Chapter 6: Nightmare
I was standing in the middle of the woods, with a patch of long grass in front of me, no trees for about twenty feet. It was early, around dawn. A heavy fog touched the ground and made the dim light eerie. The thick air filled my lungs and made me dizzy. I fell to my knees. I heard a branch crack on the other side of the trees, and bushes rustling around. I ducked down, just under the grass. I heard someone, or something drawing closer.
“I know you’re there,” they said in a deep, mean voice, a threat no doubt. I looked down and saw a rock, not very heavy, but it had a slight point to it. I stashed it in the pocket of my sweatshirt and stood up. I couldn't see much through the fog. I could see, however, the soft light bouncing off a knife in their hand. “You thought you could escape?” they laughed.
“Who’s there?” I asked, trembling. My rock was no match for a knife, even if I wasn't shaking.
“An old friend, you probably don’t remember me. You were young; your life was much different.” She had a deep voice, but I could now tell without a doubt it was a woman.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Nothing is the same for you now, though I’m sure you don’t remember enough to know that either.”
“Is this about Grace?” I yelled with a ferocity that sent a chill down my own spine.
“Silly girl, this is about you, about your mom.”
“What about my mom?” My fingers ran across the rock in my pocket.
“You’ll find out someday.”
She came closer. Her face was horrific. Her skin wasn’t just pale, it was almost transparent. Her eyes were black holes, and her red lips spread across her face in a twisted smile. Her teeth were comparable to a shark’s.
“What the hell are you?” I asked, horrified, disgusted.
“I am the creation of a gifted, evil young mind,” her voice chimed. It sounded more girlish now.
“So you’re not real,” I said, relieved.
“I’m as real as you are, and I’m not the only one of my kind,” she smiled. Biting her bottom lip, a single stream of blood ran down her chin. She gnashed her teeth. “And I’m not the worst either.”
My hand gripped the rock with the sharp end facing outwards. I stepped closer, pulling the rock from my pocket. In one quick movement, I smashed it into her face and ran without looking back. Her screams were unbearable; when I stopped I realized my ears had bled. I was hiding behind a tree, waiting to die. It was inevitable. Once I caught my breath, I got ready to run again. I wasn’t sure she was real, but I knew now without a doubt that she wasn’t alone.
They stood in front of me, bloody and beaten. There was a man, looking downwards. He looked up at me with a wicked grin, blood oozing from his mouth. Then, there was a woman, who had a handheld mirror. She had cuts all over her face. She cried as she stared. She threw the mirror down and put the shards in her mouth. The rest, for the most part, looked like the woman from the field, give or take a few bloody gashes.
I thought about running, but my feet wouldn’t move. The woman who had the mirror looked up at me and smiled. Blood-covered bits of glass fell to the ground.
“Before you think about running…” the woman from the field said in a nasally voice because of her bashed in nose. She popped up right next to me. Wide-eyed, I looked back over to where she was before, and she was still there waving. “Take into account you don’t know what we are or what we can do.”
A cliff appeared out of nowhere; she grabbed my throat and hurled me over the edge. It was quite a ways down, there was a small lake. I didn’t know whether the fall would kill me or not. I closed my eyes and no more than a second later, I was submerged in the water.
When I opened them, I was laying on the floor of the car. I choked; water came rushing out of my lungs. I was soaked. I shook Skylar awake. I was still having difficulty breathing.
“What happened to you?” He asked as he sat up.
“I was having a dream,” I began, “there were all these…” I coughed and more water came out. “…monsters I guess, and one grabbed me by the throat and threw me off a cliff.”
“That’s impossible. You’re messing with me, right?”
“No, you have to believe me. I didn’t leave the car, how else would I have gotten all wet?”
“I believe you, I just don’t understand,” he climbed up to the front seat and started the car. “Buckle up.”
I climbed into the passenger seat, anticipating the long day in these wet clothes.
“So, do you have any idea of how long this is going to take? I mean, I don’t even know what your plan is.”
“I don’t know… I—I guess it really depends on the circumstances,” he stuttered.
