Hello again, I am still here. The nightmares persist and I don’t know how much longer I have. While I am breathing though I may still recount the rest of the tale.
Now where was I? Yes, I had just left to find Sabrina.
I left in a hurry for Sabrina’s house, at least, where she told me she had lived. I had so many questions for her, and she was going to answer them. I arrived at her house a short while later, no car. She might still be home; she had told me she had not found work yet since moving here and was likely still home at this hour.
I tried calling the number she gave me the night before; instead of going to her voicemail, I heard a message claiming that the person I called had a number that had been disconnected. I tried the number again and received the same message. I was starting to get concerned.
I decided to go to her neighbor’s house and my coworker from the store, to ask if she had seen Sabrina today. After ringing the doorbell a couple of times a middle-aged woman answered it. I think her name was Lisa, but like I said before, I am terrible with names.
“Hello,” I said as friendly as I could muster at that moment.
“Oh hi, Simon,” She said sounding rather confused but not unfriendly.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was wondering, did you happen to see Sabrina today? Her car is gone, and I tried calling her a couple of times but it says that her number is disconnected, so I just wanted to check if you had seen her come or go today.”
She shifted uncomfortably.
“I am sorry, Simon,” She said looking at me with a puzzled expression.
“I have no idea who you are talking about. That house has been vacant for the last two years, and I don’t know anyone named Sabrina. Are you sure you are in the right neighborhood?”
I felt stunned, how could that be? Was she joking with me? I thought that she had been the one to invite Sabrina to that party; she said that she lived next door to her.
“But, you must know Sabrina, I left with her last night you had to have seen us together!” I spurted out slightly embarrassed by revealing what I had done yesterday.
“She had said that she lived next door to you,” I practically shouted.
“No.” Lisa insisted.
“I really don’t, I am sorry, are you sure you are okay?” She asked with concern in her voice.
“Yes, I am,” I managed to spit out.
“I must be mistaken – sorry to have bothered you, I will see you later.”
“Alright.” Lisa said waving goodbye and closing her door.
What the hell is going on?
Maybe it is just a mistake, and she lives somewhere else? That must be it. I tried calling her a couple more times to no effect. I searched near the neighborhoods of some of my other coworkers for several hours, determined to find some answers. With no luck so far and the time starting to get late, I decided to return home. Maybe she would be there, I thought, maybe it was all just a misunderstanding.
I got back home and no one else was there, I sighed. What was going on? I could not reach her by phone, and I apparently did not know where she lived so I had no idea what to do or where to go or check. I was getting very worried. It was getting very late, so I decided I would get some sleep and take the day off of work tomorrow to see if I could find out where she had gone, or what she was doing.
I went inside got out of my clothes, took a quick shower, and went to my bedroom. The dreamcatcher was hanging over the headboard of my bed again. Strange, I did not remember putting it back up. I considered throwing it in the trash, but some compulsion stayed my hand, so I decided to leave it up for tonight. I turned off the lights and pulled the covers over myself. I wondered if I would sleep at all, I was so confused and worried about what had happened today. Eventually, after tossing and turning for what felt like hours, I drifted into a fitful sleep.
I slowly opened my eyes. Sitting up I saw that once again I was not in my bedroom anymore. I was not in a forest either; I appeared to be in someone else’s house, resting on a filthy couch. I quickly jumped off the disgusting couch and almost tripped over various debris and garbage that had been strewn out over the floor. The place stank like something fetid or rotten and it was very dark inside with almost no lighting.
This can’t be real; this must be another dream.
I tried to find the door to get out of this moldering house; the smell was so oppressive it was making my stomach turn. I staggered further down the hall which I assumed to lead to the exit, but I saw something that turned me back the other way and made me feel even sicker. There was a door leading to a bathroom that was partially ajar in that hall. In that bathroom, were what appeared to be some sort of amalgamation of various body parts floating in the bathtub. The sickening stench must have been coming from there. I backpedaled until I was in the living room again. I was on the verge of throwing up when I heard something that made a chill run down my spine.
It was some sort of scratching accompanied by a soft guttural moan. I was terrified, I had no idea what was going on or where or what that could be coming from. I cautiously approached the stairs where I heard the sounds intensifying, fully aware of how bad of an idea that this was. I had an oddly familiar feeling with this house despite having no idea where I was. I somehow knew that someone was upstairs and knew I had to check on……. Victor? and make sure he was alright.
Wait, who the hell is Victor?
I shook off the odd thought and continued my ascent up the stairs. The stairs creaked as I climbed them, grimacing as I made unwanted noise with each step. Finally, I reached the second floor and saw a single open door with a sickly red light glowing out from the aperture. I froze as the moaning grew louder and a terrible tearing sound was coming from down the hall. I nearly retched when I saw what appeared to be a severed arm launched out into the hall. I was starting to realize just how bad of an idea investigating those sounds was when I heard a voice call out.
“Do be patient, my dear, it is almost your turn, just stay right there I will be with you shortly”
My God! Who or what the hell is that? A dawning horror overtook me, I knew that voice. I had seen and heard enough I started to back away when a shape sprang out of the door. Its figure was bathed in a terrible red light, but its image will forever be transfixed into my very soul. It was a terrible and lithe shape of a woman, no not a woman. No woman could be so horrible!
