Star woke with a feeling that something was wrong. Some noise, a hissing sound, like someone shushing another to silence, had roused her from her sleep. She blinked blearily, not remembering falling asleep at her desk. The fire had burned down to embers, her candle was a watery stub, the wick so recently extinguished that she suspected for a moment the hiss had been the sound of the flame drowning in wax.
But there was something else, a sense of wrong, a growing dread. The room was too dark, she realized, standing stiffly and walking to the window. She felt her heart stop: all the street lamps in front of her home were out, but even so, she could see the faint outlines of cloaked figures gathering in the street. “They’ve found me...” she thought irrationally, for a moment completely paralyzed at the window. Then she was dashing down the stairs, no thought in her mind except to escape as she yanked open the garden door and leapt out into the night only to be snatched from mid-air by a pair of thick arms.
She screamed, kicking out, trying to struggle free, surely someone would hear her, come to help her.
A hand clamped down so hard over her mouth and nose that for a moment she thought she would suffocate, a familiar voice hissed into her ear, “Now now, Miss Allen, you didn’t think you could hide from us forever, did you?” She tried to bite the hand.
“Oh, don’t be unpleasant dear. You’ll be happy, we are just taking you home. Don’t you want to go home again, darling? Aren’t you tired of hiding, of the lies?” She whimpered a response, her hands were being bound behind her back with rough rope. The man let go of her and she stumbled forward. There was a peculiar crackling sound, a feeling of warmth rushing over her.
“My god,” she thought, “They are burning down my home.” But when she raised her eyes what she saw was not her home, but a figure swathed in flames walking toward her and projecting an air of triumph.
She turned to run…
...and woke screaming, ensnared in her sheets so thoroughly that she thumped to the floor in an ungainly heap. She lay paralyzed for a moment, realizing that it had been a dream, trying to shake the feelings that lingered. Slowly she detangled herself, spreading the blanket with a precise neatness. As she righted the pillows she spotted the coin that had been hidden beneath them. It felt warm as she wrapped her fingers around it and she felt the cold dread inside of her expand again, a rushing sound filling her ears.
The charm had failed.
(Hmm..it's been a while since I've written something that wasn't a first-person journal entry)
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