I had a nightmare once.

It was no mere fright of sleep or simple restlessness, but a true terror. It wasn’t the most horrid nor gruesome in content, but it was special, for it persisted into the waking realm; blurring the lines in my mind between truth and fiction.

Vividly, I can recall that nightmare even now.

It went like this.

“Once there were two children: a boy and a girl.

A farmer’s son and his young playmate, a best friend if you will.

They were always together, free and happy. They played together on his father’s farm without worry or care. Yet it all changed one day.

It was a day like any other. There were no dark and stormy clouds. There were no bad omens.

With laughter in their hearts, they journey into the milking parlor, a place familiar to the air as they played here often.

Into the parlor they walked, and in the center sat a black cauldron. It burbled and bubbled with unknown contents.

It was strange and novel. Yet they quickly grew bored, as children want to do.

So they sought to play hide and seek.

The boy was the hider first, so he nestled himself amongst the hay within a separate chamber and giggled to himself at his masterful hiding. Yet the girl didn’t come.

She didn’t seek.

A cry of distress split the air. Seeking the sudden sound, the boy spied his companion as he peeked around a corner from where he’d hid. There, cast in the cauldron fire’s glow, were witches three.

The shadowy figures had caught the girl in their gnarled hands and brought her to the bubbling cauldron.

The boy fled in fear, desperately searching for his father.

When he had done so, he spoke quickly of his friend’s ill-fated plight, yet the father was confused and simply asked, ‘who?’

The frightened boy tried to answer but he could not as he no longer remembered the girl’s name. As he sought his memories, he found he could not recall her face or anything more about her.

He had no such friend.

The father investigated the parlor and found inside no cauldron, no witches, nor any girl.

Did he imagine the girl? Did she ever exist?

Yet when that boy awoke from his terrible dream, he felt he had lost something precious to him. No matter how much reality tried to convince him otherwise, he believed deep down that he once had a friend. A friend who was taken.”

This is a story inspired by that terrible dream.

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Far above a sleepy town, a dark and stormy night roiled and bucked. It fought the heavens with fury and lightning, shaking all. Hidden deep with its dark clouds, a trio of maleficent shadows lurked.

Those dreadful and wicked things galloped across the boundless sky in pursuit of mortal prey.

They whispered and cackled in foul tongues as they journeyed, arguing amongst themselves over every small thing.

“Behold, is that thine prey?”

“Nay, too old.”

The foul shades peek uninvited through windows and cracks, spying upon the unaware. Many mortals escaped a dire fate this turbulent night with only a chill of doom brushing their shoulders.

Onward they loomed through the world until an old home came into their sights. From discarded toys and scrawled upon wallpaper, the home radiated life and youth; a delicious sight to the dancing shades.

“Here! Here! Children in abundance, one shall fulfill the pact sister.”

“Too many to take upon the night-haunts. Find the one fast.”

“The court shall hath its due, but a nibble might not go amiss.”

Through the hallways the shadows flickered, gliding past the lounging adults nestled in the flickering light of the TV. The shadows crept into three rooms.

A trio of teen boys slumbered within the first.

“Blah boys, naught for the court tonight.”

Within the second room, a pair of girls played. One four years, the other eight.

“Too young and there’s no time to feast, alas,” the foul being said, eyeing the two.

In the last room, the shade found its prey. A tall and slender girl, a mere seventeen, bordering on eighteen, sat perched on a battered desk chair.

Her thin dark pajamas clung to her thin frame, worn threadbare from time and a lack of care. They did little to hide her athletic build, built up from a lifetime of running. However, there was a gauntness there that was disparate with the stocked kitchens the shade had spied on before.

“Curious.” the shade muttered as it observed.

Black eyes the color of the dying night outside peeked through limp twilight locks that curtained a pale freckled face to cascade down to her modest chest.

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Those black eyes swept back and forth in frantic motion as the soft-glowing screen she sat before illuminated them.

The creeping shadow drew closer to the oblivious mortal girl, eager to see if this was the prey it desired. It drifted across discarded clothing and school bags, enough for two if the second bed in the room attested.

Yet luckily (or unluckily) the twilight-haired girl was alone.

Draped across a hanger and hung like a corpse were the torn remains of a school uniform that awaited resurrection by needle and thread. The grim sight elicited a mocking giggle from the shade, the sound lost in the booming thunder.

The thunder rattled the walls as if a giant had shaken the very earth itself.

A scream of fright from down the halls startled the perched girl. She glanced about the shrouded room, listening to the sounds of the weary adults moving to the frightened child down the hall.

For a short while, she waited and fixated on the door, anticipating someone’s arrival, before sinking into her chair and going back to her screen.

A blank screen greeted her.

The thunderous fury of the heavens had cut off the power, it would seem.

In the darkness, the girl groped about the desk in search of her flashlight. In doing so, she knocked over a bottle of pills. The medication spilled upon the tabletop like many cast stones.

She snatched up a small flashlight into her slender fingers; the nails chewed down to the quick.

“Is yon girl the one?” Another shade said as it arrived to crowd the small bedroom.

“Shh.” The first shadow rebuked as it shifted closer.

Light sprung up from the torch, casting flickering shadows about the room and driving a spike of exhaustion and pain into the girl’s skull. The light caught upon her bag, discarded as it was.

The name Autumn stitched onto the top.

