Deadly Dreams: A Death Walker Novel - Book 1

PROLOGUE

The girl runs along the path in terror. Her long, curly blonde hair whips behind her like a flag in the wind. Looking behind her she screams when she sees the advancing darkness, it is a living thing that consumes everything around it as it moves toward her. Her dress tangles around her legs and she falls to the ground, scraping her hands on the tiny pebbles that make up the paths in her father’s garden maze.

Her tears blind her, but she scrambles to her feet and continues running. She knows the paths in this maze better than her own father does and she knows how to get out, but in her terror and the darkness of night it’s hard for her to remember. All she knows is that she has to keep running or she will die. She hears a howl in the distance as she rounds a corner, coming up short as she runs into a dead end. She gasps in fear because she knows that this path was open earlier today when she walked here.

The howl is closer now and she whips around and looks back the way she came. The danger continues to move and she whimpers when she sees that a slithering fog has joined the darkness that advances toward her. She knows there is another path that leads into this one and it has to lie between her and the black nothing, if it isn’t there she will die and no one will ever know the truth.

Just then a shaft of moonlight shines down on the maze and lights up the entrance to the path just a few yards away. She glances at the danger and stifles a cry; she has to get there before it did. She starts toward the opening at a run and the darkness seems to move a little quicker. She looks into it and screams when she sees faces moving through it like shadows; ugly faces, evil faces. She skids around the corner just as a tendril of darkness reaches out to touch her.

She nearly cries in relief when she sees the bench ahead. She knows where she is and knows instantly how to get out. She glances behind her in panic and notices that the swirling mass is nearly to her now. It is moving faster now that it has more room to spread out in the center of the maze.

The howl comes again and to her it sounds like it is right behind her. She whimpers again and tries to run faster, but her body is so tired already and her lungs are starving for oxygen. Yet, she continues to push herself further. She doesn’t want to die. Just when she has found...what? What has she found?

She was back to running between the trees that make up the walls of the maze. She runs around another corner and nearly entangles herself into the opposite side. She knows that the entrance is just a few turns away when she comes to a complete halt. There in front of her stands Alexander, his hand held out to her.

Her Alex, the only one she will ever love. She cries out to him, but her voice is drowned out by a howling wind. She takes a step toward him and then turns quickly when she feels the coldness touch her.

The darkness is on her and the ghostly arms belonging to the faces reach out toward her. She screams and turns to run only to be held back by the slithering fog running along the ground. She can feel something wrap around her ankles and lock like manacles, keeping her from going anywhere.

She feels ghostly fingers wrap around her wrist and tug her back. Her screams becomes more frantic, her other hand reaching toward Alex.

She doesn’t understand why he isn’t helping her. She looks into his eyes and the pain and sadness there touches her like it’s her own until she can’t catch her breath. She pulls against her restraints until she is exhausted. Her tears stream down her face in rivers, she whispers his name as the darkness consumes her and she is blind. The last thing she sees is his haunting eyes and the last thing she hears is the mournful howl. Then she is swallowed up in darkness and the painful coldness of death.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. –Edgar Allan Poe

CHAPTER ONE

I sat up drenched in sweat yet unable to stop the bone deep shivers; the scream died on my lips. The dreams always ended the same way; with the girl dead. The beginning and any scenes in between are always different. However, besides the dying there are two things that are the same in every dream; the boy that invades the dream and the fact that the girl is running away from someone or something.

I can never see clearly what or whom she is running from other than darkness and shadows, but the terror is always still there when I wake up screaming. It’s always disconcerting when I actually wake up after one and realize I am still alive. When in the dream, aside from the out of date clothes and no resemblance to me whatsoever, it feels like I am this girl. This dream seems to be one of the tamer ones I have had recently, but it still takes too long to shake off the after affects.

I didn’t look over at my clock as I crawled out of bed because I already knew what time it was. The dream always comes at the same time and when I wake up screaming its always one a.m. Distantly, I have noticed the older I get the more the dreams show up and the longer it takes to shake off the feelings of extreme terror and cold.

I walked into the bathroom and rummaged in the medicine cabinet for my pills. I downed one of the capsules with some water and walked back into my room. I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep the rest of the night so I went to the desk in the corner and grabbed my journal and sketch pad and curled up in the overstuffed chair next to the window.

I took a deep breath and opened my journal. I needed to write down what I remembered from the dream before the meds wiped it all. I noticed the date on my last entry; it had only been three days previous. The dreams were getting more frequent and intense and I felt that my sanity was slowly slipping away just like the last time.

