The Thing in the Dark to Fear

Chapter 1

Fiercely sharp, Linda’s soul-wrenching scream sliced through the evening air. It urgently communicated fear, danger, pain, and desperation. Thousands of dollars and six years at the university had fine-tuned her lingual dexterity, and Linda intuitively vocalized the most appropriate expression to fit the circumstances. Succinct. Nothing really compares to the efficacy of a desperately primitive scream. Forced from healthy lungs, the shrill cry was driven by a mind that had suddenly coiled in upon its-self. The affect was instantly sobering.

Kristen was navigating through her dream and very relaxed, floating on a cool spring breeze when the frantic scream struck her like an arrow from far away. It scared her. One moment she was relaxing in a lucid dream exercise, which often slipped into a deeper restful sleep without notice, but this time she found herself in the all too familiar clutch of a psychic nightmare. Kristen could navigate in her dreamscape by any means she desired, and her favorite was flying or floating. If anything distressed her in a dream, Kristen could escape. Although the ability bolstered her courage, rising anxiety challenged her self-confidence. With shaky determination, however, Kristen was compelled to investigate the screams.
Soaring quickly into the tree line, Kristen abruptly stopped and surveyed the scene before her. A young woman, in a formal gown, desperately screamed between unintelligible blithering and whimpering. Kristen watched a large dog, it’s paws on young woman’s arms and standing on its hind legs, it’s snout inches from the woman’s face. Kristen thought she understood the woman's fierce desperation. Moving closer, she saw the body of a young man, in formal attire, lying crumpled on the ground at the base of a large tree. Kristen assumed the animal was responsible for that as well.
The animal rumbled a deeply menacing growl. Its teeth were exposed and dripping saliva, but its snout was not quite drawn into a fully wild snarl. A snarl somehow communicates a warning; this animal was communicating intent.
The woman’s eyes switched back and forth from the beast before her, to something on her dress. Kristen thought it odd that anything could draw the woman's attention from the beast. In trying to follow the woman's gaze, Kristen moved closer, a learned skill that had become second nature. She followed the woman's line of sight.
Kristen noticed the crossbow bolt stuck through the woman’s upper trapezius muscle; the muscle group that connects the shoulder to the back of the neck. She could not identify it as a crossbow bolt, instead she thought it a sharp stick, or maybe something else, protruding at an upward angle, piercing the muscle but just missing the collarbone.
Kristen let her focus wander down the woman’s shoulder. The nearly full moon broke through the darkness of the wood line, and the woman’s light skin was perfect to contrast the shape of the creature’s paws. Kristen soon realized the dog’s paw was deformed. Instead of a large paw, this animal had what looked like fingers. Extraordinarily long fingers, with pronounced knuckles, ending in claws that were thick and brutally sharp. She detected movement and quickly whipped her eyes back to the head of the beast. Kristen almost wet herself in panic.
Most of her bad dreams were usually premonitions, and often, in self-defense, Kristen would back away from the action. If she got too close, she felt the events were actually happening to her. As with anyone’s dreams, sometimes one was a participant, sometimes one was not, and sometimes one was both. Kristen was seeing this exceptional event as an observer, but that did not last long.
The beast was looking directly into Kristen’s eyes. A boost of adrenaline coursed through her circulatory system and her breath caught. She had to take deeper breaths to get a grip on the chemical change in her physiology. As she floated away from the woman and the beast, its eyes followed her.
“Too close,” Kristen thought. She had carelessly allowed herself to focus on a peculiarity in a dangerous situation. Then movement of the bushes distracted her.

