Isabelle and Jasmine, my beautiful girls. And Anthony. I’ve missed you all so much. I’m coming back to you.
The vision of her husband blurred with reality but she was sure he was walking towards her, hands reaching out, lips greeting her with a smile. Her fingers splayed and ached for the touch of his skin, just as the darkness carried her away.
Present Day
5th November
‘Don’t run… don’t run from me.’
There, deep in the wood, she hears the voice again. The same voice that had haunted her, followed her desperately. Relentlessly for months.
‘Don’t run, wait for me. I can offer you so much more if you’d only let me.’
But she cannot stop. She cannot learn to walk through this world again, not while the fear has a hold of her body, heart and soul.
She runs down the track through the trees. She cannot place the voice, nor tell if it’s male or female. It rings like a cacophony of sounds in her head.
She risks a glance down at her feet. They are bare once again, deep in the snow. The forest floor beneath the ice scratches at her skin, and she leaves drops of blood in her wake.
She panics.
Someone will follow her home, chasing the scarlet trail left behind. But where is home? She cannot find it. Ahead, there is nothing but forest.
The mist circles the trees around her, the same as every time she sees them.
This world is stripped. Void of colour. Void of time.
Her heart pounds in her chest, but she can never understand who or what she runs from. Inside, the only thing that is always certain, is the fear. It relentlessly courses through her veins.
She sees the clearing ahead. She wants to turn the other way. She has been here time and time before, but never understands why. A force is driving her forward, which she cannot control. She runs as if the hounds of hell were at her heels.
She reaches the clearing… stops.
The voice is there, behind her.
She turns; ready to confront whatever it is that hunts her…
It’s Him.
As she feared it would be; a ghost from the past.
She’s almost afraid to look into his eyes, but when she does, she sees there is nothing there but darkness. Hollow pits where brilliant eyes once shone.
He reaches out, and before she can stop him, his hand grabs her hair, ripping clumps out by the roots.
Then fingers are at her chest. They tear through icy flesh, nails scratching against bone, against ribs, hungry for her heart.
As she cries out, his mouth opens in a silent scream, blood pouring out from within.
Detective Chief Inspector Claire Winters bolted upright, eyes snapping open.
She was shrouded in darkness and it took her several seconds to realise where she was as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings.
Her head was spinning but soon the shadows stopped moving and became solid shapes, pieces of furniture she soon began to recognise in her living room.
Her hands grabbed at her chest, which was slick with sweat despite the chill of the room. A sigh of relief shuddered through her body when she realised her skin, flesh and bone were still intact.
She pushed back the stray strands of blonde hair from her face, and then held her head in her hands. Night terrors had become part of her, almost feeling as physical as something she wore, but it was no badge of honour.
That one had been one of the worst she’d had in the last year. Usually they followed the same familiar pattern, but with subtle differences.
She sucked in a deep breath, held it until her chest ached.
Despite knowing who it was she ran from by the end of each frantic nightmare, this was the first time she’d actually seen Him – or at least some twisted version of Him.
Her hands slid down her face, wiping back tears that had begun to fall. Ice-blue coloured eyes glassed over as she eventually let the tears fall freely, staining the pale flesh of her cheeks.
A loud bang outside made her jump, bolting off the sofa, stumbling over the blanket that had fallen at her feet. A series of smaller hissing sounds then followed, erupting in a series of loud bangs, and bright lights flashed behind the curtains that she had drawn earlier.
She hugged her arms tightly around her torso and shivered. She wore a rough knit jumper, its coarseness scratching at her skin, with skinny jeans that were slack at the waist and had begun to bag at the knees. She’d lost a stone in weight in the last year, but she refused to buy new clothes.
She was startled by the cracking sound as sparks seemed to dance across the roof of her house, raining down in a night so cold it stole your breath away.
She pulled back the curtain of the nearest window and saw the bright coloured fragments scatter in the sky.
Fireworks had been let off from the house somewhere across the road, at the bottom of the drive.
She released the breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. She caught her reflection in the cold glass. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and what little lines she did have across her forehead had deepened.
She imagined she saw Him beside her, staring at their reflections. His eyes, seen moments before in the nightmare, still black pits.
Hollow.
That summed up how she felt.
She looked at Him, then squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Go away,’ she said. When she opened them again, she felt the fog in her mind begin to clear a little. ‘It’s just a nightmare,’ she said in the darkness.
After several moments passed she went back to the sofa and felt for her phone, her head feeling thick, disorientated. She unlocked the screen and checked the time.
18:36.
She had less than an hour before she was due to be at the annual firework display in Haverbridge. She contemplated not going, and pulled up the last text message she had sent, about to send her excuses.
She flicked on the light, and looked around the room, phone clutched in a sweaty palm. The house looked as it had done a few hours ago when she’d decided to just rest her eyes.
The night terrors took their toll on her. Rarely a week went past without being woken by them. Grabbing a short sleep here and there when she could had been her way of coping with it for many months now.
She knew it couldn’t go on like this, but no way would she ask for help.
This was something she had to overcome on her own… and she would, in her own time.
*
She headed up the stairs and put on clean clothes, dumping the sweat drenched ones in the laundry basket, before heading to the bathroom.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet.
Her skin had taken on a grey tinge of late and her