CHAPTER FIFTEEN - CHOICES
B was screaming. He could hear the note of desperate fear in his voice as it filled the darkness about him. He turned, but it was too dark and he couldn’t see anything. He tried to move, but his feet seemed to be paralysed and rooted to the spot. There was another scream that reached his ears as well, two voices begging him for help.
“B!” he cried. “B, where are you? Sammy?”
B, Sammy… something was wrong. Why were they screaming? Why?
His voice did not even seem to reach them, almost as if it were being sucked into an immense black hole of darkness and destruction. B and Sammy’s screams however, were still clear and shattering in the dark night.
He could hear now, Sammy’s was coming from the right and B’s from the left. Which one did he go to? They were both in danger, so who did he choose?
“Dad!”
“Help!”
Which one? Which one?
‘Pick one! Either stay here and help Sammy or go and find B!’
Now who was talking to him? Who had said those words? But Sammy wasn’t here… he didn’t know where Sammy was. Sammy was lost just like B.
Decisions… decisions… which one… ?
How could he choose?
The screams were worsening, both of them were filled with agony and he could almost hear their bodies crumbling as they were crushed with agonising pain…
He suddenly found that he could move again. He took a few steps forward and then realised that he was in a narrow corridor, doors leading off on the right and the left. B was in one, Sammy in the other and both of them were in pain.
Did he have time to save them both? He didn’t know… he didn’t even know what was happening to them…
“I didn’t know which one to pick…” a strangely familiar and yet also alien voice said from the darkness. “Why did B run away?”
“Who do I pick?” Brian screamed to the unseen speaker, begging for something to help him.
“I didn’t know who to pick!”
“Tell me who should I choose?”
The screams… they were piercing into him almost and he covered his ears as they seared into his head, burning his mind and rupturing every fragile vein in his brain. He could feel the blood filling him and he looked down and realised that blood was beginning to seep through beneath both of the doors.
“NO!” Brian screamed.
‘Pick one!’
“I didn’t know…” the speaker cried, sobs in their soft voice.
“Who do we pick?” Brian asked. “Tell me before I lose them both!”
“I didn’t even know what was happening…”
It was a blind decision… he couldn’t see what was happening. He didn’t know… but he knew they were in danger…
B or Sammy?
‘Pick one!’
“Which door? I didn’t know… I had to choose…” the second voice sobbed.
Brian turned but he was still alone in the corridor. One voice seemed to come form his head, almost like a memory.
‘Who are you going to? B or Sammy?’
But the second was with him, almost as if it came from an invisible speaker. He frantically spun around and around, feeling dizzier with each moment as the sickness ran to his head and the blood began to creep over his bare feet.
Suddenly hands were gripping hiss shoulders and he found himself staring into a hooded face. A pair of blue eyes looked back at him and he gasped slightly as the speaker spoke. “Who do we choose? Who do we choose?”
They were still screaming and Brian felt tears running down his face. “You get one and I’ll get the other,” he whispered desperately.
The blue eyes were filled with melancholy. “I don’t know what’s happening to Sammy, but I had to choose…. How could I choose…?” The watery tears were dribbling down the hooded man’s face and his eyes flickered closed. “They had to make it for me…”
Suddenly the door to the left was flung open, but at the same time the screams from the right intensified. Brian found himself running to the left and kneeling down beside the one on the floor.
“Are you all right?” Brian asked gently.
The unconscious one’s eyes flickered open. “I’m going to hate for this…”
Brian sat up sharply, his eyes frantically blinking as they tried to dislodge the thick clusters of sleep that had pasted themselves to his eyelashes. He was shivering. He was cold. His soul was chilled after the terrible decision he had just been forced to make in his dream.
He wrapped his arms about his body as he thought about the blood that had ran along the floor and covered his feet in warm stickiness. His hands were sticky, but this was from cold sweat, not the blood of his family.
He breathed deeply for a few moments and lashed his hand out to the side to hit the lamp and give a glow to the room. He didn’t like the darkness… it brought the dream back.
He blinked in the sudden light and winced as his eyes stung. He wiped the perspiration from his head and then gasped at the pain he suddenly felt. It was almost as if his head was burning and freezing at the same time and he almost cried out in agony. He clutched the blanket beneath him tightly and felt his fingers almost bruising as the knuckles locked tightly.
Then it was gone and he was left to catch his breath. He waited for a moment before he dared move and reached for the water that was permanently on his bedside table.
‘B or Sammy?’
How could he ever have made that decision?
‘Pick one!’
He felt a tremble course through him and his soul felt as if he had drenched it in an icy pool of darkness. Never. He could never choose…
But he had been forced to in the dream…
He rubbed his face, thankful that it would never have to come to that decision for him. His decisions were already made… he was going to die.
“That’s what it was about,” he said to himself, feeling as if he had to make sense of the frightening dream or else go insane. He could never make that decision because everything was already pre-ordained.
He lie back down again and buried his head on the pillows as he turned the lamp off again. Luckily he had put B in the spare room last night so he would be undisturbed by Brian’s nightmare. The kid needed all the rest he could get and he was determined to be better for tomorrow so that Brian could take him out like he had promised. B should be fine now. The cough had not moved, but he was definitely getting better. He no longer needed Brian to watch over him during the night.
He pulled the covers back over him and pushed the dream from his thoughts. It wasn’t like him to have such extreme nightmares though, especially those that brought a line of frosty dew to his soul…
It was almost unnatural…
He closed his eyes, knowing that he would need his rest to enjoy tomorrow. He thought about what he was going to do, refusing to focus on that dreadful choice him and that hooded man had had to make.
Hooded man…
Brian’s eyes snapped open again as he realised that it had been the same one he had seen in the car lot. Only this time he had been close enough to see their bright blue eyes… but who was it? The voice had been unfamiliar, but he couldn’t place a face with it. In the dream he had only been able to make the eyes out in the shadowed face…
“What have you done to me?” he whispered.