Revelation.



She can feel a slight tug of anxiety, as she makes the turn at Aberdeen Road, soft beads of rain begin to appear on the windshield, slowly becoming larger ones as the downpour begins. She checks her watch, its past noon, she was gone for four hours, but now she had in her possession enough food to last them awhile. There is something not right with her high school chum Daniel Vickers.. There’s something there, beyond the sudden death of his father, almost like a presence that she felt from the moment that he first opened the front door of the Vickers home. The feeling of anxiety returns as she sees the sky grow dark, now the rain lashing down harder on the Chevrolet, it almost seems angry to her. Her thoughts return to Daniel Vickers and his recurring dream, she would have to ask him about it, but diplomatically, she certainly didn’t want to upset him beyond what he already was. Damn it Sharon! pay attention! She barely sees something run in front of the vehicle when she instinctively slams both feet on the brakes, causing the Chevy to turn sharply sideways, almost hydroplaning out of control, the rain crashes against the dark cold pavement as she thinks about braving the elements to get out and see what she had almost hit. It is then that she sees it through the driver’s side window.. What the hell?.. A dog? A… Wolf?.. Here? She squints to see through the rain to see the strange animal that is standing in the middle of the road in the pouring rain staring at her. Anxiety begins to slowly turn to dread and fear as the animals cold stare pierces through the rain storm, she slams the Chevy into gear and slowly begins to accelerate. Ten minutes later she is pulling into the Vickers driveway, she puts it into park and tries to calm herself before taking the groceries inside. She opens the door and goes to the trunk where she picks up four plastic bags full of groceries.
“Daniel?.. Sweetie I’m back.”
She hears muffled noises coming from the den and smiles to herself, he never did like to wake up quietly.
“Danny? I didn’t know that you had any black wolves running around these woods. I almost hit one, scared the bejesus out of me!”
Silence.
“Danny?”
She puts the groceries down on the round table by the breakfast nook not even noticing that it is now completely empty. She heads towards the den where he was napping, and when she finds him, he is in an exhausted heap on the floor, both hands and arms are covered in paint, the room looks as though a cyclone hit it, but what she finds by far the most un nerving is the perfectly painted mural that is spread across the longest wall of the den.

Dreams.



She covers him in a towel after pulling him from the warm shower, and helps dry him off, visibly shaken, he lays down on the bed and she wraps him in a blanket, moments later he falls fast asleep. She lay there next to him, she herself visibly shaken as well. Slowly she makes her way back to the den, the house has grown dark as the storm outside has intensified. She lights herself a cigarette and studies the picture on the wall. It is as dark as the storm raging outside of the window pane. There are black looking trees
spread out across a small hillside, it is densely populated with trees and under brush. Behind the them she can make out the faint but unmistakable image of a stream or brook , but the most curious piece of the picture she sees is, beneath and between two of the trees on the ground, Daniel Vickers has painted a wooden door. His voice comes up suddenly from behind her, causing her to jump.
“I don’t know how or why.. I just woke up and did it, I was sleeping and dreaming again.. My head started to pound like the last time..”
She kneels down in front of him.
“Like the last time? .. Danny? This has happened before?”
He shakes his head as he’s lighting his own cigarette.
“Yeah.. Only last time there wasn’t any painting.. Just words.”
“Words Danny?.. You painted words on a wall?”
“No.. I.. I wrote them down on paper.”
“On paper? Do you still have it??”
He walks over to his fathers roll top desk and removes a stack of papers from the top drawer, he hands them to her.
“I went over them a thousand times Sharon, they’re gibberish.”
She studies the papers over and over again, staying up most of the night. The common thread in the entire text she finds is the name “Jennifer Watson” and the repeated phrase, “White hats are a lie”. the rest give words relative to one another but have no distinct meaning, names of places and people that she’d never heard of. An hour and a half ago, she’d left Daniel sleeping soundly on the dens sofa. She gets up and pours herself a cup of coffee, listening to the soft rapping of the rain on the windows.. She would have to ask him who Jennifer Watson is. Her thoughts are interrupted by the low thumping noise coming from inside of the den, she hurries to look, almost tripping over her own two feet in her haste. When she enters she finds him much in the same way as before. In the middle of the floor, his arms covered in paint, with a whole new picture painted on the wall next to the first. In the new picture the woods are exactly the same, only the door now isn’t on the ground, it is leaning up against one of the trees, and there is a beautiful young girl in a long flowing white night gown pointing at the door. She cast a confused troubled look at Daniel.
“Sharon?… what’s happening to me?”

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