Awake-A Supernatural Fantasy Short Story

 

Awake

 

    Have you ever looked for your reflection in the sky before a storm? When the wind pressures your restless heart for the truth, and your soul aches for cleansing in the rain; the colors of turmoil reach through the clouds and extend their shadows down to earth.

    Hold out your arms and let it pass over you. Light and dark duel in the shelter of the swaying trees.

    Breath… blink, and embrace the fragrance of the forest from which the winds have come; but never close your eyes, or turn your back on the storm.

    You were taught as a child to seek shelter from thunder. Watch the rain from the safety of a window, but I tell you there is nothing that heals and restores harmony between body and soul the way nature will when it also has grown restless.

    So it was the evening of my dear friend's death. As heavy as stone, my heart lay in my chest, as I stood in the deserted isle at church. My gaze fell away from the cold form in the casket. Her features were so quiet I felt as though I were intruding upon a sleeping child. I could not cry. She was gone, but there was no presence of death about her, only peace.

    The rain washed over us as the wind moaned as though in shared remorse. I was sure the angels would wait until the storm had passed to come for her soul.

    The sound of the pastor’s steps was softened by the carpet as he came to stand next to me. “Family?” he inquired with practiced tonal empathy. “Equivalent…” I answered in thought. Given the desolation of my surroundings, the volume of silence seemed viable communication.

    “We were just getting ready to lock up. I'll give you a minute.” His words felt like a hand, pushing me, trying to turn me around and shove me out the door. My feet felt an un-inclined to move as though my shoes were made of lead; the motion of my own breath induced dizziness.

    If I walked out that door, it was over. I would never see her again. Then, and only then, would death have its way.

    My eyes wandered to the piano, to the far right of the room. In the shadows the uncovered keys seemed to ripple, like water catching moonlight. I blinked; I must be seeing things.

    I looked again. I felt a stillness wrap me up like warm air on a winter night, as the room went dark. I could neither hear anything nor see anything, save the open casket and the piano, both bathed in a faint, unnatural glow.

    A shadow-sheltered figure emerged from the darkness behind it and moved to stand by the bench. It ran its fingers over the keys, sending a ripple of cold sound into the silence.

    The silhouette was feminine, with a hideously thin face. She wore garments of decaying foliage and vines that moved as if alive.

    At that moment I told myself, “Serina, you’re asleep. That explains everything. She’s not dead. None of this is real. Wake yourself up and be done with this dreadful moment., please, wake up.”

    And yet somehow, I feared I might be trapped in this dream until the dream itself decided to release me. It felt so all-encompassing, I knew not how to escape its grasp.

    The shadow-draped lady moved effortlessly toward the casket and stooped to touch the face of my departed friend, Candice Shivlen. She traced her long, gnarly fingers over the still chest and lifted Candice’s spirit by the hand, guiding her to stand, as though in a trance, over her own corpse.

    For a moment, the shadow let go of Candice’s hand and turned toward me.

    The intense, soul-reading gaze of her shiny black eyes froze my very heartbeat, and I ceased to breathe. But the moment was fleeting, her eyes flickered away as if I were nothing.

    The far wall blended into the darkness behind the pulpit, creating nothingness beyond the reach of wind-tossed shadows.

    In a fraction of a second, and with a series of static-like movements, she stood before the casket and gestured as though pulling the spirit of my friend with an invisible rope to stand beside her. My heartbeat in my chest as though grasping at life after a moment of terrifying restriction. I no longer thought of the cold body in the coffin, but instead of the spirit of Candice standing submissively by the authoritative side of the gnarl-handed shadow lady.

    A sense of desperation over pending loss settled upon my soul in an instant. I heard myself cry out before my thoughts had a chance to catch up with the words that formed. “Candice isn’t ready to go with you.” My voice fell obtrusively into the heavy darkness before me, and the spirit of my friend vanished alongside her guide. Yet I sensed my words had made an impact in the universe. Someone had heard me… I could feel it. And somehow, inexplicably, I felt the world around me pause, as though the darkness itself had eyes, which for a moment, rested on me.

    I blinked and felt a strange sensation of falling as I realized I was waking from a dream. Before my eyes had fully opened, I heard a voice answer me, almost as though from the real world, and not the world of my dreams. “How are you here?” And with that voice, my eyelids were frightened into retreat.

