The Lies That Shadow Us

Chapter Fifteen

A deafening screech woke me with a jolt. I attempted to unlatch my heavy eyelids, but they wouldn't budge. It felt like cement had been poured onto them.

The begin stages of sheer panic had me feeling sitting up in my bed so ferociously that my head began to swim. Only I as I splayed my fingers out I didn't feel the soft material of my comforter but the wet, slimy ground instead.

I felt disoriented, my eyes finally able to crack open some but white smudges blocked most of my vision. Blinking furiously I felt the grip of irritation and fear settle around me causing me to begin shaking. Rubbing at my eyes, things started to finally clear somewhat.

My pajamas were replaced with a flowy white nightgown, and I was in some kind of thicket covered in green and purple moss. Birds and insects hummed, the sunlight so bright it was obscuring almost everything in its path.

Ever so slowly I began moving, my limbs aching with the jutting movement. As I forced myself up nausea threatened to buckle my knees. Groaning from the sudden dizzying migraine compelling my brain with full force, I put one foot in front of the other and began to walk trough the forest. Each step was excruciating, my feet bare and blistered. I wasn't sure how I kept going but I did, barely.

Confusion and anger replaced some of the fear I was feeling not too long ago. I didn't know what was happening but one thing was for sure I knew that it wasn't good. A shiver snaked up and down my spine giving me the goosebumps. Unnerved to the core I breathlessly leaned my weight on a large tree trunk shutting my tired, burning eyes.

"You have to keep going. Keep moving," I whispered to empty air, my voice hoarse, trying to find the strength to move again. Blowing out a burning breath I did and as I continued to move my protesting body a house came into view.

That familiar fear ripe and menacing sluiced through me once again as I could do nothing but stare and stare and stare. I felt like I had stopped breathing all together, no sound not a single noise coming from anywhere. The ominous house loomed before me calling to me in a treacherous sing song voice.

To my dismay, I did, and not of my own free will. It was like a song sung by a siren luring me to my death and I was an amenable accomplice. Unable to control my own body, lost to its evil shrill song. Further and further I walked through the damp terrifying forest.

Every few steps I would trip on slippery leaves or my nightgown would snag on something. It felt as if hours had passed and I was no closer to my destination. Only a desperate feeling of determination kept me moving.

A feeling of so much desperation that I wanted to scream until my lungs burned even more. I needed to follow whatever it was that was leading me on this never-ending trek.

As I stumbled deeper into the moss-encrusted woods, the world around me somehow shifted, morphing into an eerie black night. No longer bright and sunny now the moon hung low in the sky, transforming the once-illuminated landscape into a vicious twilight. A deep ache gnawed at my heart, the weight of grief pulling it down into my stomach.

With each step that I took toward that wretched place that feeling grew larger and larger creating an emptiness inside me. A hole. Finally, I was at the precipice of the cursed house, close enough that I could see where the shutters had previously been chipped they were now clean and new.

Confusion rippled through me. Why did it look different? This wasn't the same house I had visited only days ago. It was but it wasn't. This was an actual home, cozy, warm...light. With shaking hands, I brushed my wild locks aside trying to get a better view of it.

In the distance, a figure materialized, bathed in an ethereal light. It was a woman, her body draped in a housemaid's gown that flowed in the wind like mist. My heart skipped a beat as the ghostly being turned toward her. It was my mother, or at least, a vision of my mother. Like a dream.