A Voice In the Darkness

Chapter 1
Chapter 1

Chapter Description: This is the first AR story I ever wrote, so it's probably not as good as others. But read and judge for yourself. ^.^

A Voice in the Darkness

Part 1

Are you afraid of it?

Or are you afraid of what you will become?

I wake up in a cold sweat. Those words, the same words I’ve heard in my dreams before. What does it all mean? For the past few months I’ve had a recurring pattern of dreams. In each dream I am in a large, often empty, house. It’s the sort of house you see on those old haunted house movies. Always massive, the mansion-like house seems to go on forever. Each time I enter the house, everything seems more enormous than before. Feeling the urge to explore, sometimes I open doors or look in drawers. Some of the doors lead to bedrooms, some lead to other doors while others lead outside to a patch of dirt. In the drawers, I find seemingly random objects. Sometimes it will be something I’ve been looking for, sometimes just odds and ends. Just before the dreams end, I begin to fear something. Something deep within the house moans and I turn away to run. Then I hear the voice. It wasn’t clear at first, but after many dreams I could understand it clearly. It is the voice of a woman. For whatever reason, the voice is soothing to me. It’s a voice that sounds familiar, yet I know no one to whom it could possibly belong.

"I had the dream again." I told Susan, my friend of 20 years. She had been the only one I told about the dreams as she fancied herself a dream reader.

"Is that so? Anything different this time?" she said, always curious as to what happened next.

"Nothing much different this time. Everything was even more massive than the last time." I told her. The dreams always made me feel so small and helpless. I guess that’s why I get afraid and run towards the end.

"What about the voice John? Did it say anything different this time?" she asked while writing it down. I told her it was about the same as last time and she seemed a little disappointed. She was having trouble reading this dream. She had been my best friend ever since 5th grade when she moved here. We had a mutual understanding of each other, but it never lead to dating. Dating just felt too weird. We agreed to always be good friends. We could talk about anything with each other.

The first time I told her about my dreams was when my life started coming apart. The company I worked for was loosing money and try as I might, no one was hiring. I worked for a small business doing technical support for the staff. I had a degree in computer science, but that didn’t seem to matter. Most people want these 19 - 20 year olds, fresh out of college with degrees and certifications coming out of their ears. Here I am, 23, and my degree seems to count for absolutely nothing! I had often thought of moving to a bigger city, but this was my hometown, and I liked the small town feel. Besides, I don’t have enough money to move. I can barely cover my current expenses. My company had to cut off my benefits and reduce my pay. Now I depend on the meager wages just to pay off bills! I eventually had to borrow money from my parents just to buy food! I’ve had to go light on the food, and lost a lot of weight. Everyone could see that I was miserable. I began to have panic attacks and frequent headaches. I couldn’t go to the doctor since I had no money or insurance. I knew that everything was stress related. So, of course, Susan immediately said that the dreams were related to that. I guess maybe they are.

After an extremely long day at work, I came home and looked at the pathetic apartment that mirrored my life. Everything about it was poor and degraded. If the company eventually does go under, I’d have to move back home. I shuddered at the thought of that. My parents weren’t exactly the best people do deal with growing up. I threw myself onto my bed and eventually fell asleep.

I was in the house again. It was once again even larger than last time. The floors were wood but had plush yellowish-brown carpet layered on top. This time, something was off. I came to a long hallway with windows on the right side. It was mid afternoon and the sun shown through them onto the golden brown carpet. Suddenly, I had a toy, from my youth, in my hand. It was a clear, colored plastic robot. As I had done in my childhood, I held the toy up to the light and let it shine through so I could see the pretty colors. I was almost hypnotized by the sunlight dancing trough the toy’s frame as I moved it around. Then I sat down right in the middle of the floor with my legs crossed "indian style" and played with it and a number of other childhood toys for a while. I felt a peace that I had not felt in a long, long time. Suddenly I realized that something in the house was after me. I got up and ran as fast as I could when I once again heard that voice. “Are you afraid of it? Or are you afraid of what you will become?” I cried tears of fright as I turned to see if she was there. I woke up in a cold sweat, this time with tears in my eyes. I was crying in my sleep?! I hadn’t cried since I was a small boy! My father had told me that big boys don’t cry. I always tried not to disappoint him. Where did that come from?! What’s happening to me?!