“Just how long are you thinking?” I demanded. I could tell with him, just as I could with Dante, what his body language meant.
“Worst-case scenario? It could be a few months.” He looked at me; he got nervous when he saw my expression. “But that’s not even really the worst case, I mean that’s if we find out she’s alive. We’ll have to find her then, right?”
“A few months, Skylar?” I slouched down and crossed my arms. “Why don’t we, oh, I don’t know, tell the police? If I can prove that I’m innocent—”
“There’s a lot that you don’t know Scarlett.”
“There‘s a lot that I don’t know?” I said in disbelief. “I don’t even know why I’m in the car with you. This isn’t going to work, and do you know why? I don’t have the first clue of what happened to her, or where to start looking for answers, and you, you don’t know a thing.”
“I know more than you think.”
I ignored him for a while, he babbled on, and I blocked him out. All I could think about was my dream. If I woke up drenched, and choking up water—if it was real, were they real? Could they be out there somewhere lurking, waiting… for me? I knew I’d seen some disturbing things, but they never touched me, never even said a word, I couldn’t say the same for these things. That was another thing that bothered me, what were they? I didn’t even know what to call the monsters from my dreams. Monsters didn't even begin to describe it; I wasn’t a five-year-old looking for them in my closet. Monsters weren’t real; these things were.
It was only six o’clock in the morning. I didn’t get enough sleep. I knew that for sure, because I was back in the fog covered field. Wake me up Skylar, come on. If I could wake up in the condition I was in now, what else could happen in my dreams that I would wake up to find to be reality? Another twig snapped, only this time it came from behind. Fast footsteps pounded towards me, by the time I realized, it was too late. Thump.
I woke up to a mouth full of dirt, except, I wasn’t awake. How could I have passed out in a dream? I spit the dirt out, though some lingered. I turned over, facing the sky. She was standing over me, knife in hand. She put her hand in the air, and before she could bring the knife down into my chest, I screamed.
“Wait,” My heart was beating so fast, I thought it would explode. “Why are you doing this?”
“I used to be like you. You made me this way!” She screamed.
“What?”
“We came to you for help, you warped us into this.” She uttered, not lowering her voice.
“I don’t remember you. What did you need help with? Listen to yourself, you don’t make any sense.”
“Ask your boyfriend.”
“I don’t have—”
“Skylar, ask Skylar,” she was beginning to lose her patience, the black empty pits she had for eyes turned into a rage-full crimson.
“Ask him what?” I said in a small voice that reflected just how I felt—helpless.
“Ask him, why you’re dreaming things like this, or like what you’ve always dreamt. Ask him about the transportation he was so eager to use, but refused to explain.”
“Okay,” I said, cowering.
When would I wake up? What would she do to me in the meantime? I closed my eyes. I felt a sharp pain run down
my arm. I opened my eyes; blood soaked the green blouse I was wearing.
“So you’ll remember, because next time I won’t be so nice.”
When I woke up in the front seat, the radio was pretty loud. Skylar had his eyes on the road, not paying attention to the fact that I was awake, and bleeding. I wasn’t wearing a green blouse now, but that didn’t stop my black T-shirt from being drenched in blood. The seat was stained, and the blood kept running down my arm. I felt almost high; I watched it flow, quite a contrast between the crimson and my fair skin.
I stared forward at the road in a daze. My hair blew in my face. I wiped it away with the hand I forgot was covered in blood. I blinked, and refocused my attention to the road. Breathing became a comfort, just sitting there breathing. At one point, I thought I was going to die, but I felt too weak to say much of anything. Skylar looked over and slammed on the brakes. My head bobbed forward, and everything went black.
I couldn’t see what was going on around me, but I felt Skylar pick me up and lay me back down. I felt him clean the wound, and tie something around it. I could tell how careful he was trying to be, though I couldn't feel much pain anyway. I thought I heard him cry, and say he never got a chance to tell me something. His voice tuned in and out like a radio that was being messed with. Once he had me bandaged up, his arms were never taken off me as he rocked, for his benefit or mine, I didn’t know.