Whispers

Chapter 1

Beads of sweat rolling down my face as I jolted awake, screaming from the horrible nightmare. Footsteps pounded down the hall before my door flung open and my mother raced to my side. She held me in her arms, running her hands through my grimy, sweaty hair and down my soaked back. She cooed into my ear and told me everything would be okay. My heart calmed as everything materialized around me.

I held my chest and leaned my head against my mother's shoulder. She laid me back down on my bed and wiped my forehead with her hand. She ran her hand down my arm and squeezed my hand tightly. I looked up at her as I calmed my breathing, her gentle and worried smile soothing me back into the darkness of my mind.

"You're mother tells me that you're still having nightmares," Doctor Emerson states as she looks up at me from behind her glasses. She holds her clipboard on her knee with a pen in her hand, legs and hands crossed. "Would you like to talk about them?"

I looked up from my fingers in my lap and shake my head. I cross my feet together, making my laying position much more comfortable on her sofa. I picked at the dirt under my nails and listened to Dr. Emerson.

"Michael, I know it's been hard adjusting in order to talk to me but this is a safe place. You can talk to me and nothing leaves this place." Dr. Emerson leaned forward and placed a gentle hand on my leg. "I believe it would be best if you tried to open up. How about we start small? How often do you have these dreams?"

"They just happen. I don't know when they'll happen, they just do," I mumble before sighing and looking at the ceiling. "They started off every night-"

"Two months ago?"

"Uh, yes. They don't happen as much any more. Maybe once a week."

"That's progress." Dr. Emerson cheered up a bit at the news, as shirt lived as it was.

"No, it's not. I have to self medicate just to get some sleep. It only suppresses the dream." I sit up and place my feet on the floor. "Nothing I do will stop these dreams. No amount of medication will help. It's not anxiety or depression or anything else that medication can help or cure. There is nothing wrong with me. No problem that my mind is trying to solve with these horrid dreams. I don't need a shrink."

"You never know, Michael. Just cooperate with me. Just a little. We might get somewhere." I groaned and Dr. Emerson frowned at me. "We still have twenty five more minutes. Might as well talk about something."

I sighed in frustration and slouched into the sofa. There was no way I would leave this room without getting bickered at by mom because I didn't say anything or work through anything. It was either open up or get an ear full.

"It's always the same dream. Every single time." She leaned forward as I recounted some details of my dream.

"And where were you while all of this was happening? Were you doing the actions or were you the one being acting upon?" I raised an eyebrow at her and she shook her head. "Were you the woman or one of the men?"

"None of them. It's like I was there, I could hear and feel everything, but I was frozen and couldn't do anything." I covered my face with my hands and sighed deeply. "A woman was running from these men. A man grabbed her and pulled her away from them. Then he stopped in the center of this garden before he allowed these men to take her and murder her. My dream ends after she's been buried in the same garden she was taken from."

"Hey, man, where you been?" My best friend since kindergarten, Jeremy, clamped his hand onto my shoulder and caused me to jump and spin around. "Jeez, man. Why so jumpy?"

"You scared me," I frowned as i slipped my bag further onto my shoulder. "What's up?"

"Where you been? You were out all morning."

"Hm, let's see where I've been." I put my hand to my chin as if I were really thinking about it. "I was at the shrink that my mother has been forcing me to go to for the past two months."

"You still having those crazy dreams?"

"Gosh, make me out to be a crazy person why don't you?" I turned back and we started walking to our last class of the day, History with Mrs. Richards.

"Never said you were crazy, bro. I just think it's weird that you started having those dreams." Jeremy opened the door to the classroom just as the Goth Girl of the school walked by. She looked at Jeremy with distaste then looked at me and frowned.

"Careful, you start looking at her like that then people might think you're crazy." Jeremy shoved my shoulder playfully as I walked past him and into the room.

"How weird is it that she gets to the school the second my dreams started? It's creepy." I sat down in the back and ran a hand through my curly blonde hair before plopping my backpack onto the floor.

"That's a coincidence, she's creepy in general."

The bell rang and our middle aged teacher walked in, slamming the door behind her as she walked to the front of the class. Her graying hair was pulled back into a tight bun that it pulled the skin tight around her face. She was classically pretty, old school charm and all, but she was stern unless something became of interest. If you managed to get her to crack a smile, she'd give you a homework pass. Nobody has ever managed to get her to smile besides me, before my dreams anyway.

"Hello, class. As you know, we are only two days from our trip. Make sure you're bags are packed and in TSA standards. As a reminder, we leave at noon and we will meet in front of the security check in." Mrs. Richards went to her desk and pulled out a stack of papers. "For now, we have a test."

"This trip is going to be awesome!" Jeremy thanked Mrs. Richards as she handed him a test and turned back to me.

"Lucky for me, mom had it paid for before I started having these dreams so I still get to go."

"You may begin," Mrs. Richards instructed as she sat at her desk.

I walked out to the parking lot and just as I reached my beat up jeep, it began to pour. I groaned and got inside my jeep quickly, taking off my now soaked jacket. Jeremy got in a minute later and did the same thing, throwing his jacket right over mine. He shook his hair, sending water flying everywhere. I glared intensely at him and he just laughed, putting on his seatbelt.

"I looked up the place we're staying at, Grigori mansion. I can't believe they turned it into a hotel. It's so creepy." Jeremy pulled out his phone and showed me a picture. The tall mansion looked like something you'd see in England during medieval times. The two tall towers stood high above the rest, the cylinder roofs were decorated with small windows. Sloped roofs and statues made the place look spooky. "It was built on to an old manor. They have some rooms listed as haunted. I wonder if it has secret passage ways like those mansions I see on television."

"For a bad ass who fails most of his classes, you do a lot of research," I teased him. He kept scrolling, showing more pictures of the inside. He scrolled passed a photo of a family crest and my eyes grew wide. "Wait, go back." He scrolled back up. "Stop. That's it!"

"What about it?"

"That's the crest I saw in my dreams." Jeremy's mouth opened and closed like a fish.

"Wait, so this dream could be real?" Jeremy put his phone away and looked at me.

"I don't know. Maybe. I hope not because this would be super weird."