literature

In Darkened Dreams_1

Deviation Actions

Rewind-Me's avatar
By
Published:
129 Views

Literature Text

Chapter One

– Hannovan –

The darkness was all around him, within him. It embraced him first, feeling somewhat familiar only to then begin to push and pull at him, closing in on him. Darkness had never been a stranger to him, not a friend either, but a constant in his life, but not here. Here his world was bright and vivid and full of light and clarity. It was different now though, the darkness seemed to take on a personality of its own, it was no longer merely a neutral, ever present observer. It had such a presence, such a force that he could feel it encroaching on his mind. In fact he could hardly detect any sense of himself anymore. The darkness seeped in and his thoughts began to bleed out and blend with it until they faded away and he was left with nothing. He was nothing anymore, just part of the darkness.

A loud, harsh pitch wrenched him from one dark world into another, where he lay, writhing in his bed, drenched with sweat with his mouth open and his vocal chords straining to produce a sound he did not know he was capable of. The scream came from deep within his body, filled with a fear so insurmountable and overwhelming that he did not know what to make of it. Once the sound left his lips, he was able to come back to himself, but in the waking world the dream made no more sense to him than when he had been within it moments before. His dreams were usually so clear, but lately they had been more like fragments, scenes that did not fit together and adding this one to the puzzle did not make it anymore coherent. He had never experienced anything quite like this one. Whether his dreams were about him or not, he was always present at least in mind if not in body, but this one was so strange, so ominous. It twisted his insides into a nervous knot that he could not undo.

There was barely time to process what had happened before his mother came bursting into the room, voice pitched high with worry. He had heard her frantic steps, shuffling from the kitchen as soon as the scream had exited his throat, dreading the moment they would arrive in his doorway. The door flew open with such force that it hit the wall with a loud crack and the sound of splintering wood, sending a hot breath of air in his direction. It bathed his already soaked body in another wave of perspiration.

"Hannovan!" his mother screeched, in what almost seemed like agony. "Honey, are you all right?" She rushed to his side, her plump body making a deep impression in the straw mattress beside him, the itchy texture of her rough spun apron rubbing up against his torso.  "Hann! Talk to me!" she demanded of him when he met her first question of well being with flustered silence.  

Hannovan yanked his hand out from between his and his mother's bodies and rubbed at the bandages wrapped tightly around his head that covered the part of his face where eyes should have been. The smooth skin underneath was irritated by the dampness of the fabric. He tried to push the bandages up over the top of his head, but his mother grabbed at his hand and pulled it away.

"Hannovan," she said again, the shrieking quality in her voice falling away. Despite all of the love and affection she showered him with and her protective nature, his physical deformities still frightened her, he knew, though she tried her best to hide it.

"I am fine, Mother," he reassured her and himself. He had not faded into nothingness, but what did it mean. It had to have meant something; his dreams were not idle things.

"I am glad," she said quietly. He could hear a slight quiver in her voice and wondered if there were tears in her eyes to match. "What did you dream of?" she asked with hesitation as if she was not sure she wanted the answer.

"I dreamt of nothing," he lied only a little.

"Nothing!" the shrieking quality crept back into her tone, "you scared me half to death!"

Death? He pondered the thought for a moment, mulling it over in his mind trying to form it into something comprehensible. Pushing it out for now, he turned his attention back to his mother.  "I heard raindrops on the roof earlier, but not now," he said. "Has the rain stopped?"

"Yes, it is quite clear now," she told him.

"Good," he answered as he pushed himself up from the bed, the straw of the mattress crunching beneath the weight of his elbows and hands.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Going outside," he told her as he swung his legs past her and over the side of the bed.
As he stood up, his body was shaky at best. He felt weak from the dream; his muscles ached and he felt short of breath. Ten steps, he reminded himself, counting in his head as he moved one foot in front of the other toward the door. He felt the presence of his mother behind him before he heard her feet shuffling closely at his heels. Her breathing was heavy, her sighs fraught with worry.

"Wouldn't you rather come to the kitchen?" she asked in a pleading tone. "I'll put some tea on for you."

"I'll be just outside, Mother. I will not go far, I promise," he assured her as he moved down the hallway towards the door, counting.

Twenty-five steps. He pushed the door open when he reached it, the scent of spring on the open air greeting him as he stepped outside. He could smell the lingering rain, the moisture hanging in the air, making it thick and heavy. Wading through it, he moved cautiously about the front of the house, rolling up the damp sleeves of his tunic as he did so. The ground squished beneath his bare feet, mud and blades of grass wedging themselves between his toes. There was a wide, round stump of a tree in the side yard used as a surface for chopping wood that he worked his way toward, running his hand along the side of the house for guidance.

