The steady drip of water is what brought her out of her
dream. She sat up, her thoughts fuzzy
and thick. Lethargy was set deep in her
muscles like she hadn't moved in a week.
The room was dark and deathly silent.
She couldn't hear any of the normal sounds of the cabin and that struck
her as odd. Normally the old walls
creaked or the trees were heard rustling outside. Now there was nothing.
Sam looked around, her head refusing to make sense of
anything. She felt numb. There were dark forms on the floor and the
smell of turned earth in the air. The
cold stone slab beneath her felt rough on her skin. Why there was a cold stone slab, she didn't
know. She shivered, rubbing her arms,
suddenly aware that she was naked. Where
she was and how she got there was a mystery to her. The last thing she could recall was going
upstairs to close the crawlspace but nothing more. Everything beyond that was hazy at best.
As feeling seeped back in to her, she realized that she was
sore. Her shoulders felt like they had
been twisted in their sockets and her hands felt raw. Sweat covered her and burned as it seeped
into what had to be hundreds of cuts all over her body. Some of them seemed to form patterns but she
couldn't make them out in the gloom.
She jumped back onto the slab with a gasp when she went to
stand, shocked by the clammy wet mud that her feet found on the floor. It finally struck her that she was no longer
in the cabin. She slowly stepped back into
the mud, intent on one of the mounds on the floor. Kneeling in the dark, she reached out and
touched it, recoiling when she felt the smooth skin of a person. Rolling the body over, she fell back into the
mud with a scream upon seeing the wide, glazed eyes of Jack staring back at
her. The other mounds became apparent as
bodies, none of which were moving.
From the floor she noticed something above her. Two little purple orbs floated there in the
dark, like gems being lit from behind.
Something about them felt so wrong, but so very inviting, like she had
seen them before. She looked away for a
second, but when she looked back they were gone. Nothing but the gloomy shadows remained.
She stood, wrapping he arms around her chest both for warmth
and to cover herself. She was shivering,
the cool, clammy air quickly chilling her.
She wanted to cry but something prevented her. Suddenly she felt someone behind her,
standing just close enough for her to know they were there.
Sam realized that she couldn't move, her body frozen in
place. The only movement she could
manage was the soft shivering of both fear and cold. Whoever was behind her moved closer, touched
her, pressed against her. The contact
was warm, almost searing hot on her skin.
She tried to recoil but couldn't.
Inhumanly dark, rough arms
wrapped around her shoulders and grabbed her head, turning it to one side.
"The lineage lives on..." The whisper of a thousand voices echoed in her
ear. The creature's sickeningly hot
breath rolled over her and her stomach started to churn yet she still couldn't
move. It held her for a moment longer,
making no more sounds.
Then, as quickly as it came, she was alone. Her knees buckled and she fell into the mud,
curling into a protective ball. Tears
flooded to her eyes and she sobbed silently, still unsure of what had
happened. She spent a long time there
before she tried to stand again, suddenly needing to find a way out. Something was still there with her, watching
and waiting as she stumbled around the bodies of her friends towards the only
tunnel out. It could be heard slinking
along, the mud slopping around it as it moved.
Sam tried her best to keep moving, to ignore it, but it was
no use. It was getting closer with every
step. She turned, unable to keep her
nerves any more, but stopped in silence when she found a small girl there,
standing silently in the dark. Her dark
hood shrouded her face, but she couldn't be more than five or six years old.
For some reason Sam felt the need to help the girl, comfort
her. "How did you get down
here?" She knelt down and reached
her hand out, "Don't worry, it'll be okay..."
Suddenly the girl's face shifted into that of a grotesque
grin, her eyes blazing with purple flames.
She laughed before leaping at Sam, easily pulling her to the
ground. In seconds, everything faded
again.
When Sam next awoke, she was in her chair in the cabin. She was still naked, but all of the mud, cuts,
and scrapes were gone. Instead there was
just a small gold chain around her neck, a tiny black amulet hanging from
it. She looked up and both her parents
were there on the loveseat across from her, holding hands and smiling
mechanically at her. Both wore a
matching gold chain and amulet.
"wha-What are you doing here?"
They just looked at each other before turning back to her,
still smiling. Behind them, on the
stairs, there were two little purple orbs buried in the shadows. Sam tried to scream but realized she had no
control of her body. Instead, she stood
up from the chair and moved to kneel before her parents. Their faces had begun to change, deep crags
and rifts splitting the flesh. Still
they smiled, both placing a now-clawed hand on her shoulders, and saying
"Welcome home, daughter."
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