Short Story Swirl

Sleepwalking (Horror)

I've been sleep walking for as long as I can remember, but my dreams only started getting bad when my aunt showed up. My mom said she had no where to go since my uncle died, and she couldn't leave her only sister on the street. I guess I understood, but my aunt always gave me creepy vibes.

It wasn't long after she showed up that my dreams started getting violent. It started off small, the cliche monster or some scary event, but then I started having the same dream over and over again. I would dream that I was running in the woods from something, and every night it would get closer and closer. When I woke up each morning, my feet would be sore and red. It got to the point where I was terrified to go to sleep.

My mom said she could hear me stomping up and down the halls throughout the night. Sometimes, she said, it would sound like I was even running back and forth. It woke up my dad as well as her, but she was always the one to bring me back to bed.

My aunt mainly kept to herself, hiding away in her room, only coming out to eat and use the bathroom. Mom said that she's always been this way.

"A little off," My mom would say with a chuckle on the few occasions I asked about her.

One night, I went to sleep, and the thing chasing me was closer than ever. As I was running, I looked around for something, anything I could use as a weapon. Panting and terrified, I grabbed the closet branch I had and turned around, swinging it at the creature nipping at my heels. With an earpiercing scream, it fell backwards, it's long black claws covering it's shadowed face. Wrapped around one long finger was a red crystal on a chain that swung back and forth as the creature screamed. It wailed endlessly, rocking on it's knees, almost even sounding human.

For a second, I thought I heard my name echo throughout the trees, sounding almost too far away to hear. When I heard it the second time, I knew I wasn't crazy. Noticing it was getting closer, I braced myself against whatever was coming next. Suddenly, everything started shaking, trees started falling, and birds scattered into the skies. The calling of my name got louder and louder, the shaking more and more violent.

My eyes snapped open.

"NATALIE" my father was screaming, his nose inches from mine, and shaking my shoulders violently. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

For a second, I was confused. What did he mean?

I looked around me and froze in horror. In my hand was the baseball bat I kept in my room, covered in blood. On the ground lay my mother, silent and unmoving. I started to panic, not sure about what exactly happened. She must have heard me stomping around and came to put me back to bed, only when she did...

Something caught my eye, and I looked to the corner of the room. There, standing in the shadows, stood my aunt with a little red crystal on a chain dangling from her fingers. She smiled at me, letting the chain swing back and forth.