Chapter: The Dream
Mom. I had to find her.
I didn’t even remember why I had to find her, but I knew it was something important. Urgent. I kept looking for her but I couldn’t find her anywhere. After trying all the rooms in the house, I decided to go back upstairs and start over. Maybe I had walked past a room and didn’t notice it. Maybe if I looked again, I might be able to find her.
I headed upstairs and stopped by my bedroom. My sheets and blanket were crumpled by the foot of the bed like always. The curtain on the window was open, letting the morning light flood into the room… But mom wasn’t here. I needed to find her and tell her about the nightmare.
The burning in my skin was distractingly painful, it was hard to focus on anything else… Mom would know what to do about it. I really needed to find her.
I hurried down the corridor and stopped in front of her bedroom. The door seemed different somehow… larger and darker. Ominous looking. But it felt familiar too, it even had mom’s lingering perfume drifting past it, the scent as familiar as the sound of her voice.
Mom knew how to make me feel better when nightmares like this happened. My father had no patience for anything, but my mother was the opposite, she always had time to listen to my ramblings and my dreams. I knew I could come and tell her about anything that was troubling me, she would listen with the utmost attention and soothed me until I was calm again.
I tried the doorknob and frowned at the locked door. It wasn’t locked the first time I looked into her room… or was it? I couldn’t remember. It was so hard to think, what I was even looking for anyway?
I glanced back, to try to jolt my memory back. The corridor was dark, but I didn’t mind. I could see quite well in the dark, it didn’t really scare me. There wasn’t any light coming from my bedroom anymore, everything was pitch black, the only light showing came from the small gap underneath my mother’s door.
My mother. I needed to find her, I suddenly remembered.
I was about to knock on the door when I glanced at the gap of light beneath the door. There was someone pacing on the other side, I could see their shadow moving. I inched with my ear close to the door and tried to listen in. I could hear Mom talking, arguing over something… She sounded upset, but I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, only muffled distressed sounds.
And then she started to shout “No! No! Never!” and there was a silent pause. No more sounds came from inside the room and I pressed my ear harder against the door, alarmed. Mom hardly ever shouted like that. Who was she even arguing with in there? Was it Dad? I began to grow anxious with worry.
I thought about knocking on the door and ask her to let me inside, but a graver voice boomed in the room and something thumped hard against the door, making me jump back, startled. I grabbed the doorknob and jiggled frantically, pushing my shoulder to try to force the door open, but it was still locked and it wouldn’t budge an inch.
I shouted for Mom, but she didn’t reply, so I crouched to try to see what was happening from the door’s gap near the floor and as I pressed my face against the floorboard, a violent crash reverberated inside the room, followed by the sound of breaking glass and furniture being thrown around.
A big shard of glass skidded out of the door’s gap and almost got my eye, but I jolted back just in time. The silence that followed was terrifying. Nothing seemed to be moving inside the room and the arguing had stopped all together. Something bad had happened in there, but all I could do was sit helplessly on the floor and try to hold the panicked tears that started to brim my eyes.
I stood up with shaky legs and was about to try to shove the door open again when a faint click echoed and the door slowly opened on its own.
The room was blindingly bright and I squinted my eyes, trying to adjust my sight from the dark of the corridor to the sudden brightness of the room. I blinked and the shape of a tall dark figure appeared in the center of the room, a lump with the shape of a body laying on the floor right next to it.
My mother’s faint voice broke away and reached my ears as clearly as the light in the room. “No. You can’t have him. You’ll never have him”. A shrilling laugh rang in the room and before I could see what was happening, the shadow cast by the tall figure began to spread in all directions, quickly taking in everything it touched, the bed, the furniture, the lump on the floor… The horrible laughter continued while the darkness grew and spilled all over the floor and up the walls towards the roof. It took the light from the window and everything in its path until it engulfed the room whole and then, there was only one direction left for it to go. Out of the room. Towards me.
Then my mom’s voice rang again, right next to my ear, snapping me out of my horrified frozen state. “Alex! RUN! HIDE!”
I turned and bolted down the corridor, to my room, to my closet, the best hiding place I knew. Whenever I was scared of something, I would run to my closet and huddle in there, sometimes for hours until it was safe to come out. I knew I’d be okay there, I just needed to get to it before the dark caught up to me.
I skidded into my room and ran for the closet’s door, but it seemed to be so far away and no matter how fast I tried to run, it wouldn’t come closer. It felt as if I was running on quicksand, each step heavy as lead and the closet always far in the distance.
Something tugged at my back and I screamed in panic. The hot fear pumped straight into my veins gave me strength for one last push and I launched for the closet with darkness on my heels. I barreled through the gaping door thinking I was finally safe but the dark was already on me, ready to engulf me.
It wrapped over me like a deadly blanket made of voidless nothing and when I tried to give one last scream, the dark slid down my throat, choking me as it filled my lungs with black soot and I woke up gasping for air, my chest burning like it had been branded with hot iron.
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