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Prelude-Dark Glimmers 9/28/2006 8:02:21 PM
Dark Glimmers
Wade Hunter
This book is dedicated to my wife, Michelle. She gave me the courage to take a chance, and the support to stick with it in the dark times. She is my muse.
Dark Glimmers
Prelude
Outside the large, two story Victorian style house the night sparkled with a brilliant flash of lightning. The electric light silhouetted the Armstrong residence, towering over the growing town below it. Seconds later the heavy slap of raindrops rattled the pane glass windows of the house as the sky unleashed its fury. The symphony of thunder with the accompaniment of raindrop percussion pounded noisily inside the house and found the small boy, sleeping in his bed beside a second story window.
The boy’s name was William Armstrong. William was a thick boy for the age of twelve, with broad shoulders like his father and a squared chin face. His personality in no way matched his promise of stature. He was shy, and right now he was very scared. Normally he would have looked out the window and watched the lightning cut scars into the pitch-blackness of the night, but right now he felt like crawling under the covers and hiding from the world. The storm supplied his already anxious nerves with more reason to twitch.
The nightmare that had sent him jumping out of his slumber hung in his mind like so many sticky cobwebs. The cotton of his shirt was clinging to his skin as he tried to wrestle himself into a state of calm. He ran a hand across his forehead, wiping away the cold perspiration that lay like dew on his brow. With the same motion he swept back the brown hair that covered his forehead and slicked it back away from his eyes.
Lightning flashed outside, and he jumped as his room filled with elongated, nasty looking shadows. Taking in a deep breath he tried to clear his head of all worry. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do. The dream, which he had just awakened from, was hanging heavy on his conscious, but he couldn’t figure out why.
The dream had been particular riveting for him, and as the lightning flashed across the sky once more, sending another strobe of clear white light into his room, he worried that it would be the first of many restless nights for him. He had no real foundation for this. It was just a thought, a voice in the back of his head, but the voice seemed to know more than he did. He closed his eyes, and the odd feeling of the dream came back to him. Even now while he was awake, the dream felt much too real. His feeling of safety had been robbed from him, as if a thief had snuck in during the night and taken it from his soul.
Scanning the room, William searched for any sign that may indicate that something may be missing (something that might ignite such an odd feeling in him), but it was hard to tell in the dark. Was he safe even now? Here in his very room? It had been just a dream. He knew that, and in the back of his head he knew that what ever had happened in that dream was not going to present itself in this room.
Reluctantly he focused on the dream, trying to recall the details, hoping that confrontation with it would resolve his feeling of despair. In truth, it was hard to recall the awful details of the dream. There were no visions of demons or spirits, but something terrible did happen. He closed his eyes against the blue-black darkness of the room, and he struggled to bring the dream back.
William’s memory was cloudy, and he wished for the company of his father. His father was a busy man though, and William didn’t think that going into his parents’ room and waking his dad would be the best idea in the world. Instead he would stay in bed and wait the night out.
William’s family was not poor, and perhaps that was part of his problem. His father was the founder of the small but ever growing town of Armstrong. His father, James Armstrong, managed to buy a thousand acres of land off a government official in Washington D.C. In truth it was practically given to him because of the secrets that his father knew about some very powerful people. Once, William over heard his mother telling one of her friends this information. William often wondered what kind of secrets his father could possibly know that would bargain such a deal, but since he wasn’t suppose to be privy to such a thing, he kept his questions to himself. In any case, his father discovered that the land held rich depots of coal. He built several mines and the town just sprung up out of nothing. Now his father ran the place like it was his own personal empire, and that made things difficult for William. He had no friends to speak of because of it. No real friends that is, save one.
Anna.
Anna was one of the house servants, who acted as his part time nanny. William enjoyed her company very much, but she was about twice his age. Anna and he played games together and talked about all sorts of things. William found her to be very pretty with golden blonde hair, the slim face of an angel, and emerald green eyes that seemed to sparkle when she became excited. He wished that she were here now to help comfort him. She had a way about her, a persona, which made him feel at ease. As he thought of Anna an idea popped in his head like a bubble. He suddenly knew what it was that he had lost in the dream. He lost his other friend. His dream friend. A feeling of hopelessness overtook him. Like a weight on his chest, it drove the air out of him. The filters that were blocking William’s dream world from his memory began to give way. He started to recall the details.
