White Wolf Rising [Completed]

Part 4: Nightmares

Two days of bed rest, pain meds and sleep. Sleeping, eating and more sleep. He changed his bandages once a day, in a daze from all the medication, then would passed out again. Until day three...

No matter what Caleb did he could not sleep. The air conditioning was blasting, the ceiling fan was spinning at full speed and he was stripped down to nothing but his boxers and he was still sweating. No matter what he did he just couldn't cool off. His skin was clammy and sweat beads gathered on his forehead and neck. The air felt thick and humid.

Caleb guessed it was the meds making him feel so feverish because his bulldog puppy was curled under his arm shivering and shaking. He tucked the covers around her for extra warmth and turned on his side. When he closed his eyes he could hear his heart beat thumping in his ears. The more he tried to ignore it the loud it got. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Finally he got out of bed grabbed the bottle of pain meds he had gotten earlier and read the label, "May cause drowsiness. Good." He took two. It wasn't time to take more but his head was pounding and he needed to get some sleep.

After pacing for an hour and hearing the irritating thumping in his ears over and over, he laid down in bed, snuggled up next to his puppy and finally fell asleep. A deep sleep filled with a dark dream that he couldn't wake from.

His head was filled with screams, growls and a strange inaudible voice. A voice that sounded much like his own but deeper and filled with anger. He was surrounded by dark shadows, silhouettes of a familiar monster, the creature from the barn. But there wasn't just one, there were several 10 of them to be exact. They all stood around him waiting to pounce. In the distance was one singular creature watching him, calling out to him.

It's voice became louder and louder screaming at him to run. That was just what he did. As he ran the shadows of monsters jumped and leaped and darted after him, growling and hissing. But he kept forward not looking back The harder he ran the slower he moved, the heavier his legs felt, until he wasn't moving at all.

In a panic he looked back at the shadowed Monsters as they closed in on him, ready to devour his soul. The last monster screamed out to him, "Caleb!" in a pitch that was so loud and so frightening that Caleb jumped out of his bed.

He fell back against the bedroom door, his hand gripping his chest trying to stop his heart from springing free his body. Breathing hard he struggled to breathe. An eerie feeling settled over him and sunk to the pit of his stomach. He wasn't sure it was just the nightmare giving a severe case of paranoia but he had the strangest feeling that he was not alone.

As scared as he was his bulldog was calm as ever, letting out a big yawn as it stretched out on the bed and stared at Caleb curiously. 

Caleb crawled to his feet the pain in his arm very minimal which was strange to him, he was thankful for those pain pills. He opened his bedroom door, stared out into the hallway, then looked in the bathroom, he crept into the living room, no one was there. But that feeling of being watched was still present. He knew he wasn't alone. He could feel their eyes on him. Everything felt wrong.

After double checking his entire house twice, he grabbed his gun and went outside. He checked every dark corner in his back yard and front yard, but there was nothing. Almost disappointed he went back inside and went back to his bedroom. Was he just paranoid?

He felt foolish once he realized nothing was there, but he still checked under his bed. He laid back on his bed and chuckled to himself, "You are losing it."

The faint muffled sound of a voice nearby brought him to attention. Someone was there. He removed the safety from his gun, used the back of his good hand to swipe the sweat dripping down his forehead. Quickly he poked his head out the door to get a small view of the living room, he didn't see anyone but the muffled voice continued. They were close by, but he couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. His house was pretty bare, Caleb had only lived there a few months and didn't have much, so there weren't too many places to hide.