Night Terrors

The Church of Whispers

This dream plagued me from when I was five to fifteen years old. I never understood why it frightened me so much and I was even more perplexed at how randomly it would reoccur. It always started the same and ended the same. Now, it has been a good eleven years since it has occurred and I wonder every night if tonight is the night it will make its grand return.

I find myself standing in a long hallway. The walls and floors are made from a dark paneled wood. The hallway runner is deep crimson in color and almost seems to serve as a pathway. Much like a cleared trail in the woods serves to guide visitors. As I walk along the long corridor I come to a set of great, iron banded wooden doors. I rest my hand upon them and they swing open silently. 

Before me is an old church. The pews though are not facing towards where the minister would stand but rather the long aisle where I was walking down. The pews, too, are made from dark paneled wood and stacked one on top of another like a beautifully crafted stadium. But, unlike most stadiums where you can see their end there seemed to be no end to these rows of pews. They stretched themselves high up into the unseen rafters above and seemed to slope inwards over the aisle the higher they went. 

Seated randomly in these pews were various people. Two that have always stuck out was a gentleman in a top hat and a woman with a veil cradling her baby. What unnerved me about these people is they were clearly dead. They're skin was an unnatural grey as if it had been sapped of all color. Each time this dream occurred the people in the pews would slowly decay more and more. Their milk white eyes stared down at me as I passed and they whispered aggressively. Whatever it was I have never been able to make out. How they whispered I also never figured out because they're mouths never moved.

Even the baby who was always crying never screwed up his face during these wailing fits. It just silently and calmly watched me walk down the aisle just like its veiled mother. I always walked down this aisle in slow motion it seemed to allow the viewers their chance to make their judgements. After what felt like an eternity of walking down the aisle I could see the end. A dirty round window perched where a normal statue of Jesus would be showed shadows of unnaturally  fast moving clouds beyond. It might have had a stained glass mural at one point but all paint had chipped away leaving fogged over glass in its place. 

Here I would stop at the end of the pew and watch those silhouettes of clouds in fascination then I would look down at the raised platform below it. On the raised platform were three giant thrones. They were carved from a black stone that had been polished to a mirror finish. I found myself walking up the three, short steps to these thrones. Each had a red cushion trimmed in gold thread. Always, I would find myself standing before the throne in the very center. I would look down upon the red cushion and for some reason that I have never had a sound explanation for I would begin to feel panicked. The whispering behind me would grow louder and my breathing would become ragged gasps that eventually led to sobbing. 

Then I would wake up sobbing in the darkness of my room. Every time this dream should occur I always dreaded sleeping for I feared I would find myself back in that church and before those black thrones.