Time Without End

Chapter One

"This way", a voice whispered as I made my way through the unfamiliar and brushy path. Things suddenly became more eerie. I was nervous, but I just kept walking, ignoring the unknown voices. "You're going the wrong way," another voice whispered from behind me. I turned around, but saw no one, but when I looked back, one of them was running towards me. I turned around very quickly and began running this time. "Stop!", I heard him say.

"Don't listen to him," the other voices demanded. Night began to fall very quickly and I was running as fast as I could, but I couldn't outrun him. It was too late and I could not escape, he had me now. Trees crashed around us and thunder rolled in as the cold wind slapped against my face and then the terrible childlike screams followed. "Just keep your head down", the one carrying me whispered. "Don't look back", he said, but it was too late. Chasing us was this large patch of black that separated itself from the night with many light blue faces moving around it and long skinny fingers reaching for me, and eyes that were wild and hungry for something.

I put my head down.

When I woke up my head was pounding. I tried to move but I couldn't. "She's awake, we need to get her into an ambulance now." I could tell that there were a bunch of people standing around me, but I couldn't make out their faces. "What's going on?", the words barely escaping my mouth. "We aren't sure, you were found unconscious." Another man began speaking as if I had gotten up and left the room. Everything suddenly got very cold and and then I heard the man's voice again, "I think we lost her.", he said apologetically.

I was standing on the other side of my bedroom, staring at my lifeless body lying on the floor with my mother's body lain across it, sobbing. The others left the room. "We'll give you a minute alone with her.", they said. I heard my mother cry even harder. I wanted so badly to comfort her, but I knew that was impossible and as much as I wanted to stay with her, there was this overpowering presence in the room, urging me to leave.

I walked out my bedroom and down the hallway, past all the paramedics and down the staircase past all the framed memories hanging on the wall, and when I opened the front door, there he was again, the one from the path, with his hand extended. "Are you ready?", he asked. I paused for a moment to look back at the house one last time before taking his hand.

I was already a thing of the past. My cool body lying in the back of an ambulance, under a thin white sheet, stained with my mother's tears.