Possessed Soul

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It had taken me a while to fall asleep, because I kept thinking about my pending date with Ryan, but once I had fallen asleep my dreams were full of nothing...just an endless pit of darkness. When I finally awoke my eyes just wouldn't open. They felt like they had been sewn shut by a master weaver who knew how to keep fabric together. The only thing I could see was the blackness of the inside of my eyelids. My stomach was spasming so badly. If I had eaten anything before going to bed, I would have surely thrown up. Nausea was normal to me, but this feeling was different: like someone was practising voodoo magic on a doll that looked like me.

I heard a soft rustle, the sound of the outdoors. I pushed my body up, still unable to open my eyes; trying to get a feel of where I was. A moan erupted from somewhere behind me, and the mere thought of not being alone was enough to shock my eyes into opening. My eyes adjusted to the dimly lit area. Blue light filtered around me, creating the shimmery veil of the night sky. In the distance, I could hear a stream flowing and the sound of owls hooting. The sound of the night was peaceful yet foreboding.

I brought my arm up and swiped it across my forehead. That was when I noticed the length of my forearm was covered in a sticky substance. The moonlight provided just enough light for me to see that my arm was red. I had never seen blood on myself. My mother had always said my skin was strong and didn't cut easily. The blood was a pretty, dark red that mixed with the blue hues of the night to create a sort of purple colour. I had never expected the sight of blood to be mesmerizing, yet here I was admiring this substance. I felt my lips curl slightly, into a smile, as a few drops of blood fell from my hands to the grass below. Was I pleased at the sight of blood?

I waited patiently for the pain I associated with blood to take over, but nothing happened. I looked all over my body for any injuries, but found none.

I pressed my palms to the ground and pushed myself up. I looked around me and saw a lump situated a couple of feet away from me. I walked over to the sleeping person and realised he wasn't sleeping. He was awake, wide awake. His eyes looked up at the night sky, like he was star gazing. He didn't move when I came near him, nor did he breathe. I gaped when I saw the knife sticking out of his chest. I recognised it as one of my mother's cooking knives, the one with a wooden handle.

A dream! It had to be a dream! But the body next to me was so lifelike and it was still warm; like he had been killed recently...perhaps only a couple of minutes ago. I shuffled away from the dead man and pressed my back against a tree. I rocked uneasily on my heels, waiting for my mind to exit this horrible nightmare. I waited and waited until it became clear that I wasn't dreaming. The red marks on my arm, where I had pinched myself, were too painful to be the thing of dreams. The air was too chilly and my tears too salty.

I had never met this man before. His head was bald, and his face was mapped by wrinkles. His eyes were a shade of blue, that were now tinged white like he was a ghost of the night. The human mind couldn't make up faces, I had read that somewhere. If I was dreaming about this man, that meant I had seen him before. So this wasn't a dream and this man was definitely dead.

***

Croydon became a blur as I flew through it. The city was different at night. The demons and ghosts had taken control of the city, which was shrouded in darkness. The city was deserted, except for the people who lived on the streets. They didn't look like people, they looked more like skeletons that were warming themselves with the help of the streetlamps. Their faces were hollowed out and their cheekbones stuck out of their faces. Thankfully none of them were in their right mind, or they would have noticed the blood on my hands.

I made it home in one piece and pushed the front door open. It was unlocked. Of course it was. How else would I have gotten out? This house wasn't simply a house, it was a home. This is why I felt a thin blanket of comfort wash over me when I stepped into the entrance hall. The house was dimly lit, with the only light being the starlight streaming in through the thin gaps in the silver blinds.

"Mom!" I yelled up the stairs. "Mom!"

I heard my mother's footsteps pad down the stairs. "Sage?"

Her dark hair was in a messy bun, and she wore nothing, save for a flimsy nightgown. Her expression was a mixture between confusion and shock. She glided across the room to me and scooped me into her arms.

"What happened?" she asked, while soothing me by running a hand through my hair.

"I killed...," I couldn't get the words out. I wasn't sure how, but I knew that I had killed that man. I knew about the creatures that lurked in the night, but never before would I have imagined that I was one of the terrors of the night.

"Oh, baby," she whispered as she held me at arm's length. "Give me your clothes and go and take a shower." She seemed calm, considering the fact that her daughter had walked in claiming to have killed someone. "Now!" She said, her voice growing more forceful as she pushed me towards the stairs.

***

"Morning," my mother greeted as I walked into the kitchen after a restless night of dozing off against my will. The smell of blueberry pancakes was heavy in the air, but the thought of food just made me feel like throwing up.

"What happened?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost." Her hair was loose and settled down her back in beach waves. I rarely ever saw her with loose hair, she thought it was more practical to have it tied up in a high ponytail or braided so that it was out of her way. Her eyes were rimmed, like she hadn't slept last night.

"Last night..." I stuttered, going through my memories: the dead man, my mother's knife in his chest, my hands caked in blood.

"Last night?" Her expression was blasé almost as if repeating my words was more like a reflex action and she didn't realise was doing it, until the words were already out there.

"The blood," I clarified, breathing heavily.

"What blood? Did you finally get your period?" She didn't seem to really believe I had gotten my period, she was asking just to have something to say.

I shook my head. "The dead man?"

"Honey, you must have had a nightmare," she said abruptly as she turned towards the sink, trying to hide her face from me.

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