Shadows
Here’s a horror kinda story I spit out this afternoon. I’ve been toying with the idea several ways and originally wanted to make it into a more complex piece. But I need work and figure short stories might teach me more (and be edited easier) than a larger project- and this gets the idea across.
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Shadows
Slivers of yellow stream silken strands across a sheet of coal grey background. Bright novas burst like paparazzi cameras blinding leaving burnt images behind. Numbers come in sharp as if a firework, 306 and then dull out. A voice whispered ‘elm’. Waiting eternities in short moments and another crack of brightness and the same numbers appear and fade away followed by the single word. All the while a steady metronome of a heart straining to break free of sweaty and captivated flesh wails aloud as if a banshee. Dulled as if with ears covered with headphone the sound, thud-thud, is felt as much as it is heard. As the sound approaches a fevered intensity, millions of tiny pings fall like drops of snow. Ping, thud then a flash and the numbers 306 appear along with the solemn word. Ping, thud and flash. Over and over it builds until the dreaded moment. As if a rake were being drawn across a blackboard the screech tears across all other sensations and Alice chokes down a scream as she sits upright in bed.
Her hands clenched painfully around a clammy sheet. Her breathes come in giant gulps as if she had been drowning. As her eyes adjust to the darkness of her room, she finds the clock. ‘Not again’, thinks Alice as her hands relax and she lets her head flop back down into a pillow coated with the remains of her nightmare. “I’m never going to get a whole night of sleep!” Alice exclaims to no one in particular, breaking the webbed aftermath of her troubled sleep.
It had been like this for several months now. At first the dream was something to ponder in psych class. A repetitive dream that held some special meaning for her life. That was when it came only once every few weeks. Now it was near nightly and more realistic. It left Alice with a feeling of utmost dread, as if something horrible was about to happen. She had tried pills, talking to a therapist, running a mile before bed every night- but it didn’t help. It was a trial just to get to sleep at night, let alone make it through the next day. Her grades had been steadily slipping and now it was spring break and time to visit home. Alice had no idea how she would deal with her parents, they’ll probably think she was on drugs or had a boyfriend. ‘How are they going to understand this haunting dream’, she asked herself.
When the dream first came it didn’t leave a lasting impression. Alice would awaken and within moments she would forget ever having a nightmare. Increasingly though the images became clearer. As if she was at the eye-doctors, each night a different looking glass- sharpening the letters on the wall across the room. Every dream brought the still images into focus. The letters, the sounds, each separate had an identity- but together they were abstract and senseless.
She turned to the digital plastic clock on the nightstand again and sighed. ‘Great, four AM- I’ll never get back to sleep now.’ She switched off the alarm clock, set to the crack of dawn and rolled out of bed. ‘Wish I had set my coffee maker an hour earlier’, Alice thinks as she tries to put her slippers on without falling back onto her mattress. Stretching to the ceiling for a moment longer than was good for her lack of rest, she walks to her miniature kitchenette, turns on the light, and firmly presses the brew now button. So hard in fact that her finger ached for a moment while she tried to decide whether to eat breakfast or not.
Alice pulls on a pair of jeans over her long johns and a school sweat shirt over her tee. ‘No sense getting all dressed up for the drive home’, she decides. Pouring herself a bowl of cereal she glances over at the black coffee pot and shivers at the silver rim. ‘So much like the nightmare, just that color of silver’. She gets a hold of herself and fills her ceramic mug so full that she has to take several sips before risking the journey back to her short table. Grasping for the remote with one hand and holding the coffee in the other she manages to find the local weather station.
Over spoonfuls of cereal Alice listens as the reporter goes on about a bad storm system moving in. ‘Great, that is just my luck. Maybe I’ll get home before it hits.’ She doubts this with the ten-hour drive ahead of her, but at least it keeps her from crawling back into bed. Her breakfast finished, she quickly rinses out the bowl and checks to make sure she hasn’t left anything out that will grow mold over the weekend. One last look around the apartment and after grabbing her luggage bag she quietly opens the door and shuts it behind her, checking the lock twice.
The road trip was uneventful except for a good hour spent in a traffic jam. As usual it was no problem with the road but people rubber necking an accident on the side. Typically Alice paid no attention to such gruesome displays but this day she was oddly drawn to the bodies laid out on the stretcher. Blood was noticeable on the victims face during her casual drive by, but she couldn’t tell if the person was alive. To one side an oddly dressed man was trying to explain something to an officer who was only shaking his head. A horn honked behind Alice and she realized she had stopped completely to see the grisly scene. The officer glanced up from his interrogation and shaking his head in disapproval turned back to the offender, who was probably drunk. Alice screws her face up to feign innocence and steps on the gas.
