A Beautiful Nightmare

Prologue

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind shrieked. The willow branches creaked. And the moon was nowhere to be seen.

But scarier than that cliche was the sight of Cole's father trudging up the driveway, his eyes clouded with sleep. The blinding red and blue lights perched atop the cop car did a good job of waking him up, sending silent streams of light across the neighbourhood like lasers at a rave.

Cole almost shrunk into himself when he made the mistake of catching his father's face under a flash of red light. His father had a calm about him, which was nothing new. He was a generally pleasant man and well known to the town as Dr. Langford. But this was a different type of calm, resembling the silence of the heavy, grey clouds lingering above.

"Doctor Langford," Officer Halley acknowledged him, standing up straight. His voice unnaturally low, like a child trying to imitate the low growl of a monster. "Found your boy out in the woods."

"Thank you, Officer. I'll take it from here," Dr. Langford replied, his voice a familiar timbre. Although the man was acknowledged around town for more than one thing, for starters, his handsome jaw and beautiful brown eyes, it was his voice that always caught people's attention. It sounded like a thunderous low timbre sliding against smooth leather.

"No problem sir. Just doing my job," Officer Halley's lips were locked into a straight line as he got back into his car. He gave Dr. Langford a quick nod. As Cole caught sight of his face, he could tell that Halley had more to say than he let on. But no one could stand to say much under Dr. Langford's sharp gaze, nothing like the warm brown glow that pooled in Cole's eyes, a softer version of his father's.

Cole's father stood with his arms behind his back as he watched the policeman's car disappear around a bend. For those few seconds, he stood as tall and silent as an oak. And Cole almost thought that he could get away with it and escape to the solace of his room. Almost.

"I'm just sleeping over at AJ's, dad," Dr. Langford uttered the words as casually as when he'd first heard them. They'd sounded so innocent coming out of his son's mouth just a few hours ago, but now it was clear that he had been the naive one. Aware of his son's recently growing curiosity in the world around him, he should have known that it was a sentence too good to be true. Now as Dr. Langford heard himself say it, he could only see himself for the fool he'd been.

"I was. It's just...We were- I mean I was..." Cole's eyes were wavering across the dimly lit blades of grass. He could physically feel the gears in his brain jamming together and creaking like an old machine as he tried to force the words off the tip of his tongue. Some words. Any words!

The clouds were starting to shift in the sky, like slabs of concrete dragging against one another, rumbling low and quiet.

"Now as much as I would have loved to hear it from Officer Halley and maybe the rest of the town tomorrow, I'm going to give you a chance to explain why you were out in the middle of the woods in the dead of the night." Cole swallowed nervously. His father watching him with the same piercing gaze that he probably gave Chief Halley. But Cole didn't have a car to flee in. He was calculating whether it would be better to reveal the truth or to get caught in an obvious lie. Smartly, he decided against the latter.

"I was exploring." It was a simple answer. But Cole felt something shift in the air. The distant grumbling of clouds was growing louder.

"Exploring?"

"Yeah," Cole croaked out, his throat suddenly feeling dry. "You know, just checking out the best hiking spots," he added not so smartly. He watched his father's face fall followed by a sigh of exhaustion.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he heaved, "Just get inside."

Cole's legs reacted before his brain could. He bolted up the driveway and into the warmth of his house. As he reached his bedroom, he heard the front door shut. Sighing in relief, he fell against the door, his breath catching in his throat.

Now that he was alone again, the thoughts of an insidious origin began to sprout up in a dark corner of his mind. The thoughts of what he'd discovered in the woods tonight. The thought that, all these years, he'd been right. And the thought that if he was right, then it could only mean one thing. The town of Woodward was in imminent danger.

He turned, still on his knees, and flung open the drawers of a cabinet beside his bed. His fingers scrambled and searched its messy contents. With a sigh, he removed each drawer in turn and flipped it upside down, shaking out his books, some gum, a few odd pieces of homework scrunched up in the bottom from the first drawer. With the shake of the second drawer, a bottle of pills fell out and rolled along the floorboards under his bed, a box of cotton earbuds fell open and decorated the clutter, this was followed by a shower of empty squished up plastic water bottle. And lastly, with a clunk, fell out a thoroughly squeezed plastic tube with just about as much volume to it as a shriveled prune.

He grabbed the tube and scampered onto his feet, only for his left foot to flinch away from the floor the moment he put any weight on it. He just about managed to fall on his bed as a red, violent pain throbbed and ebbed away with each passing second. He kicked off his shoes and rested his foot lightly on the soft bedsheet.

The adrenaline from the escape from his father had drained away and Cole was now reminded of the searing pain he'd felt in the forest. 

Cole gently but unwillingly removed his left sock and stared at his reddened ankle where the damp, black fabric clung not a moment ago, feeling the sting refreshing and intensifying as it reacted with the air. Three sharp and jagged cuts dragged down from his ankle to his toes, painted on a canvas of red, angry skin that pulsated with dark, angry veins.

He glanced once again at the pathetic tube of ointment that lay clutched in his hand.

"Well, it's better than nothing," he sighed.

He reluctantly dabbed the gel onto the first scar but the pain stayed unchanged. To Cole's horror, the gel seeping into the cut evaporated into thin air. He tried again, squeezing out a larger glob of gel, the last he could manage from the tube, and tapped small amounts across the centre cut. Once again, the gel disappeared as if soaked up by an invisible sponge. The pain was still fiery hot across his foot and he didn't see any other option. He would have to tell his father.

Cole braced himself to get out of bed to begin his painful journey to his father's room when a knock at his door stopped him.

To his relief, but also slight disappointment, Cole's father entered his room. He looked impassive for a second, the face he usually had when he'd calmed down and was ready to hear out his son. But his eyes darted back to the horrible, red blur he had just overlooked. It was his son's foot, except there were three large talon-shaped gashes on it.

"What have you done?" Dr. Langford uttered in horror.