I. O. U.
One
Midnight. There was no moon, and the stars were gone. Silence clung to her. For a heartbeat, Sharon did not know where she was. Then, as a chill wind ruffled her hair, she recognized the woods.
The nightmare was back again.
She looked around, feeling the panic began as a dull throb in her chest. The same dead trees, branches clawing for the skies: leafless, lifeless, but somehow malicious. Like skeletons with evil eyes, all watching her. The ground underfoot was herd and dry. Any grasses or flowers had died and withered long ago. All that were left were roots and stones, all cold, hard, and warning for her to begin to run.
Sharon's heart began to pound, and she could feel the adrenaline pumping. Her breaths were short, forming trails of mist about her face. She wore only her nightdress, as always, and the air was cold and damp. Despite this, a thin trickle of sweat crawled down her back. She rubbed at it, feeling her hand go clammy at the touch. Her gaze darted about her, but nothing moved—yet.
This was the way that it always began. And it always ended the same way, with her—
A sound!
She twisted around, vainly trying to make out something, anything, in those disjointed trees. She tried to call out, but her throat wouldn't obey her mind. She could feel her heart speeding up, pounding. Her breath hissed in and out of her nostrils, the only thing she could now hear. Wildly, she darted her eyes all across the eerie landscape. Nothing.
Wavering, she took a step backward. Her ankle caught on a root, and she almost lost her balance. She looked down, but there was nothing to see. She could barely make out the white shape of her naked feet.
They were there.
Sharon knew it, even though she couldn't see them. They had arrived, and were there, in the woods, somewhere. The man, the dark man, with his brooding eyes and slow, steady tread. And… the other. The un-man, the shapeless thing that plucked at the edge of her mind and refused ever to be seen.
Backing up another step, something grabbed at her long, blonde hair. This time she found her voice, and screamed, pulling forward. The twigs from the tree jerked free from her hair, as she spun to face her attacker. Just a tree.
This time.
Again, she felt that they were watching her, waiting for her nerve to break. Waiting for her to run. But this time, she wouldn't do it. This time she would be strong. She wrapped her right arm about her chest, as if pulling a cloak over her flimsy clothing. The chill from the ground was numbing her toes. Wriggling them, she tried to fight off the cold. Slowly, hesitantly, feeling ahead with her extended left hand, she started to walk. She would not run! Not this time.
Her fingers touched something cold, clammy, and alive. With a start, she drew back. Nothing happened, but she could feel something icky on her fingertips. She peered ahead, and could make out some sort of fungus growth on a tree. She had put her hand into that. Ugh! Her fingers felt filthy, contaminated, but there was nowhere to wipe them except her filmy nightgown. She didn't want to do that, and get the gross stuff even closer to her body. What could she do?
She could feel their eyes, watching, waiting, looking for her reaction. Trying to stay rational, Sharon bent down in the darkness, feeling out with her itching left hand for something, anything. Her fingers closed on something hard and rounded. As she started to rub the fungus-stuff onto whatever it was, the object suddenly came to life, skittering away from her. With a scream, she shot back upright, her chest heaving. Without conscious thought, she pulled her left hand close, smearing her fingers onto the gown.
Terrific. She could sense the contaminated spot, where it touched her thigh. It made her skin crawl, just knowing it was there. And she could smell the stuff now, a rancid odor of decay, sickly, and growing stronger.
She took a step forward, but of course the smell moved with her. It was the stench of death, she knew, of something rotting, and she had touched it…
The icy caress of the breeze stirred at her again, slipping beneath her nightdress and brushing her skin. A shock passed up her body, and she shivered. It was impossible to get warm.
Unless she ran. And she wouldn't do that.
Something crawled across her foot. Something chittering, with dozens of tiny, fast-moving feet. She screamed, and tried to kick it away. Something else, wavering, hesitant, reached out to touch her other foot. She spun around, choking back tears, and bony fingers grabbed her hair. She'd backed into the grip of one of the trees! With a sob, she pulled herself free.
The scampering things in the darkness started to move again, and her skin crawled. Insects, bugs, all after her because she was warm and the only living thing in these woods.
Forgetting her resolve, Sharon turned and ran.
She tried to protect her face from the stinging blows of the branches and twigs. She could feel the lashing of these icy fingers, and she was getting scratched and bruised. She felt the trickling of blood now, mixing with the film of sweat. Her feet pounded across the uneven ground, stumbling over the rocks and roots that tried to grab at her and pull her down to the dead soil. Her breathing was short, hard, burning pants now, as she strove to fight down the terror welling up within.
Blindly, she dashed onward. She fought off the clutching branches, heedless of the scrapes she was getting. Her legs felt dozens of tiny scratches from the brambles and thorns. She knew she was filthy, bloody and soaked with perspiration. The twigs tore at the nightdress, dragging at it as she ran, ripping bits of fabric from her only protection. But she couldn't stop. Not now.
Her chest and lungs burned with every short, coughing breath she took. She could feel the punishment the soles of her feet were taking as she ran across the jagged stones and twisting roots. Arms flailing, she ran, the terror growing within her. She wanted to scream, but she had no breath to spare for that.
