Authors: Nicole Lee
3
Rose never knew she was a sleep walker. When finding out, she could not help but speculate on how long it had been going on.
Her father had once informed her on how it was not uncommon for her to speak in her sleep when she was still young and in the cradle. Becoming a night-time wanderer never occurred to her as even a remote possibility. Sleep walking was for people with a million other disorders, not her.
The night this concealed secret would become to clear was one unlike any other, where she spent time brooding upon her past shortly before going to bed. She thought about those years as a little girl quite frequently, but never as neurotically as she had been in recent times. Now, at the age of seventeen, Rose often went over in her mind about that final day with her mother. It was three thousand six hundred and fifty days ago, the equivalent of precisely ten years.
Sometimes those recollections filled her with dread, for it was an early lesson in the brutality of the human spirit. It was so easy to wallow in a cesspool of pure bitterness, seeing as how she was a believer in issues from childhood leaking into one’s adult years was not expected but probable.
Sometimes Rose would lay in her bedroom late at night and think about Karen as an anomaly. She hoped that whatever it was which made her Mom the way she had been would not affect her. God, hear me out. I don’t want to be like her. Thank you. Amen.
How come, out of the blue, she could not stop thinking about Karen, after going for nearly a decade of successfully not having that mythically obscure figure on her mind? She tried her best not to recall those early trips filled with, stale coffee, junk food for breakfast, and miserable verbal abuse.
Sometimes she would feel guilty when keeping in mind her less than perfect childhood. After all, her father, Damian, was a stand up man who treated her with nothing but love and kindness from the time she was a toddler. At least she had the unconditional respect, appreciation, and inexplicable affection from one parent.
So many counselors had tried to teach him that not having a mother in his daughter’s life would lead to severe psychological issues. Rose thought the other side of the spectrum was true - if her mother had stayed in her life, she would be wrecked inside.
After making her bed, she sat on top of her blankets and stared out her window, noticing that the wind was shaking the branches of the tree in the front yard.
Her room reflected the way her mind worked. There were posters of countless bands she enjoyed hearing, painters whose works she always found to be inspiring, and countless stunning pictures of places she hoped to one day visit, every location from Paris to Rome to Napoli. Her two dressers were a bright orange, and only one actually held her clothes.
The second was a depository, one filled with potions, books on magical craft and spell casting, plus an entire wealth of occultist history.
When her father asked her why she needed two dressers when she did not have that much clothing, she responded that it was a storing place for her drafts of homework assignments, as well as binders, folders and textbooks for school. Fact of the matter was, this was a stretching of the truth. She was a frantically obsessive writer. Granted, her jottings usually involved ways to bring about manifestations of visions, but still, besides that, she was ordinary. Or so she liked to think.
Her cell-phone, which was hooked up to a generator in the outlet on the other side of the room, suddenly rang. She walked over and flipped it open, discovering a text message.
Looking forward to the first day of school tomorrow? Me neither. See you then. -Melinda.
Rose plugged it back in, walking over to the other side of her mattress, debating with herself on whether or not she should watch television or listen to music, two of her main sleep remedies.
The room felt a little warm, so instead she opened up the window.
Her view of the graveyard neighboring her house seemed larger tonight. The under keeper’s cottage in the distance was lit up, its luminescence shining on the sites surrounding it.
She slipped under the covers, staring at the full moon dormant in the sky through her pane. While enjoying the warmness under the blankets, she brooded over her nervousness concerning tomorrow, and about how the year might go, whether it would be better or worse than the last one.
These thoughts came to Rose while unaware of the nightmare she was about to enter. There were times when she was able to predict ahead of time whether her dreams would be good or awful. On this night, there was no forewarning of what was about to befall her. In the midst of falling asleep she felt her eyes becoming weaker, her body melting into the furniture.
In dreams, time has a way of being different in its very perception. Rose felt as if she had been here for a thousand years, despite the true yet contradictory fact that everything she was seeing seemed brand new, a part of the world she had never even known until this singular moment.
In this delusion she was standing in a hotel hallway. It was large enough to fit inside of a manor’s lobby, but since there were massive doors on either side of the room lined up next to each other, this was not a foyer, but instead an oversized corridor. The ceiling, which was built to resemble the sea‘s surface, possessed large cylindrical chandeliers hanging from it. Numerous lights were held within their bronze metal spaces, like candles trapped inside of a series of bronze cylinders. The floor was shimmering, appearing burnished by the grasping of King Midas himself. Each pillar holding up the wide and choppy upper limit were frames for the entranceways into the chambers.
At first she was happy to be here. She took delectation from the lights shining at the top and bottoms of the majestic space. It reminded her of vacations with her father, where she was so happy just to be away from the boring confines of her nice suburban town, comforted knowing she could return to it, but at the same time indulging in the rapture of being in a new place rich with undiscovered people and locations.
She began walking down the vestibule, when she felt something irritating touch her skin. Staring upwards, something appeared on the ceiling. An aquatic orange flame was forming and devouring the wood above.
Panicking, she saw an elevator at the other end of the area. Deciding to make a sprint for it, she found her feet moving slower.
Before she could reach the lift, a column located seven feet behind her started to creak. The noise was so chaotic that she had no choice but to turn around with the hopes of seeing what it was. The bottom of the pillar had been lost to the inferno, and as a result of losing its foundation, the post fell into the hallway.
It brought destruction upon the corridor.
