She was back in the apartment building, the walls covered in graffiti that changed every time she was there. It was the dream again. The nightmare that always tried to explain something to her that she never quite understood.

Again there was the rustling of the plastic, carried on wind she didn’t feel. It was all the same, and always the same. She didn’t even bother with looking into the plastic room to see the darkness hiding there. It was where the shadow man stayed when he was not tearing apart her life.

She walked right past it, and straight to the apartment door. It was numbered 23. Strange, she didn’t remember the number before. What had been on the door before. She felt like she had looked at it, but thinking about past trips down this hall were blurred into obscurity. She wasn’t sure if she had ever looked at the dark red door or not.

It opened for her when she turned the knob and she walked effortlessly into the room. Inside, the old woman was sitting there in her chair, drinking something that looked like tea. It was steaming, hot and fresh and the old woman was blowing on it before each sip. In the kitchen, Lizzie could hear someone moving around and the clang as though they were putting away pots and pans. Maybe the granddaughter was back there after having just served her grandmother.

The old woman looked up at Lizzie as she entered, a look of shock on her face, but she didn’t spill her tea. No matter how much the old woman’s hands shook either from some illness or the effort of being there, the tea never spilt. Lizzie had a quick thought, wondering if that was the case in the real world, and wasn’t sure if she would ever find out.

“You are here?” She asked and Lizzie didn’t know why she did it, but as she entered the room, she turned and closed the door behind her.

“I guess so.” She said as she turned back to face the woman. There was something different this time and she could feel it. She didn’t have that tension she normally felt when she was there. Sure it was a dream, but even in a dream, your heart can race and you can feel fear. That was how nightmares could kill you, by scaring you to death. This wasn’t like that. This was, calmer, more relaxed. She didn’t feel like she was rushing, and when she closed the door, it wasn’t to keep something from getting to them. It was simply, she realized, out of courtesy.

“You are here, while I believe it is at its weakest. Smart. Maybe now you will come to me…” The woman said, but as she spoke her voice trailed off. Lizzie realized that the woman didn’t mean to say what she had just said. Lizzie didn’t know why, but she suddenly didn’t trust the old woman as much as she had on previous visits. Without all the tension, she could focus on thinking, not being rushed. The woman no longer felt like her savior before being eaten alive. No, now Lizzie felt like she had been running from a bear just to run into a wolf’s den and was standing before the open mouth of the Alpha, staring down its long row of teeth.

Before, she had longed and looked to the old woman as being a way to save her, but why did this old woman care about her. What was she getting out of helping Lizzie?

“You are here, but something is different. You aren’t where you normally are. There is something near you, something just as dark, as dangerous as it is.” The old woman said, squinting as she was studying Lizzie. Lizzie thought about turning around, and running back out of the door. Where would she run? To the darkness down the hall? Where else did she have to go?

“What do you mean?” Lizzie approached the old woman cautiously. The woman in the kitchen was stirring something in a pot. Lizzie didn’t know how she knew it was a woman, but realized that she did and knew who it was. It was the woman she had seen on the street when she had been with Jessica. It had been the one they tried to save. The one who had screamed at her and ran away in terror, but what was she doing there?

That was when Lizzie realized she could smell something too. It was lingering in the room, like that of burnt meat. It didn’t smell right, the meat smelled sour, like it had rotted. It mixed with the fragrance of piss wafting in from the hallway and Lizzie was sure that had this not been a dream, she would be gagging.

The old woman seemed to notice Lizzie’s discomfort, and then somehow all the offending smells were gone.

“Sorry about that. Normally I am prepared for you. I have to be, to fight it as long as I do. You caught me off guard. Wasn’t ready.”

“I’ve taken naps during the day before. Why had you not come then?”

“I don’t know. Something is different this time. This time, you found me.”

“Why? How?”

“Maybe your mind is getting used to the connection. Maybe you are starting to seek me out when you sleep. Could be many things. Some things we may never know.” The old woman said as she took a long drink of her cooling tea. It stained her lips when she drank as when she pulled the cup away, they were red from the thick liquid.

“So why am I here? I remember you. I remember dreaming of you, but why?”

“You are cursed. Your family is cursed. I can not say much more. It is weakened during the day as it is a creature of dark, but It is not sleeping and is not powerless. I still can not say too much. You must come find me.”

“How? Where? I don’t know who are you.” Lizzie couldn’t help but keep glancing at the cup. She assumed it was tea, maybe coffee, but neither stained your lips red. What was in that cup?

“I can not tell you that. He is waiting for me too. He will strike then as he had done before.”

“He?”

“He, It. It is whatever it chooses. For your uncle, it often took the shape of a woman to torture him. For you, it molests you as a he.”

“Why?”

“He is a trickster. I tell you this every time and you must remember it. He plays by only rules he designs. You cannot trust what you know of him. He plays with your mind not because he needs to but because he enjoys it. He feeds off the dead, he does not need you to fear him. That he does for his own pleasure. He is old like myself. He get bored. He entertains himself with your suffering, I think.”

“Okay, so how do I stop this? How do I get my life back?” Lizzie said this and took a step forward towards the old woman. She dropped down to one knee and was about to reach out and grasp the woman’s hands in desperation with her plea, but stopped herself as the smell of copper caught her attention. She again looked at the now half empty cup. There were red stains on the rim of the glass. Dark red. It looked like blood.

The old woman smiled as she took another long sip.

