Foregone Wreath

Black. Swirling, chaotic darkness. A void within a void. A horrible feeling, one that held absolute authority over his body and forced him into the deepest innermost parts of his mind until there was nothing left...

“Mason!” His mother roused him from the depths of his consciousness. He woke up, following the sound of her voice, and sat up in the bed gasping for air. He felt the hot stick of sweat all along his body, which melded his skin to the thin sheet strewn around him in his bed. Wide eyed, he took in the familiar scene around him. Maybe today would be a good day. The thought was immediately struck dead from the thought of his dreams the night before.

Grey dawn illuminated the room, where his characteristically messy room was, well, just that. Clothes that could not be bothered to find a home. Their fault, not his. Several haggard posters of past celebrity crushes and two bands he could no longer stand, ate up the spacing on the walls. A couple pictures, most of them forced upon him in a “family picture” moment.

His mother was poking her head in the door, her frame outlined by the half circle window, the only one in the room. “A good day for a swim!” She said way too cheerily, disrupting the somber mood he was currently wallowing in. He gave a scowl, his brain still foggy and disoriented from its slumber, squinting up towards her figure. She said nothing else, and the door closed behind her as she retreated down the hallway towards the stairs.

A dream. An awful, dreadful dream. What had happened? The more that he focused on it, the hazier it seemed. The only thing he could pin down was the feeling that it left him with. Despair. Taking a deep breath and exhaling through his nose, he flung the sheet off of his body. His bare skin seemed to mingle with the pale light invading the room, the only real spot of color being his bright blue boxers.

With a groan, he swung his legs off the bed and his feet connected to the cool wooden floorboards. It was just a dream. Rubbing his eyes he stood up, but stopped when he felt the hammers going off within his skull. “Aghhhhhh.” He muttered, knowing with absolute certainty that today was not going to be pleasant. He walked over to the window, rubbing his arms for warmth as he did so. The house had little heating, and while heat normally rises, it never seemed to find his corner of the world.

Staring out, he transfixed upon the small lake that dominated their backyard landscape. It normally had a darker tint to it, but in the current lighting the water seemed a black glass, layer upon layer, farther than the eye could see. Its depths always seemed to reach out to him, encouraging an exploration. He could feel its cold fingers wrapping around him as though he were in it, pressing against all of him in a testament of its might.

He managed to look away, flitting his eyes across the expanse of trees that engulfed miles and miles all around them. Deciduous oaks formed the borders of the lake, on all sides except that of the house, which sat one hundred feet away. Their claw-like hands stretched out in all directions, their bows twisting and bending whatever way that pleased them. Behind them, ponderosa pines accounted for the majority of the forest, swallowing everything within their might. This included their home, which was nothing more than a blotch in the sea of green.

He turned around. Standing behind him was his younger brother. He was staring at Mason, his seven year old pale blue eyes boring into him, his mouth slightly agape. Frowning at the intrusion he said; “What are you doing, get out” in a dismissive tone, walking over to the pile of “clean dirty” clothes that could still weather three or four more uses. His brother said nothing, but just turned and followed him with his eyes, not seeming to blink. He was being weird, but not unlike himself. He was a strange kid. Always had been. As he was throwing on some clothes, he heard:

“Do you wanna swim with me today?” The sentence turned pitchy at the end, almost whining. “I don’t know,” he answered quickly, annoyed that his brother was still there. “Why don’t you-” his sentence caught in his throat when he turned around and there was no one there. Shaking his head, he finished throwing on a long sleeve shirt along with his sweats, but leaving his feet bare. Turning towards the door he quickly grabbed a book he was in the deep recesses of. “Foregone Wreath” the title boasted in a dark font. It was horror, not typically a genre he messed with. However the pages kept him within their embrace, always giving him more, feeding his imagination.

At the door he paused, looking at a photo taken long ago of the four of them, all smiling and about to take off on a vacation in the old family car. Long ago? He caught himself, shaking his head with a slight smirk. Couldn’t have been that long.

Turning into the brown carpeted hallway he made his way to the staircase, which wound its way down in a spiral, only to stop at the second floor before meeting its destination below on ground level. The thing almost gave him height sickness, but it was nothing he hadn’t conquered a thousand times before. When had they got the house? That also seemed like forever ago.

