Falling.

That sensation that sometimes wakes you from a good night’s sleep, but this was different. There was no awakening, nothing at all. I lied there, dropping steadily into the void with full knowledge that I had to be dreaming. It was a serene feeling I suppose – cool air cradling my body while gravity carried me briskly into the darkness, passing by what seemed to be bursts of prismatic starlight radiating in the distance. The pace quickened, my body now plummeting past the flickering lights that were now nothing but blurred smudges of color.

I was being pushed – or was I being pulled? I couldn’t tell. Balance, direction, time – everything was warped. It was so strange, and I just didn’t feel like myself anymore. I was distant and cold, vulnerable and unhinged. It was all so foggy and my mind was clouded. So I shut my eyes tight, believing I would wake up to the flailing confusion of my body beneath the sheets.

I stopped, but it was much different from what I would have expected. There was no jerking or whiplash like a car slamming on the breaks. Rather, it was as if I had been tucked snuggly into my own skin. I could feel every inch of my body come alive. The blood flowed to my fingertips. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. The goose bumps began to rise.

“I must be awake,” I thought, but I felt no sheets or blankets, no mattress against my back, no pillows beneath my head. I was merely taking some time to come-to. Once I saw my room, everything would be normal again as it should. Inevitably I was wrong.

My eyes opened to darkness – blackness so dense that I could barely see my hand before my face. Yet shards of silver moonlight waltzed across the dilapidated hall, providing only glimpses of where I stood. Cracked tile floors and tarnished columns rising from round waiting benches clad in grimy leather. I glanced about, breathless, before inhaling the musty air. Its dust-ridden heaviness sank into my lungs as it did onto the creaky wooden beams and cinderblocks. I could tell that this place – whatever it could have been – was what remained of something magnificent that had perished after years of desolation. It was a peculiar shade of ghastly beauty exuding a creeping sense of suffocating apprehension. How could I feel so awake yet still be sleeping? How can something imaginary feel so real?

I compulsively moved forward, one foot cautiously before the next across the sandy diamond-tiled floor, unaware of what could be prowling in the hungry darkness. Something profound drove my steps, and I felt powerless against this force that held a vice-grip on my heart. Yes, my heart…it was as if someone was squeezing the blood from its chambers. The tension in my chest slowly eased with each step, only to become tighter at the slightest thought of turning back in fear. But no matter the pain, there was no cringing or wincing, no response. My body wandered forward unyieldingly in search of a purpose as my thoughts raced with typical reactions to the blatantly atypical: “Where am I? Why am I here? What is happening? Where is everyone? Why do I keep moving? Just STOP!”

STOP - that single word nearly crushed me, but I finally listened. I froze before the etched glass doors of an antique elevator beside some ragged carpeted stairs colored like blood against a black canvas. The doors were captivating. I was able to wipe the dirt from the glass and traced its smooth borders and intricate designs, my thin fingers appreciating their craftsmanship. I quickly became lost within the angles and curves, a welcome distraction from the rather unwelcome surroundings; however, the ever-fleeting moonlight struck the glass and woke me from my daze to the sight of my reflection. Vibrant green eyes peered forth from the sharp features of a young woman’s long, angular face. Fair pale skin and soft lips gleamed against cascades of raven black hair gently draped upon bare shoulders and onto the tattered blue nightdress clinging to my willowy frame, the laced hem resting slightly above my knees.

My reflection was not all that dwelt within the glass. A figure blanketed in shadow shuddered in a corner of the room behind me. I turned sharply on my heel as my instincts took hold, only to find nothing but a chilling draft pricking my skin like needles. My breathing intensified and labored with each surge of adrenaline that raced through my veins. Whether it was all in my head or not, I wanted to call out and confront whatever could be here. But no words escaped my lips - only empty air. Instead, I began moving once more in surrender to the autonomic power that coursed through me since this nightmare began. Now beyond the old elevator and dusty lobby, accompanied only by the resounding protests beating against the insides of my skull.

Every shadow appeared to writhe with profound sorrow as I walked the decrepit hallway. The walls were torn and broken, aching miserably as the paint peeled from them like skin from wounded flesh. Every so often I would stumble upon a room and peer into its emptiness as if searching for something, anything that would satiate this senseless determination that pushed me. Each room offered nothing but the loneliness and neglect of crumbling drywall and stained concrete. They lacked doors and seemed to call out for company, as if I could actually hear them beckoning for me to enter, but something within me knew that I would lose myself if I did.