After quietly waiting for hours, Jimmy fired the crossbow with supreme confidence, but he missed his mark. Aiming for the roof of the Vampires mouth, Jimmy did not account for Erik pulling the woman closer as he lowered his head for the bite. That little motion pulled Linda into the line of trajectory of the crossbow bolt. It didn’t matter now; the woman was healthy enough to issue mind-twisting screams, so Jimmy figured she would be okay. Erik, on the other hand, had changed the scenario. Jimmy’s foolproof plan was to shoot Erik in the mouth with the bolt, and then dispatch the Vampire at his leisure. Now, not only had Jimmy shot the lady he used as bait, but also things had quickly turned very weird.
Jimmy watched Erik quickly recoil from the crossbow bolt that had stopped once it hit Erik’s teeth. His eyes abruptly turned blood red, and he was no longer in control of his actions. Erik morphed into a corrupt imitation of a wolf type beast. The change was not total or complete. Jimmy watched, stupefied. He would later recall the transmogrification and describe it as “almost hypnotic” but his momentary paralysis was best described as stupefaction. Had he not been wearing the camouflage hood, and had there been witnesses to see Jimmy’s expression, his gaping mouth would have reflected a momentary lack of anything remotely resembling intelligence or self-control.
The beast, on the other hand, seemed determined to match Jimmy’s lack of sagacity by momentarily being too preoccupied with changing into a foul grotesque to give Jimmy a first glance, much less a second glance. Then, as if an unseen butterfly had distracted it, the beast snarled a warning at some imagined intruder floating overhead in the opposite direction.
Jimmy found himself looking at the back of the beast’s head when his presence of mind sheepishly returned. “Well,” Jimmy thought, “that’s my cue.” Lucky breaks were never too far off for Jimmy, and he had come to rely upon them heavily. With this new opportunity presenting itself, Jimmy could fall back on his foolproof plan, with just a whole lot more caution, and a great deal less leisure.
Jimmy grabbed the wooden lance beside him, placed the butt on the ground, and used it to raise himself up. His plan was to jump to his feet, but hours of sitting motionless had restricted the blood flow in his legs. The tingling became very pronounced as he tried to take a step, but the telltale signs of sleeping extremities came too late. On his way down, Jimmy threw the crossbow away from his body to avoid killing himself by landing on the remaining crossbow bolt. Jimmy hit the ground hard, but not hard enough to miss the smell of moist earth and the curious sensation of his mouth going completely dry as things continued to unravel at a maddening pace.
Jimmy’s life didn’t flash before his eyes but a quick blur of the past four hours flashed images in his mind to the accompaniment of Linda’s screaming, an auditory aggravation that could enfeeble the tensile strength of 440 stainless steel. Jimmy set up where he and JR had planned. He waited to ambush the vampire, Eric. JR and Linda came into the clearing and talked a short while. Eric came onto the scene and quickly disabled JR by knocking him into a tree with a savage blow. Jimmy hoped JR was breathing and unconscious. Eric seized Linda and soothed her. As Eric calmly drew Linda in for a bite, Jimmy squeezed the trigger of his crossbow. The bolt flew into Linda’s trapezius muscle and instead of flying through her tissue, the bolt stopped when it struck Eric in the teeth. Linda started her blood vessel busting peals of terror. Eric morphed into a beast. Finally the part that felt like a very bad joke, Jimmy stood and tried to walk on numb legs, falling clumsily to the ground. He thought he must have resembled a Centaur dragging its invisible hindquarters.
Jimmy did not have the leisure time to strategize or curse feeling way out of his depth. Linda’s screams severely hampered his ability to think clearly; not only was her fear palpable, but Jimmy could barely contain the contagious affect of her panic. He started to wonder why JR would choose her as vampire bait, when things suddenly became sharply horrific.
The beast whipped his head around and directed his savagely hungry gaze on Jimmy. Muscles bunched for the pounce, the beast dropped to Jimmy’s level and shot forward. Jimmy recoiled in fear; raising his arms to protect his head and face, curling his body into a modified ball to protect his torso, and bracing himself for the inevitable impact. The gravity of the earth and the shaft of the lance clutched in his hands offered absolutely no assurances to Jimmy, although he would later claim they were the only tools his quick strategy needed.

The beast never saw the object that pierced his body. The wooden lance pierced his heart, and his chest seized with sharp contractions of fiery pain. As the spirit quickly washed out of him, Erik struggled to maintain his grasp on existence. Morphing from the shape of the hound beast, back into the human guise of Erik was a feat of immense effort. Erik gave no audible last words but merely gurgled muffled sounds.

Kristen watched with relief, as the man dressed like a bush dispatched the beast. The killer was wearing camouflage and Kristen realized that is why she did not see him before. She relaxed as she floated above the activity.