When he reached it, he felt around for the axe wedged into it and took hold of the handle with as firm a grip as his spindly hands would allow. Yanking hard, he jerked his whole body backward, freeing the blade from its wooden hold. He leaned the axe against the side of the house and set his achy body down on the flat surface of the stump. His shoulders burned from the exertion and he cursed the frailty of his own body. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he rested his chin upon them, letting his mind wander again.

Death, was the thought his mind returned to, but whose? He had dreamed of death before. The first of these dreams that he could recall had been of just that. It had been early in his fourth year and the dream had confused him so; he had not understood what it was until it was far too late. In his dream there had been images, something besides the perpetual darkness he was accustomed to in the waking world. He did not know what to make of them as he had never been able to comprehend the idea of sight before, but something inside of him knew that this was what it meant to see.

He saw two men standing in a field of what must have been corn stalks. They had looked like they had felt to him when he was awake, sticky and sinewy on the outside and smooth yet bumpy on the inside. He did not know who the two men were at first but when they spoke, he heard his father's voice. Thinking they were speaking to him, he had tried to call out to them, but they did not pay him any attention. They were arguing with each other. The other man's voice he recognized as a man named Carver; a friend of his father's to whom he sold some of his crop. The argument grew louder as he watched, each of their voices rising above the other. As Hannovan studied the scene, he noticed Carver reaching for something at his side, a knife that was slipped into his belt. The man pulled it out, the steel blade catching a glint of the sun and shining a bright light towards him, making it difficult for him to see for a moment. Suddenly, there had been darkness again and then light again. He had reached a hand up to his face and felt the skin near the bridge of his nose. There was something there that should not have been; there were openings in the skin that was once smooth. Then there was darkness again for a moment as a flap of skin slid over the openings and then rose again revealing the scene once more. These openings were eyes, he had realized though he did not fully understand it.

He had turned his attention back to his father and Carver, the blade of Carver's knife burying itself in his father's chest. His father let out a scream and Hannovan felt a wetness forming in the openings, tears. He watched as a thick liquid seeped out of the wound in his father's chest as Carver pulled the knife out of his flesh. His shirt was stained and sagged with the weight of the oozing liquid. Carver backed away and his father's body slumped to its knees. Hannovan had gasped and then had woken with his lungs full of air. Exhaling, he had crawled out of bed and had wandered out of his room to the kitchen to find his mother.  Was his father dead? He had been so confused, but it had all begun to make sense when he heard raised voices coming in from outside.

"Is Father with Mr. Carver?" he had asked.

His mother had confirmed his suspicions and he had begun to whimper. He told her that Carver was very angry with Father and that he was going to kill him. She had been so flustered and had scolded him for saying such foolishness, but then she had heard his father scream. She had rushed out of the house and had found him lying in the fields alone and bleeding, his life slipping away from him. His mother had been ever more frightened of him since then and the feeling only seemed to grow with each new dream he had.

He had been too late to save his father, though he doubted it would have made a difference anyway. His dreams had a way of coming true no matter what he did to try and prevent them. Yet still he found the need to understand his dreams, even if he could not stop them from coming true, there was an element of reassurance in being prepared for what was to come. He tried to go over these dreams again in his head but still they did not seem to make sense or be fully clear even in themselves. His visions had consistently been of people and places he knew or could recognize easily, people and places that he could detect a feeling of familiarity from, but these were not familiar at all. They were of people and places he had never seen before and he heard unfamiliar voices talking of unfamiliar things. They were also less vivid than his past dreams, more fractured, unfinished, nothing concrete, especially the last few.

In one he saw two women having a conversation in a dark place, maybe outside. One was blonde as far as he could tell, much of her hair and body were covered by a thick, blue woolen hood and cloak, pinned at the neck by a shiny blue jewel set in golden frame. The other was younger, her hair long and dark, pulled back in a braid that rested in the hood of her dark green cloak. She leaned on a large bow as they talked of strange things that meant nothing to him, assassins and mountain passes and the safety of the blonde woman's son. In another dream, he saw less but felt more. All he could make out was the torso of a man, hands pressed over a blue silk shirt stained with fresh blood. The rest of the image was blurred in his mind. He had felt what the man was feeling though, a sense of fear mixed with a vehement anger that raged inside of him. Then this last dream, the darkened dream. He had been slipping away from everything, even from himself. What had it meant? Was he dying? Was that even him? He wondered what any of them meant. It all seemed so much bigger than him. The shear magnitude of what his visions seemed to portray was what frightened him the most.
the beginning of my nano novel in all its rushed glory
© 2009 - 2024 Rewind-Me
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In