Afterlife (Afterlife Saga) (27 page)

I walked right up to the open window already knowing the flavour I wanted, when I noticed something familiar. The man that served me had the same deadly red tint in his eyes as the gypsy in my dream. I tried to shake it off but the red kept getting deeper and deeper until it soon looked as though his eyes would overflow with blood. I stepped back before giving him my order, when my father’s voice came up behind me making me jump.

“Whoa, hey kiddo, what flavour are you getting?” I didn't answer as my dad
walked past me giving the man three orders for himself, my sister and my mum. 

“Honey what you having?...Come on make your mind up.” My dad was getting impatient as he could see a line forming behind me. I still couldn't speak. Why couldn't he see what I was seeing? He turned to give me a look that translated to if I don't pick soon I wouldn't be getting one so I mouthed a silent “Chocolate” and he frowned at my strange behaviour.  He passed me mine with his hands full and walked towards my family who had sat down on a nearby bench. I was about to follow when the man from the van shouted “Hey Guv you forgot your change” in a thick Essex accent.

“Oh Honey could you grab that for me.” I froze knowing I would have to explain myself if I refused. Maybe I was just seeing things. That had to be
it,
no one else in the line looked freaked. People moved out of my way to let me pass as I reached up my hand to receive the money but the man grabbed my hand forcefully and my eyes met the gypsy woman's face, the one that had haunted my dreams for weeks. Her eyes were bleeding and the blood dripped down onto people's ice creams that lay in the holders. Customers still took them and licked away at them as though nothing was there. Nobody seemed to notice this mad looking woman as she was pulling me closer to the window. They were just going around me as though I was a traffic cone in the road.

“Now you will see...7....7....7
…7
” she kept repeating the number over and over as she let go of my hand. I fell back and an elderly couple helped me off the floor, picking up the change that the crazy gypsy had dropped around me. I looked back and the ice cream man's face smiled back at me, saying “Are you all right love?”

I couldn't understand what had just happened and my parents just thought my tears were from when I had fallen and lost my ice cream. But from that day on I would see things that made people's nightmares seem like happy cartoons. My nightmares started to come to life when I wasn't even asleep. I would be on a bus or in a car and one minute I would see just a normal person and then I would see them change into something utterly terrifying.

Sometimes I would see them with scales where skin should be or their hair would move as though they were floating underwater. Then there were the very scary ones, the ones that had black empty holes where their eyes should be. Sometimes these holes would glow red and the cracks in their skin would light up in reaction. Their skin would move under the cracks as though thousands of tiny little creatures were trying to claw and scratch their way out from under the rock like skin.

Others would flicker back and forth like the top of their heads kept screaming. As if the other side of them was trying to escape. These would let out a screeching sound so high pitched that I would have to put my hands over my ears and they would always ache afterwards, leaving me with a ringing in my fragile mind.

I now lived in fear of when I would next see one, becoming withdrawn and nervous. I tried to tell my parents about my fears but they put it down to everything and anything. They would tell me off sending me to my room, and then my mum would get so upset about what she was hearing. I would cry to Libby pleading with her to believe me but as the months went on she did less and less. I had no answers to any of her questions, so why would she?

“Why can no one else see them?” She would often ask but I just hung my head feeling helpless in a secret world no one else could see. Occasionally I would see a kind looking one but even these were disturbing. They would glow with eyes bright but their veins would move as though you could see the blood flowing through their bodies.  But it was normally a bluish light that would follow through into their back to what looked like wings. These too would differ in shape and size sometimes and also material.

I remember one woman looked as though hers were made from clear plastic bags stretched out onto long thin twig like fingers that curled at the ends. But the images would flash in and out so quickly that sometimes they would change. It got that way, that I didn't know what was real any more.

One day at school it was getting too much for me when a new teacher had asked why I was crying and why wouldn't I go outside to play with the others? When I had replied
,

“Cause there's a b
oy in my class that's a monster,
” She had rung my parents to come into the school. The meeting had lasted the rest of the day with different teachers and staff being involved. No one spoke to me but my father came out and barely looked at me. My mother just placed her hand on my back and said,

“Come on, we're going home.”

Nobody said a word in the car.

Later that night I had heard my Mother and Father having an argument and I had tiptoed to the landing to hear. I found my sister there already with her face full of sorrow. Marks down her cheeks revealed she had been crying. The voices downstairs grew louder and I could make out that my mother too was crying.

“But she's not sick and I won't send her to that place!” My mother said between sobs.

“You know I don't want to send her there either but what else can we do?” Tears filled my eyes at all the trouble I had caused. I wished I could erase it all. I wished I could go back to the happy kid I once was and then none of this would be happening. My sister turned to me and wiped away my tears.

“I don't understand why this is happening to you but I know you're not faking it. However mum and dad will send you away if you don't do something.” She looked at me with pleading eyes and her face blurred through my watery vision.

“Send me where?” I tried to control my sobs so as not to alert my parents that we were listening.