William’s dream friend was a large, shaggy, English Sheep dog. He never named the animal in all the time he had been around it, but he loved it all the same. The animal watched over him while he dreamed, name or no name. William had seen an English Sheep dog once at a fair and fell in love with the animal at once. Ever since then he begged his father for one, but his request fell on dead ears. His father didn’t want to take care of the beast, and he told William that once the boy got older then maybe he could reconsider it. Even with his father’s discouragement, William constantly talked about the funny looking dogs to anybody that would listen. He used to draw pictures of the animal for Anna while they played in the yard on summer days.
Soon after the fair, in which William had first seen the dog, he started dreaming of a large sheep dog. The dog had been in almost every dream from that moment on. It was his best friend, save Anna. It protected him from everything. He couldn’t remember ever having a really awful dream with that dog inside of his head. That was until tonight. Tonight he had a nightmare, and the dog was there.
The dream started plainly. William was standing alone in the dark. A large pale-faced moon shone down, casting light that diluted the dark blanket of night. The dog was not with him, but the dog wasn’t always with him right away. That did not worry the boy. The dog would come.
William heard something whimpering off in the night. It was a high pitched wail, but it wasn’t piercing. The noise simply hung in the air around him. What ever was making the noise sounded hurt. William felt a twinge of alarm. He wished that his friend would show up. Where was his friend? He wanted the company, but the dog didn’t appear. A horrible thought occurred to him then-what if it was his fiend that was hurt. William began to run towards the sound.
The sound grew closer as William went along, and he could hear the pain in the cry now. Then up in front of him about twenty yards away, he saw a mound of white fur heaped on the ground. It was his friend. The massive dog lay defeated in the mud. A large red splotch of blood stained the animal’s side. William saw a viscous wound dug into the dog’s ribs. It appeared as if it had been stabbed with something. Crimson lifeblood flowed from the wound like water from a broken pitcher, spilling out of the body in a thick red flow. The dog drew air in heavy liquid breathes. Its chest rose sharply and deflated quickly as the animal tried to gain oxygen from the blood that was suffocating its lungs.
William seeing his friend, his protector, savagely injured fell to his knees as despair filled him. The ground under him was sloppy wet, and he could feel the cold muddy earth searching for him through the knees of his pants. He tried to call to the animal, and managed a small feeble cry that reflected the pain he saw in the animal in front of him. The dog’s head turned slightly, lazily, and William saw the glaze in the animal’s eyes. He knew that his friend was going to die.
It’s a dream, he thought, amazing things can happen in dreams. The idea that if he could just lay one hand on the beast then he might be able to heal it somehow filled his conscious thought. This was his dream. He should be able to control the events in it. William inched forward, crawling on his hands and knees instead of standing and advancing.
“It will be okay,” he whispered into the night. The dog’s head lolled, and a sense of urgency overtook William. He began to crawl faster towards the animal. The earth under him squished between his fingers as he went forward, and it almost seemed that the closer he got to his friend the harder it was to pull his hands out of the muck under him, as if something was trying to hold him back.
The dog began to convulse rapidly. The seizure echoed up and down the dog’s flank in tiny shockwaves. The animal let out one, long, slow howl of pain that was barley audible yet terrifying at the same time.
“No,” William gasped, because he knew in his heart that the animal was on the very brink of death. He tried to force his way forward still believing in the idea that his touch could heal the dog in some way. Each time he lifted and placed his hand in an attempt to advance, it sunk wrist high in the mud. He was breathing heavily, grunting with each effort to free himself from the mud and move forward. He was so close now that he could smell the animal, but what was worse he could smell the heavy odor of the animal’s blood mixing with the wet earth around it. This is what death smells like, he thought. Blood and rotten soil. I am in the very presence of death.
He wouldn’t allow the thought to take control. It would be crippling if it did. He battled forward. This was his dream. He should be able to control it. He closed his eyes as he forced his right hand free from the muddy earth incasing it. He remembered the dog as it had been in previous dreams. He remembered it healthy and vibrant. He remembered his friend. The one that would lick him and make him laugh; or keep him warm when he was cold. He focused on those thoughts, willing them to take hold in this dream, trying beyond hope to help his friend cheat death.