I flipped the pages back to the entry before and noticed the date range as almost a week before that. Each entry read like a different story; some so long that they spanned several pages and others taking up only a couple.

I didn’t read them because I didn’t want those dreams to corrupt my thoughts of tonight. I turned to an empty page and put the date and time, closed my eyes and breathed deeply opening up my mind to recall the terror of the dream.

This was one of the actions I hated to do; I actually didn’t want to recall any of it, but the doctor at the hospital had thought this exercise would put me back in the moment so I could write everything down.

He thought a journal might help me. I thought his suggestion was crap four years ago when he suggested it, but have since found that it helps in a way. Go figure! Those days in the hospital were a drugged blur and I preferred not to dwell on the time I spent there, but sometimes memories and thoughts crept in when I was tired and vulnerable.

With my eyes still closed I felt my hand begin to move quickly across the page, moving almost of its own accord or like someone else was directing the pen. The dream was still so vivid that I watched the darkness creep closer through the girls eyes. I felt her heartbeat racing, her breath catching. I felt the ache in her muscles from running, and the scrapes from the pebbles on her hands.

I felt the rasp in her throat from screaming; felt the tracks of tears on her face. I could still feel the slithering snake like fog touch her and the ghostly arms pulling at her. I felt the ache in her heart when she couldn’t reach the outstretched hand of her love, heard the howl before the darkness took her. Then all was silent and still.

I opened my eyes and took a deep shaky breath. I looked down to see I had written two pages, not remembering doing it. My fingers were cramped and achy and my eyes gritty and dry. I sighed and closed the journal, leaving it for another time.

The pills had already started to dull my senses so I opened my sketch pad where pages of different faces stared out at me, some of different girls, but most of them are of the boy. I turned to an empty page, picked up my drawing pencil and sketched the eyes from my dream.

His eyes were always sad, mournful and full of pain. His face may change from dream to dream, but his eyes always stayed the same. No matter what dream it is, what hair color or difference of facial features I knew for certain that the boy was the same, just by his eyes. What I didn’t get was why the girl always had to die and why he couldn’t help her.

~

I started out thinking of these dreams objectively. It was just some weird dream that would hit me about once or twice a month when I was younger. Each one was different so I just figured I was reading too many kiddy mystery books. Then as I got older they grew in frequency.

At the time I didn’t know what was going on, but when I started getting the dreams almost every night I think I went a little crazy. I wasn’t eating and when I slept it was filled with terror. It was believed I had anorexia and some sort of disorder I couldn’t pronounce.

I made the mistake of describing my dreams and the terror that I felt to a doctor so I ended up doing a stint at the local mental hospital. When I did sleep I would wake up screaming and that’s when they decided to drug me. The drugs knocked me out, but it also dulled my senses to the point that when I had a dream I couldn’t wake up or pull myself out of it. It was an endless cycle of running and darkness.

Back then the dreams didn’t end with the girl’s death. I don’t know why, because I now know from experience that they did and do end there. Maybe I was too young to understand death and dying; now...I know all about it. Because with every dream I have, I feel the life flowing out of the girl.

When I was in the hospital I became almost catatonic from being drugged and not sleeping well. Then one of the newer doctors realized that the drugs were imprisoning me in my nightmares. It took almost a year before I could function again and when I finally was drug free and seemed mentally stable I was then released back to the state.

The seemed mentally stable really meant that I faked it well enough to make the docs believe that I really was okay and able to live in the real world again. By that time I learned that if I wanted out I had to appear normal. I never again made the mistake of telling anyone my business.

I agreed to scheduled shrink appointments and prescribed psychotic drugs. With a good luck and a pat on the back I was released out into the world a year and half older and a little wiser.

I don’t have any family. In fact I don’t even know anything about them. I was laid on the doorstep of a Catholic Church when I was a baby and the sisters raised me until I was old enough to go to the orphanage. Just a note with my first name and date of birth.

The sisters had hoped that someone would adopt me before having to go to the orphanage; they didn’t know that I wasn’t destined to belong to anyone.

CHAPTER TWO

When I was nine years old a middle aged couple took me into their home. They didn’t adopt me, but they took care of me. They let me feel what it was like to have a real life and pseudo family for two years until the dreams took over completely and I ended up in the hospital. They dropped me off and that was the last I ever saw them. After that I went back to the orphanage and that’s where I stayed.

I am one of seven teenagers that still live there. The place is a very large three story Victorian house of which I had chosen the uppermost room away from everyone when the dreams started taking hold of me again. We have a house mother that lives on the ground floor and she is only there really to keep the state happy, but we all are pretty much old enough to take care of ourselves.

