Chapter 2 – Chap 2

I must have dozed off, because I had the same dream again.

The courtroom. The figure stepping in. I roof collapsing. But this time, it continued. The giant figure stepped into the room. It was blue and almost transparent. I could dee right through it to the other side of the room. The giant seemed to look around for a little while before stooping down.

It’s face looked like one of those impressionistic paintings from the nineteenth century. It was a swirling blue mass. It almost looked like his face was made of clouds, shifting around. It wrapped it’s fingers around me.

The fingers felt…real. They were moist and somewhat squishy. When he picked me up, I felt myself sink into his hands. However, he still had an extremely strong grip on me. I couldn’t move.

The figure lifted me up slowly, as if careful not to drop me. It lifted me high above it’s head. So high, I had a whole view of the surrounding area. It was a city. A normal city. Filled with cars and buildings and people. But something…wasn’t right.

The people looked just like the giant. Impressionistic versions of legitimate humans. They’re moving were stiff and mechanical, not lifelike. Everything in this world acted like robots, no life. Just a clunky imitation.

I turned the best I could to face the giant below me. If possible, it seemed even more out of focus than before. It’s head and body were just a mass of fog. I felt myself sink further through t’s hands, which by now didn’t even look like hands, just blurry blobs. Everything around me looked like this. Even I did. When I looked down, all I could see was a faded mess.

I fell all the way through the giant’s hands. I was about to hit the ground, when I awoke to the sound of Jeffery’s voice.

He was shaking me awake. “Mr. West! Mr. West!”

“Ugh..What’s going on?” was all I could think to ask. I wasn’t sure why he’d come here in the first place, and I wanted answers.

“I need your help, Mr. West. This is serious.”

I could see the look in his eyes, and I could see that he was truly serious. He had journeyed all the way from who-knows-where to my house in the pouring rain. He needed something.

Then he asked it again. The same question.

“Mr. West, do you believe in ghosts?”

I’m not sure what made me think back to my dream, but I did. I thought about those things I saw, almost human, but too stiff, robotic, out of focus. I thought about the giant who had lifted me up. I thought about how transparent they were. I knew it was just a dream. But it all felt to real.

Before I could answer, I was interrupted by a knock at the door.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

It sounded as if a gorilla were the one knocking. I began to stand up, but my student stopped me.

“Be careful.”

“What on earth is going on?” I whispered. All of a sudden, things had become quiet, except for the constant knocking at the door.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

It kept going. Jeffery silently led me to the door, motioning for me to look through the peephole. I did, and what I saw still horrifies me. I can’t erase it from my memory.

It was a man, dressed in somewhat old attire, cotton shorts and britches and a jerkin. The sort of clothes they wore in Colonial America. But other than that, I couldn’t see any detail, because the man’s features were blurred, an impressionistic outline of what they once were.

A ghost of his former self. A ghost. I looked back at Jeffery and swallowed.

“What-” I started to say, but he cut me off with a wave of his hand, directing me upstairs. Suddenly, the knocks grew louder, and of different rhythms, leading me to believe there were now more of them, knocking at my door. The knocks were so loud and powerful that I thought they were about to break it down.

As I raced up the stairs, following Jeffery, I heard more knocks coming from my back door, and my side door. They were trying to get in. My student led me up the stairs and down the hall. We ran up to the guest room, which was connected to the attic.

“Pull the stairs down!” Jeffery cried. I reached up and began to pull down the heavy attic stairs. I heard a loud CRASH coming from the first floor. The ghosts had broken in. I managed to pull down the stepladder just as they began to chant.

They’re chant was incoherent, just nonsense. The kind of noise you hear from a newborn baby who hasn’t yet learned to talk. It was composed of grunts and shouts.

I began climbing up the steps after Jeffery. I’m an old man, and I was going fast as I could, but I was still very slow. I heard their footsteps marching up the stairs and down the hall. I mad it into the attic, and Jeffery started helping me pull up the attic stairs.

We closed up the attic just as a strange blue light flooded the room below. I could still hear the sounds of their sickening chant, though somewhat muffled. The attic was dark and dusty. I couldn’t even see two feet in front of me. The sounds of the ghosts below and the rain pounding against the roof were almost deafening.

Suddenly, a small light appeared, illuminating the attic a tiny bit. I realized Jeffery had struck a match. He handed it to me.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Before they find us.”

As he said that a heard hat sounded like an exclamation of some sort coming from below us. This was followed by a piercing creaking noise as the staircase began t lower.

“Mr. West, we need to escape.” Jeffery’s voice no longer sounded panicked, but resolved. I couldn’t read his face in the dark, but I knew that he was determined to find a way out, no matter what.

“What do we do?” I asked.”We’re trapped!”

Then, my student did something unexpected. He snatched the match out of my hand and drew it, hard as could be, into the nearby roof. It caught on fire and spread rapidly. The rain did not quench the flames, as you might expect. Instead, when the water fell on it, it spread faster. As each drop touched the scorching flame, it grew bigger, and hotter. An enormous hole was soon burned out of my roof.

The shouts from below grew louder. I glanced back and saw that the spirits had climbed on one another’s shoulders to reach the cord used to pull down the stairs. Blurry, out of focus arms and hands reached out to grab us.

Without hesitation, Jeffery leaped the full fourteen foot height from the attic to the ground. I tried to follow suit, but was stopped by something. An arm, clutching me by the throat. I yelped in surprise and tried to throw it off. I couldn’t. It was far too strong. I heard it’s satisfied cackle.

More of the surrounded me, piling atop me, suffocating me. All attempts of fighting back were hopeless. I was about to die.

Then an idea popped into my head. As I lay there in agonizing pain, crushed and suffocated by those horrible spirits, I thought of my dream. I stopped attempting to struggle. I relaxed.

It worked. Slowly, but surely, I began to sink through them. I felt like I was being pushed through a mass of gelatin. The ghosts weren’t quite solid. They are apparitions. I tumbled out the blobby mass of bodies, and before they could react, I leaped out of the attic roof, with no regard to safety.

I landed in the bushes surrounding my house. I shakily stood to my feet. My student was nowhere in sight.

I’m absolutely terrified. Those ghosts are chasing me again. I rode in my car for several miles until lost them. I’m idling in the mall parking lot. I don’t know what to do next.

I still don’t know how everything is connected; my dream, Jeffery, the ghost creatures. I’m not sure what to do next. There are cars in the parking lot, but I don’t see anyone coming in or out. There’s a forrest nearby, maybe I can hide there. I need to find Jeffery, too. He must have gone on without me, or worse, been captured.

I’m scared. And I need help.