Night Terrors

Indiscriminate movements twirled and shifted the deep nuance of shadows thrown from gardens borders.

A bilious mass of blackened swirling matter, unknown yet somehow familiar, drifted across the garden, a dense shadowy form - a hellish tornado - picking no litter nor leaving any disaster in it's wake. Disaster fell before and after it. The mass swallowed all that fell - consuming, digesting, invoking despair.

He saw it all, that hapless boy child. From his bed, deep within his mind, not a moment of it's journey passed without his knowing. His undivided attention was drawn toward the hideous billowing swell of destruction. He sensed it, more so than see it, drawing closer, gathering strength.

In his bed, deep within his mind's vision, he fancied that he stood before the window looking out. The smeared glaze reflecting an image, his own tortured image, yet not his own, someone haunted. Not that of a child but a face ten years or more his age. It was a face of how he would look should misfortune dictate that he grew up.

In his sleep he saw it all, the travesty not yet happened, the despair already cast. Fear masked his innocent childish face, drawing it tight - haggard - a terrifying image of one who has glanced into the eyes of the Devil and lived to recount the nightmare. Sweat trickled in rivulets down skin still years from being riddled by acne, pooling on the gentle cotton pillow. His fragile body trembled violently, shuddering as though, deep within, the tectonic plates of his soul crashed together creating an illusionary earthquake crushing his faith. He tried to scream. He couldn't. He tried to move but was paralysed.

The entity travelled closer, moving first this way, now that way. It's intermingled sounds became clearer yet more vague and incoherent. There were voices, inhuman, conversing in tongues unbeknownst to mankind. He could hear them, calling him, coaxing him. Amongst the cocophony they laughed, mockingly, knowing his plight, drawing strength from his fear. They were not living voices - he knew that - but they were alive in a supernatural sense. These were the voices of the dead and departed though from whence they arrived and in what age the child would never know or tell. And the tidal mass was borne of many faces, incandescent faces which swirled on the swell. Faces which saw him and grinned - humourless grins that twisted and contorted before him. The grins were wide and filled with teeth - shining, reflecting some inner light - which were sharp as razors, feral fangs that drew together in knifed peaks, almost triangular, undoubtedly lethal.

He witnessed something else too. The faces were those of children; children not unlike himself yet strangely different. These were children from no time or place he knew. They had lived to learn no friendship nor played any schoolyard games he had come to learn or love. These were children who had lived no life and faced no future, at least, not one as he himself hoped to enjoy. Their faces were colourless yet they shimmered eerily, hypnotically. They were old - in years - yet young in features. They were timeless, caught in a limbo between death and beyond. Their eyes, pale and glimmering, burned through his own, expectantly groping for some inner reaction. His attempts to focus were thwarted. The entities moved, twisted - his inability to alight his eyes on one point was his vulnerablility.

The child slept on, unable to rouse himself from listless sleep to waking sanctuary. His once coloured cheeks were sallowed, his blond hair now lay matted with restlessness, dyed with sweat. What once were bright eyes now sank deep within sockets bruised by darkened rims. His mouth contorted into a foul grimace, the lips mere thin white lines. His juvenile head which normally remained fixated in tranquil somnolence twisted first one way then the other, a metronemic movement that whipped and snapped at his underdeveloped spine.

The cloud ebbed closer. He foretold that his window would do little to bar it's advance.

His prophecy held true.

With an ear splitting crash the glass shattered inwards. Shards of fragment showered the room and in a moment of fantastical illusion the moon-rays played on the crystal shards and a rainbow cast it's light through the darkness. Tiny particles of glass flecked his skin. He groaned, trying to pull away from the pain. In his sleep - and duplicated by reality - tiny pin-pricks of blood welled from his porcelain skin like a rash.

He cowered in fear, in pain, attempting vainly to burrow into the dark warmth of his blanket. His toys, former sentinels, offered no protection, no barricade to the onslaught. The nightmare images advanced, clamouring for him. Closer. Closer. They began to swirl around his undefended head, the myriad noise of voices deafening his tiny ears. They laughed - taunting him, threatening him - as though knowing he could no more challenge them than awake from his slumber. Icy fingers, disfigured and clawed, reached from the nebula touching his clammy skin. Indomitable pain seared from his head through his entire body. He felt, knew, his body would not withstand the pain of that touch.

More fingers reached out, caressing him, torturing him.

He relented.

In an instant the entities took control. Their moment had arrived. They entered his body through his mouth, through his ears and through the corners of his eyes. They forced the orifices wider as they sought to enter into him. And once inside it was over.

Instantly his teeth shattered, the bridge of his nose collapsed, his eyeballs exploded like missiles from his skull and his face imploded without resistance.

Tuesday dawned bright and summery. Leaves opened on trees and blossom shone, illuminated by the effulgent morning sun. High within hidden recesses of the trees birds sang their forlorn melancholies whilst far away, from roads awash with commuters, the sound of ceaseless traffic passed unnoticed.

Outside his room the child's mother whistled a cheery ballad, her face smiling with the joy of the summer morn. She gently pushed open the door, surprised that her son was still in bed.

The door inched wider, slowly and silently, allowing more light to penetrate and filter across a carpet barely visible through the sea of toys strewn all over it. Slowly she entered the room, tiptoeing so as not to wake him suddenly.

She saw the boy.

She stopped.

The smile she wore diminished to a ghastly visage of dread.

On the pillow, where only the previous night her son had lain his innocent head, now lay a mass of blood matted hair, shattered fragments of bone and strings of bloody tissue. A reservoir of blood pooled within the concave that once had been his angelic face.

She screamed - her hands flying up and clasping the sides of her agonised face.

She screamed - her voice renting the tranquil air.

She screamed.

The screams rang on and on and on...