– The dream starts as it always does.

I’m two years old and I’m holding a baby in my arms.

I don’t know who it is, but I know I’m happy and that I feel important, but where the dream usually leaves me alone as the baby is taken away from me, this time it’s different.

Suddenly I’m not two anymore, and there are no babies.  In front of me it’s a mirror, and in the mirror a girl about my age staring back at me.

Where my hair is black as night, hers is as blonde as spun gold, but our olive skin complexion and our strange grey eyes are the same.  If it wasn’t for the blonde hair I would think it my own reflection such is the staggering resemblance between us.

‘Who are you?’ I want to ask, but before I can utter the words the mirror shatters and I’m covered in blood, mine or hers I can’t tell but it’s everywhere, and so are the ghosts and the corpses in different stages of decomposition.  The girl is gone.

I want to run, but there are just too many of them, reaching out to me, pulling, pushing, grabbing.  I fight them with all I have, but to no avail.

‘It must be a dream,’ I keep chanting in my head, ‘wake up Callie, wake up!’

Only when I open my eyes the ghosts are still there, crowding around my bed, spilling out of my bedroom door like a macabre parade.

I scream, wishing them away with all I have inside me.

Hands grab me and I try to fight them away, desperate.

“Callie! Sweetheart is me!”

Through the fog of fear I recognize my mum’s voice and I surrender to her arms sobbing.

“Baby what is it? Talk to me” she tells me in soothing tones.

I inhale deeply, letting her vanilla and cinnamon scent wash over my nerves and calm me down.

“Just a dream” I manage to whisper.

She nods, brushing strands of hair away from my face “I see…” she says, a tired smile on her lips “…well, just try and relax sweetheart, it’s a special day tomorrow and you need your beauty sleep” she winks at me.

I nod and pull my fluffy duvet back onto the bed from the floor, where I’ve probably kicked it during the nightmare.

“Do you need anything?” mum asks, stopping by the door and looking at me with far more concern than I would expect.

I shake my head “No…no I’m good, just another stupid nightmare.  I don’t even remember it anymore…”

She just stares at me intensely for a moment, as if she wants to say more, as if she knows I’m lying, but in the end decides against it and just leaves, after giving me another smile “All right then, I’ll  wake you up for breakfast baby.”

With that she leaves and I’m left in my room alone and still a little terrified.

The alarm clock on my bedside table reads 00.01 am.

It’s October 31^st, Halloween.

Happy Birthday to me.

Today I turn eighteen. –

 

 

Copyright © Ninfa Hayes and Misty Price, “Divine”. All rights reserved. Excerpt may be altered before publication

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