Dark Dreams

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. -- Edgar Allen Poe.

Anya sat down on the armchair, attempting to block out the voice from the kitchen.

'You're drinking,' her sister said.

'Am not.'

'Pul-leeze. You've got the face, the breath and frankly, the awful hair. You think I can't tell when my sister is drinking at eight in the goddamn morning?'

Anya frowned. She wiped her face, forcing wayward strands of chestnut brown hair out of her mouth. 'S'not that bad,' she muttered. 'Only had a few...'

Her younger sibling let out a snort of disgust. 'Seriously? Give it a few weeks before your blood alcohol content becomes more than what should be physically possible for a human being to achieve. So the guy cheated on you. Big deal! Get over it.'

'I am getting over it. And you're yelling. In my ear.'

'Anya...' Rachael tangled her fingers in her hair. 'Whatever. I'm not dealing with this shit right now.' She stormed past Anya, grabbing her coat from the stand, and stepping into her high heels by the welcome mat. The slam of the front door shook the picture frames strung up on the wall.

Anya relaxed. Okay, so where did I hide the scotch...

Armed with scotch, she cradled her glass as she stared out into the sunlit streets. Shops overflowed with cheap, tacky masks and costumes, sweet sugary candy and misshapen pumpkins. Glitter webs sprayed onto the corners of dusted windows. Gothic hanging drapes screamed out from every corner of the menagerie. Glowing lanterns with carved, hollow faces gaped forlornly outside the glass, like small children or cats.

Anya hated Halloween. Everybody just wanted to party. She wanted to be alone. Despite the urgings of her sister to "Get out and have a good time," accompanied by threats and warnings and various other forms of persuasion, Anya stubbornly refused to socialise. She knew deep down hermitising herself like this wasn't wise, but she suppressed the misgivings with another round of drink.

She continued her steady decline throughout the day, and by dusk, was ready to drop dead in a stupor. Cans and bottles made the lounge resemble a garbage jungle. Glasses with distilled alcohol congealed on the floor or on the table.

A sharp rap cut into her fogged-up brain, and out of a sense of obligation, Anya opened the front door and threw some money at the startled kids standing outside; a witch, a ghost and a vampire. She thudded the door in their faces, letting out a hiccup. She wobbled a little on the spot.

Her bleary vision steered her around the plump green sofa in her lounge to the kitchen, her fingers scraping along the flimsy cupboard drawers for aspirin. The hangover headache decided to start early and without warning, and she snarled at herself for being so stupid as to drink so much.

Finally finding the correct drawer, she tugged it open violently. It tilted at an awkward angle, completely unhinging from the support. She spat out a short exclamation when instead of the packet of aspirin, a small, round plate rolled onto her arm. A second later, it fell to the floor and shattered in several different directions. She somehow held onto the rest of the drawer, though the goods slanted and bunched precariously. She juggled the drawer back into the hatch.

'Bugger,' she managed to say. Anya vaguely remembered the plate as a pretty little thing in a charity shop. The intricate, dotted red pattern all over it formed a pale, simplistic outline of a woman. The side profile only showed one blank eye, which seemed to stare directly at you wherever you stood in the room. The whole thing reminded Anya of Japanese brush art. She bought it a year ago. She wondered how she'd forgotten all about it, tucked and gathering dust in her drawers. It certainly did look pretty...

And now it found a new home on her yellow tiled kitchen floor, smashed to pieces.

I don't even remember putting the silly thing in here.

She bent down groggily, fumbling for the parts as though she were assembling a complex jigsaw puzzle.

She gave up when she could only find four pieces, and received a nasty, jagged cut on her palm. The tiny eye pattern on the offending piece lathered itself with her blood. She flung the recovered plate parts in the bin and snatched the aspirin before swaying back into the lounge to continue indulging in a little more self destruction. Not like it can get worse, unless liver function is a problem.

Her blood dried around the eye of the broken antique. After a few moments, the sound of breaking glass followed by a storm of curses indicated another drunken mishap,

A tiny crack lashed across the eye.

She dimly recalled at one point during the evening groping along dirty brick walls, soil clumping under her fingernails before her momentum tottered her through some dark, spiky bushes. Somehow she had made it outside, but the reasons were lost to her.

When she woke up, her brain caught up with the current dilemma: face flattened to the ground, head spinning like a carousel.