It’s my dream, he thought. I can change it. I must.
As he focused on trying to change to dream in his head, he kept fighting with the mud, trying to free his hands in order to make it one step closer. He struggled on until he was unable to pull his hands free any longer. Finally when the strain of focusing on the dream and focusing on moving forward became too much, he opened his eyes. His hands were buried in the mud a good inch above his wrist. He managed to plant his feet below his chest and between his arms. He tried to pull himself free with the muscles of his legs, but all the effort did was make the muscles in his shoulders scream with agony. Slowly, he felt panic sink in. He began to wail as he tugged at his trapped hands, hoping to free himself, hoping to save his friend.
William knew that he was right next to the animal. All he had to do was get one hand free and reach out. He glanced away from his hands and saw that the animal was no more than two feet in front of him. There was no movement in its chest. There was no air going into and out of the lungs of the animal. William felt tears well in his eyes, and he began tugging frantically at his stuck appendages, needing to get them free, having to get to the dog.
William could see the wound in the dog’s side from where he was. It was a deep round hole. Blood was no longer running from it, but from the looks of the dog’s fur and the ground surrounding the animal there may not have been any blood left inside the dog to flow from the hole. William looked at the wound, and he saw one small bubble of blood inflate, strangely transparent and red at the same time. The bubble stayed like that for a few seconds and then popped soundlessly. William wondered if it was the dog’s soul escaping from the carcass that had been its home. It was too much for him to take.
“You can’t die!” he yelled towards the dog. “You can’t leave me alone.” Anguish controlled his voice as he continued to yell.
Exhausted, William rested his head against the muck covering the ground, crying for the loss of his friend. He wondered again if he could change things. If only he could make it to the animal then maybe there would be a chance. He wondered if he woke…would it all be better? I can just fall back asleep and the animal will be fine, he thought.
Somehow, he knew deep inside that his friend was gone forever, dream or no dream.
He felt that there was something to powerful about the situation that wouldn’t allow it to be fixed. His friend was dead, and now he was all alone.
Then another thought occurred to him, and it seemed a bit to complex for his young mind to grasp. Yes, this dream felt different. He had been telling himself that. But how did he know it was a dream? He thought about that with his face planted in the mud, with his shoulders burning from the effort to free his hands from their strange prison. How did he know this was a dream? He had been focused on that-on knowing it was his dream. He had been trying to change his current scenario, because it was his dream.
How did he know that?
You don’t know that you’re in your own dream, he told himself. Not until you wake up from it, but he did know that he was dreaming. Perhaps it was because the presence of the dog, dead or not, but he didn’t think so. Something was terrible wrong with all this, and the fear that William had been holding back suddenly came in a tidal wave of anxiety, washing over him and drowning all hope of things fixing themselves.
As William began to shake with the sadness that filled him, he noticed the green-twinged fog that was rolling in. He caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and looked up. The fog was all around him. He looked at his fallen comrade, and the wound on the dog’s flank was gone. The blood that had stained the animal’s fur was crusted into a black shell.
William felt fear squeezing him with all of its unseen force, constricting his lungs. Something bad was going on, and he needed to free himself, now. Planting his legs under him once more, he pulled with all the adrenaline that coursed through his veins, and the bond trapping his hands gave a little then released him all together. He stumbled backwards and landed forcibly on his behind in the mud with a splat.
Move, he told himself, but as he stood, he didn’t know whether to run from this place or go and try and save his friend. In his head there was still a chance that he could change things and save the dog. Bravery and love overtook his fear, and he turned to the dog, still hoping beyond hope that he could manipulate what was happening. The black-crusted blood made him hesitant, but he reached his hand out regardless. He focused on healing the dog, and his fingers touched the course fur that covered the animal. His unconscious started screaming at his conscious, ‘ forgot the damn animal and get out of here while you still can.’
