Chapter 17 Falling

• Every night for years, I had a dream where I was falling. I would turn round and round as I fell farther down the hole. It was dark and menacing, but before I fell, something would chase me that sounded a lot like a little girl. The thing is the way she sounded, scared me to no end. I remember one night. I had just closed my eyes and then I heard it, a gentle scraping noise coming from the end of the bed. Convincing myself that it was just something in my head, I keep my eyes closed and count to 100. When I am done, I hear it again. As I open my eyes, I feel the sheets begin to slowly lower as if someone was pulling them from the foot of the bed. When I see the shadowy dark figure emerge, I scream out into the night. Fearing no one will help me, I try to make my escape and end up flat on my face before realizing that my feet were still caught up in the sheets. Struggling to get back up again, I pull my feet from them and then run into the hallway. Not noticing that this isn’t my hallway anymore, I keep running and running. Finally, when I glance at my surroundings, I hear the voice from the small child, and it is saying a rhyme over and over again. Not wanting to look at what is following me, I keep running and realize that the corridor is longer and darker than it has ever been. I could swear that I hear my parents voice from ahead, so I keep going without noting that there is something wrong with this situation. SShaking my head, I feel the perspiration slide off my forehead and into the darkened hallway where the only thing I can see is a light from far ahead. Hearing the little girl’s voice again, she mocks me and says with a sinister sound to her voice, “Can’t catch me, I just keep running and running. But do you know where you are going? I do and I don’t think you will be happy when you get there.” This time when I hear that, I stop running for a moment and glance back to where I heard her voice. That same shadowy, looming figure is standing there staring at me with a smile on it’s face. Then I see it’s eyes as they stare at me with big saucers made of yellow, that remind me of lemon Jell-O. When it starts to walk towards me, I back up slowly and fall over something lying behind me on the floor. She starts to chant again before I turn around and run towards the far-off light and wish that I had remembered what my mother had told me from the night before. It was something like, “If you ever come across a shadow that bites, move into the light and it can’t follow.” I think that was it, but I can’t be certain because when she said it, I wasn’t really listening at all. Instead, I was playing my video games and watching a television channel. It’s times like this that I do wish that I listened to my mother. Now that I keep going over it in my head, I am sure she said, “If you ever run into a shadow that moves in the night, don’t be scared. Just remember that they only exist if there is light from in front of you.”