His head pulsed, and he brought both hands up to it, dropping his book and pressing them as hard as he could to stem the pain. His vision blurred, giving the house a ghostly appearance. He thought he heard someone screaming, a blood curdling scream of pain and agony mixed with despair. This seemed to stay for a moment, then his vision straightened back to its normal self, and everything was as it should be. Panicked, he looked around frantically and listened for the scream.

The only thing he could hear was the sound of his skyrocketed blood pressure, and the distant sound of a ticking clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tok. Tik- heart still hammering, he picked up his fallen book where he had just dropped it, and made his way down the staircase, not sure as to what had just happened. Was he going crazy? Was it just the effects carrying over from the dream? Should he tell his parents? No, he wouldn’t do that. That would just worry them. It was probably nothing, but he still looked around nervously, almost feeling like he was being watched. As though someone was just over his shoulder, staring down at him from the darkness.

Shivering, he quickened his pace and passed through several rooms before he got to the kitchen/living room. The kitchen, too, was illuminated in the gray twilight of the sun filtered through the layers of clouds above. Nobody was in the kitchen, which was unusual. They always had breakfast together as a family. “Guys?” He half shouted, while concocting his mix of cereal and milk.

Receiving no answer, he sat down at the kitchen table, and started to browse the book while feeling the familiar crunch of the food. For some reason he could not focus on the book. He found that while he could recognize the words, nothing stayed within the boundaries of his mind. He put the book down and rubbed his eyes, trying to force them to focus. As soon as his hands were down and his eyes cleared, he found his dad across the table, staring at him. There was a line of watery drool running down his chin, his eyes an uninterrupted stare.

“I didn’t hear you come in. Are you okay dad?” His dad seemed to take a moment, and then, still with a blank expression, said;

“Of course. Was just thinking about the lake. You ganna go take a swim soon?” Mason scowled, shaking his head. “Why is everyone talking about the lake today? Its way too cold to try and enjoy a swim. I just wanna relax today. I can’t remember the last day that I got to myself.” He tried to remember when the last day he had truly done nothing was. It was a hazy memory somewhere in the back of his head. “Also you’re drooling.” With that, he looked back down at his book, and shoveled another spoonful of the flaky cereal into his mouth. SLAM! A fist entered his vision as his father pounded the table with dreadful force.

“Go to the lake, now.” His voice was deadly quiet, almost like it seemed on the verge of breaking. Maison looked up into his fathers void face, eyes wide with shock. He had never seen his dad like this. He tried to search his fathers eyes for some hint at a prank, the kind that he always loved to pull. Mason started to smile, but failed when his father mimicked it. But it never reached his father’s face. His brown eyes bore into Maison’s own, a crazed light flickering in them.

Tik Tok Tik Tok Tik Tok…

Everything was silent. The release of his father's breath hit Maison in the face, and he smelled what could only be described as a putrid, rotting odor.“What's going on dad?” He said in a small voice, swallowing afterwards. His father's hand was trembling on the table now, from anger or some other emotion he had no idea. “I’ll help you.” said his father, still with a grin on his face. “Just go to the lake.”

“I don’t want to.” Mason said again, shrinking back as he said it, feeling very small in the chair. As he pushed back as far as he could in the chair, his father, his smile still getting bigger, started to turn his head. Maison could see his lips start to crack and pull apart. His fathers head was starting to turn sideways at a very unnatural angle that shouldn’t have been possible. “I’ll take you thereeee thennn.” The voice was a croak that ended in a slight hiss. His father reached for him, still turning his head. But Mason had already jumped up, and ran out the room as fast as he could. Right into his mother. “Mom! He shouted, tears coming to his eyes. “Dad is scaring me!” He was looking back at the hallway that lead to the kitchen, but his mother said nothing.

He turned around frantically, wondering why she wasn’t saying anything. But when he did look at her in the dark of the hallway, he took several steps back. Her eyes seemed to be glinting, and she looked a lot more thin and frail than she ever had, her skin stretching across her bones, seemingly ready to tear. Her breathing was raspy, and she was just staring at him. She brought up a hand and pointed at him, the pointer finger knobbled as with age. Behind him, he heard his dad make it into the hallway, and he could hear his breathing as well, getting closer to his back.

