Dream Journal #12

I feel like I could actually make something out of this one.

1 Jul—2 Jul

There were two main characters: a brother and sister, who were both in their teens and had dark hair. They lived in some sort of modern-day rural area where most of the villagers knew each other and many buildings were bordered by woods. I had the feeling this was part of some sort of series starring the brother and sister, and I knew they had dealt with the supernatural before.

The siblings were staying at their grandmother's house (although they did have parents, or at least a mother, living in the village) and were on the old, wooden front porch with them when something that looked like one of the "bonies" from Warm Bodies came towards them. The skeleton wasn't moving particularly quickly, but it was menacing, and the brother and sister knew to run away. The skeleton took off after them and, without turning to look at the grandmother, who was standing on the edge of the porch, jabbed the first two fingertips of its left hand into her pupils. The grandmother screamed as her eyes withered away, and the skeleton generated the same eyes in its eye sockets. This took only a moment and barely hindered the skeleton, who continued charging after the siblings.

The brother and sister came to hide in a hotel, where several others of the village were staying. This included one of their teachers, a plump man with a rusty voice who taught chemistry. The hotel seemed safe, but one of the other kids told the teacher they smelled HNO3 in one of the rooms. The teacher, who referred to this as "caustic acid," went alone to the room to investigate. There he was possessed by the same spirit that was responsible for the earlier skeleton; I could tell because his eyes and some of the skin surrounding them turned black.

It wasn't long before the siblings were captured by the skeletons, although the latter had already stolen enough from the villagers to look more like slightly rotten witches. One who seemed to be the head witch ordered the other witches to force the brother to kneel in the centre of the room, which was made of old wood like just about everything else in this village. The sister was not restrained but knew she couldn't do anything; she just tearfully tried to convince the head witch she was wrong. The witch said something about her sense of incompletion and what it means to be human before walking back to the brother. After a moment of thinking, she decided she first and foremost wanted to hear again and so placed her hand over the boy's ear.

Outside, a few villagers and I were running from the possessed teacher. While we were in the middle of descending some tall, wooden stairs, we heard the brother scream. This brought us to a nervous halt, but we realized all we could do now is try to keep ourselves alive, so we went back to running. One of the stairs had several uneven planks jutting out over the next step, so I had to find a gap between the fingers of wood to keep going down.

The brother and sister had apparently made it out of the witches' house and were now in a scene at the local park, where several groups were running from their possessed loved ones. My group was going over the thin sheet of snow on the ground when I decided to try to throw a snowball back at our pursuer to dissuade her. I really only threw a clump of snow, and it didn't do much good, but I kept trying.

Another group joined the fray, fleeing from a possessed large woman with long, curly, red hair. They had apparently decided running wasn't fast enough, because they were skiing down the gentle incline of the park with makeshift skis that were just blocks of wood below their feet, attached to strings for them to hold as they went down.

The main characters were running from their possessed mother. Apparently this was actually a book, because the next chapter was about half of a page. The brother was relating the general chaos and hopelessness of the scene, and then at the very end confirmed that the witches had succeeded in making him deaf.

The scene jumped to the same village some time later, and the survivors (main characters included) were climbing up into a wooden play house in the park for some sort of gathering. It was difficult enough for them to get up there, since the ridged, wooden slope was sized for children, but they made it inside, where a blonde teenage girl greeted them. More and more villagers kept coming, and few had made it into the play house before the siblings realized there was not going to be enough room. They pushed their way out, and soon everyone was sitting on the sun-warmed ground, listening to someone giving an emotional speech about the events that took place here.