    Shivers rushed through me violently. The light of the morning shown through the window by my bed. It spilled onto the otherwise shadowy wooden floorboards, in proclamation that it was safe to step out of bed. But before I made a move to rise, the ringing of my cell phone scared my scattered thoughts into a more reality-oriented focus.

    “Hello?”

    “Serina! It’s Candice’s sister, Neome. Candice has been in an accident. I know you were expecting her this afternoon, and I thought someone should tell you. We’re at the hospital here in Bardstown, Kentucky. She was admitted at 3:00 AM this morning.”

    “Accident!” My chest felt as if it would cave in and crush my lungs. But… admitted… hospital. That meant she was alive! I took a shaky breath and said, “Thank you for calling. I’m on my way.” I dropped the phone as my feet hit the floor, but dizziness challenged my balance, and for a moment, I fell back.

    The memory of my dream still chilling my bones, I let the voice that woke me echo in my thoughts. “How are you here?” Somehow, I felt the voice belonged to the shadow lady, although of course, she was just a figment of my subconscious fantasies. Yet, as dreams will, it weighed on my mind, grounding my turbulent thoughts as I dressed in a tizzy.

    Time might as well have been lost between grabbing my car keys and finding myself halfway down the road, listening to the nagging sound of a glitching navigator. Inside my head, my dream from earlier played in scattered fragments on repeat as I tried to make sense of the moment.

    I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focused on the road ahead of me. The air was damp and the day was dim. Save for a soft breach of light filtering through the heavy gray sky, there was little indication it was 10 in the morning. As the rain set in, I found the nearest exit and parked on the broken pavement that was the unmarked parking lot of a tiny gas station.

    I turned the key to rest my car, and the silence set in like loneliness at night. The voice of my navigator cut offensively into my thoughts. As I reached for my phone, I was distracted by a gust of wind that shook my window. Looking out, the far trees seemed to toss shadows at me as the wind stirred them strangely toward each other.

    And in the way one tends to sense someone sneaking up behind them, I felt myself being pulled involuntarily back into the dream still stirring in my mind. The darkness engulfed me as my head hit the steering wheel.

    I blinked and stood, stepping blindly forward into the light before me. As my eyes adjusted, I steadied myself. I stood in front of a hospital bed and looked down upon my friend. Her breath was shallow, but the rise and fall of her chest was reassuring. I could sense someone was sitting behind me, and I meant to turn and say hello.

    But upon attempting to step about, I lost my footing and fell. My fall was unchecked by the expected confrontation with cold, hard floor. Instead, I slipped into darkness that was almost comfortable for softening my fall, and time seemed to slow.

    I found myself standing again, in complete darkness, utterly unaware of my surroundings but vaguely conscious of my state of unconsciousness. And I chose calm out of belief that I never woke to begin with. For this could not be happening.

    A now familiar voice turned my head in the darkness. The world around me became barely visible as deep shadows and gray light, until my gaze rested upon the shadow lady. This time, much more physical in appearance. An aroma of decaying foliage was inescapably one with the damp air my unwilling lungs took in.

    “You again... It has been a thousand years since last I saw a breathing soul. No one comes to see me but the ill-fated deceased. So tell me, what are you here for?”

    I shook my head to clear my thoughts and focused on the road ahead of me. The air was damp and the day was dim. Save for a soft breach of light filtering through the heavy gray sky, there was little indication it was 10 in the morning. As the rain set in, I found the nearest exit and parked on the broken pavement that was the unmarked parking lot of a tiny gas station.

    “A breathing soul?” I pondered aloud. Remember, Selena, you're dreaming, I told myself. So just get yourself together and go with it. No harm can come to you in your sleep… I think.

    “A breathing soul indeed… a soul to whom warm breath was given to bind it to a vessel. A bondage that comes with free will, but also ignorance of the afterlife so that its true nature may be tested.” She took a deep breath and lifted her arms while tilting back her head, revealing the pale gray skin of her neck. “Sweet bondage I was denied…” Her voice turned cold and bitter with these last words, and the vines that made up her skirt rustled as she lunged toward me.