It was a hunt, she knew: her pursuers were in no rush. They wanted her exhausted, ready to break, before they closed in. But knowing it and being able to do anything to fight it were not the same thing. After all, she knew that this was a dream, but the terror and the lacerations felt very real indeed.
Finally, she could go on no more. For one last time, she stumbled, and now she fell. She couldn't even feel the extra pain as she crashed to the ground. She did manage to force one arm under her shaking body, and levered herself into a sitting position beneath a skeletal tree. The branches over her head felt the bars of a cage, and she knew that she was trapped.
Every breath she took burned clear down to her stomach, and she could never take in enough air. She brushed the long hairs from her eyes, and stared out into the darkness.
He was there, watching. Though there was no real light, she could see something burning redly in his eyes as he stared at her. It was the same man as always—tall, dark, with long, untidy hair flapping in the breeze. His skin was pale, his red eyes sunken. She took all of this in without thinking, because her eyes were drawn to the blade he held.
It wasn't a normal knife. It was more like a cake knife, with a narrow blade that flattened out, then came to a sharp point. Dimly, she knew she had seen something like this knife before, and that it was important. But she couldn't place it. Besides which, this wasn't the time for cold, analytical thought.
This was when she died.
A slow smile crossed the man's face, twisting it unevenly. He had caught her thought, could scent her panic and utter weariness. He took a step forward, and she tried to crawl away. But the tree behind her held her firm. The blade rose, ready.
If it was only death that she had to face, she would almost welcome it at this point. The panic had built to fever pitch, and she knew that dying of fright wasn't simply an expression. The thumping of her heart against her rib cage told her that it was almost ready to burst. But death was only the start of it…
Behind her killer, still hardly there, was the Unseen. It lurked, just on the edges of vision, shifting, hungering, waiting. It was the force behind the man, the predator waiting for its
next victim to be delivered. It was ravenous, waiting to devour her, body and soul.
Death would be only the beginning of her agonies.
The knife rose, as the man stepped forward. She flung her hand out, a futile gesture she was unable to halt. He laughed, and grabbed at her wrist. She cried aloud with the pain as he forced her arm aside, exposing her chest. Then, in a frenzy of movement, he struck, plunging that glittering blade straight for her.
At the last second, she screamed.
And shot bolt-upright in her bed, panting, sweating, clutching the sheets about her for protection. Her eyes flew open into the darkness of her own room. She could see shapes and shadows of her precious, familiar life, in the gray light coming through the window. The canopy of her bed, overhead, more protective than the tree she had just died under. The warmth of the bedclothes she gripped tightly to herself. The—
Twin red spots burned in the shadows by the doorway.
He was here, in her room! He had escaped from her dream! He—
She fought down the terror that was bubbling up within herself, moving slightly to get a better view of the redness. Then she sighed with relief. It was the light from her digital alarm, hitting her mirror on the far wall. There really wasn't anyone in the room with her at all. She was alone, and her parents were across the hall from her, and she was safe. Utterly, utterly safe. It had just been a dream.
Then the redness winked out. Terror started to build up again in her. She could feel something in the room, something malevolent, something watching her, savoring the smell of her fear. She couldn't turn her head to see. If she didn't look, maybe, maybe she'd be wrong, and it wasn't there.
If the redness had been the alarm clock in the mirror, then why had it suddenly vanished?
Refusing to surrender to the childish urge to dive under the bedcovers and cry, she fought the tense muscles in her neck, slowly managing to twist her head about to look at the clock.
The front wasn't lit at all. Then, as she stared, the red numbers came back to life, blinking 12:00, over and over.
She let her breath out in one long rush. It had been a momentary power failure, nothing more. The figures flashed on and off now, demanding to taken care of, and she reached out a hesitant hand for her watch. She half expected something to reach out of the gloom and grab her, but nothing did. She glanced at the watch-face, but could make nothing out. It was too dark. She switched on the bedside lamp, and quickly glanced all around her room. Everything was normal, just as it had been when she had turned off the light to go to sleep.
3:32 in the morning! She brushed her hair back and reached over, setting the alarm again. Then she took a drink of the water on her night-table. One last look around, to be certain that all was fine, then she reached for the light. And hesitated. Maybe she'd be better off leaving it on for the last couple of hours of the night? Then she took a grip on her fears, and refused to revert to her childhood dread of the darkness. There was nothing there to harm her, nothing at all. It had just been a bad dream that she'd been having. For the fourth time.
Fighting back her worries, she hastily switched off the light, and buried herself under the bedcovers again. Their warmth about her was comforting. But her nightdress stuck to her where she had been sweating, and she wriggled uncomfortably. She was exhausted, as if she'd really been running those terror-filled miles in the eerie forest. And her feet hurt. She rubbed at her left sole, trying to ease the cramping sensations. It didn't help much. And it felt rough, and sore. Almost as if she had been racing through woods in her bare feet. With a sigh of relief, she was just glad that there wasn't any blood or scratches on her body. Had there been, she just might have given in to the panic that lurked slightly over the threshold of her consciousness. She was afraid to return to sleep, in case the dream came back. Maybe she'd just stay awake until the morning… Slowly, without being aware of it, Sharon drifted into a dreamless slumber for the remainder of the night.
Vampire Diaries 01 - The Awakening Page 19