Prophetic Dreams

Prologue

James Sander walked past the old house.  Most of the single pane windows were broken, leaving a few thin shards that told of a time more glorious than this.  The paint, once a vibrant yellow was now pale brown and peeling from years of abandonment.  Nothing stirred within its rat infested walls. The eerie silence that came from the half open front door reminded him of a horror movie he had seen as a boy.  Shaking off the chill James walked past the old house, as he had so often in the past. 

 Beyond the house, back in the shadows of the moonless night was an old barn.  He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there as it had been before.  James didn’t want to go to the barn, he knew what he would find there.  He tried to stop, to turn around, it was no use, nothing he could do would keep this from happening, he stopped fighting. 

 As James approached the barn his body began to shake so violently that his teeth chattered.  He wanted to close his eyes, they wouldn’t respond.  He turned to face the dilapidated barn.  A dim red light glowed from within.  All the way in the back, in the farthest corner the red glow illuminated nothing but the half rotted corpse of a young lady, mid twenties, hanging from the rafters.  She had once been very beautiful, but was now mere flesh scarcely hanging on her petite frame.  Rags of an old wedding gown, torn to shreds by the savage beasts that inhabited the old homestead, were draped about her shoulders.  The veil, still mostly in tact, hung over her shrunken hideous face.  James felt weak, his knees shaking so violently that he collapsed.  On his hands and knees he scrambled for the entrance hoping beyond hope he could find the strength to make it, this time. 

The doorway began to fill with glowing red eyes, those eyes of a creature so heinous it knows nothing and could never think for itself.  It is only the force of the evil behind the beast that drives it and controls its actions.  As the eyes approached James a deep growl could be heard, though not from the beasts themselves but from beyond them somewhere in the darkness, if not beyond that as well.  As the creatures came closer they began to take shape.  That which came forth through the dense shadows was an evil never seen by mortal man.

With the gait and build of a hyena and the overly large head of a lioness they were almost comical.  If not of course for the deep set red eyes and the intent which they carried with them.  Their teeth were all of three inches long and came to dagger like points.  Their feet were that of the mythological gryphon, yet very much their own with the curved claw that rose from the center roughly six inches in length.  Small horns emerged just behind and between the ears.  Their breath was nauseating with the smell of death.

The deep unearthly growl from in the distance grew steadily as the dark creatures circled James Sander until it was more a deafening hum than a growl.  It stopped and the still air was broken by a fierce, hot wind blowing through the barn.  James felt as if his skin was going to be cooked off his body, all of the beast’s leapt in one motion toward him.