Dreams of Fate

Noah Griffin bolted awake.  His eyes flew open and his limbs flailed, messing up the sheets.

The glass-like knocking continued to come every few seconds as he whimpered.  He looked down at his hands, made a fist, opened, and wiggled his fingers.  Yep, he was awake.  This wasn’t a dream after all.

Gathering the courage to look for the source of the noise, Noah rolled over in his bed so that he was no longer facing the wall.  He kept his eyes shut as he did this so that he wouldn’t feel like an idiot if it was just a branch or bird at the window.  Once over on his side, he peeked through his eyelids, holding his breath unknowingly as he did so. 

In the window, illuminated by the faint night-light in the corner of Noah’s room, was not a branch, nor was it a bird.  It was a human figure.

Noah recoiled, yanking the sheets over his head.  The witch.  The witch wasn’t just a nightmare.  The knocking stopped for a moment but what replaced it might’ve been even worse.  What filled the silence was laughter.  The chuckles were muffled but still equally as fear-inducing as they were in his dreams.

After the laughing died out, the voice started.  The voice was eerie in the fact that it was deep and unintelligible.  Noah raised the sheet slightly off of his head, careful to not make it too noticeable.  As the sheet came away from his head, the voice began to form words.  The mumbling quickly became: “...umbass.  Open the window, dude.  I’ve been out here for half an hour.”

Noah threw off the covers and sat up, looking at the figure in the window.  He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and turned it’s flashlight on.  In the window, the figure cowered, shielding its face with its tan hands.  “Dude, what the hell?” it said loudly.

In the isolated beam crouched Art.  Noah rolled his eyes and hoisted himself up out of bed.  

He ambled his way over to the window, tripping once over his too large pajama pants.  Slowly, he pulled the bottom part of the window up until it would go no further.  Art shrunk through the window and nearly fell as he stepped down into Noah’s room, prompting a threatening look from Noah.

“Dude we’re 18 now, have you not realized that pulling the covers over your head wouldn’t protect you from a murderer?” Art teased.  

Noah strained to hold back from shouting, succeeding in whispering, though his face showed his real emotions: “All these kids going missing this week and you’re making fun of me for being cautious.”  He paused, shaking his head for a moment.  Yes, it was just an excuse but he didn’t want Art to know that he was still terrified about some stupid witch.  “What are you doing here, Art?  It’s literally…” he checked his phone, “two-thirty in the morning.”

Art’s eyes widened, his mouth slightly open.  He quickly shook this look off and sighed, “Noah, you’ve got to see this.”

“What is it this time?” Noah groaned.  

Art leaned up against the windowsill and looked down at his feet, “Well, that’s why I need your help.  I’m not sure what exactly it is.”

*****

Noah and Art stole into the streets, careful to stick their landings as they jumped down from the roof of the front porch that Art had climbed to get up to the window.  The gentle breeze seemed to blanket Noah in a welcome contrast to the sauna that was the daytime.  The streets were bare; the only company the two of them had was that of onlooking deer and raccoons in the distance.  The streets weren’t usually this quiet but the disappearances the past week had caused the villagers to favor the indoors at night.

“Art, I really want to know where we’re going,” Noah begged.

With a sigh, Art replied: “Fine.  Just so you’ll shut up about it.  But promise me that you won’t freak out.”

Noah halted in place in the street, Art following suit a moment later.  Noah didn’t say a word, just looked at Art expectantly.

“We’re going to the woods,” Art admitted.

Noah’s hands ripped through his hair, turning white when his fingers locked onto chunks of hair.  He stammered for a moment before shouting: “I.  I told you I’m done going to the woods again!  I never wanted to go last week and after that night, I--”

Art’s hand clasped over his mouth, sure to let no more noise out.  “We don’t talk about that night.  And could you be any louder?  Damn bro, I thought I was the loud one.”

“I’m not going in there again.  I can’t,” Noah said more quietly now, escaping Art’s hand.  

Art gave him that look that Noah had seen far too many times.  That look of disappointment.  Of betrayal.  Time after time, this look reminded Noah of the feelings behind it.  He had become well acquainted with these feelings and wanted nothing more than to never feel that way again.  This look reminded him that, if he were to lose Art, that same look, those same feelings, would arise in him.  Then, he would be truly alone.

“Art…”

Art’s eyes dropped, his mouth followed; a look of pathetic desperation.  “Noah, it’s nothing like last time.  Whole new adventure.  If we stay far enough away from that area, we’ll be perfectly fine.  Please?”

Noah paused, debating whether or not it was really worth it to give into Art’s pleas.  Is he really worth it? Noah thought.  Is he really worth putting yourself in danger?

“If we die, it’s your fault,” Noah said.  

Art smiled and motioned to Noah as if he were a drill sergeant commanding: “Move out, troops.”

The dormancy of the street intensified any movement that didn’t adhere to this image.  With every rustle of bushes, Noah’s head snapped to the source of the noise, knowing that it was going to be nothing but a tiny creature but too wary to take any chances.  After one particularly large reaction, Art snickered.  Noah feigned indifference and the two of them pushed forward.

As the woods approached, Noah could feel himself tensing.  To Noah, just about any place on Earth was preferable to the woods.  Seeing it now made his breath quicken.  He glanced over toward Art and saw that he was sweating.  Noah said nothing to him but he knew that Art was not big enough to work up a sweat after walking this short a distance.  