Rose gasped in shock as an enormous cloud of embers, lumber fragments, crumbled stone, and lumps of smoldering bullion flew in every direction. A plank doused in the combustion emerged from the mountainous conflagration, and like a menacingly swift arrow it headed straight for Rose. She saw it spinning to the fore, an instrument of devastation bound to strike its flames upon her.
She squinted, woken up by her own fright. Relief, that great abiding liberation which only comes every once and a while in someone’s life, filled her with happiness.
Rose then opened one eyelid, and noticed that something was off, shredding any ounce of respite that had a moment ago felt so idyllic.
She sat up, learning that whatever she was lying on had a rough surface.
Rose learned that she was outside. This was apparent because of the cold breeze caressing her face. Her feet were exhausted, signaling to how she had just walked a few miles, and gazing downwards, it dawned on her that she was wearing the white gown that she had put on before falling fast asleep.
Taking in the site with still blurred vision, it became unmistakable where she was.
It was the burial ground next to their house.
She could tell by the mild chill in the air and the still rising dawn that it was morning. Pressing her body to the left, her toes dangled over the edge of the spot she was resting, and it occurred to her that she was somehow above the lawn. Moving to the side so as not to step on a sacred place, she landed on her heels and felt an aching soreness. Turning around, she saw that it was a large tomb, one whose formerly chiseled identification of the departed had faded away on the stone.
Her house was a street away, so she began the small hike, still absorbing the idea that she could be a sleep walker at all.
Shaken by the dream and making her way up the sidewalk situated on the outskirts of the morose necropolis, she was deep in thought about her current affliction. Ideas around why she could have wandered around in the night while barely conscious began forming in her mind. Rose had cast a spell on herself for more energy in order to deal with whatever stress Senior year might bring. Nevertheless, she had performed that specific incantation many times before, especially last year when the finals were around the corner. It was not uncommon and usually worked well, resulting in very few negative side effects except for minimal insomnia and occasional short lasting outbursts of anger.
Rose wondered what could have caused it. Sleep walking had never been a bother before. She noticed a higher spastic level within her own body lately, but she was smart enough to attribute that to the fact that school was starting today.
She was aware the day had not started yet however, because it was way too cold outside, and the sun was not shining yet.
Walking into her home, she looked around to make sure that her father was not out of bed - a rarity, considering he worked a grueling night shift, and for the most part slept in until late evening.
She moved upstairs and changed into the clothes she had prepared to wear on the first day of school, which consisted of a pair of black jeans, a black blouse, and all of her regular waterproof bracelets, coupled with a pentagram necklace she always hid underneath her top.
Moving downstairs after having grabbed her binder, Rose looked at her alarm clock and found that she still had another half hour before class started. She decided there was time to comb her hair, eat breakfast, and brush her teeth.
She went down into the pantry and reached for a box of cereal, grabbing a jug of milk from the fridge and heading to the table. The mystery of what had happened still unnerved her. When she poured the frosted flakes, the cereal overflowed and spilled onto the table.
A picture of her long deceased Grandfather took her by surprise, considering it was a photograph she had never seen before, one of him in his Navy outfit. The snapshot resembled Damian so much that it caused her to lose concentration when trying to prepare breakfast.
She scooped up the pieces of granulated flakes and tried to slide them back in the box, when she heard a voice behind her.
“
Any left for me?”
“
You’re up early,” Rose said to her father, trying to force a smile so as to look casual, before realizing that her smiling on the first day of school was not a normal act.
He sat down across from her, a bowl and spoon in hand. He grabbed the box.
“
I got home sooner last night,” he said. “It was dead. There was no business. At least I clocked in a solid six hours, but it was a waste of time. No one came in. Hey, are you going to make me dinner tonight?”
“
You’re not going to worry about that, right?”
“
Yes,” he said. “I have no food, and I’ll need something to eat before going to work. You know what I’ll be in the mood to eat? Ham, cheese, and hash brown quesadillas, like you used to make. You’d that for me?”
“
Of course,” she said, not in the mood to put a meal together after a day of who knows what stress could befall her. It gave her something new to dread and figure out when she had enough to think about as it was. Yet she loved her Dad, and after all the favors he had done for her through the years, she figured cooking dinner would not be so bad, seeing as how he did not know how to prepare anything except toast..
Damian Whelan was every bit as handsome now as he had been when she was born. At six foot two, he was muscular despite never working out, and had a full head of hair even though his age should have made him bald. Even his skin was not pale, despite almost never getting any vitamin D. His experience of having dealt with her mother scarred him in an unspeakable way, and he avoided the dating scene. There had been a few women in his life since then, but the minute they disappointed him he would immediately rid himself of their company, whether their mistake was major or minor. Many people would have interpreted these maneuvers as being calloused, but Rose knew where he was coming from. Damian would never want to deal with the betrayal, manipulation, rage, and opposition that he had to put up with for years before the state agreed that he deserved custody of his daughter.
Although they had discord every now and then, Rose loved her father. He gave her money, clothes, food (or at least provided the paycheck for the necessary products), shelter, and had managed to fulfill the position of two parents, the mother and father, taking on both roles, an emotional act of high wire balancing described as being anything but effortless.
“
I had an awful dream last night,” he said in between bites.
So did she, of course, so it was hard for her to take sympathy in the fact that her father had a nightmare. Deep down she could not help but wonder if it was as bad as having one which detailed being trapped in a hotel which was burning down, to wake up back in the real world. That is to say, at the very center of a graveyard.