We all go to school and do all the normal things kids do except we don’t have a family to come home to. That used to bother me, especially after getting a taste of a real family, but now it’s just a fact of life.

I thought the dreams I had in the hospital were a prelude to the ones I have now. The dreams even then were tame in comparison, though I was having them almost every night. They became less frequent after my drugged state, but when they did come back they became darker. Now with every year I turn older the more I have them and the more intense and scarier they become.

I don’t know why I have the dreams or what they mean; I try not to think about it, but sometimes I can’t help it. What I do know is that after every dream I am left feeling as if a piece of me has been ripped away.

The pills were starting to take over so I tried to focus on the image I had just drawn. This face was once again different, which left me wondering how many different variations of this guy there were, as my fingertips hovered over the image.

My lingering questions...why was I having these dreams and who was this guy? If I let myself think about it, and normally I wouldn’t, I would have to assume that this guy was reincarnated into different lives.

There was no way that two people, or in this case way more than that, would have the same eyes, filled with the same pain and loss. And that thought led me to the girl. What about her? Again, if I was not drugged up...was it a different girl in every dream or was she somehow living all these lives as well?

Her looks were completely different, even her eyes...but the love I had felt in the dreams coming from her toward the boy was the same. This I knew for a fact. I continued to feel that ache after waking up. That was one of the reasons why it was so hard to shake.

It seemed that by now my dreams would start repeating themselves, but so far not one had been the same. The brief scenes I got from each dream were from different times. How many lifetimes do that equal? How many times does this girl die violently in the darkness with only the boy looking on?

I am beginning to think the girl and boy are connected to me. Which is weird because really they are just people in my dreams aren’t they? If they aren’t then that begs the question why me and what were they trying to tell me?

I have had these dreams for a long time and never thought to try and figure out why. They were a part of me so I just accepted them as a facet of my makeup. But what if there were more to them? I mean past lives. Me? Even if I believed in past lives this was just too much to accept. I had nothing to base this on and no one to ask.

These questions were not things I would normally ask myself in the light of day, but the chemicals I take to calm me sometimes make me think more clearly instead of what they are designed to do. Maybe I should think about it. Try to figure it out. What could it hurt? The only part that scares me is the death part. If these dreams were me in past lives why do I keep dying?

I just wondered if one of these times I won’t wake up.

Hi, my name is Danielle-I am fifteen and I am a Death Walker.

I just don’t know it yet.

CHAPTER THREE

I opened my eyes to dreary morning light coming through the windows in my room. I could hear rain pattering against the roof and I groaned. This was the first day back to school after spring break and I felt like crap. I still felt slightly hung-over from the pill and I had a headache. Great start to the day.

I got up and headed into the bathroom to take a shower. I glanced in the mirror and winced at my reflection. Dark circles were a wonderful way to start out the semester. The other reason why I picked my room besides location is that is has its own bathroom.

I am one of three girls at the orphanage and we each have our own bathroom. The Goth Twins or the Twins as I call them share a room. Why? I don’t know when there are so many others to choose from, but then again they are a little strange. They have the second floor to themselves and the four boys are stuck on the ground floor with Ms. Roth the house mother. They don’t care if they have to share a bathroom. Boys are gross.

I skipped drying my long hair since one, I was already running late and two, it was going to get wet from the rain anyway. I threw on a t-shirt and pair of jeans, tied up my boots and grabbed my backpack and jacket. I locked my door, took the stairs at the end of the hall and passed the twins on the second floor landing on my way down.

Trying to make a fashion statement already D? asked one of them.

I didn’t know whether it was Alice or Vicki since they looked so much alike. They really weren’t twins in the familial sense, but they dressed alike, acted alike and were just all over creepy. Guess that’s why they were still here just like me. No one wanted to take Goth teenagers into their home or some kid that had done a stint at the crazy hospital.

You know me, always on the cusp of fashion, I retorted with a grin.

I heard the snort behind me as I hit the ground floor. I saw the boy’s troop into the kitchen ahead of me and Mitch looked back at me and smiled. I smiled back and walked in after him.

Ms. Roth wasn’t the best example of hearth and home, but she took her house mother role seriously. She loved to cook and she made sure we were fed properly. She has been with the orphanage for years and had never married. She always says that as long there are children in the house she will take care of them. That was a plus because if we had to cook for ourselves all the time we would starve.

I hung my backpack and coat on the back of my chair and sat. Ms. R had the table set and enough food out to feed an army,