Face of Dreams
There are two forces that can drive a man insane, horror and beauty. My story incorporates the latter. I am Dr. Donald Trazier and my tale begins during my stay at the wondrous palace of Rassihren. I had to take monthly visits to my psychiatrist because my mind was playing tricks on me. I was having hallucinations all the time and when I went to him the first time he told me that he might have found out what is causing these strange occurrences in my mind. My psychiatrist told me that I have had unusual brain activity that may be hazardous to my health. He also said that some seclusion from my loud, busy life as an industrialist might do me some good. So I came here, my new purchase, I had bought it to be a home away from… well, anything. It was perfect for my psychiatrist's advice.
Only my sweet sister, Jennifer and a few of our servants had bothered to stay. Jennifer went with me for fear of what may happen if she was away. She said, "Well what if he gets hurt and can't call for aid. Or what if his condition worsens and he is having troubles. In light of these cases I must stay with him." Boy was she right, if only it were someone else, then the whole incident may not have happened at all. My sister had the most beautiful face, perfect skin smoothest thing ever created. It was as if a gift from the gods, ...unfortunately it wasn'ttrue for the rest of her...
The first day at Rassihren showed promise of becoming a wonderful one. We arrived shortly after noon, and got out of our car. With help from our servants we unpacked our belongings. Our servants included Wilson the butler, Mariel the cook, and Bonnie the maid. When my sister and I got settled in it was about ten o'clock and after our long drive up here we wanted some rest. She bid me goodnight as I stared into her glorious face. As I stared I felt a slight pull on the back of my mind which pulled me out of my dream state. Even though I didn't feel tired I offered little objection because I thought that the twinge in the back of my mind was to tell me that I needed to get some sleep.
During the night I had a dream. It was the strangest dream that I had ever had in my entire life. It was just a face that looked like it was fading away. I called out to it, "Hey, stop" and it stopped backing away. Still I couldn't distinguish the features so I called out again with more force, "Who are you?" It started coming closer, so I kept on calling. "Come closer", I said, "I just want to know who you are." So as it came closer I could distinguish the features and was shocked to discover that the face belonged to my sister. Her amazing face filling up the entire view of the dream, suddenly I had this urge to take her face. I had to make her face mine. I reached out, and all of a sudden the face drifted away and I could hear shouting far off in the distance.
I was jerked out of my dream by the shaking of my shoulder and as I looked up all I saw was a face. Abruptly the feeling of anger entered my mind but I realized that the face I was looking into was that of my maid. She looked frightened which jerked me quickly out of my lingering sleep. Quickly she retold a fascinating story which I knew to be true by the look on her face. She said that while she was cleaning early in the morning when she saw some one in the kitchen. While she was looking the figure opened a drawer and pulled something out. It then turned its head around to look strait at her, she caught a glint of something silver when she turned and ran to the laundry room to hide. While in the laundry room she herd someone run upstairs she followed in fear of my life because she saw the thing turn right into my room but when she got there, the figure was nowhere to be seen. Also I was in bead asleep, but the window was open and she believes the figure went out to get away.
After a few seconds I started searching my room for some kind of evidence to her claim and I found something that made me sweat, a butcher's knife. So what she was telling me was true after all. I ordered a house meeting in the morning to talk about the troubling events that had taken place the following night. My sister came in confused and tired; she must have slept through the entire ordeal. Again I felt the twinge in my mind only this time it was more of an urge. As she came closer the twinge became painful. Her face was flashing in my mind's eye. I didn't know what it was but it took a lot of my strength to restrain it. After suppressing it I felt really tired and when I looked up I saw that everyone was staring at me. "People of this house", I said, "There was someone in the kitchen at a late hour so if you were there speak up." No one spoke. "I believe that you are trust worthy so it is as I have feared. Someone might have come here to kill me; it could be any one of my business rivals or worse partners. I just want to tell you that you must always be alert especially at night."
I looked around at the faces taking in their expressions I realized something I hadn't before. The cook was missing; I didn't see her at the meeting. So I realized then that it could have been an inside job after all. I went back to the meeting room and saw everyone still there. I turned to the maid and said, "Have you seen Mariel lately? She wasn't at the meeting."
"Why no sir…do you think that she could have tried to kill you?"
"That's exactly what I'm thinking. Let's see if we can find her."
It didn't take us long to find her. It was the smell really that made us look in the walk in closet. We saw her bloated corpse hanging limply from the rope around her neck. At that point I knew that whoever did this knows what they were doing. As the day went on people mostly left each other alone although I expect that the maid had told everyone else that Mariel had been killed. That night I had another strange dream, only this time it scared me. I was looking through someones eyes and they were in my room.
