Wake up.

It scutters in the darkness. I listen. Ignore the voice.

Hurry.

The moist cracking echoes throughout the pitch dark room. There is no light here. I struggle to search for a light switch, but all I feel are walls. They are cold and smell of flesh. As if they were once alive. There is something else in here with me that scurries not in vain. It’s movements seem random, but I can hear it drawing closer.

Wake up.

The voice in my head bellows from nothingness its warning. It is familiar. It is sickening.

My face twitches as I follow the walls. Where am I? What is this place? Why do I feel like I’ve been here before? The questions leak from my conscience. I try to suppress them, but I’ve never felt more panicked. Or maybe I have?

Something slams against my shoulder, and my entire body comes to a rigid halt. I’ve hit another wall. I’m cornered.

There is nowhere else to go.

Before you die.

Unable to keep my back turned to the creature in the darkness, I turn. My bare back hits the chilling walls meeting in the corner. I wince and swallow hard.

The sickening shuffling sound continues, steadily growing closer. To my left. to my right. Back again. As if it knows that I’m in the room, but it doesn’t know exactly where.

It’s silent once more as the thing stops moving.

Is it thinking? I wonder.

I lift my leg and try to move along the new wall. I must be slow. Mustn’t make a sound. If it hears me, it will know where I am.

I freeze. The courage, albeit a flimsy, panicked courage, that was only Moments ago flooding my body has gone. I struggle to breathe, my lips trembling at the same rate as my eye lids. This feeling is new to me.

Is this what it feels like to die?

This is that emotion, I thought. The emotion that fills an antelope as the lioness devours it alive. The shock that envelops the weary patient when the diagnosis is gravely announced.

An emotion of the imminence of death.

I no longer feel a will to move myself, to search for escape. Rather, I close my eyes tightly and pray that it happens quickly.

My heart pulses through my veins causing my ears to pulsate as well. The silence is deafening. Seconds give way to minutes. Nothing happens.

Was it a dream? I nearly smile at the thought. Yes, I’m still in my bed. The cramp in my leg isn’t from standing on one foot out of fear of placing down the other. Surely, I’ve just woke up and slept on it in an odd way.

I scream out.

A sudden and deep burning in my right calf sends pain coursing through me like an electric current. Then there is a warm feeling. Wetness. Instinctively, I yank my leg away. An audible rip causes my body to seize up, and I fall to the floor.

When I feel the creature let go, I clamber backward, only pushing my back further up the wall. My teeth clamp down on themselves. As I try to scream through them, nothing more than spit and despair spills from my mouth.

Crack. Crack.

Like bones popping in and out of place, the thing in the room seems to prepare itself. It’s close now, inches away from my thighs. I know it’s hovering over me, because I feel impossibly hot saliva dripping onto my skin. On my legs. On my waist. My stomach. My chest.

I feel breathing on my face.

***

“Momma!” I scream.

My body, with a mind of its own, raises up. I continue to scream, my throat quickly becoming horse. But the nightmare is over.

I’m in my room.

The alabaster moonlight beams through my bedroom window casting calm silhouettes on the circular rug. Cluttered toys remain in their mess just outside the medieval themed toybox. Even the bedroom door is how I left it; just barely open with faint light from the hallway floating in.

A dream. Just a horrible dream.

The pressure in my lower abdomen tells me I need to use the bathroom. Hours of sleeping, and fear, have taken their toll.

I wipe sweat from my forehead and sigh. Stretching my joints one at a time, I lower myself from the cool mattress.

Before I feel the rug on my feet, a different, unexpected sensation overwhelms me.

The same burning feeling from the dream. Pain torques my spine and ripples through my skin. Immediately, my leg gives out, and I fall to the floor with a choked shout.

I pull up my pajama bottoms, expecting to see a spider fleeing the scene of a fresh bite. Maybe an ingrown hair that has gotten a little too bad. Anything that makes sense during the middle of the night in a twelve-year-old’s room.

What I see is beyond my comprehension.

A deep bite mark.

