Bathe In Fire - Shadows of the Night 2

Chapter 3

Hi!

It took me forever to find the right song for this one, so I hope you like it :D

A certain someone will reenter the scene in this chapter, though maybe not the way you think... Mouhaha! Read, comment, vote if you like - and don't forget to check out the music! Thank you all for reading.

Lara

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Chapter 3

About half an hour later I crawled into my bed, zombie-like. I was dog-tired. Taking a long hot shower before wolfing down a sandwich the size of a plate hadn't exactly helped my cause. My muscles felt leaden. My body hurt in places I didn't even know I possessed, the pain warring with renewed waves of hazy tiredness. I was so out of it, I failed to set the alarm clock at the first attempt. Finally I closed my eyes, waiting for coma-like unconsciousness to come.

Had my thoughts been half-way coherent then, I would have probably guessed that I wasn't going to get a lot of sleep that night. I didn't know when it started, but start it did. I had been sleeping some time already. I felt it, more than a whisper, more than a touch of ghostly fingers on my brain. A faint background noise in the far distance; it began to arise, coming closer and closer. Sneaky and incorporeal, it crawled into my room and insinuated itself right into my mind. Even in my state of dream-laden half-unconsciousness I was aware of it: the temperature in my room went down perceptibly. It made me shiver.

The dream was familiar, more real to me than it should have been. The silent, seductive voice started with a monotonous speech pattern, before it picked up rhythm and pitch, swinging back and forth like a hypnotizing sing-song.

Usually nocturnal silence was almost absolute in my room, barely disturbed by nightly traffic on the streets. My ability to react to stimuli should have been too low to perceive it, and yet, the voice and the chilling breath were the only things I could hear and perceive. Nothing else was in existence. I heard it. I listened to it. Its closeness didn't disturb me at all.

At first the breathing was distinct, if arhythmic. Then it slowed down until it was too slow to be coming from a human being, then silence. The words came with an ease that left little to speculation: the voice that was more than sound was inside of me.

Come, come to me. Come to me. Come.

The words repeated themselves in my head, spinning, culminating in a thundering whisper, before I saw him. He was standing a few feet in front of me, dressed in black, pale chest gleaming in the dark, his hand outstretched to me. It was compulsion in its purest and vilest form. Wandering in the realms of sleep-induced almost-unconsciousness, my mind was unprotected. Dream and reality mixed into one undistinguishable sea of darkness.

Defying science yet again, I got up from my bed, motions mechanical, found myself walking towards the door, to follow the direction the voice was coming from, ready to go to him. The door handle was already within reach, graspable and real to me. That was the moment my bare feet stepped on it. Skin at the soles of my feet registered a warm, tingling sensation, but I chose to ignore it, about to close the final distance to the door. Then I smacked into an invisible wall.

I tried again, but found that I couldn't move forward. Powerful, familiar warmth exploded and rose up through my feet, seeping through my whole body upside down. Each and every cell was shaken and heated as the pulsating sensation shook my veins. I blinked once or twice, shaking my head in disorientation, my hand still hovering over the door handle. My eyes flew open, darkness and reality slamming into me.