A Haunted Subconcious

 

         Catherine was walking along the moonlight beach, the wind teasing her chocolate brown hair. At least, she thought it was the wind. The gentle touch of the wind became the icy clawing of fingertips at her neck. She was approaching the place where she had discovered the body. She wanted to stop, to turn around and run away, but she was drawn – no, dragged – toward it as a dog is pulled along on a leash.

       The place was as it had been when she left it – a slight imprint in the sand to indicate that something had once been there, but no body. The gentle lapping of the waves seemed to Catherine like the murmurs of a thousand souls. As she drew closer, the air chilled to a frosty haze in front of her, obscuring her vision. Her arm seemed to stretch out of its own accord, fingertips reaching towards an unseen object. When she reached the exact place where the cadaver had lain, she felt the air almost solidify into ice. The cold was nearly unbearable, consuming Catherine with a deep, senseless terror. As her fingertips brushed the air where the corpse had sat, she felt her hand connect with something solid; she recoiled in fear. Looking up, she glimpsed green eyes staring out of a pallid, pretty face framed with blonde locks. The girl was sitting up, and her neck dripped blood from a half-congealed wound. In her hands, she held an old-fashioned gilded dagger, embedded with a single opal. Around her neck was the necklace – an emerald cut diamond dangling from a simple, silver chain. Only the diamond now gleamed red. Catherine was backing away, but the girl stood up. It was one, swift, fluid motion – one minute she was sitting, the next she was on her feet, quickly enough to make Catherine blink.

       “You’re Catherine.” She said, not unpleasantly. “You found my diary.”

       Catherine was too shaken to reply. The girl held out her hand, and beckoned.

       “Come closer. I have something to ask of you. Come now, I don’t bite.” The girl laughed, a haunting, malicious sound, tossing back her head, eyes dancing wildly in the moonlight. She seized Catherine’s hand and led her along the beach, towards the water. Her skin was not icy, as Catherine had expected, but like fire, or electricity, sending a pulsing throb of heat through her veins as she made contact. The corpse – for lack of a better term – skipped into the water without making a splash. The whispering of the waves was becoming louder now, screaming in Catherine’s ears. She was dragged into the icy water by the girl, struggling to free herself of the vice-like grip.

          “You don’t need to be afraid of me.” The girl told her, turning around to face her in the midst of the waves. “You know that, don’t you?” Her voice was gentle now, for the most part, but it had a dangerous edge. No, not quite dangerous, but unstable. As if her mood might change with the crash of the next wave, and the softness would be replaced by uncontrollable fury. This girl is insane, Catherine thought. Whoever she is – was – she is completely and totally out of her mind. The waves were swirling, now, losing their individual forms and melding together to form a giant whirlpool.

       “Come in with me.” The nameless girl whispered. She had let go of Catherine’s hand, and was beckoning with her index finger. In the way that the wicked stepmother had beckoned snow white to take a bite of the poison apple, Catherine silently remarked.

        “Where are we going?” Catherine asked, working hard to keep the tremble out of her voice.

        “You know that, I think.” The corpse replied.

       “Who are you?”

       “You know that too, in a way.” Her voice was devious, full of purposeful mysteriousness. Catherine wasn’t going to get any answers tonight.

        “I won’t come.” She said, turning away from the ghostly figure.

        “You will eventually. I’ll wait. I have all eternity, you know!” There was a girlish joviality to her tone, this time, and she laughed that same eerie, sinister, laugh. It was not a girl’s laugh, or if it was, it was the laugh who had been poisoned by harsh reality at an early age.

       The laugh was still echoing in her ears as Catherine’s vision swirled out of focus, and she blinked open her eyes. She was lying in bed, surrounded by the aqua blue walls of her room, the sun filtering in through the gauze curtains.

It had been almost a month since she had found the corpse, and she had had the dream every night, without fail. The papers were under her mattress; she had not dared touch them since she had left the beach that day. She had not been back to that place, either. She tried not to think about it, but her subconscious sabotaged her each night, when she was forced to give in to sleep. Then there was no helping it.

        As she did every morning since the day she had picked up the blood-soaked pages of the diary, she stared down at her slender hands. The splotches of blood were still there, permanently stained onto her skin. No amount of scrubbing or chemicals had succeeded in wearing away at the marks. She was tainted. Infected.

        Wiping her hands uselessly against the fabric of her pajama pants, she got up and prepared to start another day. Turning to the mirror on the wall, she thought for a fleeting second that the corpse-girl had come to haunt her waking life, as well. But she was wrong, of course. Just her over-active imagination, spurred on by a fearful paranoia.

       The green eyes and blonde hair reflected there were her own.

Author's Note

I hope I didn't conflict with any of the details in the other chapters...