Midnight Voices

PART I. THE FIRST NIGHTMARE

The girl lay in bed, determined not to go to sleep.

That was when it all happened, when she was asleep.

That was when the dreams came — the terrible dreams from which she could never awaken — so if she didn’t want the dreams to come, she had to stay awake.

But it was so hard to stay awake. She’d tried everything she could think of, tried them so many times she couldn’t even remember.

Tried sitting up, just sitting in the darkness, her back against the hard headboard so she wouldn’t be too comfortable, gazing at the lights playing on the window blind. Sometimes she’d left the blinds up, thinking the brighter light would help her stay awake.

But it had never worked.

She’d tried sitting in her chair, too. The one by the window, where she could look out. In the daytime it was one of her favorite places to sit, because she could watch everything that was happening outside. But at night sitting in the chair didn’t work any better than sitting up in bed.

She’d tried reading under the covers, using the flashlight she kept in the nightstand next to the bed, but she’d known the first time she tried it that it wouldn’t work: she was way too comfortable, and the batteries in the flashlight started to give out after she’d read only a few pages.

Besides, it was even harder to breathe under the covers than it was in the dream.

Part of the trouble was that the dreams didn’t come every night. Some nights she just drifted into sleep, sometimes in her bed, and sometimes in the chair, and woke up to find the sun shining on the window shade. Those were the good mornings, when she didn’t wake up in the grip of the terrors of the dreams, her breath coming in gasps, her body so tired and weak that it felt as if she’d been running all night.

Running from the terrible things that happened to her in the night.

She looked at the clock, but its glowing green hands had barely moved at all.

Get up, she told herself. Get up and walk around. Walk around all night, until the sun comes up. But the bed was soft and comfortable, and as she pulled the covers snug around her and closed her eyes, another voice spoke.

Maybe the dreams won’t come tonight. They didn’t come last night — maybe they won’t come tonight, either.

She let herself relax — just a little — just enough so the bed seemed to cradle her.

And then she heard it.

A moan — so soft she wasn’t certain she’d heard it at all.

She froze, holding her breath, straining to hear. But she couldn’t have heard anything — couldn’t have! She only heard the moans in the dreams, and she wasn’t asleep yet.

Was she?

She opened her eyes to search the darkness.

The clock was still there, its hands glowing green and pointing straight up. Across the room was the window, with the lights from below casting shadows on the shade.

But the frame around the window was indistinct, as if she were looking at it through fog.

The fog of the dream!

But how could it be? She was awake! She hadn’t fallen asleep — she knew she hadn’t!

She looked at the clock again. No more than a minute had gone by.

But now its hands were as indistinct as the frame of the window.

“No,” she whispered. “Please, no…”

Her voice trailed off into silence, but the silence was quickly broken by the sounds of the dream.

The distant moans, the voices of the night.

The creaking of doors.

Footsteps coming close.

No, she tried to tell herself. I’m still awake. I stayed awake. I’m not asleep. I’m not!

She tried to cry out, tried to give voice to the terror that had suddenly seized her, but her throat had constricted, and her chest felt as if it were bound with steel bands — bound so tight she could barely breathe at all.

The footsteps came closer.

The fog grew denser, swirling around her, making her feel dizzy, blurring her vision until even the hands of the clock disappeared.

Arms reached out of the mist.

A gnarled finger moved toward her face.

Another finger, bent and swollen, touched her skin, its ragged nail leaving a burning sensation as it traced the curve of her cheek.

She tried to shrink away, but knew there was no escape.

The twisted finger dropped away from her face and closed on the covers she still clutched about her neck. She tried to fight, tried to hold on to the quilt, but her muscles had gone weak and her hands fell away.

The covers vanished into the mists.

The voices began. She lay perfectly still, trying to close her eyes and ears, trying to tell herself that none of it was real, that she would wake up and it would all be gone.

The voices grew louder, and more fingers came out of the mist, fingers that prodded at her.

“Yes,” one of the voices whispered. “Perfect… perfect…”

Her vision began to play tricks on her, and suddenly everything around her seemed to be a vast distance away. She could still hear the voices, but they, too, seemed to be coming from the very edges of her consciousness. Yet even though the voices and the shapes had retreated into the distance, something else, something she could neither see nor feel nor hear was closing in on her.

Run!

She had to run, had to escape before the unseen force held her in its grip, before the whispering beings came back.

Too late! She was paralyzed now, unable to move her legs or her arms, unable even to sit up. She was held tight by bonds she could neither see nor feel, but that held her immobile and helpless against the forces around her.

Now the beings were back, swirling around her, whispering amongst themselves.

Suddenly a stabbing pain shot through her chest, as if a needle had been jabbed directly into her heart.

Then another stab of pain, this time in her stomach.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to strike out at her tormentors, but not one of her muscles obeyed her commands.

The stabs came faster, jabbing her belly and her side, her groin, her neck.

The whisper of voices grew to an incoherent babble, then faded away until all she could hear was a strange sucking sound, like a cat lapping milk from a bowl.

It got harder to breathe then, and she felt her heart pounding, beating so hard she could hear it, then suddenly skipping beats, vibrating in her chest as she tried to catch her breath.

Dying!

She was dying!

What light there was began to contract into a pinpoint until she felt as if she were looking down a tunnel. Then she was suddenly free of the bonds that had held her paralyzed, and was running through the tunnel, racing toward the light. But the beings that had a moment ago surrounded her were chasing her, reaching out to her. If they caught her—

She plunged onward, her legs straining, her arms pumping. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst, and her lungs ached as she struggled to suck in enough air to keep going.

But she was getting closer!

The pinpoint of light was expanding.

But even as she came closer to the light, she could feel her pursuers gaining on her, coming closer and closer.

They were right behind her now, reaching out to her. Every muscle in her body was burning now, and for a moment she felt herself pulling ahead.

She was going to make it! This time she was going to escape into the light.

She was almost there! Just another step and then—

She tripped.

Her foot caught on something, and she lost her balance. Throwing her hands out, a scream of frustration and terror erupted from her throat and—

She woke up.

Her eyes opened.

Her heart was racing, her breath coming in gasps.

She felt as weak as if she’d been running all night.

Her body felt clammy, her pajamas were damp with sweat.

But it wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real.

It had only been a dream, and she was back in her bed, in her room, and the first rays of the morning sun should be shining on the window shade.

It had only been a dream, and she was all right.

Except she didn’t feel all right.

The morning sun wasn’t shining on the window shade.

She wasn’t in her bed; wasn’t in her room.

Everything was different.

The light — the light she’d chased in her dream, the light she thought would save her, was a bare bulb, hanging above her.

The tormentors, whom she’d thought she left behind in the dream, were still here, lurking in the shadows, their presence more felt than seen.

One of the tormentors, clad all in white with a mask covering its face, drew closer, and she felt something. Something being pushed up into her nose. But her mind was so fogged, her body so weak, that she wasn’t quite certain of what might have happened.

But one thing she was certain of.

She was dying.

She was dying, and she wasn’t sure she cared.

Being dead couldn’t be any worse than living through the dream again.