World of Gods: Blackwater

Chapter 1: Whispers

"I have a gun!"

The shaky warning echoed in the darkness, but no one answered back. The young woman was slowly working her way through the hallway of her apartment. Her messy brown locks dangled against her wet forehead. Large beads of sweat and fear raced down her thin face.

Heart pounding, she swallowed the lump in her throat and quickly jumped into the living room with a "HA!" but again, was met with nothing but silence. Switching on the light that was right beside her, she winced from the sudden brightness. There was nothing missing or out of the ordinary in her apartment. The TV was switched off, and as she looked at her front door, the dead bolt remained in place. She pinched the bridge of her nose, shutting the light off angrily before plopping back onto her cooling bed.

"Damn, just when my dream was getting good..." she mumbled before falling back asleep.

For a short moment, the voices in her head had rested. Gentle snores could soon be heard from the woman asleep on the bed, perfectly at ease bathed in the blue light from her alarm clock. But when the time on her clock suddenly fizzled out, a strange silence filled the room. For some reason, it caused Lucine to wake up. Sitting up, she glanced groggily around the room. She tried her best to figure out what was going on while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first, until she spotted light shining from under her closet door. Groaning in frustration, she pulled the warm covers off herself and stepped barefoot onto her soft blue carpet. Her dark hair was messy from moving about the bed, part of which hung in front of her face. Yawning, she crossed the room lazily, shuffling along the floor. She turned the light off, ready to go back to bed, only to hear whispering.

"Hurry back"

Hearing the voice again, Lucine would put her hands on her head. She closed her eyes tightly as tears built up. "Just stop! I don't want to hear it anymore! " Lucine shouted into the darkness.

"You need to return," a voice echoed in her mind once again.

"Shut up! Shut up! " Lucine repeated it over and over. "I am not crazy! I don't want to be crazy! Just go away! " Lucine cried. Her sobbing started to finally drown out the voice. She had to cry herself to sleep once more.

It was only a few hours later that Lucine would wake up. Her wet pillow didn't make for a comfortable resting place. It seemed as if those whispers had started up again. Unable to fall back asleep, she'd made herself useful and did some research. Lucine got on her laptop and shakily looked up if the building was haunted. There was nothing on the building or any information she could find on a search engine. From there, she got lost on the internet looking up different ways to banish spirits, protect herself from evil, and what hearing voices meant until an hour had already flown by. "There has to be an explanation for this..." She closed the lid of her laptop and let out a sigh. The young woman figured that if she kept busy and focused, nothing could bother her. But just in case, she quickly grabbed her wireless headphones and blasted music. She couldn't hear voices, supernatural or otherwise, that way. It seemed to work for a few hours until she could pick up something strange over the sound of her music.

"They are lost without you."

Ripping her headphones off with a startled gasp, Lucine's lips trembled. 'Am I crazy?' She thought to herself, desperate for some answers that only a 'doctor search engine' could give. Which, of course, resulted in no real response or concrete answers but only hours of frustration. Before long, the young woman was heading back to work, exhausted. Throughout the afternoon rush, all she could think of was the vivid dreams she had had. A white outline of a large city surrounded by snow-capped mountains. It was all she could see in her mind.