She was streaked in gore and viscera from the unfortunate person she had just finished with, and she licked blood from her fingers with a serpent-like tongue. On each of those fingers, prodigious nails extended out, or were they claws? And her skin was a shifting layer of translucent colors, one-moment jet black, and the next ivory white and somehow every shade between. Her hair seemed ethereal as if it was not really there and floated above her head in a silvery white vapor. But worst of all were its eyes, its terrible eyes.
The eyes had the predatory pupils of some great hunting cat, but the color of the irises was not anything of this world. The pupils seemed to shift between a dark gray and abysmal black like the darkest pits of the abyss. Her, or rather its eyes transfixed me, and I could not move, nor look away. She walked closer to me, seemingly not walking at all but rather gliding, until she was close enough to touch me.
“Hello little thing,” She purred.
“I have been waiting for you.” She reached out one arm and caressed my face with the monstrous claw.
“Zach no!” a voice cried out from down the hall. He was missing his arms but the prone figure down the hall tried to rise and scream a warning. I felt panicked and horrified. What had this monster done to Victor? How did it get into our house? Then I remembered.
Wait, how could I remember something I had never seen?
But I remembered the deaths, the terrible nightmares, the warnings, and my name, Zach Thomas.
Who is Zach Thomas?
The creature disrupted this burst of jumbled memory, and she inched closer as if to kiss me, then she turned and slashed my throat out with the other talon.
I fell back down the stairs, watching my body separate from my severed head, but that body… it was not my body… And then I saw only darkness.
I screamed as I lurched up out of bed. My bed! Yes, thank God I was awake. The terrible dream was at an end, and I was back in my bedroom. I stood up in a cold sweat. It was only 4 am. I turned the light on. I did not think I was going to be going to sleep again tonight. Once the light was on, I looked over my headboard, and to my surprise, I saw that another of the tassels of the dreamcatcher had turned into a metal spike.
This cannot be happening, what is going on?
I decided to look into different avenues with my search and look into some of the details online since I definitely was not going back to sleep, and I had resolved to take the day off of work. I booted up my computer and searched for any details or stories involving Sabrina Cohen, maybe I could track her down if she had a history. What I found was deeply disturbing. When I looked up Sabrina’s name, all I found was a connection to a year-old police report about a missing person in this county.
That’s impossible!
I hoped it would just be a coincidence. But then I saw the picture. It was definitely her, absolutely no mistaking her features. Except that, I noticed her eyes were green, a very bright green, not the gray color I had seen when I met her. The report was from a little over a year ago and read:
“Local police have officially declared Ms. Sabrina Cohen as missing after her absence from work was noted and later investigated after concerned coworkers had asked the police to look into the situation.” The report continued,
“Ms. Cohen lived alone and was not known to be seeing anyone at the time, so there are no suspects in regard to a possible kidnapping. If you have seen or heard anything about her, please notify your local police.”
What the hell is this? That can’t possibly be her.
I thought someone would have recognized her by now and she was not using an alias or disguises other than maybe some contacts. Did she just come back without notifying anyone? I had no idea what to do next. I continued looking at various police reports in the area and decided to check for any that occurred around the same date in previous years.
I was horrified when I saw the obituary for one Zachary Thomas, 32. He had apparently been decapitated in his home over two years ago by an unknown killer. His roommate, Victor Gavin, is reported as missing but wanted for questioning in possible connection to this grizzly homicide. The crime scene photos were even more shocking and sent a wave of icy dread into my heart. Mr. Thomas’s house was, or at least looked, exactly like the house I had seen in my dream last night.
I kept wondering about that name, Zach, why was that name familiar?
That’s my name.
What? No, why would I think that is my name, my name is Simon? Yes Simon.
What the hell is going on with my head?
I continued to read on in the report and was truly unprepared for the next part. As I reviewed the details of the location of where the murder occurred, I checked to see the street address and nearly fainted. The report gave a very familiar address, familiar because it was the very same address as the house next to my coworker, Lisa. It was the very same house that I had believed that Sabrina lived in.
“No,” I said aloud.
“This is not real, this cannot be real; I must still be dreaming. There is no way it can be the same place, there is no way I could witness a murder that really happened in a dream.”
I tried to calm down and consider what I really saw.
I was murdered.
What the…? Why were these random memories assailing me? Am I going crazy? When I was dreaming, I felt different, not like myself. And I moved and acted almost like someone else was moving for me. And in the terrible end, when I was killed, I saw a body on the ground that was not my own, before it was over, and I woke up. Was Zachary Thomas killed by that thing? I thought that was impossible, that thing cannot be real. But the dream was so vivid, how in the hell could it just be a coincidence?
I was overwhelmed by these revelations; I had no idea what to do. I decided I would check out that house. Maybe I would find something there that might link all this together or perhaps explain some detail of the fact that I had been missing or open a new door to the truth.
I arrived in the neighborhood later that day, equipped with a flashlight and my cell phone, in case I needed the light or to call for help. I had more than a few questions in need of answering and I hoped that this little break-in would answer a few of them.
The house, yes I went to the house. But I am sorry I need to get up and move around a bit and get more caffeine, the soft glow of the computer is lulling me to sleep and I can’t go, not yet. If I am still alive when I return I will continue the tale.
Until then stay safe.