Microhorror Writing Contest

Read Between the Lines

Bedtimes stories were not lost on Amelia, even though she was just a kid she knew that it was the rhythm of the words that relaxed her into sleep. The circular scansion of the gentle prose was like a gently spinning disc drawing her into the land of dreams. Waves, wind, the waft of the trees in the breeze; those nocturnal visions were similarly soothing.

Then one night, after her mother had seen her asleep, having soothed her with stories, Amelia’s dreams were intruded upon. There was a new sound, there was a knocking of wood against wood, but irregular like a stylus in a rough groove. Each impact echoed into the next, and the irregular percussion drilled into her sense of calm until she was lucid and fully aware; but she was still dreaming. The walls were not of her bedroom but of a tree house, and the wind was no longer soothing but picking up intensity, like the naissance of a storm. The building cacophony was penetrated still by rattling echoes.

The wooden beats were passing around the yard below, but getting louder, moving closer. Then she could hear it coming from beneath her treetop den. It was nearing the open hatch. Amelia wanted to move closer, to look at who was approaching, but she couldn’t move. Each time she tried to shift her limbs ached as if constrained, but she knew that she being held by fear itself. All her attempts to wake herself up were failing, and, though she knew this to be a dream, she couldn’t escape into wakefulness. The tapping was just below the ridge of the entrance now, she would see it any second now. Her whole body twitched, movement at last, and Amelia woke. She was in her bed in the top room of the house again, with her bedroom door open, just the way she liked it.

The sudden break from the nightmare brought no comfort. The tapping returned. Arrhythmic and rattling against the banisters leading to her room. Free of sleep Amelia thought that she’d be able to run, but there was no where for her to go. When she did move her limbs were sluggish, as if she were wading through snow. The thud and click of the stick upon the stairs was nearing its zenith, Amelia was sure that she’d see it this time. Her attempt at screaming was stymied by a reflexive constriction of her through, as if fingers were pressing on her larynx.

With sudden clarity she broke and ran, free to move, and to scream. Amelia hurled herself towards, having escaped, at last, from the dream within a dream.

There was nothing there. No attacker, no stick, no banisters, no stairs.

Amelia fell into the darkness, and kept falling.