The first time I saw one of their buildings, I threw up in a dumpster behind a 7-Eleven.
Not because it was ugly. Not because it was dangerous. Because it was wrong. So wrong that my stomach just... gave up. Everything I'd eaten that day—a bagel, three coffees, half a granola bar—came right back up.
I was twenty-three. Fresh out of architecture school. I'd taken a job as a junior designer at a firm that was supposed to be prestigious, the kind of place you put on your resume so people know you're serious.
I lasted two months.
The project was a corporate headquarters in some suburb outside Phoenix. Glass and steel. Clean lines. The kind of building that says "we have money and we want you to know it."
I was doing the site survey. Just a routine thing. Measuring the footprint, checking the soil composition, making sure the foundations would hold.
And then I saw the house.
---
It was down the street. Two blocks away. I'd walked past it three times without noticing it, which is insane because it was massive. A four-story Victorian—no, a five-story Victorian—no, I couldn't even count the floors because they kept changing.
The roof was wrong. The angles were wrong. Everything was wrong.
I stopped walking. Stared.
The house had a turret. Three turrets. No, four. It had a wraparound porch that wrapped around itself, folding in on its own space in a way that shouldn't have been possible. The windows were all different sizes, different shapes, and none of them seemed to correspond to the rooms you'd expect behind them.
I walked closer. My skin was crawling. My neck prickled with a sensation I couldn't name, like being watched by something that wasn't quite there.
A sign was nailed to the front gate. Small. Elegant. Bronze.
BALKWILDE & SONS
ARCHITECTURE OF TRANSFORMATION
We build what shouldn't exist.
---
I should have walked away.
I should have gone back to my hotel, called my boss, said I was sick, quit the next day, moved to a different state, changed my name.
But I was a twenty-three-year-old idiot who thought he was brave.
I pushed open the gate.
The garden was... I don't know. Beautiful? Terrifying? Both? The flowers were all wrong. Roses that bloomed in impossible colors. Vines that grew in patterns that hurt to look at. A fountain in the center of the courtyard that flowed upward, water defying gravity in a smooth, silent arc.
That's not possible.
But it was happening right in front of me.
I walked to the front door. It was made of wood. Heavy oak. But when I touched it, it felt like stone. And when I knocked—
It opened on its own.
---
The interior was a labyrinth.
I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it was literally a labyrinth. Hallways that didn't go anywhere. Stairs that led to the same floor. Rooms that were bigger on the inside than they were on the outside.
I walked for what felt like hours. Past parlors and libraries and bedrooms, each one more impossible than the last. The walls were covered in wallpaper that shifted when you looked at it, patterns that rearranged themselves into shapes that almost made sense but never quite did.
And the sound.
A low hum. Constant. Everywhere. Like the building was breathing.
It's the HVAC system. Just the HVAC system.
But I knew it wasn't.
I found a study on the third floor—or maybe the fourth, I'd lost count. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with volumes that had no titles. A desk sat in the center of the room, cluttered with blueprints and sketches.
I picked one up.
The drawing was of a house. A small one. A cottage, maybe. But the angles were wrong, the proportions were wrong, and when I tried to trace the lines with my finger—
The drawing moved.
The cottage shifted. Expanded. The lines rearranged themselves into something else. Something that wasn't a house at all.
I dropped the blueprint. Stumbled back. My heart was slamming against my ribs.
Get out. Get out get out get out.
I ran.
---
I never worked on the corporate headquarters. I quit the next day. Packed my bags, drove back to the city, never looked back.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the house.
The impossible geometry. The shifting walls. The hum.
And the name on the sign.
BALKWILDE & SONS.
ARCHITECTURE OF TRANSFORMATION.
I started researching. Late nights. Bad coffee. Bags under my eyes.
Balkwilde & Sons wasn't in any directory. No website. No phone number. No address. It was like the firm existed only on that one brass plaque.
But their buildings were everywhere.
I found them in old newspaper archives. Obituaries, mostly. People who'd died in houses that didn't make sense. Structures that "seemed to change shape at night." Rooms that "didn't stay where they were supposed to."
One article from 1957 described a woman who'd lived in a Balkwilde house for three years. When they found her body, she was curled up in a closet, her fingernails torn off from trying to claw through the wall.
Her last diary entry read:
The house is dreaming. And I'm inside the dream.
---
I didn't sleep for three days after reading that.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the shifting walls. The impossible geometry. The hum.
The house is dreaming.
What does that mean? What the fuck does that mean?
I couldn't stop thinking about it. Couldn't stop researching. It was like the buildings had gotten inside my head, wormed their way into my brain, and now they were living there rent-free.