She eventually succeeded on making it upright. She stood by a pool under a moonless sky. The pool rippled with blackness, the bottom unfathomable. She suspected if she were to fall into it, it would be forever, so she walked gingerly around, ignoring, or trying to ignore, the mesmerising way the waters lapped near her feet. The air shivered with an icy wind, tiny little needles cutting into her skin and raising goosebumps across her body. The narrow gap in the hedges gave the wind a voice, a low, gentle howl or murmur which wheezed like a inhalation and release of lungs.

Anya settled down on a deck chair and wrapped her cold arms around herself. She listened to the steady, languid thump of her heart and the rushing of blood as it circulated through every vein. Clouds draped across the sky. Without the moon or the stars, she felt the dark in the world, lurking in silent corners, step out to play. As a child, she was afraid of the dark. Afraid of the shadows.

A titter rang out through the poolside. Anya's eyes snapped to the source like a rusty bear trap. She frowned, sure the figure now gracing the ceramic floor lingered nowhere near the pool a few seconds earlier.

Almost as if the person had appeared out of thin air.

'Who're you?' Anya said, placing a hand to the side of her head. The headache buzzed in irritation.

The figure in response smiled at her. A tiny little vibration raked its way through Anya's spine. She couldn't quite see the figure's face.

'Hmmm...lets see...' The voice was low, hollow, raw; it scratched the space between them like the sigh of wind through a mossy grave.

It also sounded distinctly female. 'Got a lot of names, gets very confusing.' The female paused, in the same way a drop of liquid hangs suspended on a stalactite. 'The Mongolians called me Kara. I liked that one.'

Anya shuffled uncomfortably and shakily to her feet, limbs creaking in protest. 'Huh? What? Mongolians? You're not making any sense. Then again, I have a headache and I'm drunk, so nothing makes sense.'

'Convenient,' Kara agreed.

'Is this your pool?' Anya demanded. She gestered to the pool, her arm shaking a little.

'In a manner of speaking.' The female stepped a little closer, grinning like a skull. Anya could now make out the eyes. They seemed familiar. Her memory poked itself into a slow, churning motion, flickering through images to find a match. The impossibly black eyes showed no emotion whatsoever, gazing at her as only dead things could. The atmosphere seemed to coalesce and condense.

Even in her befuddled state of mind, Anya knew something was very, very wrong.

'Gotta say though,' Kara continued in a deadpan tone, 'You should be way more careful with your alcoholism. Never know what you're gonna break. You ever believe in ghosts?' She halted, hovering.

'N-no...?' Anya squeaked, shrinking away.

'Ain't that a shame?' Kara whispered. She reached toward her with a pale hand.

A stifled gasp rang out. Anya realised it was hers. She backed away from the grasping fingers, shuffling a few pathetic inches into the hard stone wall of the compound. Kara licked her lips slowly, a wet, slimy tongue darting out in anticipation. Anya felt the cold and the fear, and a small voice at the back of her mind shrieking.

The fear turned her stone-cold sober. The atmosphere gave her a sense of light, dreamy suffocation, of a seeping numbness fingering across her skin; it spoke of a death where lungs flooded and puffed out with water as her arms flailed, weak and feeble for the far off surface.

This has to be a dream. Right? Please let me be right...

Her eyes fluttered to the murky pool. Sudden understanding hit her. Terror crystallised her limbs.

'Calm now,' Kara soothed with a hiss, 'It won't be long.' She bent over Anya, dead eyes not matching the cruel curl of her lips. 'Think I'm gonna enjoy this a lot more than you are. That's for sure.'

'W-what?' Anya stuttered, barely recognising her own voice. 'W-what will you enjoy?'

A gleeful look peppered the aberrant features. 'You've not guessed? Oh... I think you have.'

Anya's frozen limbs cracked into life. She scrambled around the woman. Her hands bumped and scraped the chairs as she stumbled, staggered, her breath hitching in harsh uneven gasps.

'I like it when they run,' Kara murmured.

Anya got about as far as ten feet before something rammed into her side. She let out a wild screech as she tumbled into the pool. The shock of the freezing, abyssal touch of the water momentarily caused Anya's body to lock up and stiffen like a wooden doll. Her dark brown hair fanned out as she sunk.

Then dead, leathery hands grasped her neck. She got spun around, like a puppet on strings - and came face to face with a sinister smile.

Monster.

