Werewolves and Vampires

Chapter 17: Sandra

Every night for the rest of the week I had nightmares. I'd wake up to Ivy shaking me furiously and my own throat killing screams. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep and the excessive crying wasn't helping much either.

The nightmares kept coming back, but they changed sometimes. Some nights I was in the forest, other times I was in a cave. Sometimes that man was there, sometimes he wasn't. One time he wasn’t there, but I was chained to the wall and couldn’t get free no matter how hard I yanked against the mental cuffs.

One thing I was sure about though, was that every night they got worse and worse. I didn't know why, but I had a gut feeling that they were warnings.

It was finally Friday and it was early morning…again. I was used to waking up early in the morning because of nightmares, but today I had had enough. Though I woke up feeling exhausted, but restless. I was going to get back in the swing things ASAP. The wallowing in misery and fear thing wasn't going anywhere. I had to move on.

I pulled on my usual jogging clothes, but skipped over the iPod. Not being able to hear what was going on around me scared me to death. I slipped out of the house silently, sure that if Dad or Ivy knew I was sneaking off alone they'd be mad, and took off jogging down the street without getting caught. It was five thirty in the morning, but I didn’t care. Maybe exercising would make me so exhausted that I’d just pass out later on tonight without nightmares.

For almost two hours I varied between walking and jogging, and I felt even more exhausted than I had during the week. My limbs were heavy and my lungs felt like they were going to explode. I stumbled to a stop and bent over, hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath.

A wave of unease washed over me and a familiar prickling feeling made the hair on my arms stand on end. I straightened up and looked around, mild terror seizing me. I had stopped right next to the forest. In the early morning light, it didn’t seem so bad. But looking deeper into the forest, I could see the darkness within.

I sniffed the air cautiously, and there was that metallic scent again, which I now recognized as blood. Except it was stale this time.

There was no around. The morning was peaceful, too peaceful for anything bad to happen. I took a deep breath and stepped into the forest. I was sick and tired of being afraid of something that most probably was just my imagination. So, that’s why I swallowed my terror and made my way into the inky blackness. I followed the scent of blood and hoped I could find the scent of the thing that wasn’t quite animal and wasn’t quite human either.

For a long time I walked cautiously, just sniffing the air. I had already made it to the darker, creepier part of the forest where everything was dead. Where I had found the blood on the rock.

I shuddered and continued walking around, trying to calm my pounding heart, as the scent of stale blood grew stronger.

A twig snapped, and I stopped, my head whipping around to follow the sound. But there was nothing and no one around, so I kept moving as silently through the forest as a shadow.

I finally found the rock with blood, except the blood was dried now, just a faded stain on the rough surface. I sniffed it, trying to figure out who it belonged to. The scent was familiar to me, but I just couldn’t place it no matter how hard I tried.

I sat there for a while, crouched next to the rock, just thinking about whose blood it could be until I heard it.

Death.

I stiffened and my eyes widened. It couldn’t have been a nightmare, that was just wishful thinking.

Again and again it repeated, and my fear seemed to slowly creep up and tried to swallow me whole.