A few miles out of town the storm started. The sky suddenly became dark and rain splattered the roadway. She was long since off the interstate and felt thankful she was almost home. Reaching out to turn off the radio so she could concentrate on the road she paused as her eyes noticed the street sign alit by her headlights. “Elm”, she manages to mutter but was unable to finish as the rain had turned to sleet and her car lost traction. Skidding across the lanes at a slant, Alice fights to regain control of her car. Two bright lights erupt blinding her momentarily and the dirty grille of a truck can be seen bearing down at her. The numbers 306 can be made out before Alice’s nightmare suddenly comes into brilliant focus. ‘My god, this is what I was seeing.’ She swings the cars wheel to the right and steps on the gas knowing it would do no good. How else could she have seen this vision if she would survive this?
The same screech runs out as metal crushes against metal, but only for a moment before Alice loses consciousness. The trucker unharmed leaps out of his truck and rushes to see if he could help the girl. When he sees her, he thinks better of this idea as her head was caught halfway through the windshield. Trying to get back into his cab without losing his footing on the ice coated street, the trucker gets on the CB and frantically calls out for help.
“She’s not going to make it, there’s no way she can survive this.” Alice hears as the ground rumbles beneath her. ‘I must be moving’, she thinks to herself and then tries to speak. ‘I’m alive, I can hear you’-but her lips don’t even move. Wrapped head to toe in bandages she feels a thud as they push her into the emergency room where she fades out of consciousness again.
She dreams a dream that is not quite a dream. In her non-dream Alice is dead. A collection of memories and a driving will to do something, to warn herself. She finds herself floating in her apartment, surrounded by familiar objects she somehow knew she could not touch. They were as images on a television screen, flat and two-dimensional. Gently she drifts into her bedroom and looks down at what was herself. Asleep and peaceful, her old body the most real thing in this dream that was not quite a dream. Alice struggles to voice the warning of things to come. ‘Take the day off and leave early’, or ‘say you have too much work to do, stay at school.’ But such complex expressions were beyond Alice’s ethereal state. Images, sounds, and sensations are all Alice can communicate. She sees her living self shudder as the ideas flood her slumber. The seed of the nightmare had been planted and still Alice cries out with voiceless imagery. ‘The truck and the sleet and the road where it happens, I must get these across’. So she yells in pictures and sounds until the slumbering Alice erupts from her nightmare and the dead Alice disappears.
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Alice’s family stands around her bedside along with the resident doctor on call. He was carefully explaining that there may be some brain damage from swelling but it most likely would not be permanent. Alice heard all this but felt it odd. ‘I’m dead’, she thinks,’ why are they talking like I’m alive?’
Her father was first to notice her increased breathing and her opened eyes. “Look, Alice is awake. Oh my dear Alice-I thought we had lost you.” Tears of relief pooled at the corners of his eyes as he gazed down at his daughter.
‘Such a handsome face my father has, it’s a shame that I have to tell him the truth’, Alice thinks before opening her dry mouth. “But Father, you did lose me.”
Silence flooded the room and all eyes turned to the doctor while Alice simply murmured under her breath, “Elm Street, truck, don’t go Alice … don’t go.”
Calmly the Doctor waved the parents into the hallway. “I’ve never seen this before, there is nothing physically that should cause this problem. Perhaps it’s some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. I could get a psychologist up here if you want?”
At the word psychologist Alice’s father’s face paled, but after looking back at his muttering daughter he nodded in ascent, though his eyes were downcast.
“Alice do you know where you are today?” A woman’s voice pulled Alice down from some plane of reality best left misunderstood.
“I’m in a hospital, I was in a car crash.” Alice’s voice was tentative and unsure.
“That’s right, you’re in a hospital- but the car crash was seven months ago. You’re all healed up now.” Alice turned to face the speaker who was only a few years older than she was. A pretty face but perhaps a bit plain and grave as if something was terribly amiss.
“Several months ago? I just saw my parents a moment ago.” Alice was trying to be helpful but with the look of consternation on the woman’s face it must not be working.
“We’ve been through this before Alice. I’m a psychologist. You’ve been here in the Psych ward since shortly after your accident. Your parents come to visit you near every day.”
“A psych ward? But what am I doing here for a car accident.”
“Perhaps we should get to that later Alice.”
“No, I think I should know this now!” Alice asserts while sitting up from the bed she was in. Noticing a slight sting of pain as various wires and tubes stretched at her skin.
The psychologist sighs, fearing the same thing happening as it has in the past- but hoping perhaps this time will be different, she decides to be upfront about it. “Alice, you’ve been here because you keep saying you’re dead.”
Alice’s eye’s close for a moment and she slides back down onto the hard hospital bed. “That’s right, I’m dead. I almost forgot.” Then Alice goes back to saying the same phrase over and over again as if she was talking to someone else.
Alice’s psychologist looks down at her pad and makes a note. ‘No matter what I try she keeps slipping back into psychosis. It doesn’t make any sense.’ The psychologist gets up to leave while Alice mutters, ‘no Alice don’t be afraid-I’m trying to help you.’