The sounds coming from the other room stopped and Lizzie suddenly had the sense that someone was listening to them. Someone or something. Before she had known that the person in the kitchen was that girl Lizzie had seen, the one she knew of as this woman’s granddaughter though she couldn’t remember how she knew that. Now she wasn’t so sure as she saw the old woman tense at the silence in the room.

“I cannot tell you. Not here. You must seek me out, but for now you must go.”

“But how do I find you?”

“Silly girl, look around you. I’m not hard to find.” The woman was laughing, and the red liquid dripped down from the side of her lips. Maybe Lizzie was wrong and this wasn’t a dream as it sure felt like it was quickly becoming a nightmare. At any time she felt like the old woman would stand up and start chasing after her.

Was everyone in her life evil? How had she fallen into such a world of darkness. She didn’t know who to trust. She had thought this woman would help her.

Lizzie hurried out into the hall, escaping the sudden chill she had felt in the room. The goosebumps from her arm had spread throughout her body and she had to control herself from shivering.

Back in the hallway she had the deja by sensation. It wasn’t the same as when she had gone in. She felt like something should be there, something she was afraid of, something that always chased her down the hall. This was when the darkness would be after her, and she thought she could feel a taint of its presence.

No, it wasn’t there. She felt the pull again to the plastic covered room but she ignored it. She just stood there, looking around. Actually she wasn’t sure where to go. This is where the dream would usually end. She would leave the apartment and get chased. Without the chaser, she wasn’t sure what to do.

On the wall across from the apartment was a myriad of graffiti. Whenever she came there she would read what was scrawled there, usually something dark written in large letters covering much of the wall. It was hard not to notice it, but as she looked closer at it, there was more to the graffiti than she had noticed before. There were other sayings that were smaller, some written under the larger dark sayings and some integrated into it.

As she looked, she saw that much of it was written in a beautiful letters, painted in a bright blue. There were poems of the light and of peaceful dreams. Poems about flowers, green grass fields, and a calm river during the morning dawn. Then she noticed it. Hidden small amongst the lovely writings was an address.

The old woman’s words came back to her, “Silly girl, look around you.”

Lizzie started to chant the address to herself, afraid she would forget it as the world around her slipped away.

****

Lizzie woke up on the floor of the barn and shivered from the chill. She saw her breath as it left her mouth, the mist swirling around her face. She hadn’t remembered it being this cold before, and now it seeped into her. Her jeans felt wet beneath her and she wasn’t sure of them really being moist or if it was due to the cold floor beneath her.

Slowly she stood, using the door behind her to guide her up while she wrapped her arms around her. Her head felt heavy, her thinking slow as the realm of dreams struggled to keep hold.

She was still chanting the address. She realized it, and moved faster, looking around her frantic until she came across the pad of paper on a side workbench near the back of the room. She hurried towards it and wrote down the address.

“Wha la!” She exclaimed, happy with herself that she had finally remembered something important from the dream. Then her happiness evaporated as she remembered the woman, laughing at her, blood covering her teeth and lips as Lizzie had rushed to flee the apartment. Was this really the woman she would hope to have some answers for her? She was relying on her to be her salvation.

What was the woman’s motivation for helping her? Why was so willing to get involved with the darkness. She had to have a reason. Everyone had an angle. She wasn’t going to just, lift this curse from her out of the goodness of her heart.

Could she trust this woman? Lizzie wasn’t sure of the answer.

She looked up from the pad of paper and at the curtain she was now, much closer to, having rushed over to the paper.

It wasn’t a curtain. It wasn’t anything. It was pur darkness. No matter how many lights were in the barn, the back half was lost to it.

She was much closer to it than she now felt comfortable. It was, unsettling. How had she not noticed before that there was nothing. Not nothing in the way that the room was empty, but the room was completely gone. This wasn’t right, and she suddenly worried that she was going to get pulled into it.

It was drawing her closer to it. It wanted her to be a part of it. It was why the paper had been so close to it. The darkness had moved it. She sensed that her uncle would never have been so close to it. All the workbenches were empty this close to it. It had been the one to move to the pad of paper.

Lizzie, that’s insane. Your losing it again. Take a deep breath. It’s just a curtain. You’ll see. But, it might not be a bad idea to go back into the cabin.

Lizzie stepped away from it and back to the door. Her feet felt heavy, her body slow to leave the darkness behind.

“It’s where the shadow man is from” said another voice inside her head. This one different, a stronger voice that felt like it was more than her own thoughts. She didn’t know why, but she trusted it and believed it. This is the darkness she had felt when she had tried to stop it. Somehow this was the darkness from the time before the light was formed in this world.

She opened the door to the barn, wanting to hurry back to the cabin, when she stopped. It was snowing outside. It was the first fall snow but there was already enough of it to coat the ground in a layer of white.

It seemed to early for snow as it hadn’t been that cold before today. Now the temperature had significantly dropped and there was snow.

She looked to the couple of dead people walking around the house. They grew bored, she could tell, and while they hated her for what she had done, they also tried to keep themselves busy. Elisabeth and Josh were currently walking, hand in hand. She noticed that her dead friends didn’t leave footprints in the snow. That was interesting as the undead things had definitely felt real enough to kick her ass.

So the dead didn’t leave foot prints… Well, if they didn’t, then whose footprints did she see walking around her house, up to the back door and then continuing on?

Someone else was there…