There's No Place Like Home [Glimpses of Faith - Journal]
There’s no place like home
(January 27, 1998)
Woke up from the dream in a cold sweat and quickly sat up in bed, hitting the top of my head against the ceiling. (I forgot I was on the top bunk.) The shock of the pain almost made me scream, but I managed to keep myself in check - Mom and Pop Gothic are in the next room, right between the girls’ room and the boys’ room, natch, and I didn’t want to know what would happen if I woke them up. As I rubbed my head, I thought about the dream, running through the field again with the little dark-haired girl, scooping her up and falling through the gate of bones and landing safely on the other side. It continued like it did the last time - she starts crying, then tells me she’s glad I came back for her, and how she missed me. “Yeah, I missed you too,” I say back.
“Don’t go away again,” she says, and I hold her, feeling weird since I don’t know who she is but I’m trying to stop her from crying. I run a hand through her hair and say, “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s what you said before.” She pulls away from me, her face wet with tears. “I woke up and you were gone. I thought you were still out hunting but then morning came and you were nowhere to be found.”
Suddenly there’s a scratching noise on the other side of the gate and the girl grabs onto me, and I move her away from the wall so that I’m standing in front of her, protecting her. “It’s here!” she screams, trying to pull me away from the gate. “It’s going to kill us!” I squint into the darkness and it’s then that I see we’re surrounded by a forest of huge and creepy trees, their thick branches hanging all around us, like we’ve stumbled into an orchard or something; I thought I could make out fruit hanging heavy off some of the trees. “Don’t let it kill me!” the girl screams, her eyes huge and fixed on the gate.
I woke up then, shaking, the scratching noise echoing in my ears. Rubbing at the fresh bump on my head, I realized that there actually was scratching noise, coming from right above me, in the ceiling; sounded like rats, big ones probably, dragging their nails across the attic floorboards, or crawling in the spaces below, in the walls, searching for food.
I put my hands over my ears, slid under the sheets, and, pulling the blanket over my head, waited for morning. I knew there would be no more sleep for me.
©Go Ask Malice.