Nightmare

The group, ten or more of us, walked in silence under the beech trees. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows where coming at strange angles, making it look like there was something moving just out of my eyesight. I was in the middle, watching those in front while trying to keep the few behind me up with us, they kept trying to stop; they were too tired now.

I knew we had to keep going, I knew we could not stay the night in the woods. No shelter, no where to put your back and know you were safe from at least on direction.

“I have to stop here, this is where I stop,” she said leaning against a sapling.

“Just a little further, out of the woods and we find somewhere to sleep. I promise.” I lied.

My clothes where wool and cotton, they hung from my frame loosely and chafed my skin from the sweat and heat. The boots on my feet were tight, but only because my feet had swollen after days on the trail. Sweat poured down my face, off my nose. My hair, long and auburn, was tied in a tail and blew easy in the breeze.

I stopped and told the group to listen. Dogs barking in the distance. Hounds, closing in and coming fast – nothing left to do now but run.

***

We run into a train station. The walls are white washed and dusty, doors are mostly red paint and shut, but a few seem to sway with unseen hands opening them to see who we are.

One of the women bolts for a doorway, screaming that she has to find him. Her son has died on the trail and she cannot seem to remember that he is dead and buried. I race to the doorway that she went in, but she is not there, I can see down the hall a long way, further than she could have covered even at a run, but it is empty now, she is gone.

I turn, I hear a pounding footfall, I begin to pass out and just as I close my eyes I see her son, standing in an open loading dock.

“Evil,” I scream.

***

“Evil,” I screamed as my wife woke me this morning in the darkness.