Chapter One of Cinderwhite

            It wouldn’t be long before the night terrors came.

            I wandered awake within the dream, or it might be more accurate to say, I dreamed while awake. I moved along the sidewalks of High Street. The relatively small college town surrounded me on all sides, closing in a claustrophobic squeeze. Short, flat-topped buildings bookended a one-way street where buses and cars barreled down the road. A beggar, in a ragged coat and ripped boots, sat huddled down on a stoop. He didn’t stir as I moved past.

For a brief second, I walked the winding path of a misty forest where shadows casted from the spindly fingers of tree branches. Creatures skittered and scurried about unseen. 

As my bare feet slapped down on the cold pavement, I found myself back in Morgantown. In pajama pants and a baggy tee, I approached an oncoming gaggle of men in cargo shorts and polos. They narrowed their eyes as if trying to figure out just how drunk I was this night. Whispers passed between them. I knocked into the shoulder of one, and he spun around.

“Man, he’s hammered!”

“I’m asleep,” I muttered back over my shoulder.

One might think lucid sleepwalking was what normal people did every day. It wasn’t. Not for me.

All my life, I’d been sleep walking. Disconnected during my waking hours, moving about like a film zombie, I found I was unable to place myself in the moment. While sleeping, my body would stand and walk about my parents’ home, without my desire or permission, to go rearrange the contents of the fridge or tumble down the stairs. It was like being under a spell, but for the most part, it was pretty chill until the nightmares seeped in. They always did.

            During the first year of college, I hadn’t walked about once. I’d desperately hoped I’d grown out of it. But, as I ambled down a dark sidewalk, in my Nirvana shirt, without my waking mind piloting, I was completely wrong. Some things we don’t outgrow.

            I slid in and out of awareness of my surroundings, and as I placed foot to pavement, headlights rushed toward me. As brakes squealed, the oncoming vehicle came fishtailing to a stop. The horn blared, but I kept walking. Then, the city peeled away like an orange’s skin. The details blurred and faded, and I did not step up onto the curb but over a small muttering creek. A young woman, with short black hair with purple tips and a silver ringed septum piercing, swept leaves along the grass, and she said to me, “We want the heart. Give us the heart.”

            “Don’t take my heart!” I yelled at her. Her eyes locked on me, hurt, and she vanished into the fog.

            “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

            A small part of my mind realized how much danger my waking body was in. Threats of cars and falls loomed all around my sleepwalking self. The Monongahela River flowed a few blocks away, but I was powerless in the trance. I staggered on against my will without any awareness of where I treaded.

            Trees towered all around me like skyscrapers. The canopy above disappeared in a thick shroud of fog. Boulders scattered on the ground like tombstones of giants. Ragged and worn, I faltered along the ground to crest a hill. Down below, a meadow rested in a break of trees. Layers of filtered sunlight broke through the mist to radiate an object on a flat stone. Atop this altar, an oblong shape burned in red and blue flames. Yet, the object didn’t actually burn in this fluttering ghost fire. The glass walls of this box frosted over, and fingers of mist danced along the silver frame of this glass coffin. I couldn’t see the body inside through the ice and flames.

            Growling rumbled in the forest behind me, and I sprinted to the coffin. As I approached, my skin felt hot while my breath frosted in a cloud. A symbol of three interlocked spirals was carved and faded into the stone altar. Dozens of shadows stepped over the ridge behind me. Nebulous dark vapors twisted and writhed along their humanoid shapes. They held form yet lacked definition.

            Their guttural voices sounded like they spoke through mouths full of blood. “We want the heart. Give us the heart.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled out.

            More shadowy monsters formed. Some with leathery black wings while others padded with long snouts like pitch black and eyeless wolves. They didn’t get any closer as they merely surrounded this meadow. When I turned to the coffin, a body moved gently inside. The details of the shape obscured. A silver tipped dagger appeared in my hand, and a voice called out. A woman’s voice.

            “Give us the heart,” she said. Her voice icy and echoing, it wrapped around my face like the brush of fingers. She was different than the others. With long black hair and a white fitted dress, she stood there with her face obscured by fog. She raised a pale, gaunt arm to point a crooked finger at the coffin. The dagger in my hand hummed, and when I looked back down at the sleeping corpse, a slender hand touched the inside of the glass.

            The woman behind me spoke, again. “Give us the heart of the cinderwhite.”

            I lifted the lid of the coffin to see clouds of frost circulating along the dark shape of a woman who stirred softly. Standing somewhere between nightmare and fairy tale, I raised the blade above the opening of the coffin. The silvery edge pointed at the chest of the shadowy shape.

            “I can’t do it!” My free hand gripped tightly to the coffin wall, and ice frosted around my fingers. Pain speared into my palm, and the forest closed in all around like a tightening noose.

            “It’s your life or theirs,” the woman whispered with dripping malice.

            I raised the dagger high into the air, my hand trembled the entire time. I wailed out in defiance but found my hand plunging toward the body. My fist slammed into the roof of a car. The forest blinked away, and wide awake, I stood on High Street, clutching the hood of a two-door sedan. My other hand was balled in a fist as pain bloomed up my wrist. I hit the roof of the car so hard I left a dent.

            Laughter broke out behind me, and I spun to see a small group of people with their phones pointed toward me—filming the entire scene. With my body pressed into the door of this random car, my cheeks burned bright red. The nightmare of waking just as bad as sleeping. I pushed off the hood and tripped on the curb landing on my ass. Most of the group cackled while one man gasped and took a step toward me to help me up. “Are you OK?” the stranger asked.

            Before he could reach me, I leapt up to my feet and sprinted down the sidewalk. My bare feet ached with each pounding footfall. My heart bounced around my ribs as I gasped and sputtered. Wind rushed through my hair as I ran as if demons chased behind.