Nightmare In A Bottle

Something bad happened to me. I know it did. Doctor Stein, my therapist, thought so as well. Which was why I had asked him to meet me here tonight. The more I thought about my past, the more I could feel the ominous feeling envelope my bones as I stared out into the murky water and took a seat on top of the highest boulder.

The uneasiness that came with hearing the angry waves crashing into each other was unlike anything I've experienced before. Well, from what I could remember anyway. The second I opened my eyes after that realization, something told me to look out into the water. I regretted it the moment I did.

A pair of white pasty hands branched out above the water, as if they were reaching for something, or someone. Panic settled into me as I debated whether I should go out there and help or go back inside the house and call for someone. As much as I loved being near the sea, I was absolutely terrified of it. Again, I had no idea why. Part of the trauma I assumed.

Nevertheless, this person needed help. They were drowning! I needed to help them before it was too late.

I set aside my fears and dunked into the dark water. I was never sure if I had been a good swimmer or not, but it seemed as if I'd been a pretty decent one, considering I'd gotten to the victim just before the water took her down permanently. I grabbed her by the waist and did my best to swim us both towards the shore. As soon as I made sure we were out of harms way and onto the sand, I pushed at the dark hair covering her pale face and gasped in horror at the sight before me.

Blood beaded down her temple along with the sea water, the bruising on her neck slowly forming into potent hand prints, the cut on her bruised lip now open and still trickling with blood. Her injuries weren't what shocked me. Or the fact that someone would even dare do this to another human being.

What petrified me was how identical the woman looked to me.

"Mary," Doctor Stein's voice was calm and steady as he approached us. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't even believe what I was seeing at the moment.

"What...what's going on? Why does she look like me?" My question came in between chattering teeth and a shivering body as I stood up and enveloped myself with my own arms.

"Come with me, Mary. I can explain everything," he offered, and I shook my head, closing my eyes as I refused to wrap my head around the situation.

"Did you kill her?" I questioned indignantly, wincing at how sudden my tone had just changed. His eyes grew wide with caution as he took a step back and tried his best to regain his composure.

"Mary, look down," Doctor Stein insisted, and when I did, the body of the woman who resembled me was no longer laying on the sand in front of us. I looked around for her and saw no sign of her. No footprints of any path she might've taken. Not even the trail of when I dragged us both out of the water and up to this very spot.

"Come, it's a frosty night. Let's get you inside," Doctor Stein persisted and I nodded in defeat as a memory resumed within my thoughts. This house was left to me by my grandmother, Darlene Knight. My mother never believed in curses. And yet I inherited the same one she'd been blessed with; an affliction to bad men.

Elios! Elios Beauchamp. My husband. He must know what happened to me to make me forget.

"Where is my husband?" I asked Doctor Stein, the moment we stepped into the house and he closed the door behind us.

"Oh, Mary. There's so much you don't know," he answered, as he followed me into the living room, while I lit up a few candles and set them by the windows. The electricity always went out in this house for some odd reason.

"Start with the woman on the beach," I urged while I took a seat in my favorite rocking chair overlooking the lighthouse.

"Think about it Mary. Why does she look so much like you? The same hair, the same facial features, the same petite body..." I thought back to the woman on the beach and flashes of seeing myself in the mirror left just as quickly as they came.

"How could she be me? I'm right here," I declared as I desperately tried to understand what was happening.

"When was the last time you ate something? Watched television? Took a nap even?" While he continued his questioning, I tried to think of the answers, but the truth was, I didn't have them. And in return, trepidation began to consume me.

"What are you saying exactly, Doctor Stein? That I'm...dead?" I replied with a short laugh, "...that's impossible. Like I said, I'm right here. And I can prove it."

"That's not necessary."

"Let me prove you wrong," I exhorted, as I stood up from my rocking chair and walked over to him, the creaking floors beneath me echoing throughout the house up until the second I reached him. He flinched the moment my hand cupped his face and slipped right through his flesh. I stumbled away from him as I began to realize he was right. I wasn't alive. I really was the woman on the beach.

"How...how did you know I was dead?"

"I'm not really a doctor. I'm a physical medium. I was sent here by my spirit guides to help you, Mary. We need to figure out what happened to you and get you to cross over before it's too late," he explained and I looked at him in confusion.