Erik’s hands found the lance as his visage passed into his human form. Black blood sprayed thickly from his chest onto the lance, and the wound began to smolder.
Linda stopped her screaming as she looked upon the scene with surreal morbid curiosity.
Jimmy was absolutely vibrating with adrenaline. His eyes picked up every movement but his vision was in a peripheral mode. He tried to focus and control his breathing, which came in spasms as he tried to calm down. It was too early. His grip on the lance gave a vicious thrust causing Erik to writhe with hatred and tormented pain. Both men were on their knees facing each other. Jimmy pulled the lance and Erik moved with it. Feeling bolder now that he was in control of the situation, and Erik was fading fast, Jimmy leaned toward Erik and whispered, “I am the thing in the dark to fear.”
Eyes open, but not focusing beyond his private microcosm of terror, Erik lazily rolled his gaze in Jimmy’s direction. Caught between the cruelty of his impending demise and the reality that his anguish would not end in peace, Erik used Jimmy’s words to fuel his anger. Brutality was easy and with any luck, this creature would supply Erik with nourishing blood. Erik quickly made a grab for Jimmy’s head, but his strength was tapped out. Jimmy pulled back, easily slipping from Erik’s dying grasp. The camouflage hood slipped off Jimmy’s head, and Erik looked at it in his hand. He raised his eyes to the face of the man before him, but the man's features were hidden under camouflage face paint. Only the whites of his eyes and teeth were discernable. Erik’s final coherent thought was simply, “now that’s scary.” Erik slid to the forest floor in a quivering spasm.
Jimmy drew a machete from a scabbard on his side. Grasping it with two hands and raising it high above his head, Jimmy placed his entire body weight into a slash that removed the Vampires head. Before the head rolled too far from the body, it disintegrated into dust. Erik’s rapidly decaying body lay on the ground. Then suddenly dust and smoke were the only evidence of his existence. Even his blood on the lance turned to dust.
Linda seemed to gain new energy and put it all into a maniacal screaming hysteria. Jimmy looked at her in wide-eyed disbelief. He put his finger to his lips in an effort to quell her excitement, but he completely failed to take into account the effect of his camouflage 'war-paint'. His gesture had an affect opposite of what he was hoping for at the moment, partly because the camouflage paint was placed to highlight the contours of his face in a most macabre style. With renewed energy, the young lady screamed and scrambled away from him as quickly and as loudly as she could, hampered little by her long gown and heals.
Jimmy, shaking his head in disbelief, sheathed his machete, recovered his wooden lance, and looked around once more. Picking up his camouflage hood, and cross bow, he was satisfied that he left no clues to his presence. Jimmy felt a wave of nausea wash over him as he approached JR. Fear and hope. Erik had savagely knocked JR to the ground. Jimmy let out the breath he was holding as he detected a pulse in JR. He was alive and that would have to do for now. Jimmy felt bad about leaving the young man where he was.
Approaching voices announced the impending arrival of people responding to the screams, and he decided that he did not have the heart, inclination, or time to calm the girl. His growing urge to silence her made him laugh at himself, her panic was contagious.
Apparently, the young lady mistook his laugh as a sinister indication of his intent toward her. She thrashed about even more wildly while maintaining her clamorous vocalizations of terror. Jimmy slipped quietly into the woods to make good his escape, still shaking his head in disbelief.

Kristen woke with a start, breathing hard. She looked around her room looking and listening for clues in her physical environment that may have caused or influenced the dream. She saw and heard nothing of significance.
She turned on her nightstand lamp. It did not offer much light but that was why she liked it. Grabbing the writing pad she kept beside the bed, she mentally reviewed the dream. "It was so real," she thought. She had to record the details quickly.
As Kristen wrote, she could not shake the idea that this was literally a reflection of an actual event, instead of a symbolic dream. Her hand shook with fear, making the effort of writing that much more difficult. Kristen stopped trying to analyze the dream and recorded as much as she could remember; observations, people, location, and feelings.
Kristen had a tangible taste of foreboding evil about the man-beast. She incorrectly assumed it was a werewolf. The young man that was lying on the ground played no role in the action but he struck a cord deep inside her. The man in camouflage was less a mystery to her but crucial to the event.
“What was it he said?” Kristen tapped the pen lightly on her lip trying to remember his words. Then it became very clear to her, and she quickly jotted down the words.
“I am the thing in the dark to fear.”