    I might have stepped back had she not been restrained by the foliage which clothed her—and I by the fear her black eyes instilled as they rushed toward me. Vines extended from the hem of her attire and twisted themselves into long ropes that wrapped about the base of a long-dead tree.

    For a brief moment, her closeness terrified me. Until, meeting her gaze, I sensed only desperation, without malice, in the soul-searching lightlessness of her eyes. She seemed helpless and void of hope, like a puppy left to forage for shelter in the rain. And looking upon her, sympathy softened my heart, letting my body regain its composure and move freely again.

    I stepped back and cleared my thoughts as best I could. Her arms went limp as she hung her head. “What do you want?”

    What do I want? I thought about it for a second and realized I wasn't sure. Answers… maybe. “Who are you? And what did you want with the soul of my friend?” As I spoke these words aloud, again I felt the constriction of my dream, as though it were somehow real, and every action in this moment would hold consequence.

    “Who am I?” She sounded almost perplexed to be asked. “Your kind know me as a goddess of death. Although, contrary to popular belief, I'm not a goddess at all. Only an unborn soul. Given the task of fetching the unfortunate and bringing them here.”

    “An unborn soul…?” I asked aloud. “Like a human soul?”

    She looked at me for a moment like I was stupid, but answered me nonetheless. “What else? I have eternal life… if you will. Bound to this place, in this flesh that's as much a part of the earth as the decaying corpses of the deceased. A vessel… but one that has no free will. Without which, my soul is untested, and my existence, such as it is, has no expiration.”

    I had forgotten at this point that I believed myself to be dreaming, and caught up in the moment, I reached for her hand. Her fingers felt like dried wood, and there was no heartbeat even when she moved.

    Despite the weight in my heart as I looked upon her miserable form, I was uneasy about the power she held over the dead… my friend. And perhaps, one day, myself.

    “I saw you…” I said softly, almost as though someone was listening, other than us, and I were crossing a forbidden line. “You took my friend. Why? And how were you at her funeral if you cannot leave this place?”

    “Your friend? Candice Shivlen? She isn't dead, but dying. And what you saw wasn't me, it was her dream. And you… how were you there?... Or back to the more important question… how are you here?”

    “I wasn't… I'm not... I'm just… dreaming… I think.”

    I felt overwhelmed by a sense of confusion and suddenly strongly desired to leave this moment and wake up. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself awake. For a moment, I believed when I opened them again, I would be back in my room at home. But before I could, her voice pulled me back into the moment, and I opened my eyes to face her, still standing within arm’s reach. Was I ever going to wake up?

    “You're not dreaming. Your soul… is here. With me. And your body is resting, in a car, on the side of the road.”

    “What?!!!” I felt a chill rush through me, as a sense of doubt and dread set in. Did I wake? Did I set off to see my friend? Am I unconscious and defenseless and… and soulless on the side of the road?

    “If I'm not dreaming…” I said shakily, “how do I get back?”

    “Seriously…?” she said, plopping cross-legged to the damp and smelly ground. “Beats me. Same way you got here? Anyway, aren't you here about the fate of your friend's soul?”

    “Uh… yeah… I guess… what are you planning to do with her?”

    “Lead her to wander this forest in eternal darkness, of course. That's my job.”

    “She doesn't deserve eternal darkness. You must know a way to save her. Can't you just not go get her?”

    “Would you be willing to put yourself in my shoes to find out? If you could save her then? Would you?”

    “Of course I would,” I said defensively.

    Faster than I could blink, she sprang to her feet and threw her arms around me, saying, “Then you can have them.”

    “Have what?” I asked, completely overwhelmed and feeling muddled.

    “My shoes.” Her voice cut through me like a cold blade, leaving me paralyzed. Because her voice… was my voice. I looked down as I felt myself leave her embrace. And my gaze fell upon her hands… or were they my hands? I felt like my heart should be racing at this moment, but I couldn't feel it at all. As though it were no longer in my chest. And then again… my voice…

    “Merciful heavens! So this is what free will feels like! I have a heartbeat! I'm not tied to this wretched place anymore.” I looked up slowly, dread having numbed all other senses. This didn't feel right. I wanted to wake up. And I wanted to wake up at once. But I could feel that I was powerless to do so.

