One of them was running towards Oliver, his face looked pale, sweats was drenching his shirt. ‘Run! Run!’ He screamed the word repeatedly, his head never bothered to turn back for his friend. Without thinking much, Oliver was running too. Twigs were scraping the man’s face and body, and the rocks were poking his feet despite the fact that he was wearing boots. He tripped over a curved vine, and the torchlight flew about 5 meters from him, hitting the ground hard. The front glass broke, but the bulb was still emitting light, witnessing the incident.
Taking one look back Oliver saw the other man scampered and passed through his friend, ignoring him. It seemed like he was still running even though he was out of breath. From his place he could even hear he was panting and grunting as he ran. Oliver’s feet came to a halt. He almost fell as the weight of his body was still moving forward even though his feet had stopped going. The moment the spun his body around, the man passed his shoulder, and Oliver felt the cold wind brushed him and he heard the man’s ragged breath.
It felt real. Oliver could even smell the man’s bad breath as he passed him, liquor. Hesitantly and without thinking, he scurried back to the other man before he heard the horses squealed, stomping their hooves as they ran off. From a quick glance he saw the coach moved passed the woods and Oliver was sure he noticed the curtain was disturbed, as if someone in the coach was trying to look out.
‘Get up!’ Oliver shouted at the man. There were few cuts on the man’s cheek and arms, not to mention blood oozed from his head, running through his old, disfigured scar. ‘H-help…’ He cried, trying to get up on his feet. ‘It’s coming after you, run!’ He added.
‘GO AWAY!’ Suddenly a voice came deep from the woods, from where the two men went earlier. Oliver stunned. He turned his head to where the voice came from, but it was pitch black, paralyzing his vision.
He felt his stomach flipped. The adrenalin rush inside Oliver dominated the chilling night. In fact, his body was burning up. Sweats were rushing down his forehead and neck.
‘Come on! You can do this! He tried to grab the man’s shoulder, but it was pure vain. His arms went pass through the man, as if Oliver was a ghost.
Deep and scary, the voice rephrased, this time more firmly. ‘GO…AWAY!’ Oliver noted the voice was different, and far deeper than any human voice he ever heard of. It echoed, as a flash of light gradually appeared from where the voice derived from. The incandescence of the light grew stronger, filling the whole space with luminous white light. He felt the ground under him shook, threatening to crack open and take all of them into the earth. Oliver squinted from the glint, before he heard the man below him yelped, ‘NO!!!’ And that was the last voice he heard.
KRINGGGG!!!!
The alarm clock was ringing like hell, driving Oliver to insanity. He quickly rolled over and pressed the stupid thing about 3 times until it shut up. He let out a heavy sigh as he glared towards the alarm. It read precisely 8.30.
Slowly, he forced himself to sit as he looked around. His head felt heavy, and he suffered a steady tingling sensation on his left cranium. He realised Toby was gone. So were his book and little Monkey. The soft, hazy daylight slanting through his bedroom window aimed directly at his face. The window pane was partly opened, and the lazy morning summer breeze found it way in, brushing against Oliver’s messy hair. Sometimes the smell of salty air managed to come in from the nearby beach, mixing weirdly with his lavender scented room.
The gentle gust felt like a good slap, hitting him on his face. It was the same feeling that he felt when Principal Norman presented him his first-class slap as Oliver accidently pushed some sort of lever on the field trip to a dolphin show, which made him, the principal and his other classmates to take an unplanned swim.
On top of that, his heart was still working double time from the nightmare, but he kept telling himself that it wasn’t real. He managed to put the dream aside, where it belonged to, the unreal world. Dragging the pillow against him, he curled into the weird sensation inside him. He knew it was just a dream. But a part of him told that it was more than that…
He stared at the wooden floor until his heart rate was normal again. Then he hauled himself out of the bed to take a quick shower and went downstairs. Walking into the kitchen, he saw mum at the workplace preparing pancake and dad at the coffee table, with the morning newspaper.
‘Morning honey.’ Mum suddenly said before him, as if she knew Oliver was coming.
‘Morning mum, dad.’ He replied. Dad only nodded as he took a sip of his coffee, his eyes were scrutinizing the papers.
He sat at the kitchen table as Mrs. Clay came by his side, setting down a plate of pancake in front of him. The smell of pancakes, honey and coffee was really good, which eased Oliver’s headache. As he squeezed the honey onto his plate, he looked around. ‘Where’s Toby?’ He couldn’t believe himself being concerned enough to ask that question, but he asked anyway. Or maybe he was just trying to make a morning conversation, with a question a family member would ask.
‘Grandma. Don’t you remember?’ Dad answered, fixing his necktie. He finished his coffee, grabbed his suitcase and kissed mum on her cheek before he left for work. As he passed the table, he ruffled Oliver’s hair and said, ‘Take care of yourself when you at the beach, and don’t get into trouble.’
Oliver remembered. Every Saturday morning Grandma will take Toby for a walk around the neighborhood with her. He poured himself a cup of coffee as he heard his dad’s Camry roared and left the porch.
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