2:16AM

It was a dark and stormy night. The window pane in the guest room was being rattled by the wind and pelted by large the raindrops from the raging thunderstorm outside, threatening to shatter the thin glass and start flooding the confines of which Allison was occupying. A lightning bolt struck somewhere near the century-old house, illuminatung her room momentarily and making her stir in her slumber.

The said girl took a deep breath of the air and cringed into consciousness―it smelt like mould and rotting things; like wet garbage. It wasn't like that when she had first entered the room; the sunlight had been streaming through the grime-littered glass of the window, highlighting all the furniture. It had smelt like her Aunty Catherine's musky rose air-freshener. It had smelt pleasant.

She rolled over to face the wall, squirming around under the duvet to get comfortable―and sighed. It was one of those nights: the ones where she would wake up and not be able to get back to sleep.

She huffed and rolled over again, this time facing the bedside table, before opening her eyes. Blinking at the digital clock on the table, she read the time. The neon red numbers glared back at her. It was 2:15am.

There was a creak from somewhere inside of her room and her eyes darted around the room, seeking the source of the noise.

Nothing.

There was nothing she could see in the darkness. Allison willed herself to go to sleep, hoping that maybe this time could be different so that she could stop feeling such stupid paranoia.

A few minutes passed before there was another creak, this time louder, and from her closet. She slowly blinked and squinted a few times, the words 'you're fine' and 'you're just being paranoid', her self reassurance.

She perched herself on her elbows and looked around, heart beating rapidly with the adrenaline of fear, mind flooding with dread. She watched the door glide open on it's hinges silently before it thumped the wall quietly. Her blood ran cold and she choked out a long and shaky breath past her tight throat.

But nothing came out.

She looked to the clock again and read 2:16AM. I must be hallucinating, she thought―it was late after all, and she felt incredibly fatigued.

But then there were steps, as steady and rhythmic as a clock's tick and tock; and she knew she couldn't have ever imagined those sounds; so loud and clear and so, so nearby.

She sat upright and looked over to the bedroom door, a few feet away from the foot of the bed, and searched for shadows. A pale yellow light filtered through the gap under the white-painted wood, untained by any dark shapes. There were no shadows, and her Aunt's snores reached her ears softly for behind the wall on the other side of the room. If it wasn't Aunt Catherine, who was it? There was no one in the house but the two of them. Did Aunty Catherine have a husband?

Another sound disrupted her train of thought. But as she listened closer, trying to find the source, she heard something chanting her name in a hushed voice instead.

"Allison," it sang sweetly one last time. The voice was velvety, a woman's, and was accompanied by rattles and hisses that reminded her too much of a rattle snake for her comfort. It bounced and echoed within the walls of Allison's mind, making the warmth of her body leave all at once, chilling her right down to the marrow of her bones with the doubled-toned, minoric voice.

"Step out of the bed little girl, come now―there's no need to be timid," the voice said. Allison shook her head vaguely at the darkness in the room, looking around frantically, desperately wanting to scream but stopping her was a thick knot in her throat.

"Dream, dream. Allison it's all a dream," she assured herself, choking out the whispers, screwing her eyes shut and wrenching them back open repeatedly. "Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake u-"

There came a tut and a dark giggling from somwhere in the darkness before cold fingers caressed her nape and sides and down her arms simultaneously, raising the hairs and pulling goosebumps from her skin.

Her body was violently shaking now, trembling furiously. She frantically looked for something to hit whatever the thing was with. She grasped the clock tightly in her hands as a last resort and threw it weakly into the black of her room. She didn't hear it hit the ground.

"You poor girl," a whisper sounded in her ears. The woman, the thing laughed with great joy, mocking the terrified, little girl sitting wide-eyed in her bed trembling with her fear.

A leathery-black, gangling hand shot through Allison's chest, tearing straight through her flesh and spraying blood onto the walls and ceiling at the brute force. Her ribs snapped and shattered, the jagged edges cut into her lungs and she began to choke out blood. She screamed out in excruciating agony.

Unhuman, serrated claws dug into her throat and tore all of the skin under her chin to mere shreds, making blood ooze out and onto the crisp, white sheets around her like melted chocolate dripping from a spoon into a pot. She screamed and bawled and wailed and screamed again even louder, chest a gaping, red hole rimmed with ripped skin.

The smell of her blood filled her nostrils and she felt dizzy, choking and coughing out the hot, thick substance. All around her body, the sheets had gotten wet and sticky, white tainted a deep red; black in the dark of the room. She gagged on the hot substance flowing out of her body, spamming and convulsing until she arched off the bed. Her head lolled about and buried into the slickened pillow. Her eyes rolled back into her head and gurgles sounded from her mouth as her body twitched and shuddered and bled before she collapsed into a black and eternal abyss, blood an icy cold as it coated her skin thickly.

Allison awoke from her dream―the nightmare with her heart pounding erratically in the confines of her ribs and a cold sweat drenching her night gown. She felt around her chest and felt nothing protruding, The smell of blood lingered no longer in the air.

Sighing in relief, she blinked a few times to get the horrifying images out of her head. Allison twisted her body to look over at the clock, she observed it switch from 2:15am to 2:16am.

The closet door creaked open.