They were lying on my bed at first, but then they got up. They were very careful not to make a noise going across the floor and opening the door so carefully. After making sure that they weren't herd it headed towards the closet which it opened and it got out a broom. After getting the broom it proceeded down the corridor. As it moved so silently down the corridor a floor board creaked which caused him to stop suddenly. It herd a noise in one of the room's, someone was waking. It flipped the broom in its hand so that the brushes were facing it and the handle was outward. It hid itself on the side of the wall when the maid came out for her early cleaning.
As the maid came out of her room she didn't see it looking strait at her, didn't see it tighten its grip on its side of the broom. She only saw it when it swung the broom with all its might. The broom cracked, but so the maid's jaw. All that could be herd was the grotesque sound that the maid uttered as her dying corpse hit the floor. It stood for awhile as the sound reverberated off the walls. It looked in the mirror. I saw who the culprit was as he checked himself for blood. The sound awoke the people only a few door's down, but it was quick as it bolted for my room and left my thoughts to blank.
The first thing I remembered in that morning was a hand urging me to wake up. I looked groggily upwards to see my sister frightened beyond fear and for some reason I was happy. As I looked into her frightened, beautiful face I felt like she should be afraid. I smiled at her, which to my surprise made her cry. She told me that Bonnie my faithful maid had been killed. I got up and felt a strange feeling of de-ja-vu. I continued out of my room and into the hall. I looked up the hallway and saw the still form of Bonnie and a broom next to her which was split in two. Suddenly I remembered my dream, of someone walking into the hall, taking the broom, and….
I saw the murderer; I saw it before it happened from the murderer's perspective. I know what had happening. A quick burst of fear overwhelmed me but was soon replaced with an odd sense of acceptance. I knew who was killing my staff, I knew what reason he had and I agreed with him. It was all a factor of beauty, who could have it and who should not. I knew what he had to do and I backed it up, only next time we wouldn't fail. That day I quickly went to the kitchen and got enough food to last me through the day.
I went to me room and locked the door; I mustn't be disturbed today there was much work to be done in secret. As my accomplice and I planed, we must have thought up every possibility from the time we step out at night to the time when we commit the deed. Every night we slipped out into the hall, cautiously without making a sound. We practiced this every night for a week to make sure we got it right, to make sure that we wouldn't be caught. Every day we sat in solitude except for meals, when we would go down, eat, and laugh inwardly about how the two other remaining targets didn't have a clue who it was and that they looked around like frightened children in the dark. On the end of the last day we knew that this night it would all end.
When everyone is asleep we will strike, and make sure that the most beautiful face in the world falls into no other hands but ours. I waited with bated breath for night to fall. In fact I sat in one place staring in one place going over my plan with my partner silently. As darkness fell I knew that the time was right and we went out of the room. In the hallway we had never sunk as stealthy as we did then. Not a floorboard creaked as we moved gingerly and tediously down the long dark corridor. A small light shown from the butler's room but that did little to slow us down. We simply walked into his room without a noise. He must have seen us because he turned around startled and quickly regained his composure.
He asked us, "Sir, what are you doing up at such an hour?"
We simply noticed that he was shaving with a flat raiser and said "We just wanted to borrow your razor."
"We?" he asked as he handed his shaver over to us. We quickly snatched the raiser from him and slit his throat not caring about the blood. We thought about how it could not have worked better if we planned it. We wiped off the blood from the raiser on the dead butlers jacket and continued down the corridor to our sister's room. Luckily the butler didn't have enough time to scream because it would have woken up our sister but she always kept a light on since the first killing. We did not take long to get the closed door but there was no way of knowing if she was awake or not because she often read during the night.
We slowly cracked the door open to see if she was actually asleep and we saw her lying there with the book lying on her lap with her eyes closed. We cautiously crept into her room and slowly moved towards her bed without her waking up. Suddenly we noticed that she was stirring in her sleep but we kept to our plan only staggering a bit to make it look like we were injured and that the blood on our shirt was ours. When she woke up, she was startled at first, then shocked, then horrified as we plunged the raiser into her stomach. Now her face was ours as soon as we get it off of her other unperfect body. We started and finished the delicate procedure of removing the face with little difficulty. Then we took the beauty of the world to our room and hung it up on our door.
Shortly after it became apparent that during the murders someone had called the police because they arrived and saw us staring at our prize face. Unfortunately, the cops thought we were mad and moved us into some room with nothing in it. I asked them if we could at least have the face with us to look at but they called us psycho and told us that we will get nothing ever until we burn in hell but I knew that I would soon get out and once again, the face of dreams would be mine.