“The school thinks you should be sent to a special hospital so you can be monitored by doctors and therapists.” She lowered her head in shame to be the one to tell me this.

“They think I'm crazy don't they?” She nodded and a single tear rolled down her pink cheek.

“What am I going to do, I don't want to go, I'm scared Libby.” She held me close to her, hugging me tight not wanting me to be taken away. She leaned into my ear and said one word.

“LIE” My head popped up and looked at her. She was serious.

“What?”

“LIE. Tell them it was all a lie to get attention, tell them a girl at school put you up to it, tell them
it’s
scary films you have been sneaking downstairs to watch, I don't know but tell them anything so they won't send you away!” She was almost as desperate as I was but she clearly had time to think about this.

I nodded saying,

“Ok I will but Libby what do I do about keeping the monsters away?” She looked worried at my response and sadly said,

“I don't know but let’s deal with this problem first.”

It felt comforting to hear my sister's semi belief, so it gave me the confidence I needed to do what I did next. After telling my parents one of the excuses Libby had come up with, everything went back to normal pretty quickly. Apart from my seeing things I could not explain, my life went back to the usual young girl’s life I had originally had. Only now I had to fake a lot of things. Why, for example, I would jump at nothing and looked shocked at some random person walking past. But my parents were more than happy to believe that I was fine. If only for one day they saw the same things I did. I would sometime dream that this would happen but then felt guilty about it instantly. I would never wish this curse on anyone. Even at such a young age I still knew the consequences such a life altering event had on one human mind.  

However it all changed again six months later when Libby came running into my room with an idea. She had recently seen a documentary of a man that travelled around the world talking about different cultures. My dad was watching it as he did every week when my sister took notice of one part in particular. It was when he tried to take a picture of the Aborigines, they held up their hands in protest. The guide then explained why this was. 

Spiritualists would claim that the human image on the mirrored surface was akin to looking into one's soul. The spiritualists also believed that it would open their souls and let demons in. Aborigines believed that taking one's picture took part of one's soul away. It somehow kept it locked away.

Locked...that was the key. 

This was how her idea was born. She thought that if taking a picture of someone let demons in then maybe taking the picture of a demon would somehow contain them. But it didn't quite make sense and I could hardly go around taking every one’s picture just in case.  So she came up with another way, she told me to try and draw them whenever I saw one. Maybe this would act as a sort of prison for them to be locked out of my mind. It was something I had never thought of, so I did as she asked and started sketching them every time I saw one.

I found that every time I did this it would lock the image from my head and I wouldn't see it any more. The effects didn't stop there, because after years of seeing these living nightmares they grew less and less until one day I realised I hadn't seen one in over a month.

However they didn't go completely, they were now only coming to me when I was asleep. I would play back part of the day and somewhere there would be one
changing into something horrible but as long as it remained in my dream I could cope with it. I would then get up and draw what I had seen and keep it in a hidden folder, locking it out of my head forever. The next time I saw the same person, they would be just like everyone else and I wouldn't dream of them again. By the time I hit my teens the dreams had also stopped, only coming back to me a few times a year. I owed it all to Libby and she would never know the full extent of what she had done for me. She had saved me from my curse.

Now, of course, I was back to my own unusual therapy, drawing the visions that had come to me in last night’s horror. Of course the difference now was that I had a knight in not so shiny jeans and t-shirt, but man what a knight he was! It was worth being so scared in the mists of hell to see the heaven there waiting to pull me out. It was just a pity that he too was just a fragmented version of the truth.

Draven at the club and Draven my knight were miles apart. It was just a shame that the only one of those that was real hated me!  I sat back staring at the pictures of faces made up of teeth and shuddered at the thought. But this time I didn't have a book I could add it to. This time I would have to start a new one, for new nightmares.  

And I had a feeling this was only the beginning of my recurring past.

Chapter 15 - To VIP or not to VIP

I went downstairs just before the morning light filled the kitchen. No one was up yet and I was thankful for it. I still felt strange from the night’s events and Libby would no doubt pick up on it. I was trying to time it right so when she got up, I could jump in the shower. Hopefully I could get away with not seeing her until tonight after work.

The thought of work gave way to new worries. It would be even harder now knowing that everyone would soon find out I was about to turn down a once in a life time opportunity. For them maybe, but for me? More like a recipe for disaster!

I sat and wondered as I played around with the breakfast before me that I couldn’t eat. I let my mind go over every detail of the dream. Had he woken me from a nightmare in a
dream?
How was that even possible?  I searched my room before coming down here for any evidence of the possibility that it could have been real. But I was living in hopes for an impossible reality. What had me so fixated? He had completely seduced my mind.

Was there anyway of going back?

But did I want to even if I could? I knew the answer. There was no turning back now. He had ruined all chances for me feeling like this about anyone else. Jack had made it perfectly clear about his feelings last night but I had
shied
away from his attentions, yet before I would have loved it. I would have really gone for someone like Jack. He was funny, charming and above all a perfect gentleman. But Jack wasn't the problem...I was.