    And what I saw before me was myself. My mind began racing. Why was I looking at myself? How was I not… in myself? I shuddered, and the sound of rustling vines broke the brief silence. I was in her body, and she was…? What was she? She looked like me, but if only my soul had come here, assuming I wasn't dreaming, then how did we trade places?

    Her voice came from what was now my mouth with a strangely dry, raspy sound. “What did you do to me?”

    “I gave you your chance. To save your friend. When you figure it out. If… you figure it out. I'll be back.”

    “Back?!!! No… no, no, no, no, no, no… you can't… go…” But she was gone. And so was my strength. My legs crumbled beneath me, and the moisture from the forest floor chilled me to my core.

    I no longer cared if I was stuck in a dream or real life. Either way, I felt the imprisonment deeply, and a sense of hopelessness turned my limbs to lead. I could feel the hollowness inside my new body, as though I were trapped in a cage.

    The forest around was completely dark from the moment I was left alone. And in the darkness, I sat, terrified, and grew increasingly restless for what seemed like days. I felt as though losing my sanity might have been a relief, for as long as this darkness was my reality, and as long as the vines that bound me, that were an extension of me, forbade my quest for light, every waking moment was torture. And to my dismay, sleep never came to rescue me.

    I'm ashamed to admit, looking back, during those first days of darkness, I never once thought of my friend, of her pending fate or why I was there to begin with. It was as though I was in an internal state of panic. All I wanted was to be able to see again. To grasp the reality of my surroundings in the light, and find a way out of the prison that was my new body.

    It would have been a relief to be able to cry, or feel my heart panicking with me, but all I had were hollow fingers that appeared to be made of wood. With them, I could feel the stillness, the cold of the air, and the moisture of the soft ground beneath me.

    I don't know how long I sat fiddling with those fingers in the dark before they found the vines that led from my hem to the base of the tree to which I was bound. But it was when I wrapped the vines about my hands and pulled them close, that light returned to the forest around me. Soft and gray, and warm, and calming. It shone from the dead foliage that wrapped about my wrist as I held it.

    Once the light had restored a sense of calm to my soul, I was reminded by my surroundings why I was there. I couldn't grow resigned to my predicament without trying to find a way out. “When you figure it out… if… you figure it out. I'll be back.” Those words echoed through my mind on repeat until I struggled to have another thought, but how did she connect with the spirits? And how was I to know what I was supposed to do to change the fate of Candice Shivlen?

    Remembering that I first saw her in Candice's dream, I closed my eyes to the light for the first time since discovering how to create it, and focused my thoughts on Candice.

    In my mind, I saw her lying in the hospital, still breathing softly. I thought I might have been there, but opening my eyes proved I was still in the forest. I focused again on the image in my mind and willed myself to think back to the place in which the dream had been her family church, in the late evening, with the rain beating down on the trees outside the high windows, casting shadows on Candice's coffin as they passed in front of the full moon.

    In that moment, the image came into focus again. And I felt once more as though I was dreaming. Only this time, I was the shadow lady, and Candice had no visitors. The pastor was getting ready to lock up, and Candice lay in her casket, as still as the night was somber. I moved toward her and paused, startled.  Her spirit was faintly visible, laying  within her body, like a second silhouette, barely glowing beneath her skin, as if her soul were resting just beneath the surface, waiting to be called. I reached for her hand, somehow breaching the boundary between us, and felt our souls touch, spirit to spirit. She rose, slowly, as if pulled while sleepwalking. And in that moment, I realized: I had become her unwitting guide.

    I couldn't have been more at a loss as to what I should do next. If her soul slept, how was I to wake her? And if I was in her dream, was she asleep in her dream?

    I held her hand as though letting go would separate us both forever and seal our fates prospectively. And broke the silence with her name. “Candice… wake up and listen to me.” And although nothing should have been able to startle me at that point, when the eyes of her spirit popped open, I felt as though I would die of fright.

    She looked at me, blank and dazed, as though my words were the only thoughts in her mind, and even those weren’t processing.

    Still shaken, I tried again. “Candice, you’re dreaming. But I’m not. I’m here because… you’re dying. And if I can’t help you find your way back, you’ll be lost to the darkness, and I’ll be trapped here too, like this, long story, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have time to explain.”

    As though I had switched on a light in her brain, my words brought the Candice I knew back into the eyes of her soul.