"Too late? Too late for what?"

"There are other dark entities out there. In different dimensions. And some of them like to collect lost earth bound spirits, like yours, and turn them into hellish ones that torture the living."

"Is that why you kept coming back? To keep me from turning into a monster?" I was touched by the notion and frankly saddened by the kind of work this man had to indulge himself in. I couldn't imagine the kind of despairing souls he's encountered before me.

"It's my life's purpose," he revealed with a small smile. I offered him a sympathetic one in return.

"I don't remember how I died or who killed me. I just know my grandmother left me this place in her will," I said as I sat back down into my rocking chair and he took a seat on the sofa. The more I embraced the idea of being among the dead, the more my surroundings began to decay around me. Nothing was as it seemed.

"Did anyone else know you were here besides Elios?" Elios had followed me here? Memories regarding Elios were slowly making their way back to me.

"No. I don't even know how Elios knew I was here. I left him in the middle of the night. No money. No clothes. I had to get out of there..." I paused for a moment as I tried to remember that night specifically. It had been during a particularly stormy night. I remembered hearing the whooshing sound of the rain against the windows of our two-story home in the middle of Maine.

"Do you remember why?"

"Elios....he wasn't a very nice man. I knew that before I married him. He...forced me into it," I admitted, shame overflowing my lifeless being. I had promised myself I'd never become my mother and yet I ended up just like her, married to a man who put nightmares to shame.

"This was the last place he was seen, Mary. Something must've happened to him. They never found his body or yours," Stein informed me and the news confused me even further.

"I think we might've fought...here," I paused as I griped the armrest of my rocking chair and the memories returned to me once again. Elios had barged straight into the living room, using his brute force to try and shake sense into me when I refused to come home to him.

"He was pounding his fists on the door so loud, I swear I felt it in my bones. I didn't want to let him in, but I did it anyway. Terrible mistake...terrible mistake..." I kept repeating the words as the darkness began to wrap itself around me again. It was tangible, the thickness of it filled the room enough to cause the windows open, candles to blow out, doors to open and slam shut. The house was far from dead tonight.

"He hurt you, didn't he?" Stein's question wasn't an easy one to answer. Even in death my pride was holding on by a thread, but I nodded anyway.

"After he was done hurting me...he carried me towards the water...thinking I was dead..." I told him, recalling that horrible night like it was yesterday.

"So you didn't die in the water?"

"No," I replied and wrapped my arms around myself tighter as the wind began to blow into the house through the opened windows, "I managed to swim up to the surface somehow."

"What did you do next, Mary?" Stein urged as he walked towards me, and met me at eye level, while crouching down at the knees before me. I tried to sift through my memories some more, but I was too scared to find out what happened next.

"I can't."

"You can do this. I believe in you," he encouraged, despite the chaos spinning into madness all around us. If he could risk his life doing this work for a lost soul like me, then I could find the rest of my forgotten memories for him.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on that frightful night. Starting with the moment I dragged myself out of the water and made my way back to the lighthouse keeper's home. My home.

"I remember seeing the candle in the window. He'd poured himself a whiskey and was sitting in my rocking chair like nothing happened. He'd taken everything from me. My house had been the only thing I had left in this world and he'd taken that from me too. I wasn't about to let that happen..."

"Mary, what did you do?..." Stein trailed off as the sadness in his gaze forced me to understand that what I had done to Elios wasn't justice. It was revenge.

"I took a piece of a broken glass I had found by the beach, snuck up behind him and stabbed him in the neck. There was so much blood. On the floor...on the walls..."

"How did you die then?"

"Elios was always a stubborn man. He refused to die alone. He followed me. All the way up to the top of the lighthouse, still clutching on tightly to his neck. He locked us both inside, breaking off the handle so neither of us could get out of the mess we had created." The house was now slowly returning to its serenity. No more angry wind. No more ground-breaking tremors. The truth was finally free.

"I knew you could do it," Stein professed proudly and I responded with a smile as my home steadily turned into the house it had once been before I had brought so much darkness to it.

"Thank you for bringing my nightmare in a bottle to an end," I expressed gratuitously, as I finally began to feel the heaviness of a past unknown lift itself from away from me, paving the way for a transition into the afterlife of my own choosing.

"Thank you for allowing me to set you free, Mary Beauchamp."