“It’s her.” The shade said with a wicked smile.

Dark eyes chased the errant shadows as the girl named Autumn clutched her head in pain. The striking lighting outside sent more dancing shadows squirming upon the walls, a show created purely for her by the violent storm.

“Did yon girl see?”

“Don’t lie! She hasn’t the eye for it!”

“She mayn’t see, but mayhap hear if ye yelp so.”

Thunder boomed, overpowering the shades’ anger and scaring Autumn as the world’s fury swept through the town.

Cries and whimpers resounded from the surrounding rooms at the tempest. Autumn herself closed her eyes and counted between the strike and the booming.

One, two, three. Crash.

“A kilometer,” Autumn muttered.

Into the darkness she stared, the fright shaking her body in time with the peels of thunder. No less afraid than she was as a child.

“Hope it hits the school. A day off would be nice.” Autumn said.

School, that grim place that made the magical act of learning utterly mundane. Not to mention the horror of socialization and the banality of cliques. She’d always preferred gym class; running made her feel so free.

“I shall steal her hence!”

“Lo, I call her mine!”

“I hath said SILENCE!”

Within a brief lull in the crashing thunder, the noise of the bickering shadows echoed. Autumn spun about with a violent fright. Torchlight scythed through the gloom as she hunted for the disturbance.

Yet all was still as a corpse. Nothing stirred, neither a mouse nor a house.

“I thought I heard something?” Autumn mused through bitten lips.

Sighing, she stood up from her battered chair, stretching out her back from hours curled over her computer. It clicked and popped as she drew up to her full height at five foot seven. One of the tallest girls in her class, not that it helped much.

“You art to blame.”

“Nay you.”

“Ye both art but empty-headed sprites.”

Ignorant of the danger about to befall her, Autumn staggered to her unmade bed, eyes struggling to fight against the call of deep slumber. As the lightning continued to crash down outside, she slipped into that elusive dream.

Now the shades made their move.

The nightmares that plagued Autumn this time were real. They slipped across the walls like stains of oil to stretch keen claws out towards the vulnerable mortal. Monstrous shapes formed like the most macabre of puppet shows.

They slithered and crept ever onward.

Clawing tendrils caught upon her sheets. Her troubled sleep rocked her back and forth, narrowly avoiding a swiping shadow. But it crept forwards again, coalescing into a python-like form made from the twisted oils of the deepest shadows.

It coiled around her form, squeezing her soft body in its coils. It entangled Autumn in her sleep. A single twist and it could shatter her swan-like neck, yet it would not as it wasn’t its purpose.

Autumn twisted uncomfortably as she slumbered, twitching against her bondage.

As her mouth opened in a moan of discomfort, the beast of shadows struck. In an instant, it dove between her lips and down her throat to fill her lungs with clinging oil.

Panicked eyes flew open as the black water choked her.

It was frigid in her lungs.

Autumn bucked and writhed as she fought against the coiled shadow, but it was for naught since the beast only constricted tighter in response. She was but a mouse before the predator.

Autumn’s tears rolled down her face as she lost her mind to fear. The burning instinct bit into her fragile psyche like starving hounds after rotting meat. The black water that filled her lungs spewed forth from her lips to pool onto the floor. It grew and grew as she drowned, soaking her bed in sweat and foul oil.

Autumn tried to scream for help, but there was no air to do so. Only a spluttered gurgle came forth, drowned out by the ongoing thunder. The oily snake contorted her lungs into an unnatural shape as they slithered within her body.

Amongst the crash of thunder and her choked cries, Autumn could hear the rising sounds of sinister childish giggles echoing about her now flooded room. Try as she might, she couldn’t see the source.

Down into the abyssal waters, she went. She couldn’t escape, no matter how hard she fought. She felt the icy grip of death looming before her and realized in that bitter moment that she desperately wanted to live. Autumn’s vision sparkled and blurred as she drowned beneath the murky waters that lapped against the ceiling above her. She wondered if this was how she’d die.

Drowning in her room with no one the wiser?

Her final thoughts lay with her foster siblings and she hoped they didn’t find her body first; they were already so scared as it was.

Autumn drifted languidly downward into the deep waters of the Beyond. Down past her floor into an ocean of impossibility. Fish passed by her fading eyes, obeying no laws but their own; they hurt to look at. Beyond her fading sight was a looming face of such infinity and age that minds shattered upon gazing upon it. Great long tentacles drifted in the currents and eyes of deepest nothing gazed at the sinking pair.

The greatest and most terrible of secrets burned through Autumn’s mind in an instant, only for her to forget them once more. Thanks in kind to her blurred vision, the burden did not fully consume her mind. The oily serpent was not so lucky as without eyes to shut, it met with the eyes of the elder one and simply ceased existing.

Although freed, a lack of oxygen had robbed Autumn of her strength and even if this place had an “up,” she lacked the energy to pursue it. So she drifted in the currents for a time until the great mind that idly watched the intruder in its watery home wished elsewhere before it returned to its long slumber.

“Doth thee bethink yon girl made it?”

In Autumn’s remarkably clean bedroom, one shade spoke to the other. Neither seemed to care for the fate of their third.

“I care not. We have fulfilled the pact either way. ‘Bring me a young girl worthy of being a witch before the dying of this year’s autumn.’”

“Dumb hag should’ve worded her pact better.”