Location: In The Bedroom?
Slipping off my sweater, I dove onto my bed and forced myself to breathe.
Josh might be my best friend and future best man but what he had told us had been on my mind since last week Friday when we had snuck out.
I could still remember her mysterious eyes on her horrifying face as she stared directly at me.
Who wouldn’t remember her face after the in-depth description Josh had given? What had made me suggest we sneak out is beyond even my understanding.
I got off my bed and got myself ready to take a shower. Having been through all that I’d been through last week meant that I couldn’t make my mind settle anymore.
I felt as though every eye I saw in the photos on the walls were looking at me as I made my way to my room and then all I could see were her cold, black eyes staring into my soul.
(Okay...so maybe I lied about making you feel better about the situation...I had to. How else was I supposed to make you read my excerpt? Yes, it gets creepier...but I’m here with you!)
I couldn’t eat or stay up late or meet my boys at our spot anymore because I was afraid of the dark and our spot reminded me of everything. They didn’t leave their houses either because they were just as scared; I could tell this.
Okay, fine, my mother told me and so did Dorian.
Today at school, Mrs Meyer’s, our history teacher, was wearing a long white gown and as she passed by all of them sprinted away.
Of course I was with them, so you see, I knew.
Sleeping, though, I could sleep for hours and not have nightmares, thank the Lord!
Knowing I would throw up, I avoided dinner entirely. (No. I was not pregnant! Regardless of what Dorian or Josh might have said.) I threw my towel on my dresser, put on a pair of bowers and went to bed.
The moonlight shun all around me and I could see my dark shadow at my feet. I could see that I was in my boxers still and I felt so cold and naked that I was shivering.
The trees surrounding me seemed so familiar yet so out of place with the fresh air that was blowing then stopping and blowing again.
I breathed out and a thick puff of white mist was flowing away in front of my face. That only happened when the night was extremely cold, when I usually never left home to begin with, so I knew something was wrong.
I hugged myself with my cold hands, fingers feeling like ice cubes and not aiding in warming my temperature at all, trying to remember why I even left my house in the middle of the night.
That’s when I heard her. Not her but the horse really.
Its thundering hooves were racing toward me from behind my back but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t turn around. I could hear her getting closer and closer and closer, just like Josh had described she’d done with him, yet I couldn’t turn around.
There were tears on my cheeks, though I couldn't remember when I had started crying, and kept trying to spin myself around. My heart started thundering like the horse’s hooves and pretty soon I was trembling, but not from the cold anymore.
My body wouldn’t turn and I just started shaking and shaking as my heart continued pounding harder in my chest.
I was bawling so hard that I wished the sounds approaching would be drowned out but it never did get softer. It increased.
I screamed one final scream as the hooves sounded at my back. I jumped...or rather threw myself to the ground on my right.
Then the horse raced past me, dashing straight through the spot I had been standing on, without anyone on it. I was still shivering hard and my heart was still jumping like crazy but the tears had stopped sprouting from my eyes. My stomach started to cramp and then I was moaning in pain and fear because I knew something was wrong.
Without any warning, a cold, frosty, bony (almost sharp) hand reached out and took a firm grip on my shoulder where the goose bumps were already trailed, fingers digging into my skin.
I could barely see anything with how fast the tears started streaming again but I had no strength to run. Like before, I was petrified.
She spun me around slowly like a puppet until I was facing her.
Staring into her lifeless eyes; at her decaying mouth, curved into a hideous lip grin with her white chapped, sore covered lips visibly detailed; at her nose which I hadn’t realized was also rotting and grey and partially missing, up until then; at her grey, rubbery-looking, white-grey, pale skin which hung from her skull at wrong angles.
She started to smile but before I could even see her crooked yucky teeth, her breath had started to stream toward my face in a greenish, stink mist that knocked me right out.
‘Aaah!’ I sprung up in my bed with the sheets tangled around my waist leaving my chest and feet bear. I had always been told that I scream like a girl but I never did care, once it did the job and someone always heard me.
‘Josh, honey, you okay?’ Mum opened my door and stood there staring at me.
I guess when you scream at everything you see and hear, that your parents never actually know when you need help or if you’re joking or just being yourself.
‘I’m fine.’ I grinned and she shook her head laughing at me.
‘Enough joking around, Hun. Come on.’ Mom clapped her hands. ‘Up now!’ She walked away and I dropped back down onto my pillow holding my chest, forcing myself to breathe and my heart to calm down. It felt good to be able to move my body at my own will.
Nightmares.
Why do people have things like that?
They’re so...dangerous.
Sighing, I threw my coverlet off my waist and walked toward my closet. I yawned while stretching, making sure I made as loud a sound as I could so that my sister would get annoyed since her heels were clacking outside my doorway.
I heard her huff and clack away before laughing to myself and placing my hand on the door knob.
She would definitely get me back later. I rolled my eyes at the thoughts of what she could do and had done but knew that there was already no turning back.
I'd thrown a dish sponge at her and Dorian would get back at me by putting flour in my milk. I'd spray bug spray around her room but although she hates the smell it technically did help her. She retaliated and actually got a skunk into mine. She was never fair!
Now I would just have to shower at Josh’s for a week.
Sighing, I twisted the knob and almost screamed a second time in one morning, not out of jokes or games but because of fear.
There inside my closet, breathing into my face, was the lady in white. Her black eyes were so heartless and deep that I started to find myself becoming lost in them.
‘Sorry, wrong closet.’ Without much thought, I acted on instinct and shut the door in her face.
‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day.’ I said in my best Dorian imitation before running out of my room, my limbs threatening to give out under me and throw me face first onto the ground, and into the hallway.
It’s crazy how humor shows up in the most awkward times. Like when your nightmare just showed up and made your body get covered in cold sweat.
About to run down the stairs, I stopped, realizing I was only wearing a pair of boxers and knowing that I should be ready for school by now. I raced back into my room and grabbed my school bag from near the door before racing back out and silently tiptoeing into Dorian’s room.
I closed her door quickly then put on the first pieces of clothing I could find, knowing Josh would lend me some of his clothes that were surely nearer to my size than my sister's.
A mini skirt and a short baby girl’s top?
Part of that thing was definitely missing, probably chopped off and lying around somewhere but I was not in the mood for hunting so I just threw them on. (My brain was screaming that I'd be paying hefty for that...since borrowing her clothes was off limits.)
My parents talked to my sister a lot but I guess she is technically an adult. I rolled my eyes at the mere fact before grabbing my backpack off the ground.
N
ext, I did the thing I knew I could do if I ever was in trouble and couldn’t stay in the house. I climbed out of the window and allowed myself to fall onto the porch roof then rolled off the edge.