Ash woke up screaming. He sat bolt upright in the backseat of his car and looked around, horrified. He felt a hand grab his, and recoiled, shoving his back into the seat behind him, eyes wide. There, ahead of him in the front seat was Linda, with a concerned look on her face. She didn't look possessed at all... She looked normal, and... somehow completely different than in the dream, but he knew it was Linda somehow... Wait, dream... Yes, it had been a dream. All of it had been. Had he made up those other people? Ash looked around the car, but found that the two of them were alone.

"Ash, honey are you alright?" She asked, reaching out and grabbing his hand again. "Sweetheart, you were having a nightmare, it's okay!" She said, touching his face with her other hand.

Ash panted, trying to get his heartbeat to slow. That had been the single most horrific dream he'd EVER had in his entire life... He nodded. "Yeah... Sorry, baby... I'm alright. Just a really intense one."

She smiled and leaned over the top of the seat, kissing him. "Well, don't worry, lover. We're here."

"Where?" Ash asked, scratching his still disoriented head.

Linda laughed, climbing out of the car. "The cabin of course."

Ash froze. The cabin. Now he remembered, they'd taken a vacation from S-Mart and school to come up to a secluded cabin in the woods outside Dearborn. That's where the dream had taken place...

Ash opened the door and climbed out, looking around. He felt his stomach sink as he looked at the cabin for the first time... It looked just like in his dream. Not similar, EXACTLY the same. Ash looked around the dark woods around him, and felt like he'd seen all these trees already too, knew there was a work-shed in the back yard, knew ALL of it already.

Behind him, a scream split the night and Ash spun around, but Linda was gone. "Linda!" Ash called out, but there was no answer. No. Not again. He didn't even think about it, rushing blindly off into the woods to search for her. He couldn't lose her again, not like this... "Linda!" He called out again, but there was only silence in reply. All around him, the trees towered in the darkness, the only source of light coming from those almost floodlight lanterns on top of the cabin's forward leaning roof.

Suddenly though, the silence was shattered as Linda burst up from the bushes into view, right in front of Ash. Her face was pale, her eyes blank white now, and her teeth sharp. He recoiled in fear and toppled backwards into the grass. Linda began to giggle and chortle, stretching out her arms and staggering toward him like a zombie. Ash scrambled backwards, remembering this as if it had just happened. His hand closed around the shovel that just appeared next to him, and Linda leapt through the air. For a moment, Ash didn't know if he could do it again, but his hand moved all on its own it seemed, driven by some powerful force to survive. The head of the shovel hacked right through her flesh and bone, and the head bounced away, rolling down the hill as her body toppled to the dirt.

Ash shoveled the last load of dirt onto the grave and looked down at the necklace that he hadn't even given Linda yet. "Oh Linda..." He mumbled to himself in horror. This felt so familiar... How had he known this would happen? Why wasn't he more surprised that the horrific dream was coming true? Ash headed toward the cabin, unsure why he'd even buried Linda to begin with. Was it just because that's what happened in the dream? He looked back at the cross he'd made from branches, and realized that must have been it. Ash reached the steps of the cabin and looked up at it, frowning. He stepped back, staring at the place like it's windows were eyes, and it stared right back at him.

Suddenly, the window-tops angled down and towards one-another, and the step of the porch contorted like a mouth.

"JOIN US!" The cabin demanded.

Suddenly, the front door burst open and Ash felt something coming for him. He screamed in horror and shut his eyes, then felt his feet leave the ground and kept screaming as he rocketed backwards through the woods.

His screaming came to an end when his back struck a tree and he toppled forward, landing head-first in a large puddle of water.

He didn't move.

After a moment, bubbles came up from beneath the water, but then nothing. Suddenly, Ash yanked his head up and cried out, his voice warping and his face contorted like his friends had been when they were possessed. Somewhere inside himself, Ash was still Ash, and he saw all of this as though he were a spectator. His eyes had gone blank white, like the others, and he felt defeat wash over him... It hadn't been a dream at all, waking up had been the dream.