William pressed his hand against the animal’s side, and he felt the chest rise under it. He had done it. He had healed the animal. He felt an extreme happiness. Then he felt the heavy rumble in the chest, and heard the livid growl, sneaking into the night. Finally his conscious brain heard his unconscious mind, and he knew that he should have run the moment he freed himself from the mud.
William began to pull back just as the head of the dog lifted out of the mask of mud and fog that was cloaking it. William saw the brilliant green eyes, like emeralds glimmering out of the animal’s eye sockets. He felt a great terror at the sight of those eyes, and he stumbled backwards, splashing in the cold mud as he went. When William was able to pull his attention away from the strange glowing eyes of the beast, he noticed the long muzzle and gaping mouth full of razor sharp teeth. This was no longer his friend. This was no longer the dog that had accompanied him on all those nights. Instead it was a beast, and he seemed to see the size difference in the thing for the first time. This animal was nearly twice as large as the one he thought it to be. William reared back as the fanged mouth snapped at him. He screamed, and fell back in the mud as the animal reached full height. He could see it for what it was now, a great white wolf. The smell of dark mud and blood filled William’s nostrils once more. That’s the smell of death, his brain whispered, and the animal lunged for him.
That’s when he woke to the sudden crash of thunder outside his room.
That’s why he felt so scared and alone.
William dipped his hands in the water basin and splashed some water on his face. He wasn’t feeling any better about his dream now that he remember what it was. As a matter of fact, he was becoming extremely worried about the whole thing.
On his way to the bathroom, he peeked into his parent’s room. Neither of parents were there, and he didn’t see any sign that anybody had been in there. Feeling a bit confused, he continued to the bathroom, hoping that some cold water may wash away the grudge of worry on his mind. The water felt good as he splashed it on his face. It seemed to clear his head of the lingering clouds of sleep, but it did nothing to prohibit his mind from racing. He was hoping that his mother and father would have been fast asleep in bed. He would have liked to curl up in between them for the rest of the night, his dad‘s good night rest be damned. He needed that feeling of protection that parents can bring. Where could his parents be at this time of the night with the storm raging outside? It just didn’t feel right. He wanted their company, but that wasn’t going to happen. If not his parents’ company then whose?
Anna’s.
William felt the urge to go stomping through the rain to the servant’s quarters out back and see if she was awake. He hadn’t seen Anna that much lately-not as much as usual that is. He would sure like to se her now. She always seemed to comfort him. She was like a big sister really, that is as far as William could guess what a big sister would be like. Splashing his face once more with cool water, he wiped off and headed back to his room.
As much as he wanted company, he would never go out to get Anna. His parents would be furious with him, and that was the last thing that he needed right now. Just get back in bed, he thought to himself. Get back in bed and pull the covers over your head. In the morning you can find Anna and tell her all about the dream.
The dream. That damned dream.
William’s thoughts shifted back to the visions that had woken him; particularly back to the life like quality of the events. Never had he dreamed like that before. His dreams no matter how joyous or terrifying had always felt…well…like a dream. This dream seemed all too real for him. He thought back to the dread he felt during the dream and realized that he was still feeling the gut wrenching emotion. Could it all just be in his head? He hoped so, as he remembered the nasty green eyes behind the fanged mouth of the wolf from the dream. “God help us all if that thing ever became real,” he whispered.
The thought of going to find Anna popped back into William’s head. She could help him with all these crazy ideas, but he knew that if his mother found him running around after bedtime there would be hell to pay. He reached his room, and suddenly became very curios where his mother and father might be. With the storm outside they wouldn’t be out on the grounds. Stopping and listening, William confirmed what he was thinking. There was no noise in the house-save the creak of the boards under his own feet. He stood still for a moment, listened. He didn’t here anything. His room was at the top of the steps, and he peered over the smooth, hand-carved banister, trying to see if he could catch any movement downstairs. He noticed nothing except the darkness of what seemed to be an empty house. If his mother and father were downstairs they must be sitting in the dark. He saw no flicker of candlelight, dancing across the floors of the downstairs, and no light from the fireplace in the family room. It was just the gentle ebony of night broken up occasionally by the light from a lightning bolt sneaking into the house.
