Here's my dip into horror fiction writing.
October 29, 1992 She still couldn't shake the previous night's dream. It followed Talia like an acid reflux aftertaste, through the morning routine, kids fed, lunches packed, and in the car to school and work. During the quiet times, with student heads bent over writing, the dream would kick her in the stomach and for a moment she felt sick. No clear visuals just a horrifying sense that somehow, somewhere, she had seen or done something atrocious and unspeakable. It felt like loathing and horror, bordering on mania.
Talia went through her paces, but the relentless dream dogged her like a voracious demon, hovering over her, waiting to devour her. It was all so nebulous. Pure feeling with no cognition. She could call up no clear memory from the dream. What could I have done or seen if only in my dream to make me feel so repulsive? Or revulsed.
And it was weird because Talia was the sort of woman to whom no odor of wrong-doing or malice could stick. Happily married, mother of three, fifth grade teacher, volunteer, friend. Came from an old established family, the Riordan's, well thought of and liked, in their little Massachusetts community. And this was all part of the dream, although in negative so to speak. Like something was twisting every good thing about her, back to bite her.
At lunch, the teacher's lounge was full of chatter. But for Talia, a full-on blinding headache had taken over the right hemisphere of her brain. Barb, the school psychologist leaned over toward Talia.
"Good Lord, woman. You look terrible! What's wrong? You'd better go rest your head before the bell rings."
That does it, thought Talia, it's a stupid dream and it's making me crazy! Maybe if I close my eyes tight, I can remember what happened and then let go of it. Talia leaned back in her chair. Vague recollections began to take shake. Disturbing images jabbed at the edge of her memory. Just out of sight. Then suddenly, the dream came back, in a rush, like vomit. And Talia passed out cold.
"Mrs. Sternburg, are you okay? Taylor, I think Mrs. Sternburg is sick. Let's go tell Miss B." Hearing student voices, seeing nothing.
'Talia, it's Kate. Can you hear me? We're taking you to Valley View ER. We think that you might have suffered a slight stroke. We're calling Rob. I don't think she's conscious at all." Warm down one side and kind of prickly. Lights. Ringing noise. People running. Utterly immobile.
"Tally, honey, wake up, my God, what's going on?" For a moment seeing Rob's sweet face, tears running like taps, the girls sobbing, arms wrapped around dad. Moving away. Fading out like the lights at the end of a play.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Sternburg. She's gone."
Bad things happen to good people. But when bad things happen to bad people, beware. 300 years and prior to Talia Riordan Sternburg's death to the day, an event took place. October 29, 1692 A small village outside Salem, MA. Goodman Morten sits hunched over a table, a look of pure cancerous malignancy on his fat, greasy face. A rich man, vicious and sadistic. His small eyes, buried like pin pricks in folds of fat, have a disturbing glow-worm light in them. Like an All Hallows moon.
"Damn that Riordan wench; damn her spying eyes" the words come with spit, 'How dare she decry me to the elders? She could not have seen what we were doing in the woods that night! That lying whore!'
Then he begins to mutter and tremble, his craven nature taking over. He gags out,
"My God. She's a midwife! She was coming home that night through the woods, from Goody Bridewell's birthing. She saw..."
Heavy boot-steps stomping through the brush, in the gun-metal river-mist morning. The clank of manacles can be heard approaching the cabin. The deputy's men coming to arrest him. Morten, the coward and the beast, spits out a final curse.
"Here me now, Widow Riordan, I will reckon with thee. A life for a life."
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