Phobia (7 page)

No! Not him! Not my Colin!
I refused to believe Colin was anything but sweet, but an alternative explanation eluded me.

The darkness was darker than anything I’d ever seen. It felt thick, suffocating, like a wool blanket over my face.

“Colin?” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, Dana. I’m so sorry.”

Why?
I wondered.
Please don’t tell me you’re sorry you’re about to kill me.

“I’m going to stay right here by your side. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m scared, Colin.”

“I’m going to stay right here beside you,” he repeated, “I’m not going to leave you, Dana.”

“Stay with me, please. I need you.”

“Please wake up, Dana. Please.” His voice broke on the second ‘please’.

Is he crying? What the hell for?

“Please wake up,” he whispered again.

I’m trying to, Colin!

* * *

When I woke, I was safe in my bed. Moonlight streamed through the windows, bathing the room in a soothing glow. Then I realized that it wasn’t moonlight, but my LED nightlights, which were once again working.

What a freaky dream. It sounded like Colin was right here in the room with me.

I got up and checked the light switch and confirmed that the power was on. My laptop sat on its table beside the bed, closed and shut off, just the way I had left it. I opened it and pressed the power button.

The digital clock beside the bed said 4:25.

Wait a minute.

The clock wasn’t blinking. I looked at my computer and confirmed that it was indeed 4:25 am. Colin wouldn’t be up for at least another hour.

If there had been a power outage, the clock would be blinking and the time would be wrong. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and giggled to myself. Of course the clock wasn’t blinking. It was just another one of those damn dreams. That explained the creepy thick darkness with nothing but Colin’s voice.

Maybe the intruder had been a dream too!

There was one way to find out if it had been a dream. I crept out to the living room, glancing furtively around corners, looking for signs of an intruder. Everything was exactly as it should have been.

The phone was in its cradle, where it belonged. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID screen to see which number had called last, and on what date.

The last number was my co-worker Pauline, who had called me the day before the accident to ask me if I’d cover a shift for her. I had told her I wouldn’t be available. (given that I planned to quit the job.)

All of the calls on the list were old. There was nothing new. There should have been at least two new calls. The phone had rung twice – once when I was besieged at the front door by unwanted intruders, and once when one of the intruders had answered my phone. The fact that there were no new calls confirmed that it had all been a dream: the knock at the front door, the phone call, the darkness. My sanctuary was secure.

I made a pot of coffee and returned to the bedroom to see if Colin was around yet. He wasn’t.

In the dream, I had been about to leave the house to refill my prescriptions. In reality, I had actually been planning to do that but now I was having second thoughts. What if the dream was prophetic? What if someone came to my door the moment I tried to go outside? It was a matter of timing; that was all. There was no way there would always be someone on the doorstep. Odds were, I could open the door anytime and find nobody there.

Like right now, for example.

I could open the door right at that moment and nobody would be there. And so what if there was? It wasn’t the end of the world. All I had to do was tell whomever it was to go away, that I wasn’t interested in whatever they were offering.

Open the door. Go ahead. Do it. Prove that there’s nothing out there.

I walked to the front window and peeked through the blind to confirm that the doorstep was empty. The street was empty. Not a soul was in sight.

See? It’s safe. Now open the door.

I placed my hand on the knob.

DING-DONG!

I jumped back at the sound of the doorbell. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a doorbell.

What the hell?

DING-DONG!

I started to laugh when I realized the sound wasn’t coming from the door at all, but from my laptop. The doorbell sound was my email notifier. I ran back to my bedroom to check.

There were two new emails. One was junk mail from a Christian dating site. “Find the match God has chosen for you,” it said.
Yeah, right, God needs to use Internet spam to find people dates.
The second one was a poorly written letter informing me that I had inherited a large sum of money from a member of the Nigerian royal family. I deleted both.

Damn! Where are you, Colin?

He didn’t come online at all that morning, which sucked because I’d really wanted to talk to him about the bizarre nightmare that was already fading from my memory.

