Another Take On Dreams
The First Night
The long day that began with anticipation and twisted Erin’s gut ended with the family courts deciding that after being raised for fifteen years by her father, a cop in the Denver PD, Erin Reed needed to be living with her mother on the other side of the United States. The whole ordeal was a tear jerker in both parties. Jemima, Erin’s previously non-existent mother, was smiling while fanning away her tears with plane tickets to Pennsylvania. Erin on the side of the room was clutching her father’s uniform while snot mixed with her tears.
By the time the next sun had rose Erin was already standing in front of her mother’s massive house with a black umbrella. Correction, it was a manor, white and two stories tall. Erin’s whole entire life was in suitcases around her missing the people that went with them. The manor was drafty. Her mother was proper, and half-brother was uninterested. Therefore Erin drifted off to sleep with the rain pattering on the window, in a room as far as she could get from her new family.
It was still raining. Erin stood, toes gushing the mud between them, in nothing more than a sports bra that doubled as a reflector and a lacy, black thong. She hugged her curves in an attempt to keep warm, teeth chattering. Slowly, the rain drizzled from her long curly black hair down to her pale fingertips tickling her arms along the way. Her evergreen eyes flicked about searching for signs of life.
Although the sky was blacker than a demon’s soul, there was a faint smudge of amber light peeking out of the trees ahead of Erin. Shivering Erin made her way towards the glow wincing with every step as her feet landed on the dry pine needles. As she got closer the rhythmic sound of a shovel being thrust into dirt and taken back out again became audible. Peering from behind the pines, Erin saw two crusty men slinging mud out of a knee-deep pit. The wrought iron enclosure and granite tombstones sent a chill down her spine.
Erin hit the ground getting a mouthful of pine cones. A woman with fair blonde hair rushed into the graveyard wearing a long black dress that belled out at least two feet all around her.
“What the Hell!” shouted Erin as she shoved herself up and charged the ivory woman. Slipping on the grass, Erin slammed into a wooden coffin.
The pale woman kneeled next to Erin and threw open the rough box grabbing the body inside and hugging it to her chest. “My boy,” sobbed the woman softly, “my beautiful boy. Why did God take you away from me?”
A waft of decay smacked Erin’s nose, and she scrambled away from the macabre scene struggling to not throw up. From here the head of the corpse was in full view. A shock of golden blonde hair fell on a white forehead that led down to a strong bluish jaw. The driving rain pelted his motionless face as the storm intensified. Rocking back and forth, the woman clutched his body like a lifeline.
The lumbering, mud-crusted men emerged from their hole, walked right through Erin, still lying in the mud, giving her whole body the tingling sensation received from hitting a funny bone. Looming behind the mother and her dead son, they removed their hats revealing hair with greasy sheen that repelled the rain.
“Ma’am?”
She did nothing.
“Mrs. Lihton, ma’am, we’re supposed to put your boy down in his final resting place.”
Her fragile frame shook as her blonde curls fell from her bun and rested on her soaked shoulders where one of the grave digger’s hands rested. The two men shared a look and a nod. The one with his hand on the mother’s shoulder tore her away from the corpse screaming while the other one shoved the body back into its box.
Leaping up, Erin lunged pulling the mother away from the digger, her bare feet slipping on the sod. The wind whipped the mother’s skirts snapping and scratching Erin’s legs. The lumbering figure of the grave digger slithered through the muck toward the shivering pair as they backed away from the man’s glowing eyes.
“Come along Mrs. Lihton.” The animal said reaching out for the mother.
“That’s not necessary, John!” A slender, pale figure whooshed out of the pines, her skirts trying to take her with the wind. Her fair hair frizzed as she squinted her mud colored eyes looking at the older version of herself. “Mother come inside. You’ll catch your death in this weather,” she said extending a graceful hand.
“You don’t have to go,” Erin shouted over the rain, “If you need more time, stay.” The woman’s puffy red eyes shifted to the casket whimpering and shaking while covering her mouth trying to suffocate her own tears.
Another hand appeared on the mother’s shoulder and a pair of lush lips whispered into the other ear. “Think of Papa, Katie, Helena, Charlie, Maggie, and Fran… Come inside and banish this chill.” Her voice cracked,
“Don’t leave me, too.”
Turning to look at Erin, the mother dropped her shoulders, “Your father must have the fire stoked up inside. I suppose…” With that the black somber figure glided back through the forest she came through leaving Erin shivering in her underwear with a coffin on one side and an endless pit on the other.
The brown-eyed daughter who couldn’t have been much older than Erin stood up straighter looking down on the two grave diggers. “I thought that carcass was supposed to be six feet under by now,” she snarled.
“Yes ma’am.”
“You shall address me as Miss Gwendolyn and I will wait until it’s done.”
“For God’s sake Erin! Wake up!” She stood in the middle of the scene with her brow furrowed, her bra soaked, and her body numb.