Neriah always thought she was in the darkness alone. Battling for her life in a world that doesn't care. Little did she know she was never alone.
Her guardian angel, Anthony, was always with her. With Anthony's help, she goes from broken to fully a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
When I was twelve years old one night, I was stirred out of my sleep. An eerie feeling that someone was staring at me my made my neck hot and I woke up. I opened my eyes to see a black shadowy figure hunched over my face. This dark figure had no face, only an outline and I knew it was glaring at me. I was paralyzed by fear and couldn't even move a muscle in my body, not even a twitch. As it hovered over me, it felt as if the world stopped.
Nothing was moving, the television was froze, the air was still. I gazed up and noticed the fan had stopped in place. The air was cold but my body was hot. We held our stare at each other for what seemed like hours.
I heard a voice in my head say, "Neriah get under the covers."
I was too afraid to move though, too nervous to think what this thing was preparing to do to me. I felt that it was trying to say something to me. I didn't want to hear what it had to say. I listened to the voice and mustered up the courage to get under the covers and close my eyes. I pulled my sheets over my face, perhaps in the nick of time, as the shadow was leering closer to me.
I stayed under those sheets for a while, hand clasped over my mouth. Too afraid of what I might see when I came out. But I had to be brave. I had to get out of this room away from that shadow. Away from the evil that I felt. I peeked my head out of the covers and it wasn't hovering above me anymore. I looked around the room from the ceiling to the wall. I was almost immediately paralyzed when I saw it standing there in the middle of my bedroom floor. It was almost as if it had been waiting for me to move. Waiting for me to get up and make a run for it so that it could snatch me up and take me... I imagined it was from the bad place. Gramma Lucy told me about the bad place once. How it was a place I never wanted to go to. How you relive the most painful moments in your life. She called it Hell.
I didn't want to go to a place like this. I didn't want to be taken by this... shadow demon. It's the only way I could describe it. It just felt evil, like it radiated anger and pain and it wanted to inflict that on me. So I could feel how it felt. It was darkness and it was terrifying. I cowered back under my sheets.
Anthony's POV
"You need to leave this girl. She is protected!" I shouted at the Tenebrae. It stood there, seemingly studying me as I studied it. "Why are you here?"
The Tenebrae continued to stare. No eyes visible, a being of pure darkness. A shadow as a human may call it. It shouldn't be here... yet here it is loosed from its demonic cage. In sweet Neriah's bedroom, it came intentionally for her. I'm thankful she heeded my word and got under the sheets. She didn't need to witness what was to transpire.
"I said leave Tenebrae. You are not welcome here." Again it held it's stare. I drew my sword, light beginning to radiate from it. "If you do not leave, you will be ended by my sword."
"You cannot stop fate." The tenebrae hissed. "This girl will be destroyed. We will end her from the inside out. She will be hit with pain after pain. She will forget you and she will be taken to infernum to suffer until the end of days. And then she will suffer more."
"Why does he want her? Why do you need her life ended?" At this point I was pissed. I needed answers. Why was Hell after Neriah? What hidden powers does she possess that he would send the darkness to take her as a child.
"Ahh" The tenebrae garbled, "You were assigned to her, yet you know NOTHING about her. You will die not knowing."
It lurched at me and grabbed me by my throat. I dropped my sword and the fighting began. He swung me around in a circle, attempting to make me dizzy. It didn't work. It only ticked me off more. I held on to it's arm and climbed my way up it's body to it's neck. I squeezed and squeezed with all my might. Finally it stopped spinning. I dropped it and went for my sword. Right when I went to strike it darted out of the room through the wall. I followed it to the front of the house.
"You cannot protect her. You will fail. She will never rise to her full potential. You will never get your wings." it hissed in the dark of the night.
"You know for a shadow, you talk to much." I leaped in the air and struck the tenebrae down before it could move. The light from my sword taking it's essence leaving only fragments of shadow to be seen floating in the air.
"I will always protect her!" I shouted to the Heavens and to the depths of Hell. I stared up into the sky. "Whatever purpose you have for Neriah, it will be fulfilled."
Neriah's POV
Some time had passed and I worked up the courage to come out of the sheets. I still felt it's presence but I also felt some light in the darkness. When I looked out from the sheets I saw the shadow figure spinning around in a circle in the middle of my bedroom. My eyes widened and I was confused.
"What in the world?" I whispered to myself. I couldn't stop staring. Then all of a sudden it stopped. It just stood there, but it didn't feel like it was staring at me. Out of nowhere, it leaped out of my room through the wall and vanished.
I took the opportunity to climb out of my bed and run to my Gramma's room. I didn't stop running until I made it to her bedside.
"Neriah, what-" she said. But I jumped into her bed and into her arms. I cried and cried in my Gramma's arm. I only remember screaming, "Shadow Demon".
She rubbed my head and calmly told me I was dreaming and everything is okay.
What she didn't tell me was that everything wasn't okay. She put me to sleep in her bed. I later learned, in her journal that she left the room and went into my room.
She wrote, "When I opened Neriah's door there was a stench of evil in the room. I almost couldn't walk in, but I made myself walk into her room. There was a figure in her room that greeted me. A tall shadow figure with a brown cloak on. Pointing a blackened figure at my grand baby's bed. I immediately started praying. Casting it out of my house and out of her room. It left and the stench left. I went back to Neriah and prayed over her. Hard!"