It’s no bigger than a house cat’s bite, but it will certainly scar. My eyebrows raise – Where is the blood? There is none on my leg. None on my pajama bottoms. It is as if the bite occurred a week ago, yet it feels like it happened seconds prior.

My eyes become heavy with water. Vision blurred, I pull myself up half-limping half-running to my parents room.

I can’t help but think, how is this possible?

***

By the time I wake up the next morning, my father has already gone to work. My Mother walks stressful circles in the kitchen, and I focus on my cereal.

“Gabe.” She suddenly speaks up from her room temperature coffee. Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat.

Wiping sleep from my eyes, I reply, “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.” She shakes her head, though. “I’m calling in today. We are taking you to the hospital.”

“St. Josephine’s?” I ask with a smile.

“Of course. You know I work there, so we can use my insurance card.”

“Cool.” I can’t hide my smile, but I notice she sees it.

“What?” There’s apprehension in her voice. She’s ready to interrogate.

“Nothing.” I swallow hard.

“Tell me.”

“I just…”

“Just what?”

“I wanna see Lu.” It comes out as little more as a whisper.

She pipes in before I begin to say his name, “No. H-he needs rest. I-I don’t think he’d be feeling up to it today.”

Mom buries her face in her coffee mug. She had no trouble making eye contact with me before I brought up Lu’s name. Her hands shake. As she turns to begin another lap around the kitchen, I see the gray hairs and enumerate her head. I’ve never seen her so old. So tired.

“Lucienne would want to see us.” I spout. My cereal is soggy now, and it is the last thing on my mind.

She stops. Places her mug on the counter by the sink. Her shoulders tremble as if she is trying to keep down tears.

“Fine.” My Mother surrenders. “But don’t tell your father.”

She doesn’t need to tell me that every time. Lu is my brother. I’ve never understood the stigma with visiting my bedridden brother. He’s sick. Up to now, I’ve been told plenty of times that Lu won’t make it. Lu doesn’t have much time. Lu needs space.

I’m not going forget my brother exists.

And I’m going to see him before I have no brother left to see.

As I smile at the opposite edge of my mouth so that my Mother cannot see, I notice her robe’s sleeve has fallen partway.

There’s something on her forearm. Something familiar.

A bite mark.

***

I have never been the kind of person to feel paranoid. Growing up in an upper class family, preoccupied with the acres of countryside of my father’s land, I don’t remember a time when I felt that something bad was about to happen. Life has been sleepovers on the weekends, skipping out on homework assignments to play online games, staying up all night to read comic books. Things are different now.

Deep down, I am afraid.

It is difficult to pinpoint what it is that I fear exactly. My brother could die at any Moment. Sure, I am scared of that happening; The first major death in my family and it just might be my closest friend, my only brother.

But this fear is a different creature. I had my first nightmare a year ago. I had just turned eleven, and after a day of partying and binging waves of junk food, I woke up in the middle of the night screaming and coughing up blood.

I’d never seen my Mother so frightened before, her child before her staining his sheets with viscous clots of red. She nearly screamed. I could see it on her face. The panic. Fear. It was nauseating.

A child wants to be reassured when strange fluids fly from his mouth. He does not want to see his Mother more terrified than he is.

I don’t remember the dream I had that night. What I do remember is horror beyond what I’d ever imagined before. My heart had beat so hard, so quickly, I felt as if I had been in the clutches of death itself. It’s a curious sensation feeling your blood scrape through your veins so rapidly, yet your skin seems to freeze over.

Ever since, I’ve been having more and more frequent nightmares. Nightmares that don’t make sense to me, but leave tangible scars. Visceral reminders that even a child’s dreams may be tainted.

But how?

I wince as a sudden pain ripples throughout my leg. I’d sat on it wrong as I got in the backseat of my Mother’s van. Only now, ten minutes into the ride, does it rebel.

Pulling my leg out from under me, I shift my position and lean my head against the window. I manage a smile.

I get to see Lu today. He’s going to be so happy.

But, if Dad finds out what we are doing, there will be hell to pay.

End Chapter 1

Next Chapter: A Coming Dark - Chapter Two