Chapter 4: Dreaming of a Disaster

My sleep was not one of the half-sleeps that you experience when on a train or plane, or riding in a car. I was not at all aware of my surroundings. When I fell into slumber, I couldn't even feel the bumps and stirrings of the train. Nor could I hear the people talking around me, or the sound of the metal tracks.

Through the darkness that I saw behind my lids, figures and lights began to blend their way into my sight. As they came into focus, I realized that they were my family. Before me stood my mother, my father, my sister and my brother. They looked strangely pale; their eyes dark and tired.

I felt myself moving toward them, my legs walking me forward. I had no control of myself, however, this didn't alarm me. At first it didn't, anyway. It felt natural to approach my loved ones, so I didn't try to stop it.

As I neared them, however, their faces began to darken further. I noticed that they weren't smiling. Their heads were hung solemnly. They seemed almost devoid of life. Despite the change in their appearance, I found my body continued to close the gap between us.

Before more than a few seconds passed, I was within arm's length of them all. They encircled me, their features becoming increasingly inhuman. Their mouths curved into demonic grins, showing sharp and hideous teeth. Their eyes seemed to twinkle with red as strange, sinewy shadows consumed their bodies.

I was paralyzed and completely helpless as they stood around me. I felt an icy chill creeping up my legs. It was like small, individual strands of ice wrapping themselves around me. It made its way up my body, and from what I could see, the same was happening to my family. The strange, hair-like shadows had covered them all the way to their chests. As I made this observation, the icy feeling spread quickly over my torso.

Countless laughs echoed in the pitch black around me. My family seemed to tilt their heads back, laughing along with the hundreds of voices, though all of them could not be coming from only those four. I felt tears well up in my eyes as the ice reached my neck. They, too, were cloaked in shadows, and the only part of them that I could easily see were their faces. My vision blurred from my tears as the shadows covered their faces, and my own as well. I closed my eyes, choked out an almost silent sob, and let the darkness take me.

My body itself felt weightless, but my mind felt slow and burdened. I had hundreds of thoughts flowing through my head, and I couldn't tell the difference between reality and dream. For all I knew, it wasn't a dream. I opened my eyes again, and found myself in the attic.

The light was off, but I could see the lights shining in through the spaces in the wood. I couldn't see much in the room. I was on the hard floor, sitting on my knees. It took a few moments of looking around before I noticed what was right in front of me.

Oddly luminescent, and only feet away from me, sat the little girl. She looked somehow different, I noticed immediately. Her hair was long, yet it did not hang in her eyes as it did the last time I had seen her. Her eyes did not hold the same malice. She looked like a normal girl in a kimono.

“Good evening, Rei,” her voice rang out in my head. It sounded like a dozen chiming bells harmonizing. It was not at all the same voice that could have made the horrific laughter that I'd heard as my consciousness slipped away from me the night before.

I stared at her form, not saying a word. I merely observed her as I sat, wondering what the difference was between now and the previous night. How radically different she was concerned me. However, I humored her, and kept my breathing even. That task, though, was a little difficult, since I was still recovering from the vision of my family.

“It is not I that wishes to harm you,” her voice came again. I saw in her eyes that she was sincere. Tears seemed to sparkle in them, if only a little. It was confusing to me.

“Then why was it you that confronted me,” I asked. My voice cracked, and fire seemed to shoot up through my throat. My throat was dry from nervousness and horror. I tried to clear it, but it only burned more.

“As I said, it was not I,” she insisted. “It was as the man wrote. 'She is not as malicious as she seems'.”

My eyes grew wider. “So... Why,” was all I could manage. I desperately wanted answers, and even more than answers, I wanted out. I wanted to forget all of it. The house, the journal and the spirits... Everything.

A small frown creased her face, and small, white hands appeared from under the billowing sleeves of her kimono. She inhaled, and her hand stretched out toward mine. As she did, the soft smell of cherry blossoms spread to my nostrils. It was heavenly until her cold, dead hands touched mine.

Flashes of a scene that I could not make out took over my vision. I could only distinguish a few parts. I saw her face, matted with blood, twisted in anguish. I felt a strong pressure around my throat. It grew until I felt as though my head was going to explode. I felt my awareness fade and my vision went dark again.

My eyes snapped open, and I was in the attic again. I grabbed my throat, gasping for air, coughing and sputtering. My eyes were watering so badly that I could barely even make out the cracks of light. I wiped them on my sleeve, trying to clear them of the tears as I caught my breath.

The girl was where she had been when I felt her memory's cold embrace, though she was standing. The air in the room was heavy now. Even though the feeling of hands grasping my neck was gone, I could still scarcely breathe. Something was terribly, dreadfully wrong.

I looked up to her face, with was now shadowed. Her eyes weren't visible to me anymore, and hair clung to her skin, hiding a majority of her face. I then saw that her kimono was black and was splattered in many places with red.

As I did the night before, I tried to pull myself backward, away from the figure. What little I could see of its mouth crooked itself into a smile so insidiously wrong that my stomach knotted at the sight of it. I could see a faint, red glow where the eyes should have been. I kept trying to reach the way down into the closet, though it was hard in the darkness. Finally, I felt the place on my hand, and tried to slide it back.

As I did, light from below did not flood the attic, as I hoped. I looked behind me, seeing nothing but swirling shadow. I heard the sickening crack of bone. My head snapped toward the sound, and I gasped as I did. I was face to face with the girl. Her neck was twisted at an impossible angle, and it made an indescribable grinding noise as it twisted even further. The air around me smelled of rot and decay, not the sweet blossoms that filled the room minutes earlier.

I climbed my way backward, hopping down into the closet. Hundreds of milky-white hands reached out for me as I did. A few of them grabbed my clothes as I tried to escape from the girl, but I managed to shake loose. After working my way down, I expected my feet to hit solid ground, but they never did. The darkness consumed me again.

With a sharp intake of breath, I woke up on the train. I took a few moments to calm my pounding heart and slow my rapid panting.

“Sir, are you alright,” I heard a voice ask beside me. I jumped a little, not expecting to hear any voices after that, considering the lack of many passengers on the train.

“Y-yes,” I said quietly, coughing to clear my throat. “I'm fine. Thank you.” The small woman was a worker on the train. She nodded slightly, still looking concerned before she walked off to tend to some other passengers. I shook my head, trying to defog my thoughts.

I realized that the train was slowing for its arrival in the Tokyo train station. I gathered my things as the brakes hissed. I was glad to be back in Tokyo. From the way the journal read, I wouldn't be bothered too much when around other people. With the massive population of Tokyo, it was unlikely that I would be alone at all on that weekend.

With that, I got off of the train and headed into the familiar chaos of Tokyo's streets. It was a different hectic than I'd experienced over the last few days. I was thankful for that. I would have taken the loud, busy nightlife than the horrific, unpredictable one.

Back in my hometown or not, I wasn't out of the woods yet. Little did I know that I was only looking into the treeline, and the forest would only grow darker the more lost in it I became.

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[Katie Wan]

Creepy..