Inside Evil

Chapter 11 - Part I

*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks*

Once again, Roberta rose at the crack of dawn due to the nightmares that now consumed every sleeping minute. Whilst her thoughts troubled her throughout the waking hours as well, the darkness of night brought a more visceral horror. The violence of her nightmares was getting stronger, and each time that Roberta awoke, she felt more and more fatigued. Much of the time she felt as if she'd had no sleep at all.

Her initial dreams had followed the original theme, plunging her into a world of icy streets and whispers which grew steadily louder and louder until they completely surrounded her. In an unsettling turn of events, the little old lady had disappeared. Each time the dream occurred, Roberta's conscious mind caused her to look up at the windows, desperately hoping to see that tired old face again and perhaps catch something new. Just to see the woman and know that she wasn't completely alone in this would be of some comfort, but she never saw her again. The window looked different somehow, and Roberta couldn't quite work it out until several dreams had passed, whereupon she realised that the roses had gone. Not even the window box remained, just a clear blank window. Was this an omen? Did it somehow suggest that her short time had lapsed? Now, the big, black, staring pane of glass just added to the ferocity and terror of the dream, and with no splashes of red, yellow or white to brighten up the bleak landscape, there was nothing to give Roberta hope. Now all she had when she was asleep were unsettling images and the sound of those whispers, continually getting louder and closer to her until she thought she'd suffocate.

But those dreams, of desolate streets and deadly whispers, had changed and now her nightly terrors had altered. Each and every night Roberta now found herself in the depths of an enormous forest, menacing shadows chasing her as she scrambled through the pine needles trying to find an escape. It mirrored the events of real life, the night when she'd absentmindedly strayed into the woods after dark, and Roberta was sure that many would say that it was this incident which affected her dreams. Even Roberta thought this to be true, but it concerned her that it was the dreams which were reflecting real life and not the other way around. At least a dream was a dream, a figment of her imagination. But the incident in the wood, that had been horrifyingly real. There was no way Sam could dispute the blood on her head, the look in her eyes. Roberta had seen it, felt it and been terrified by it.

Roberta had analysed what had happened, both in and out of the dreams, over and over. Her main cause of concern was that in every single circumstance, time had been mentioned, or more correctly, the lack of it. The old lady in the dreams and the mirror had said there wasn't much time, and that Roberta needed to move quickly. Meanwhile, the figure in the wood had said that it wasn't her time. Were the two connected or was she being foolish? Surely it couldn't be a mere coincidence. If Roberta had been shown anything over the past few weeks it was that there was no such thing as coincidence. Everything happened for a reason.

She was finding it increasingly hard to keep her mind focussed, and the only way in which Roberta could try and make sense of her thoughts was to write notes. She'd borrowed one of Sam's blank research notepads and had been scribbling down thoughts when they came to her. She'd started off in an organised manner, creating one section for her dreams, another for the old lady in the mirror, and another for events which had actually happened to her. She put a bullet point next to each item, making it easy for her to scan the text. However, her plan of keeping logical records had quickly failed, and she now turned page after page and didn't recognise the writing that stared back at her. If the scrawl could even be called writing. On many pages she found that she couldn't even make out the words which she herself had put down upon the page. But it helped, and if she was actively noting things down, Roberta found that she could hold onto her train of thought without her memories and emotions becoming tangled like battling tree roots.