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I stopped abruptly before one of the rooms – the only one with a door among all the others. Its surface was black and slick like damp obsidian, a single round knob protruding from the center. It was somewhat ajar, allowing enough space for me to make out a boarded window and an old floor-mounted radiator. I stared into the room, seeing nothing in any direction, but just as I had given up, The Woman appeared in my periphery. I could only see so much with what little moonlight slipped through the cracks between each board of plywood. She was unmistakable.

An emaciated woman was wearing nothing but her sickeningly pasty skin, scarred and cracked like worn plaster. She stood tall and grimly statuesque in the back-left corner of the room. Her head drooped against the wall with sopping wet hair slithering to the base of her bulging spine and dripping with black, oily liquid. I couldn’t move even though I wanted to run. My chest tightened and squeezed out the little breath I had left. I panicked as The Woman began mumbling softly and incoherently. Her head snapped up with the revolting pop of cracking vertebra. The room grew even darker as the shadows fled from where she stood. They scurried across the walls, stealing away the remaining light and leaving only her image behind.

“Move! Move! MOVE!” I screamed to myself. My heart pounded faster and fiercely as my fear grew. My panic reached new heights when The Woman began to flicker and convulse, just as the static of a television screen when set to the wrong channel. She faded in and out, appearing closer to the door each time. Seconds seemed like hours and…

Her back was right in front of me with nothing but the edge of the black door between us. She was even more skeletal and fractured up close. A foul rotting odor oozed from her skin that burnt my nose. I quickly looked at the floor to clear my vision of what I believed to be a terrible illusion, but only The Woman’s blackened bloody soles caught my eyes. Her feet did not touch the floor. She stood on several inches of putrid air.

I could not believe my eyes. No, I didn’t want to believe them, but I knew they told no lies. Not this time. When they returned to the creature before me, her body slowly turned without moving a single muscle. Yet, just before her face was revealed, the black door violently slammed shut, the crash surging through my body like a jolt of electricity. I stood still – breathless – staring blankly ahead, unable to reason or even fathom what was in that room. Then I heard it: faint giggling muffled by the barrier that separated us. The sound faded for but a moment until something struck the door from within the room with a tremendous and thunderous force. The impact was so monstrous that it threatened to split the door in two. A jagged crack appeared in its center, and from within the depths bled the same inky fluid that dripped down The Woman’s skin.

I ran. The shock of the slammed door must have restored my free will. Frankly, I didn’t care why. I ran as fast as I possibly could from that thing, even as rubble and splinters of wood dug into my bare feet. Echoing whispers filled my ears and resonated through my core, following me obsessively and amassing after every abandoned quarter. Terror ripped through my mind as the voices felt like they slowly tore at my soul. They begged me to surrender and leave the place within my memories where I knew it should rightfully exist. God knows that I desperately wanted the same. I continued running down the same corridor, which grew longer and longer with each heavy step, but it finally opened into a large room. The whispers escalated to stifled shouts and screams. I looked around frantically, spinning in circles. Any hallways or doors that led into or out of this single space had disappeared. Nothing but solid walls surrounded me. Even stranger was the rise in temperature to a dull heat unlike what I had felt anywhere else in this hellhole.

The only means of leaving this prison was an old, wooden stairwell that led deep into the ground. This was no escape at all. My head began to throb as I approached it. The voices raged and bellowed in their desperation. I stood atop the stairs and gazed into the blackness to which they lead. A dead silence finally embraced the room. Frigid air, like the one I felt in the lobby, pierced the warmth and fluttered into the deep, carrying upon it fragments of noise, raspy and welcoming.

E… Again, by the walls and floor, the wood, the stone, and what I can only describe as the bones of the earth.

Ede… And by the encroaching darkness steadily rising from the depths and wriggling onto my feet. Its touch invited me in – like welcoming a corpse into a six-foot grave.

Eden…

My fear faded, and all that remained was blind obedience – my freedom shattered by the inevitability of submission. I succumbed to the shadows, too weak to deny their invitation. I was overwhelmed with dejection and disappointment – that frustrating feebleness welling inside of me, but it was of no consequence. I hated the dark and would have died to escape its vice grip, but nothing could shake its hold on me. All I could do was close my eyes. I surrendered to the fate that awaited me beyond those stairs.

I placed one foot onto the next step down. It creaked beneath the pressure, and heat from below brushed over my toes. Yet before I could take another step toward the final descent, a voice, light and airy as a spring breeze, welcomed me back to the reality abandoned by my slumber.