Disclaimer: Cheese is good. NiGHTS characters are good. I own cheese. I don't own NiGHTS characters. I'm a sad, sad child.
It's funny how parents react to a child screaming in the middle of a night. Only a dream, they'd say; it was only a dream. Go back to sleep, don't worry, hush now, it was only a nightmare…
And it's funny just how dead wrong they can be.
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The first thing that Helen noticed was the smell. It was a sickening, sweet stench that you sometimes got in hospitals; the one that went so well with the ever-cheerful staff who seemed to be smiling just a bit too wide.
The second thing she noticed was that the floor around her didn't feel like her bed. It seemed hard, and she couldn't feel her stuffed animals around her. The third thing she noticed was that it was dark and she couldn't see. That was when she realized her eyes were closed. Opening them, Helen Cartwright sat up so she could take in her surroundings.
Well, her first assumption had been correct: this definitely wasn't her bedroom. She appeared to be in a somewhat rundown hallway, one that stretched until the end disappeared from her vision. The walls around her were pitch-black. Helen was sure it was just a trick of the light, but she could've sworn that she saw things moving in the paint. All in all, to her, it looked like the hallways in the bowels of her school; like a boiler room, in fact.
The twelve-year old pushed herself up. How on earth had she gotten here from her bedroom? And more importantly, who had brought her? Helen turned in the opposite direction, hoping to find a way out, but instead faced a brick wall. Carefully turning back, she began to walk down the long, empty corridor. She made sure to periodically check the floor and sides in front of her as she crept; she'd read too many adventure novels not to know what happened to the incautious.
Rrrip! CRASH!! Leaping in alarm, she tore down the hall as she heard the something tear and fall to the floor behind her. She heard heavy breathing behind her, and could smell it, too. It reeked of brimstone, and something…dead. Like an animal had crawled under the sink and decomposed, its flesh rotting from the bones.
"Go away!" She shrieked, her pink bunny slippers flopping about wildly as she hurtled away from her would-be attacker. Instead of wasting precious time looking over her shoulder to see, (which was, as she knew from her books, a very reckless move to make) Helen looked around in front of her. Surely there was a way to escape. Let's see, she thought.…nope…nothing there…aha! She spotted a crevice to her right, and dove straight in.
If she had known what would await her on the other side, she wouldn't have been so eager to jump. If only she'd remembered what happens to the heroes when they leap before they look…
Helen wailed as she tumbled down into the darkness…and fell to the ground with a bang! Unsteadily, she sat up, rubbing her head. This was getting weirder and weirder…first a hallway, now a throne room! Everything was either red or black, and a large, twisted throne rose up from the ground. Spikes rose from it, all as twisted as the throne was. And the room's look wasn't the only disturbing thing; despair and fear seemed to emanate from the room, oozing through the walls and into Helen's heart.
She carefully rose to her feet. Maybe, she could look for a door, and-!
-and she felt a clawed glove from behind grab her chest.
"NOOOOO!" A scream tore from her throat-and she sat bolt-upright in bed. Bed? She thought, looking behind her frantically as she tried to detect the hand's owner. …it was just a nightmare? But, how could that-
"Helen?" Helen heard the sound of slippers padding across the floorboards outside her room, and her door opened. Walking in, with a purple dressing gown and her hair up in curlers, was Helen's mother. "Is everything alright, honey?" She asked, looking worried.
"Yes, Mom," Helen sighed, looking at the violin that hung from its strap at the foot of the bed. When that person had touched her…she'd felt a different kind of fear. Almost like panic. "I just had a bad dream." Her mother's eyes passed over Helen twice, and her expression changed from concern to appall.
"Girl, you've GOT to start cutting your fingernails," she said sternly as she waved her finger. "I mean, LOOK at you!"
"Huh? What are you…" Helen slowly looked down at her nightgown, and her heart stopped. Four slash marks, long and jagged, had ripped through the fabric. Just over the top of the chest. "..oh my god…" she whispered, feeling them. "…oh my freaking god…"
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Author's Note: Happy Halloween! Don't worry, it gets more exciting later on. XD