Cursed ✔️

25. The Nightmare Continues

It was all wrong. John was in a familiarly unfamiliar place somehow. He looked around but saw only darkness. He was all alone again. Through the moonlight, he made out that he was in the woods - with trees having not even a single leaf but only branches - dark crooked branches that appeared to be coming towards him. The ground below him didn't have any grasses or bushes. It was all sand, dark, black sand. He heard the sounds of the vultures circling above him. He was scared but yelled, "Hello?" hoping that he'd not be alone. Being alone in the dark always played games in his mind - disturbing games.

He shivered and rubbed his hands on his arms as the temperature suddenly dropped down. Suddenly, he heard a familiar voice behind him. He thanked because now he had some company in the creepy woods. But he soon wished that he'd be alone.

"John?" John could identify the voice from anywhere. It was Harry's.

"Harry?" He turned around hoping to see him and when he did, he ran and hugged him. "Oh, Harry, I missed you so much, man." He started sobbing.

He hoped that Harry would say something. At least 'I missed you too' but instead, he stood there hugging Harry in silence.

"What's wrong, Harry? Why aren't you saying anything?" John said wiping his eyes. When he took a step back, he stood there in horror as he saw Harry's innocent, sweet face turning into a horrifying nightmare.

His face was distorted. He had only one eye filled with blood and an empty, dark, deep socket where his other eye should've been. His skin was burned down and his mouth was stretched from both sides revealing a huge dark abyss inside. His neck - half-cut - was tilted to one side as if balancing his twisted body.

"Why?" The sound came from the abyss. "Why John why?" It was a disturbing sound. It didn't sound like Harry at all. It was deep and demonic.

John's legs moved backward as he closed in on him. "I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't know back then. I'm really sorry."

"Sorry? Huh! Save it, John. You're a liar. You're the reason I died. You're the cause of the misery that my whole family has to go through. All because of you. All because you took the stone. Why in the world didn't you leave it there?" Harry's disoriented body lunched forward.

"You know you're my best friend Harry. I won't harm you. I'm really sorry. If I could, you know I would turn back the clock." As John was stepping backward, his legs collided with a rock and he fell down. He was scared. Scared of his best friend. Scared of what stood in front of him.

"Huh! Forget it, John. It's all because of YOU! Everyone is paying the price of what YOU did. We were innocent. You've ruined so many lives."

Suddenly, Harry stopped. The branches behind him extended forward towards John.

"Murderers don't deserve to live." As he said that line, the branches moved towards John, with full force, tangling him.

"I'm not a murderer. I'm really sorry, Harry. I would never ever kill you. You know that. You're my best friend. I would never harm you. I'm sorry." It was hard to let out the words as he began to choke. "Please forgive me."

"Forgive you? Huh! Stop playing the victim, John. You're a murderer, who doesn't deserve to live. Now you'll know what it's like to feel that dying pain."

The branches constricted him more making it harder to breathe with every passing second. He felt he was running out of the air. He tried to break free but the branches held onto him too tight - tighter than a snake that entangles its prey before killing it.

From a distance, he saw Diana with her sinister, terrifying smile with narrowed eyes.

This was it. He's gonna die. He could feel his heart was about to burst.

Harry came closer to him, with something in his hand. John's sight was too blur due to the lack of oxygen that he couldn't make it out. But he was sure that whatever it was, Harry was gonna kill him.

He tried to scream, but his voice was gone. As Harry's crooked body came closer to him, he closed his eyes and covered his face with his arms.

Nothing.

He laid on the sand, for a few minutes, frozen with fear. But nothing.

He slowly opened his eyes, trying to adjust to his surroundings. He slowly felt free. Not constricted anymore. He checked his neck and his body. The branches which were wrapped too tightly around him were gone. He looked around, but he didn't see any sight of Harry.

He took a breath of life.

As he studied what was around him, he questioned where he was? The woods with the dead, killing trees were gone. Below him, there wasn't any of that black sand. And as he looked above, the night sky with the vultures was gone. Instead, he found himself on a concrete floor with something sharp and heavy in his hands. The surroundings were still blurred but he could at least figure it out that it was a knife that he held in his hands.

"Ahhh" Someone came running towards him groaning and murmuring something. It wasn't Harry or anyone's voice he was familiar with. But it had that same demonic essence which Harry had, but this one was over a level above demonic. He stood paralyzed there, unable to move.

As that someone came closer and closer to him, he let out a gasp. In front of him, stood his sister - Hannah, with blood all over her. Before he could say something, she suddenly grabbed John's neck, elevating him a few inches above the ground. He struggled to break free but failed. His legs began to swing forward and backward as he was choking to death by his own sister. "Han-" His voice began to break. This couldn't be Hannah. This could NOT be her sister. She would never harm him, let alone kill him. But still, what stood in front of him, was still Hannah - her sister.

Without thinking twice, he stabbed his sister right in her guts, in self-defense. Hannah moaned in pain and loosed her grip on John. John fumbled and coughed for a few times and breathed in as much air as he could. When he was about to make a run for his life, Hannah held his arms. Her grip was too constricting. He could feel every muscle and bone break. "I'm sorry, Hannah," John said as he rose his hands with the knife in and stabbed her. He stabbed her again and again and screamed.

"John!" John felt someone shaking him. "John! Get up!"

John screamed and got up. He was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. He checked himself.

"Thank God!" He breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"They're not real, John. They're just nightmares. It's ok. You're safe."

John had two choices at this point. Either to tell Hannah everything that he saw or to remain quiet. He chose the second option to go with. He did not want to tell his horrifying, near-death experience to his sister. Not when his own sister was trying to kill him and he stabbed her - with his own hands. He looked at his hands trying to forget it. But the vivid nightmare came back to him.

"John, it's alright." Hannah calmed him down.

"Well, how's Emily?" John said still trying to recover and trying to get his insane heartbeats to normal, changing the topic.

"I paid her a visit today, she hasn't made any recovery," Hannah said looking down with sadness reflecting all over her face. "But on the bright side, at least her condition is not deteriorating. " She tried to be as optimistic as possible.

"That's good but what are we going to do Hannah? I mean, Diana's onto us. She'll find any means to kill us." Diana's sinister smile from his nightmare crept into his skin causing him to shiver. "It's like it is a dead-end from here. There are no clues that we can follow or solve. We don't know where that last piece could be."

Both of them sat there in the room in silence, trying to find a way but got nothing.