A Witch’s Journal:
Foretelling
Barren. That was the first word that came to Karen in her dream. A barren wasteland. Here, the earth was so dry that cracks stretched and covered every surface of it. There were no trees, no lakes, nothing. It was all just hard, backed earth and clay. An ominous mist lay over it all, but Karen thought she could see shadows, figures moving around her.
Then suddenly, she saw it – moving steadily towards her, its flesh hanging in disgusting green slimy strips, its eyeballs bulging. One eye wasn’t even in its socket, but hanging from a thin red vein. Its clothes were mere rags, and as Karen watched, unable to move or speak, the creature moved toward her and grabbed her arm.
Karen screamed.
All was calm. The sun was up, and light was coming in through the gap in the curtains. Not a sound went through the house, but somehow it was the silence that scared her. She hurriedly got out of bed and went to her parent’s room. She knocked. No answer. She knocked again. Still nothing. Finally, she put her hand on the doorknob and turned. It was unlocked. Even more scared now, she tiptoed inside. She turned, and there, lying in pools of blood on their bed, were her parents, ripped limb from limb.
Karen’s screams once again rang through the house as she dialed 911. A women’s voice answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“My-my parents! They’re - they’ve -…” Karen cried hysterically.
“Where are you?”
“N-number th-thirteen, Highway Street, off of exit 296, but please ma’am, my parents!” Karen kept crying, unable to describe how horrible the situation was.
“Get out of the house as soon as you can. We’ll be right there.”
Karen dropped the phone, not bothering to put it back in its holder, and ran outside. In minutes, she heard the sirens, and then the police cars came down the street. Seeing Karen crying her eyes out, they parked their car outside her house and went up to her.
“What’s happened?” The woman asked, not unkindly.
Karen couldn’t speak. Dumbly, she beckoned them in, and ran up to her parent’s room again. When the police officers caught up with her, she just pointed toward the door, refusing to go in. Then, suddenly, the picture of her parents came back to her, and everything went black. She fell, unconscious, to the floor.
*****
When Karen woke up, she saw a room of white. The walls were white; the furniture white, even the bed was white. She turned her head slightly and saw a woman sitting beside her, knitting. At the moment, it just looked like a shapeless bunch of wool, but at the speed the lady was knitting, it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“Well, it seems you’ve woken up. Good, good,” said the woman without looking up.
“Ummm…” said Karen uncertainly, “Who are you exactly? And…” she looked around, dazed. “Where am I?”
“Why, your in the hospital, dear. Where else would things be as scrupulously clean as this?”
“Good point… who are you again?” Karen sat up a little, regaining a little of her composure.
“Well now, let’s see: I am your great aunt’s cousin, twice removed,” said the lady.
“I didn’t know my great aunt had any cousins,” she said, then frowned. “Wait, scratch that, I didn’t even know I had an aunt, much less a great aunt.”
“Well, you do, and that’s that.” The woman looked sternly over a pair of rectangular spectacles. Karen stared back, blankly, wondering what to think of this lady.
The lady continued to knit. By now, the once shapeless bunch of wool had gained a definite form. It was a blanket. Pure black, it looked almost blue when compared to the stark whiteness around her. She then realized that everything the lady wore was black.
‘How odd,’ she thought, her mind getting fuzzy again. She dropped back onto her pillows, and was instantly back asleep.
*****
She dreamed of the barren plain again. Only this time, it was worse, for she could see everything. No longer was there a sickly, disgusting green fog over it all; everything was all perfectly, horribly clear.
She saw millions of corpses, an army of them, walking towards her. Their flesh hanging from their bodies, their eyes bulging, scabs covering them from head to toe; they weren’t looking at her though. They were looking behind her. Slowly, Karen turned. There, behind her, was another vast army of corpses heading towards her as well. The tow armies stopped, glaring at each other. Then they roared and charged at each other, colliding right before Karen disappeared, screaming.
*****
“Aaaahhh!” Karen thrashed about, and fell out of bed, hitting the floor with a thud. The pain from doing so brought her back to Reality, and she looked up, staring, at the bemused, bespectacled woman watching from the doorway.
“Well now, get up, get up, we can’t have you lying on the floor all day.” The woman ushered Karen back into bed. As she lay back down, she noticed the room she was sitting in.
It was a room covered entirely in black. Everything that could be black, was black. The only thing that wasn’t black was a blue rose, sitting in a vase on the bedside table.
Karen wondered how she could see. She looked around for a window of some sort. There were none.
‘It’s like a cell. A prisoner’s cell,’ she thought uncertainly. ‘But why on earth would Aunt – whatever-her-name-is – want to lock me up?’ She couldn’t think of any reason at all.
“Hey, umm… Aunt - ?”
“Lily, dear. Lily Bodman.”
“Aunt Lily, why aren’t there, umm… any windows?”
“But there are!” Aunt Lily said with surprise. She walked over to the side of the room, grabbed hold of something, and flung it to the side. In poured the light of the sun, but even despite this, the room still seemed dark, as if the pure blackness of it sucked out all the sunshine, similar to a black hole.
“Oh… thanks Auntie.” Karen yawned, then got up and looked around for the door. Finding it, she made to go to the bathroom to do her normal morning routine.
Her Aunt grabbed her arm.
“Where do you think your going?” She asked this as if she thought Karen were about to go to some crazy, dangerous party with alcoholics and drug addicts.
“Just to comb my hair and brush my teeth, though, now that I think about it, I should probably take a shower too.”
“No, not right now. And you don’t need a shower yet, I can guarantee it. Anyway, you have school tomorrow, so you need to pack all your belongings, lay out your clothes, and make sure you’ve got everything you’ll need for tomorrow. Also, you need to clean up this room, bring in and unpack all your belongings that you won’t be taking with you to school. Until then, your not allowed to go back to bed.”
Karen stared at the woman for a moment, then just nodded dumbly and went about the business her aunt had told her to do. Somehow, she had a feeling that it would be suicide to try to argue – her aunt made her feel like one false move and that was that. Goodbye Karen, so long, farewell.
*****
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