The Coming | The House of Voices #2

Twenty Six - Dreams

Dreams

Parish:

Parish found himself in a large dark room. There were no windows or doors that he could see, and yet there was a thin slat of white light peeking into the room at the bottom of the floor. Everything else was in complete darkness.

With the help of the thin beam of light, Parish could see his own legs stretched out in front of him and they were… glowing. A faint orange that hummed and thrummed rhythmically. He blinked down at his legs confused. Why were they glowing?

Standing up, he looked around the room only to find it completely empty. He blinked and when he opened his eyes, the thin slat of light on the floor had broadened until it was an entryway for him to pass through. Light filtered into the room from the outside, but he still couldn’t see anything inside the room. Not wanting to stay there any longer, Parish stepped through the entryway and into a long corridor that looked vaguely like the patient’s wing at Abercoster’s. There was a snap behind him and Parish turned around to see that the room he’d just stepped out of had disappeared completely. He was staring at a blank wall.

Breathing in deeply to steel himself Parish started walking down the corridor intending to search for a way out. He made it only a few steps before a sniffling sound stopped him in his tracks. He looked to his left and found that a solid oak door had sprung into existence on the wall. Curious, he put his hand on the knob and twisted, opening the door.

Inside, he found his aunt Helena sitting on the floor of a room that looked oddly like the living room of her home in San Fran. Which, he thought, was impossible, since he was pretty sure he was in the Institute less than a minute ago.

“Aunt Helena?” Parish called out hesitantly, approaching with caution. Something about the scene seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t figure out what. His aunt paid no attention to him, didn’t turn around to face him. She kept staring at something on the floor and crying.

And that’s when he remembered. He’d seen her in the nightmares the Voices had given him earlier in the den. When October had called them and he’d somehow been able to hear the woman talking. The woman had shown him his Aunt, sitting in her home and sobbing in pain. When he’d tried to approach her to see what was wrong, he found her staring at a collection of photos. They were all pictures of her sister, his mother, except for the one in her hands. That had been a picture of his wrist, marred by four bleeding lines in his skin. The Aunt Helena from the nightmares had balled up the photo in her hands and thrown it at him. “It’s your fault,” she’d screamed at him. “She left because of you!”

With a sinking heart, Parish realized that he must be stuck in another Voice induced nightmare. He knew how it was going to play out, he’d touch his aunt’s shoulder and she’d begin screaming at him… and yet, he couldn’t stop himself from going to her. She was crying, and he wanted to comfort her. He put a careful hand on her shoulder and the woman whipped around to face him.

And she was smiling. “Oh, Parish. It’s you.” The tears streaming down her face were happy ones. She held out a photo to him. It was a picture of him when he was eight. His father was carrying Parish on his shoulders and his mother was smiling up at the both of them. Aunt Helena was standing beside her sister, holding an ice cream cone out to her. Parish took the picture from his aunt’s hands and looked at it. He still remembered that day. “We had some good times, didn’t we?” She said, still sniffling and smiling.

Confused, Parish nodded. What was going on? Why was the nightmare different?

His aunt smiled. “Remind me to tell you some stories later. You have to get going now, you’re going to be late.” Late for what, Parish wanted to ask, but his aunt shook her head at him. “Go, honey. We’ll talk later.”