Maybe I should start writing this crap down.

Writing might not be a bad idea, actually. It was therapeutic, from what I’d heard. I’d always dreamed of one day writing a book. Maybe journaling my strange dreams would be a good start.

I sat down at my computer and opened a new Word document. I thought for a moment about where to begin, then started to type. Any plans I’d had to leave the house or open the door to check for intruders were forgotten as I delved into the surreal dreamscape that had been my nightly home.

I lost track of time while writing. I took a break to stretch my legs and drink some water, and then resumed work on my manuscript. I wasn’t sure when it had ceased being a journal and made the transformation into a manuscript, but that was how I now thought of what I was writing: a manuscript. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it when I was finished but I had a feeling that the tale was far from over.

I didn’t hear from Colin that evening, so I sent him an email:

Miss you. I’ve had some pretty bizarre dreams lately. I’ve decided to start writing them down. Who knows, it might make a good story one day. Going to go to bed now. Hope I catch you in the morning.

Dana

I nestled into a plush pile of pillows and duvet, floating on a breeze of Valium like a piece of dandelion fluff. Writing about my scary experiences had given me some peace of mind. For the first time in many nights I looked forward to a restful sleep.

~*~

~ 14 ~

I was not surprised to find myself in yet another strange place, given the bizarreness of my recent dreams.

It looked like a factory or refinery of some sort. Metallic structures surrounded me far and wide like an endless city consisting entirely of industry.

Two pale suns lit a clear blue-green sky that reminded me of a tropical sea. Even combined, the twin suns did not match the intensity of the sun on Earth.

Ashen towers stretched toward the aquamarine sky. Pipes coiled up the sides of the towers, connecting one to the next. Layer after layer of steel grate walkways zig-zagged from tier to tier, linked with staircases and spanning the gaps between towers. From what I could see, I could walk from one end of whatever-this-was to the other without ever touching the ground.

I climbed the nearest stairway to the level above ground and followed the walkway around the side of the massive tower. The hollow clank of my footsteps echoed on the steel grate.

I contemplated for a moment the wisdom of venturing deeper into this bizarre place. The thought of getting lost in a maze of steel didn’t appeal to me but I continued forward nonetheless. I followed the walkway, winding upward around one tower and onto the next. It occurred to me that climbing a narrow staircase to a dizzying altitude was uncharacteristic for me, given my intense fear of heights, but I felt compelled to climb despite the growing unease in my gut.

I heard a faraway noise – a dull metallic clang. A few seconds later, the rail beneath my hand thrummed as the sound waves reverberated through the structure. I froze, waiting and listening.

I heard it again. This time it was closer.

CLANG!

It was the sound of one gigantic piece of steel crashing into another with tremendous force.

CLANG! CLANG!

It was getting closer.

With each clang, the sound waves intensified, resonating through my body from the steel grate beneath my feet. Something gargantuan was coming my way.

A metallic cacophony erupted all around me. My ears ached from the sound, but I didn’t dare let go of the handrail to cover them.

The world shook.

Towers swayed and I heard the metallic clatter of pipes rattling against the steel structures. I looked over the edge, regretting how high I had climbed. If only I had stayed on the safe, solid ground.

Giant fissures opened far below. The surface I had deemed safe mere seconds earlier crumbled before my eyes. Massive chunks of dirt and rock fell away from the towers and the place I had stood before starting my climb became a black abyss.

The towers swayed but seemed sturdy. I couldn’t see how far down into the ground they reached, but they appeared to be deeply rooted, as if anchored to the very core of the planet.

No ground was visible anywhere; just more mazes of stairs and walkways leading down into darkness.

An earthquake!

I was trapped at the top of a tower in the middle of what appeared to be the mother of all earthquakes. Earthquakes terrified me. I’d experienced a series of quakes during a visit to Los Angeles some years ago – not devastating by California standards, but no less traumatic for me. I never recovered from the realization that the earth could move under my feet whenever it felt like it, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I’d never felt so out of control in my life. Feeling out of control was the most terrifying of all terrors.