Bubbles escaped from Anya's mouth. The words screaming out of her were lost to the bone chilling waters. Pallid lips clamped onto her. A tongue snaked out to lick at her teeth. The emaciated fingers pulled her in closer as her mouth was forced open, letting liquid sluice into her lungs.She saw the pale, lifeless face as it brushed against hers, eyes glassy and empty, felt the leer against her lips. The other hand that had been around her neck trailed down, scratching her breasts; sharp nails moved down her stiff stomach. Anya felt and followed the movement with a sickening, helpless fear thumping her ribs.

The probing fingers slunk their way lower, lower...

Anya's mouth still gaped open like a bottle under a tap, saturating her lungs. She couldn't move, she couldn't respond, but her mind screamed and screamed and screamed...

She awoke sprawled out in her bed, panting heavily. She placed a jittering hand to her forehead. Oh, thank fuck. Thank god...

She breathed in shaky relief, her erratic heartbeat slowly powering down.

She'd never experienced a dream like it before. It sunk under her skin, giving the crawling sensation of jerky spiders and spindly legs. It dug with strong, rusty hooks, and tried to handcuff madness into her soul.

But it was a dream.

Just a dream.

She allowed her eyes to shut, the after-image of the open window dancing behind her eyelids. Her headache long since banished, she wondered briefly when her sister was due to come back from the Halloween bash. Hopefully soon, since she really didn't feel like being on her own anymore. The nightmare left her weak and tired. She heard the sounds of drunken laughter from outside the house, and made a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh of relief.

The noise, interfering as it was, fixed her to reality. Better than the fear of solitude, of the risk of slipping back into a warped nightmare; anything but that. She opened her eyes, staring again at the window, past the white frame and smudges to the blackened streets. The view gave her part of a lamp-post, a few branches of a sturdy oak tree, and flashes of terraced houses. Dawn peeked over the tops of the buildings.

Lacking sleep, feeling wretched and tightly strung, Anya pottered through the morning rituals before she ventured off to work. She passed through the revolving doors, across the velvet blue carpet and the tight, spartan, open offices. People chattered and hustled. She caught her reflection from the interview room. She looked smart in her white shirt, black blazer and pinstripe trousers, but her face appeared haggard and puffy. Her eyes squinted, not yet able to open all the way.

In a word, she looked wrecked.

After reporting in to her manager, she made her way to the work desk.

The ghost of fear still prickled in her blood, as she hunched over the computer. She checked her newly acquired orders, and began to type.

Time passed very quick.

Someone tentatively touched her shoulder. She glanced up, and saw it was her work colleague, Michael. 'Are you okay, Anya? You're oddly quiet.' He hung over her, concerned. He placed a steaming mug of coffee on her desk. Anya twitched a wan smile at him.

'Hangover. You know how it is.' She liked Michael - he always took time out for her, and the coffees were a bonus.

'Even then, you'd be growling like some sort of caged tiger,' he grinned, displaying gapped front teeth. He mimicked a clawing motion.

Anya rolled her eyes, fingers back to clacking on the keyboard. 'Thanks for the life-saving coffee.'

He beamed at her, brown eyes twinkling. 'No problem. You look like you need some waking up.'

She felt her frayed nerves mend and relax, as the echoes of the dreams began to fade into the recesses of her mind.

Just dreams.

**

The streets lay coated with dust and grime. The walk back home emanated with lazy quiet - everything appeared oddly empty. Not a car rumbled down the asphalt. Not a person scuffled the pavements. Not a spirit whispered or stirred.

Odd, certainly, but a first time existed for everything, Anya reasoned to herself.

She turned down the ruptured street, passing the battered, almost derelict looking sign reading "Richmond Road." She'd already started day dreaming about the hot bath, the Radox bath salts, and generally winding down from a stressful day, plagued by deadlines and the murmuring memory of the dark nightmares. The sleepness night left bags under her eyes, purplish like bruises.

Work dragged tediously, in the sort of way that encouraged people to bash their heads fruitlessly against a desk just to deal with the mind-numbing boredom and drudgery of the constant click and tap of keyboards.

She hesitated part-way down the street, her gaze flickering to the elongated silhouettes of the terraced houses. She felt a bizarre kick of unease. A small, invisible voice told her to wake the fuck up and view things more clearly.

She shouldered the paranoia aside.

The unease only elevated as she paced the lonely pavement, despite her admonishments and gentle cursing. The unease possessed a bitter-sweet taste, and a faint smell tinged her nostrils, one she couldn't identify for the life of her. The only thing slightly similar to it came from a garbage bag full of rotten meat and vegetables, with the flies whizzing greedily around.