*****

Into the woods they went, Noah falling back so that Art could lead them to whatever it was he wanted Noah to see.  With the street lights no longer reaching, Noah pulled out his phone and went to swipe on the flashlight but his hand was intercepted by Art.

“No.  I’ll just use the screen on my phone.  More low-key,” Art said quietly, almost in a whisper.  

Art unlocked his phone, tapping it periodically to stop the screen from going dark.  The two of them continued on through the woods.  Noah had noticed that Art’s footsteps were cautioned, avoiding any fallen twigs.  Noah followed suit.

Further up the trail, the road forked.  In the grass between the two paths stood a post with a sign on it.  Noah gave the sign a puzzled look, unable to read it through the ink of the night but feeling as though he recognized the area.  He and Art had come to the woods many times throughout the years and explored many different parts of them, which made him unsure of which section this really was.  There were many of these sign posts throughout the woods, all of them looking the same.  

Before Noah could decipher what the sign said, Art pulled his arm, leading him down the path to the right.  Noah opened his mouth to object but thought better of it; they needed to stay quiet.  One could never know who, or what, was in the woods.

The path led them on an uphill, one that caused the both of them to start breathing heavier as they trekked up it.  It wound left and right through the trees like a snake.  Noah had come to the realization that, oddly enough, the sounds of animals that he had heard on the streets were no longer present in the woods.  It was eerily quiet, something that he hadn’t thought to be the case the previous times that they had ventured here.

The ground began to level out and the trees dispersed ahead of them.  The dirt path turned to grass as they continued onward.  Noah squinted his eyes, trying to adjust to the dark, which he thought he had already done.  This area seemed to be darker than the rest of the woods, however.  

After a minute or two of walking in this tree-less area, Noah yelled: “Oww, what the f--” drawing out the ‘f’.  Blowing air through his nose, he snatched Art’s phone from his hand and turned on the flashlight, pointing it down at his feet.  Protruding from the ground was the object that Noah had smashed his shin into as he was walking.

In a small voice, Art said: “Noah, please don’t be mad at m--”

“You brought me back to the cemetery?” Noah screamed.  “You said it was going to be nothing like last time!”

Stepping toward Noah and motioning with his hands to quiet down, Art begged: “It’s not like last time!  Look, I knew if I told you where we’re going, you wouldn’t come.  Just please let me explain what’s going on.”

Noah’s breaths were dangerously short, his eyes were bulging as he ran his hands through his hair.  He was too overwhelmed to say anything in response.

Art took the opportunity; “The last time we came here, it was after one rumor I heard about the witch.  Well, I had a nightmare about a witch last night.  The longer the dream lasted, the more I was sure that she was the witch in the tomb; the one from the story.  I couldn’t get her out of my head after that.  So, I did some research to see if what happened was real or if it was just in our heads.”  He paused, seeming to be waiting for Noah to say something.  Noah’s hands were still in his hair but his breathing had relaxed a bit.  He still said nothing.

Art continued: “Well, I learned that when all the people went missing in 1994, one of the victims was at the witch’s tomb earlier that week.  The night before the disappearances started.  Sound familiar?”

Noah cupped his hands around his nose, sliding them down until his thumbs were propping up his chin.  He could feel the tears welling in his eyes but didn’t dare to let them go; he was not going to have a repeat of last time.  “I think I need to sit down,” he said quietly.  He took a seat, propping himself up against the headstone he had rammed his shin into.  Art remained standing.

“The girl who visited the tomb was named Nicole.  Investigators found her journal in her room and found that she had been having nightmares involving a witch for three nights before she went missing,” Art paused, taking a deep breath.  “I had that nightmare last night but I haven’t slept tonight, so I haven’t had the chance to dream again.  How about you?”

Noah froze.  His mind ran wild with all of the possibilities of what this could mean.  The witch wasn’t just invading his dreams, she was invading Art’s, too.  Noah opened his mouth and paused before letting out a big breath.  Then, he spoke: “I’ve been having the same dreams.  One yesterday and you woke me up out of the one I was having tonight.”

Art stood still for a second, as well.  He looked genuinely disturbed, a face that Noah thought he had never seen him wear before now.  Art said blankly: “Fuck…”  He stood still for another moment or two before he seemed to return from his thoughts, “After Nicole woke up from the third nightmare, the night before she disappeared, she decided to go back to the mausoleum.  The last thing that she wrote in her journal was that, that last night…” He stopped, looking as though he was scared to continue.  “...She found the door to the mausoleum open.”

“Oh my God,” Noah gasped, his eyes staring at the ground, unseeing.

Art said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper: “Noah…” He reached out his arm and extended a finger, shakily, toward where he had been staring a few moments ago.  “I think we only have one night left.”

Noah picked up Art’s phone from the ground, the flashlight appeared again after shining directly into the ground.  He slowly turned the flashlight toward where Art’s finger was pointing.  He had been pointing at the mausoleum, the same one that had given Noah multiple sleepless nights since the first time he encountered it.  The beam reflected off of the granite walls before centering on the two innermost columns.  Between the two columns was the unusually bare, wooden door to the tomb.  The tears trapped in Noah’s eyes gave way, unleashing a stream of waterworks down his face.

The door to the tomb was ajar