As I clung to the steel railing with all my might, waiting for the end, I noticed words stamped on the tower in front of me. I struggled to keep my eyes focused and read from the swaying structure.

Property of Guh-Ptarng-Bdarng

Universal Seismology Incorporated

All at once I understood, as if plucking a lost memory from the back of my brain.

Guh Ptarn-Bdarng
was the Universal Quake-Maker. And yes, he was gargantuan.

With each one of
Guh
’s heavy footfalls, ripples of energy radiated across time and space, colliding with other worlds. When one of those worlds was at a vulnerable point in its physical composition, such as when tectonic plates were under a peak amount of pressure, a seismic event was triggered. I was witnessing the butterfly effect in action, from an alien world. I understood that each action had a reaction, and that each event was the product of a trigger somewhere in the universe.

How the hell do I know all of this, or even understand it? I totally sucked at science in school!

The real question was, why was I there? Of all the places I could have traveled in my dream, why had I found myself on the Quake-Maker’s home world?

I could only think of one answer: It was a warning.

I was about to have an earthquake at home. One of my biggest worries was about to become reality.

* * *

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I sat up, awake. My alarm clock had gone off even though I didn’t remember setting it.

My bedside lamp was still on, and the novel I’d been reading lay beside me on the bed. If I’d been reading science fiction, it would make sense that I would dream about an alien world, but it was a fantasy novel, filled with warriors, wizards and elves. If anything, I should have dreamed myself into a magical fairytale. Now
that
would have been a good dream, especially if Colin played the part of the prince.

Instead, I had dreamed about a cold steel world where an unseen giant stomped around, creating energy ripples across the universe.

Did I seriously think an earthquake was imminent? Not likely. I didn’t live in an earthquake zone and I’d never experienced a quake the entire time I’d lived there.

Did I need to be worried?

Of course not.

Just another bizarre dream to add to the growing repertoire of weird experiences I was compiling in my manuscript.

I checked the clock. 3:06. Why the hell would I have set the alarm for that time? On closer examination I saw that the alarm hadn’t even been set.

What the hell?

I could have sworn I’d woken to the sound of the alarm.

I wandered to the kitchen for a glass of water.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

“Fuck!”

I spun around, glaring at the microwave. I reached for the cord and found it slack. The thing was still unplugged.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

“Shut up!” I screamed at it. “One more sound and you’re dead, hear me?”

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
it replied.

“Fuck you!”

I stalked back to my bedroom and dove under the covers.

Sleep now, worry about it in the morning.

Tomorrow I would put that faulty piece of crap out in the garage where I wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore.

When I woke again, a big truck was rumbling past the house – the first traffic I’d heard in what seemed like forever.

Did I miss garbage day? Damn! I could have gotten rid of that microwave once and for all!

It occurred to me that I hadn’t taken my trash to the curb once since I’d been home. There was no need. The trash can was empty.

After a few seconds I noticed something different about this truck – the sound didn’t fade away like it should have. It just kept rumbling. I placed my hand on my bedside table and felt a vibration eerily similar to the one from my dream. My bedroom curtains swung, as if in a breeze, but the window was closed.

Earthquake!

I stayed in bed, hidden under the covers. It was too late to run and there was no place to go anyway. One thing I’d learned in Los Angeles was that you couldn’t outrun an earthquake.

My bed rocked back and forth, giving me a slight sensation of vertigo. I clutched at the bedsheets to keep from falling off.

The house groaned and shuddered, then made a
whump
sound. I felt a jolt, then all was still.

I had dreamed of the Quake-Maker, and then we’d had an earthquake shortly afterward.

I wondered for the second time if my dreams were prophetic. Did that mean an intruder was going to enter my home?

My terror from the previous night returned. I wished Colin was with me.

But what if he was? Was he the intruder? A stalker?

I just didn’t know anymore.

I sobbed myself into a blissful dreamless sleep.

~*~