Out of instinct he shoved past his mother, pushing her into the wall as he did so. He heard her laugh and turned around as he made it to the other end of the hallway. It seemed as though the hallway had gotten darker somehow. His mother was now crawling along the side of the wall, reaching out towards him. His father had entered into a quick shuffle, hands outstretched, his grin so wide that his whole mouth had begun to tear.

The stab of absolute horror and dread was almost enough to completely paralyze him. However, the adrenaline startled him out of his trance, and he smashed through the door leading into the living room. The big room looked out into the backyard, with floor to ceiling windows along the back wall and sat next to a sliding glass door. Frantic, he looked around the room, unsure of what to do next. There was a hallway to the immediate right, and in the middle of it he made out the form of his brother. “Come on, we need to get out of here!” He shouted, gesturing towards the glass door.

“Are you ganna swim with me?” His brother asked, and then giggled in a high pitch. His brother moved forward until the gray light streaming through the windows caught his face. His eyes were sunken, and his whole head seemed to be gray. There was no skin around his mouth. “Lets play!” He said again, laughing with an eternal grin.

Bile leapt out of Maisons mouth. Behind him, the breathing of his parents were increasingly closer and closer to his neck, and he could hear his mothers fingernails scratching at the walls. With a scream, he ran as fast as he could to the glass door, threw it open, and ran into the backyard.

This couldn’t be a dream. But it had to be right? He had never dreamed in this much detail before. The sights and smells were as real as anything else in his life. He could feel every blade of grass underneath his foot as they got trampled. He felt his heart racing so fast he thought it would leap out of his chest. He felt the wind catch the edges of his clothing and race through them, cold from the surface of the lake.

He stopped half way between the house and the lake, bent over and pulling in deep breaths, holding his head in his hands. “This can’t be happening this can’t be happening this can’t be happening…” he said over and over again, trying to calm himself. He looked at the house. Nobody had followed him through the door, and he couldn’t see anyone behind it. He looked at the lake.

It sat as serene as always, the dark tranquil water unmolested by any outside force. He took a step towards it. It was a pretty nice day, after all. He wouldn’t mind taking a swim. He took another couple steps. What was he thinking??? He needed to leave. To run far away. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t seem to stop taking steps forward. He felt hands on his back. “That’s right,” his family said behind him. They looked at him from around his shoulder, their heads close to his. A shiver ran through his entire body. They urged him on, slightly pushing him.

They walked alongside him now, most of the skin gone from their bodies. They looked like walking skeletons, tatters of their earlier selves hanging on by threads. He struggled as hard as he could, but he couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t stop the forward process. He tried to scream, say anything, but everything just stuck in his throat. The oaks alongside the lake had interlocked their branches, making a barrier around the lake.

When they got to the shore and the very edge of the water, the three figures that used to be his family stopped suddenly, as did he. They turned and looked at him, their empty eye sockets a darkness that could not be penetrated. They started to sway and chant, even though there was nothing left that should have been able to lend them a voice. With all his might he struggled, pushing against the invisible force. His foot touched the water. The shocking cold instantly numbed his toes, and caused a reaction up the rest of his leg. As soon as he was within the grasp of the water, the torrential force seemed to rip him forward, destroying whatever will he had that was opposing it.

He ran into the water. Submerged his knees, then waist, then torso. Everything except for his head, That remained on top as he swam towards the middle of the lake, the cold making his entire body numb, and the chanting behind him fading away the farther he got. A mist was rising off of the surface of the lake, blinding him to his surroundings. He reached the middle and floated there, a mind without a body, feeling the immense size of the lake below him. His feet dangled as they kept him afloat. Then something touched them. Something he could not see, although it felt like a hand. Then more and more hands grabbed him, figures below he could not make out. They dragged him down, down, deep. The light from the surface quickly dimmed and blinked out of existence. He finally did scream then, but his lungs took on the water around him as he plummeted to the bottom, his vision blurring out until…

Black. Swirling, chaotic darkness. A void within a void. A horrible feeling, one that held absolute authority over his body and forced him into the deepest innermost parts of his mind until there was nothing left…

“Mason!” Annie, his mother, roused him from the depths of his consciousness. He woke up, following the sound of her voice, and sat up in the bed gasping for air. He felt the hot stick of sweat all along his body, which melded his skin to the thin sheet strewn around him in his bed. Wide eyed, he took in the familiar scene around him. Maybe today would be a good day. The thought was immediately struck dead from the thought of his dreams the night before.