As he succumbed though, the sunlight from the dawn crept up to his fallen form and shone brightly into the Demon's eyes now inhabiting his body. It growled, holding up Ash's hand to shield itself from the rays of sunshine. It growled in pain and then clutched Ash's face, but then Ash felt a hard tug, and had the strange, exhausting sensation of being yanked back into his own tired, beat-up body. His vision went blank white, but only for a moment, as the white swirled away from his vision like water going down a toilet, and he felt free again as the warm sunlight washed over him.

Ash felt like his face was heavy, and his jaw hung open, he gasped for air, and let out a cry of horror as the pain from the injuries he'd sustained the night before washed over him again. The cuts and bruises re-appeared all over his body, and he passed out from the agony.

...

Ed stood at the edge of the landing field where he'd been instructed to park. The airport was small, and he saw the little private plane taxi to a stop. He smiled and waved, hoping that Annie would see him. Ed was a tall man, blonde hair, blue eyes, a master race poster child, and good-looking to boot. He came from a wealthy family, and dressed accordingly, a very fine brand of shirt, off-white in color, with a yellow sweater on his back, sleeves tied around his neck, and of course, khaki pants to complete the look. He was an Associate professor from Michigan State, and had been anxiously waiting for weeks for Annie to call him back.

Annie, who was now stepping off the plane, was not like Ed in many ways... She was average looking. Pretty, but not BEAUTIFUL by the conventional standards. She had big, dark brown hair, and usually dressed for the outdoors, due to her upbringing. Her father Raymond had always taken her on his trips with him. Her mother hadn't been the outdoors type, but always loved the two of them together, so she never minded them being away. She'd learned everything she knew about archeology from her father, who was currently a professor at Michigan State, and had helped her a lot towards getting her own doctorate from the college. She'd met Ed through her father's work of course, as Ed was her father's T.A. throughout most of her schooling. The two had hit it off very well very fast, and Ed had proposed to her just before she left for the dig in England. Annie had told him she needed to think about it, but kept the ring anyway.

As she approached, he smiled at her and rushed forward, hugging her tightly. She kissed him on the lips passionately, and he (as usual) returned the kiss in a sort of mellow way. Ed had never been much for passion, of any sort. The two had slept together already, but Annie found it to be only... satisfactory. Ed's lack of passion was one of the reasons she hadn't said yes to his proposal straight away.

"Annie, how was the trip?"

"Ugh. Long." She said, rolling her eyes, trying to put the thoughts of proposal out of her head. "VERY excited about getting to work though." She said.

"So, what condition are they in?" Ed asked, referring to the item she'd mentioned in her letter.

"Taka a look." She said, holding up the display case to him.

"They haven't aged a day in over 3000 years!" Ed exclaimed.

"Maybe longer." Annie said with a smile. She looked down fondly at her find, and really hoped her father would be impressed. The case contained the missing pages of Necronomicon Ex Mortis, the Book of the Dead.

"So, when do we begin the translations?" Ed asked.

Annie headed over to the car as Ed picked up her suitcase. "Tonight." She said eagerly. "Is everything ready with my father?"

"They should be, but I haven't spoken with him in a week. No phone at the cabin."Annie nodded, remembering those long summer weekends her and her family would spend up at the place. "Yeah, forgot..."

Ed tossed the bags into the trunk of his car as they reached it. "Annie, you hinted in your telegram that you and your father were onto something with the first part of your translations. What has he found in the book of the dead?"

Annie smirked. She had almost forgotten about the initial translations she'd done with him, so excited about the new find she'd put the previous one out of thought till now. "Probably nothing... but just maybe... a doorway to another world." She said.

As the two of them climbed into the car, Annie once again looked down at the ancient pages in the case she'd brought, and wondered just how much of this stuff she really believed in. Her father never had, but after so many years hearing him tell stories of this ancient text... Annie seemed to have developed a certain romanticized, adventurous feeling, WANTING to believe that the book really could commune with the Dead, bring them back to life even... And as the car drove on through the fading light of day, she realized that she obviously believed a lot more than she thought she did.