William wondered if he was possibly still dreaming- if this was some manifestation of his loneliness. He stepped to the door of his parents’ room, once more, just as lightning filled the sky with electric white light, and he could tell that no one was in that room. The covers to the bed weren’t even ruffled. He stepped back from the room as if it possessed some form of threat to him. He could hear his own breath rattling from his lungs as he turned towards the steps on his right. The orange light from his candle cast elongated shadows down the stairs, and he pondered whether to head that direction.
If his mother found him roaming the house she would be beyond rage. His mother was very strict when it came to certain things. William was to be clean before bed, and once in bed that is where he was to stay.
Once he had made a mistake. Before bed he drank to much water. He got up in the middle of the night to go relieve himself. His mother must have heard him scampering across the hallway floor, because she was in his room waiting for him when he got back. When he tried to explain, she slapped him and hoisted him into bed.
“Little boys do not wonder at night,” she had said to him, shaking a finger in his face. Her breath was like fire as she spit the words at him, and he spent the rest of the night sleepless afraid that she wasn’t finished scolding him.
He loved his mother with all his heart, but sometimes her temper seemed to get the very best of her. It was that thought that stayed his feet at the top of the stairs. Then a volley of thunder roared, and William needed to find someone in the house. He could no longer stand the thought of being alone. With his dream lingering heavy on his mind and the storm crashing in on the house from outside, he felt very cold and afraid. He found himself half way down the steps when another thunderous crash echoed in the house. He sprinted down the remaining steps. He didn’t care if he did run into his mother. Her rage would be better than his solitude.
Once at the bottom, William noticed that no light could be found dancing across the yellow painted walls of the house. He stepped into the entry room, which was the first room one came into when entering the house, and looked around. Rain was knocking on all three of the windows in this room, and he wondered how he hadn’t heard it before. It was heavy, almost pleading, as if the rain were trying to force its way through the walls to get inside the house. The front door was unlocked, which seemed amazingly odd to the boy, and he stepped in that direction.
William thought about opening the door and poking his head out into the night, but something didn’t seem completely right about that idea. Maybe it was the forcible sound of the rain on the windows and walls, or maybe it was his frazzled conscious. Either way, he decided to stay away from the unlocked door and peer out the windows instead.
Through the square four-inch pains of glass that made up the window on the northern wall, William could see the lighted orifices of the church that rested just north of his house. It had been his father’s idea to build the church there on top of the hill, overlooking town. There had been some grumbling from the town folks, because the church was so high above the rest of the town. Everybody would have to scale the hill in order to make service. In the end his father got what he wanted, and the church was built just two hundred feet from where William now stood.
William felt a small amount of relief to see lighted windows, even if it was in another building. It helped dissolve the thoughts that everybody else in the world had simply vanished. Through the raindrops, William saw a shadow pass in front of the yellow twinge of the window. The shadow was merely a dark shape against the flickering light in the church, but he could tell that the shape had been a person. He wondered if both his parents where up at the church for some reason. What reason he couldn’t figure, but it could be possible? They had to be somewhere, and it seemed that they were nowhere in the house.
William smeared his face against the window and peered through the storm at the small red brick church. Right now all he could see were lighted windows and the dark outline of the structure against the rolling tide of cloud and bolt beyond it. He waited eagerly, hoping to see another flicker of shadow in the window, but nothing happened for several seconds. Then William saw another shadow pass in front of the same window as before. It was followed by a smaller shadow that appeared and disappeared all most at once. The light coming from the windows seemed to pulsate against the storm-first becoming bright then dimming a bit.
William thought about going up there to see if his parents were at the church. He knew the penalty would be harsh if they were there and he came strolling in out of the rain. He knew that it would be worse if they weren’t there, and they caught him. He decided to watch from his perch.
After several minutes of no action, a dark shape came out of the church, and another scampered after it. William couldn’t make out many details through the rain, but he could see the two people like dark wraiths in the night. Lightning flashed, and William caught sight of a big man, broad shouldered and tall, and William knew at once that it was his father. The other man looked to be the preacher. He was a small, skinny, balding man that walked a bit hunched over.