I found more articles. More obituaries. More people who'd lived in Balkwilde houses and never come out the same.
And then I found one that changed everything.
A story from 1982. A family of four. Father, mother, two daughters. They'd moved into a Balkwilde house in upstate New York. Six months later, the father was found wandering in the woods, naked, covered in his own blood.
He'd killed his family.
When they asked him why, he said:
"They started to believe the house. They started to believe the dream. And the dream was hungry."
---
I stopped researching after that.
For a while.
But the obsession was still there. Gnawing at me. Pulling me back.
I started driving. Just driving. No destination. No plan. I'd get in my car and go, following some instinct I couldn't name.
And every time, I'd end up in front of a Balkwilde house.
Not the same one. A different one each time. A sprawling mansion in Connecticut. A suburban ranch in Ohio. A high-rise apartment building in Chicago.
They were all impossible. All wrong. All hungry.
And the hum was always there.
---
The last one I visited was in New Orleans.
A townhouse. Narrow. Three stories. The kind of building that looks like it's squeezing itself between its neighbors, like it's trying to hide.
I stood across the street, staring at it.
The hum was louder here. Throbbing in my teeth. Pulsing behind my eyes.
Don't go inside. Don't go inside don't go inside.
I went inside.
The door was unlocked. The interior was dark. I walked through the hallway, past the living room, into the kitchen.
The kitchen was impossible.
The cabinets were upside down. The stove was on the ceiling. The sink was empty, but I could hear water running, a steady drip-drip-drip that came from somewhere I couldn't see.
And on the counter, a single sheet of paper.
A blueprint.
I picked it up. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold it.
The blueprint showed a house. A small house. A cottage.
It's the one from before. The cottage from the study.
But the cottage was different now. It was expanding. Growing. The lines were spreading across the page, reaching out, reaching toward me.
I dropped the blueprint. Ran.
But the house was changing. The hallway was longer. The doors were different. I couldn't find the exit.
You're inside the dream.
You're inside the dream and the dream is hungry.
I heard it then. The voice.
Not a sound. Not words. A presence. A pressure. Something that had been waiting.
You've been looking for us.
Yes. Yes, I have.
And now you're here.
I'm here.
Good. Because we need you.
Need me for what?
The presence pressed closer. I felt it in my bones. In my teeth. In the back of my throat like something I was about to swallow.
We're building something new. Something bigger. Something that will make all the other buildings look like child's play.
What is it?
A city. A real city. The city that exists in the spaces between dreams.
I don't understand.
You will. Soon. You'll help us build it. You'll dream it into existence.
I can't—
You can. You will. You already are.
---
I woke up three days later.
I was in my hotel room. In my bed. The sheets were soaked with sweat. My mouth tasted like copper.
I didn't remember getting back.
And then I looked at my hands.
They were covered in ink.
Blueprint ink.
And on the desk, a single sheet of paper.
A drawing.
A city.
A city that shouldn't exist.
A city that was waiting.
---
I burned the paper.
I threw away my pens. My pencils. My sketchbooks.
I stopped drawing. Stopped designing. Stopped doing anything that involved making marks on paper.
But it didn't matter.
Because every night, I dream.
I dream of the city. The impossible city. The city that exists in the spaces between dreams.
And in the dreams, I'm building it.
Brick by brick. Wall by wall.
The hum is there. Always. Throbbing in my skull. Telling me what to do.
Build. Build. Build.
I try to wake up. I try so hard. But the dreams are getting longer. More vivid. More real.
Last night, I woke up with concrete dust under my fingernails.
The night before, I woke up with a blueprint in my hand.
The night before that—
I don't want to think about the night before that.
---
I'm writing this because someone needs to know.
Balkwilde & Sons isn't a real firm. It's never been real. The name is just a mask, a disguise, a way to make the impossible seem ordinary.
The buildings are real. The buildings are always real.
Because the buildings are dreams.
And the dreams are hungry.
They want to grow. They want to spread. They want to consume everything—every city, every street, every house, every room.
And they need architects.
They need people who can dream them into existence.
They need me.
---
I don't know how much longer I can fight it.
The dreams are getting stronger. The hum is getting louder. I can feel the city inside me, pressing against my skull, trying to get out.
Tonight, I'm going to try something different.
I'm going to lie down. Close my eyes. And when the dream starts, I'm going to try to wake up.
And if I can't—
If I can't wake up—
Please don't let them find my body.
Because I won't be in it anymore.
I'll be in the city.
The impossible city.
The city that's been waiting for me all along.
---
I can hear the hum now.
It's calling me.
It's time to build.
---
END