What am I smelling?

The smell increased in strength as she gravitated onwards, nearly reaching the curve. The sick feeling persisted in her, gnawing and biting restlessly.

She found herself breaking into an jog. Paranoia berated her, beckoned at her.

She whipped around the corner and plunged into total and utter darkness, as though all the light in the world was suddenly sucked into a black hole.

A sense of claustrophobia crept into her. She found herself hyperventilating a little as her heart rate sped up.

A sibilant hiss gusted into her ears. 'Hello again, sweetie. Miss me?'

This cannot be happening! I'm awake!

A choking whimper forced its way out of Anya's throat. 'No way.'

'Awh. don't want to have funsies with me in the dark? Pity.' A ghastly chuckle inched through the blackness, leaving a rancid stench in the air. Anya lifted her arm to her face. Blind. Not even the outline registered in her sight.

She was alone in the cold and the dark. With a monster.

Kara quieted, allowing the silence to penetrate the emptiness like a dagger. She could have been anywhere in the roiling blackness. She heard a slow cluck, 'Imagine what things I could do to you in the dark?'

Anya moved. She couldn't see - had no idea where the hell she headed, but her brain shrieked at her to get her ass moving.

She thudded into a wall.

She turned sideways.

Also a wall. The other way -

Trapped.

Wave after wave of knowing laughter echoed around her prison. Kara began to sing. 'Lost alone in the deep dark woods, wolf at your heels...'

She paused. 'I'm not very good at rhymes. Not a bad singer though. Don't you agree...?'

Anya's heart skipped in wretched terror at the memory of the touch of the female, the cold dead hands leeching out the warmth in her skin.

She could hear - no - feel light breathing near her face. Her limbs solidified, keeping her in place. Was it? Was the air of wind she could feel -

An rough, pinprick sensation caressed her leg muscles. Her wrists thudded in a violent blur against the walls, held by dry, papery hands. A bony, cold thing pressed its way up between her legs - Kara's thigh.

'Now, now, sweetie. No need to be so scared. I can smell the fear, you know...' Kara's voice tickled Anya's ears. The chilling breath slithered down to her neck.

Too late, Anya felt the teeth. Razor sharp.

She started to scream, but gurgled off horribly as the female ran her teeth from shoulder to shoulder, causing a gush of sticky warmth to ooze from her neck. She couldn't scream anymore, but she could choke on her own -

'What the hell, Anya? Are you okay?' She tethered herself into reality as Michael shook her awake. She looked around, unfocused. She was still in the work office. The area by now was mostly empty, and Michael's face was pinched in worry.

'God, thanks for waking me, Mike. Can't believe that happened.' She groaned.

'Yeah. Looked like you were having quite the nightmare,' he tutted.

'You have no idea,' she scowled, as she rubbed her eyes.

Michael smiled, the picture of innocence. 'Probably not. spent quite the few minutes shaking you. It's just us two left now.'

'Damn. I didn't get much done...Boss is gonna be so angry with me.'

'Oh, that's okay,' Michael grinned. 'You don't have to worry about it.'

His features began to peel, erode off his skin to reveal muscle, tendon and bone. A face morphed out of the sinew.

'Won't be anything left of you for anyone to worry about...' it whispered.

With a hysterical, blood-shattering screech, Anya launched towards the doors, scrabbling and clawing like a maddened animal.

'It never ends you know...' Kara sniggered. 'Not until you...'

**

**


Rachel let herself into the house, giggling slightly. She was a little tipsy, and the Halloween party turned out to be one hell of a bash. She noted the empty glasses and bottles in the lounge. She sighed and shook her head. No doubt all this alcohol made itself present, probably the very second after she banged the door shut hours earlier. She had no idea where Anya hid the damn drinks, and resolved to hunt out every last one.

'Anya? You awake or what?' She yelled out into the house. No reply.

Drunk out of her skull, belike. She gritted her teeth in irritation, kicked off her heels and shrugged off her coat, leaving it on the sofa. She clunked up the stairs, listening to the boards creak as she headed to the bathroom.

**

**

After receiving a terrified, hysterical call, the ambulance roared into action, arriving a few minutes later. The paramedics fished the limp body of a woman out of the bathroom of a simple terraced house.

The only inexplicable thing to happen came in the form of a China plate sitting on the kitchen table, unbroken. One tiny fleck of red dotted the largest eye. Numerous red dots scuttered across the entire surface, like droplets of blood, or tears, or both.