    “I’m sorry… what? And you, your… If I’m asleep… and you’re not, then… who are you? How are you even here? Her expression was complete bewilderment.

    There it was. That question again. And I still didn't know the answer. “I, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how I’m here… not exactly. But it’s me. Sarina. You have to wake up, and when you do, don’t let go. Fight to stay awake. Fight to live, so you can change your destiny. Want it so badly that you cling to life with everything you have. If you die now, Candice, your soul won’t find rest, you’ll be trapped in darkness, and I don’t know exactly what you need to change… but if you don’t, I won’t be able to help you again, or leave this body and return to the world either.”

    “Sarina…? You… are my friend? How did you? You are a…? What are you exactly? And why should I believe anything I hear in a dream? None of this makes any sense, I just want my thoughts to let go, so I can rest, I just want this dream to end.”

    “Because…” I said, realizing the disparity of my situation was reliant on convincing Candice to listen to me. “If I'm right, you can't afford not to believe me. So give me the benefit of the doubt, please, when you wake up I will come to you, then you will know I speak the truth. Don’t close your eyes again, I’m begging you, don’t do this to either of us. I think I might be here because… You remember the pinky promise we made on your porch the night your dad left? You said if you ever slipped into darkness, I had to come find you, no matter what, I had to talk you back to sense like I always do? I promised… and we both cried. Remember? And the scar under your hair from where your brother pushed you and you fell onto our barbie tower? You made me promise not to tell mom, because after he saw he made you bleed, he was shaking with fear of the consequences? Or when we ran away into the woods and tried to build a teepee so we could live off the land and you gave up when you needed to pee and we didn’t have toilet paper?”

    She stared at me as though trying to uncover some hidden motive, and after a pause, during which I greatly feared my own fate, she broke into an eerie laugh, and sat down on the edge of the coffin. She turned around and looked back at her body. “I remember… Sarina, I remember. Why am I already in a coffin? This isn’t some kind of wake from the actual dead and scare everybody to death situation is it?” This time I laughed. This was the Candice I knew. She always made me laugh in the worst moments, and somehow that made them bearable. For a moment, feeding off each others energy, we both sat and laughed.

    Then she squinted at me and pointed at the vines that had replaced my hair. “Girl… if you could see yourself right now. That’s the worst bad hair day of your life.”

    Again we both laughed and then I reached for the flowy glow around her spirit head, at least I have hair… what do you call this?”

    Reaching for her hair, and feeling what I referred to, she made one of her funny faces, and I thought we would both die laughing, until the room started to shake, and a crack broke through the ceiling of the church, and we could see the stars through the gap, and here the wind howling outside.

    “You should go now.” I stood hastily.

    “Okay. Plan: wake up, ASAP. Girl… wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.” She let go of my hand and lay back down into her body. She released my hand and eased herself back into her body. Maybe, just maybe, her will to live rewrote what would have been. Because as I looked down into the coffin… her body was gone. The casket lay empty.

The church also faded into darkness, and I found myself standing again in the forest. Surrounded by soft shadows and holding a coil of foliage tightly in my fist. I sighed a breath of relief and looked up to meet the gaze of the real shadow lady, in my former body. Standing across from me, the look of disappointment on my face was a welcome sight.

    “You came back,” I said, feeling strangely guilty and relieved at the same time.

    For a moment, I saw the figure wearing my face, my old self, flicker like a candle before it goes out, and in the next moment, I found myself back in my body, and surprisingly… awake.

    I lifted my head off the steering wheel and realized I had never left the car. My heart was calm, and my brain felt like a movie on slow-motion rewind.

    I remembered the long days in the forest. The immense burden of time as it dragged on in the darkness. How could I still be here? Unless, by some cruel twist of my subconscious, time was an illusion, and it had all indeed been a dream.

    I shook my head and slapped my cheeks. I felt awake.

    I turned the key and rolled down the windows, and the fresh air filled my lungs, creating a backflash of the damp, smelly forest.

    The clock still read 10:46 AM. The date hadn't changed. I wanted to close my eyes and catch my breath. But I was afraid of falling asleep, so I dared not even blink. My phone vibrated, and a text popped up.

    It was from Candice's sister. It read… “She's awake.”