Outside the rain failed to slow, and the lightning was putting on a show across the sky. Brilliant, blinding, zigzag stands of blue-white light joined the heavens with the earth below it. Thunder sounded in heavy chorus of ground shaking explosions, and rain drops fell in fat ripe drops, pelting anything and everything in its path. The ground was slick with runaway water and mud, and the trees swayed in the stormy wind as if entranced by the squall itself.
William watched as his father and the preacher engaged in what seemed to be a heated argument. His father was flailing his arms and pointing back into the church. William couldn’t hear them of course, but he could imagine his father’s great voice competing with the storm for audience in the preacher’s ears. The preacher seemed to be trying to comfort William’s father with soft gestures, and William could not imagine that the preacher’s high-pitched voice would be audible above the storm. The preacher kept pointing back at the church, as if pleading to go back inside out of the storm. William’s father turned, with a glance towards the house, and marched into the church with the preacher hot on his tail.
William wanted to run out the front door and up to the church now more than ever. Why was his father so upset? Was his mother sick up at the church? What was going on?
The image of Anna filled his mind, and he made a sudden decision to find his friend and ask her if she knew what was going on. Anna stayed in the servant’s quarters out back, but if his mother had been sick maybe she had been sent for. Someone in the servant’s quarters had to know something. He took one last look into the night and decided he didn’t care about the consequences of being caught out of bed. His nightmare had upset him, and now something was obviously upsetting his father. He wanted to find Anna. She could help him. William spun from the window determined to make it out the back door and across the yard.
His mother was behind him.
William felt a fresh wave of fear take him as he turned and saw her standing there. She appeared from nowhere, made no sound as she stood behind him, and had in no way made herself known. William braced himself for the slap he thought was surely going to come, but then he noticed his mother’s appearance and her lack of concern at finding him out of bed.
She stood there, silent like a statue, and William noticed that she was watching out the window. Her white dress sported a large dark stain on the front of it. The image of the injured dog from his dream drifted back to the front of William’s mind. He forced himself to look, and he saw no wound. The dress was just stained. He could see now how the rain had soaked the cotton of the dress. The wet material clung to his mother’s body, exposing the curve of her hips and breast. Her hair was down, and it hung in long wet strands across her slim shoulders and narrow cheeks. The beauty of her face was distorted both by the ugly expression she wore and the shadow that filled the house. She looked subdued and dangerous at the same time, like a great lion trapped behind steel bars. Her eyes seemed vacant as she continued to stare past him, through the window and up at the church. Her gaze never faltered, and it seemed that she fought her lids back from blinking so that she didn’t miss anything that may happen outside. Her lips where drawn ever so softly into a soft white line. The corners of her mouth twitched involuntarily. Her right hand was at her chest opening and closing, moving up and down all at once, as if caught in an endless cycle that it could not break. Her left hand clutched at the hip of her dress, drawing up the material into a small crumpled bundle. The sight of her was ghastly, and William began to think that she was a ghost.
“You should be in bed,” she said in a detached voice. It held no malice or contempt, and the words were spoken as if stating fact rather than brandishing a warning.
“I had a dream,” William replied feebly, mainly because it was the first thing to come to his mind. His mother didn’t look down at him; she just stared out the window. Her eyes never blinking filled with the brilliant sparkle of the lightning that flashed through the window.
“Mom?” William asked worriedly, but his mother gave no response.
“Bed,” was all she replied.
“Why’s dad at the church?” William asked, wondering just how far he could push the situation before his mother snapped from her catatonic state. Something was obviously wrong with her, but he had no idea what it was.
“Because he’s a sinner,” she replied in the same detached voice and offered no more explanation.
Worried even more now, William asked, “Mom are you okay?”
She seemed to stir at this, but her dead stare on the church never fell to meet her son’s eyes. Her left hand dropped the bundle of dress it had collected and reached out for William. William tried not to flinch at this. The hand found his head, and touched it softly as his mother stroked the boy’s brown hair with a long loving gesture.
“My hair fell,” she said with a slight bit of glee in her voice.
William felt no comfort in his mother’s touch. She seemed very far away, and he didn’t like the way she was fixed on the church. He remembered the exaggerated motions of his father, almost as if something terrible had happened. That coupled with his mother’s behavior was scaring him worse than his dream.
“Mom why are you all wet?”
