled, revealing blackened teeth, and leaned closer. Its breath was fetid, like rotting leaves.
"Martin..." it whispered.
He tried to struggle, but he was paralyzed. His heart pounded. Sweat beaded at his temples.
The creature hissed and vanished with a sudden gust of wind, leaving him gasping, drenched in cold sweat, heart thundering in his chest.
He barely slept the rest of the night.
—
In the morning, he stumbled into the village bakery. People turned their heads. Conversations stopped mid-sentence. Whispers followed him.
"Er ist markiert…" someone muttered under their breath.
He approached a local woodcutter by the counter.
"Hey, excuse me. Do you know anything about—?"
The man stood up and walked out without a word.
"Friendly town," Martin muttered.
He turned to the baker, an older woman with trembling hands.
"You saw it, didn't you?" she asked, voice low.
Martin blinked. "What?"
"Der Alp. You have the mark now. You're one of them."
"One of what?" he asked, his voice rising. "What does that mean?"
She lowered her gaze and handed him a loaf of bread. "Leave this place, before it feeds again."
—
That night, Martin bolted the door and sat with a flashlight and his voice recorder.
"This is Martin Adler. Second night in Bärenholz. Confirmed sleep paralysis, visual hallucination, possible suggestion due to folklore saturation... but it felt real."
The wind outside picked up.
He heard soft thumps on the roof. Then scratching.
He froze. The scratching turned to scraping.
From inside the walls.
He backed into the corner of the room, flashlight beam shaking. Then—silence.
Until—
"Maaaartin…"
It came from under the bed.
He spun, crouched low, heart racing. Slowly, he lifted the edge of the blanket—
Two pale hands shot out and grabbed his wrists.
He screamed.
He kicked backward, scrambling away, but nothing was there.
The door burst open. Frau Weber stood in the hallway, eyes wide.
"You opened the door," she whispered. "You let it in."
—
He left the inn the next morning. Found a room in the barn on the edge of town. The villagers had stopped speaking to him altogether. He walked the village and people crossed the street to avoid him.
That night, the dream came again.
This time, he was in the forest. Snow crunched underfoot. The trees were alive, pulsing like lungs. He saw himself nailed to a pine, eyes sewn shut, the Alp perched on his chest whispering dreams into his ears.
He woke screaming.
Blood trickled from his nose. His shirt was damp with sweat. The window was open, though he hadn't touched it.
A single footprint was left in the snow outside.
Bare. Human.
—
The final night, Martin tried to leave. Packed his bags. Rushed to the edge of the village.
But the roads had vanished.
He wandered for hours in the fog, always ending back where he started.
At the inn.
At midnight, the Alp came.
It didn't sit on his chest this time.
It stood in the doorway, grinning. Behind it were others—half-formed shadows of the villagers who had vanished over the years, eyes empty, jaws slack.
"You were warned," it said.
"Why me?" Martin cried, backing into the corner. "What do you want from me?!"
It tilted its head. "You told our story. Now you are part of it."
It pounced.
His scream echoed through the cold mountains, swallowed by fog and pine.
---
Martin Adler's body was never found.
A week passed. Then two.
The podcast episode he had recorded never aired.
Back in Munich, his producer, Lara Stein, grew worried. Martin never missed a deadline. She reached out to local police, but the file was closed almost as soon as it was opened. "Unexplained disappearance," they told her. "No signs of foul play." But that wasn't good enough.
Lara had worked with Martin for years. He was careful, methodical—obsessive, even. So she packed her bag, loaded her recorder, and drove to Bärenholz herself.
The village was as cold and quiet as he'd described. She checked into the same inn, noted the frost-covered windows, the heavy silence, the way people watched her from behind curtains but never spoke.
"Martin Adler," she asked the innkeeper, showing a photo. "You remember him?"
Frau Weber's hands froze on the counter. Her mouth tightened.
"He left," she said.
"When?"
"About two weeks ago. Didn't say where."
"Did he leave anything behind?"
A long pause. "No."
But Lara had been in this business too long. She knew a lie when she heard one.
That night, in her room, she searched every corner.
Nothing.
Until she checked under the floorboards.
There, wrapped in a torn blanket, was Martin's digital recorder. Its metal shell was scratched, as though something had clawed at it. The screen was cracked but intact.
She hit play.
Static.
Then a voice. Martin's.
"…I think it's inside me."
Lara froze.
His voice was ragged, broken.
"I wake up and it's not a dream anymore. I see things in the mirror that aren't mine. I hear it laughing. At night, the villagers… they change. Their eyes go black. They whisper in a language I don't understand. And the Alp—God, the Alp—it feeds. Every time I sleep, it leaves something behind. Like a splinter in my soul…"
Then static again.
Lara turned off the recorder, heart hammering. She looked around the room. The air was still. Too still.
Then—footsteps in the hallway.
Slow. Deliberate.
She reached for her phone. No signal.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
A soft, wet sniff.
Then a voice. Familiar, broken.
"…Lara…"
She backed away from the door. "Martin?"
"…it's so cold…"
"No. No, no—"
The doorknob turned, but the chain held. Just barely.
She screamed.
The innkeeper burst in moments later, clutching a rusted crucifix.
"It wants to wear him," Frau Weber said, eyes wide. "You shouldn't have come here."
—
Lara didn't sleep. She spent the next day combing the forest, guided by a local child who hadn't yet learned to be afraid of outsiders. The boy led her to a hollowed pine tree wrapped in faded red ribbons.
Inside, she found Martin's bag. Torn, but intact.
And scrawled in blood on a torn notebook page: It lives in stories. And I told it mine.
Lara took the bag and fled.
But as she turned to leave the tree line, she saw it—half-hidden in the mist.
A figure wearing Martin's face.
But the eyes were all wrong.
Too dark. Too wide.
It smiled.
---
Lara made it back to Munich, but something came with her.
The fog followed her car for miles.
She locked the recorder in a drawer, buried the notebook, told herself it was trauma, stress, grief.
But each night, she heard footsteps outside her apartment.
Each night, the voice grew closer.
"…Lara…"
Now, she doesn't sleep.
Not because she's scared of dying.
But because she knows—if she does sleep—he'll finally find his way in.
And next time, she won't wake up alone.