No answer. She just continued to stroke his head.
“Momma, I’m scared.”
“Shhhhhhh.” she whispered softly. “Hush now. Mommy took care of things.” Her hand continued to stroke William’s head, as her eyes continued to stare out the window. William saw her expressions harden. Her eyes narrowed, and her mouth bent into a sneer. He started to turn back towards the window. He wanted to see what was happening. He wanted to know what could invoke such a look on his mother’s face.
His mother’s hand clamped down on his hair preventing him from turning. She yanked his head to keep it straight, and the pain of the follicles pulling from his scalp was enough to bring tears to his eyes.
Her hand tightened further. Her face turned into an awful grimace as she continued to look out the window and up the street at the church. William had never seen so much hatred.
“Mom,” he squealed as the pain became too much to bear, and she finally broke her concentration on the church and looked down at him. Her face softened, and her hand released its iron grasp on the thatch of William’s hair that she had been pulling. There seemed to be love in her gaze, but she still seemed far off in her own mind. She bent down and took his hands, raising them up and kissing them. She turned her head queerly as she did so and rolled William’s hands over in hers. Puzzlement worked its way across her face.
William wondered what was going on. His head hurt from the force of his mother’s yanking. He wished his father would come home. His mother was scaring him.
“You have mud on your hands,” she said in a dreamy voice, and William expected her rage to finally take center stage. She said no more about it. She only rolled his hands over and looked at his nails.
“Mud?” he asked, and it was more a thought aloud as he considered what his mother had said. There was a good five minutes of hand scrubbing before bed tonight, and there had been no mud what so ever under his nails. He stole a glance at his hands, nervous to completely take his attention from his mother. His nails were soiled with mud. As a matter of fact, the mud was down right caked under the nails as if he had just been outside digging in muck.
Or stuck in it.
His stomach gave a quick jump as he remembered the mud shackles from his dreams. It was just a dream, he told himself, but then he looked back down at his hands. You thought it was more, a small voice in the back of his head told him. You thought it was more than a dream. The voice was right, he did remember considering that at one point. He remembered the odd feeling of knowing he was in a dream, of trying to change it.
William tried to pull his hands from his mother’s grasp, but she held fast to them even after he began to tug away from her. Her eyes flashed with a crazy hysteria, a mad rage that he would never believe could inhabit his mother’s face. He remembered the large wolf from his dream, and suddenly his mother reminded him of the snarling beast.
William pulled on his hands again, frantic to get away from his mother, and the wild look left her eyes. She stood back up and continued her vigilance of the church out the window. William stepped back.
“Go to bed,” his mother said in a soft voice. “Go upstairs and go to bed. Now.”
William sidestepped around her. He made it to the steps, and realized he was afraid to go up the stairs and back into his room all by himself. He also knew that he needed to get away from his mother and whatever state she was in. He stopped, glancing back at his mother. She remained still, looking out the window. He wanted so much to be able to go and wrap his arms around her right then, wanted the warm love that only a mother can provide. It was a harsh feeling due to the fear he had of the woman right then. He looked up the stairs, wavering in his resolve to be strong and to go up to bed alone.
“Mom,” he asked the back of her head. She didn’t turn just acknowledge his request to be heard.
“Can we get Anna from her quarters to come sit with me a bit?”
He saw his mother go rigid, and her head bent back over her shoulder. William saw the madness flash across her eyes again. A funny smile snuck across her face, but no words came from her just yet. He watched as his mother’s eyes narrowed and pinpointed him where he stood. The funny smile faded into a grimace, and William felt like turning and running up the steps, slamming the door to his room, and throwing the bolt, locking his mother away from him.
“I don’t think that will be possible,” his mother said. William, sensing the harshness in his mother’s voice, turned and took the first step up the stairs. His mother turned away from him, looking back out into the storm, watching what ever play was unfolding up the lane.
“Anna,” she whispered in words that barley carried across the room to her son. “Anna has gone.” Her voice seemed to relish the very words it was saying.
William, catching the steely coldness in his mother, took the steps two at a time. Flinging himself into bed, he pulled the covers over his head. He began to cry. It appeared that the storm had stolen both his friends tonight.
