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Name of Nightmare: Cealg

Fear: Manipulation

Home: Incultra

Cealg's Personality:

Cealg at first may appear to be tempermental and moody, but this is really part of his act that he puts forwards. He may be soothing and gentle one minute, and then brutal and cruel the next. Underneath his wide range of emotions is a cold and calculating exterior that plans each movement, every word, and every gesture. There is also a deal of reservation to him and he rarely lets anything slip about himself and when he does, it is usually for a reason.

He believes everyone - human and Nightmare alike - can be used and it is only a matter of finding the aspect of the personality that can be exploited to bend the creature to his will. He particularly enjoys steering people into being the means of their own downfall and relishes the moment when they realize they've done all this to themselves above all. He rarely resorts to pain or violence as he believes these crude tools, things that should be used in conjunction to his other methods, but never as a means to accomplish his desire alone.



Name of Human: Christine (called Chris)

Chris's History: Chris is a 19-year old college student in her sophmore year of school. She confident, assertive, and independent. She likes to believe that the world is a logical place and can be understood with enough thought. Her emotions are carefully guarded and she tries to remain in control of herself, although she is only human and does give into the occasional bouts of emotional lability. Again, she chalks this up to perfectly reasonable things - hormonal triggers, social conditioning, etc.

Index of Journal Entries:

1) The Shattering of Will Begins - Fear Stage
2) Her Guardian Angel - Fear Stage
3) Unwelcome - Fear Stage
4) Possession - Fear Stage
5) Welcome Home - Terror Stage

Her Guardian Angel

“Do you believe in guardian angels?” Chris asked out of the blue in the days that followed, when both roommates sat at their desks, one working on schoolwork, the other daydreaming.

“Huh?” Chris’s roomie had been the one who was working. She paused in mid-essay-sentence.

“Guardian angels. Or some other force that watches over you.”

“That’s an odd question coming from you.” Out of the two, Chris was the more skeptical one and would find logical explanations if she could. Like the mirror. And the other odd things that have happened recently.

“Well, I’m just speculating. It’s an interesting thought.”

Chris’s roommate sat back in her chair and sighed. This really wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have, not being a very religious person. Neither of them were.

“If we’re on the subject of supernatural I’d say you’d have something malevolent following you,” she finally said.

Yesterday Chris had been unable to enter the dormitory as her passkey kept failing to register on the scanner. She’d swapped it out for a new one with the front desk, that one failed as well, and it wasn’t until she got a third one that she could finally get in. It was late at night as well and Chris swore she kept hearing footsteps on the stairs above her.

Then earlier that morning the lights had sparked and gone out while Chris was dressing for the day and when maintenance had come to check it out they found that nothing was wrong. Just odd little things that were interesting enough to talk about.

“I thought that too for a bit,” Chris said with a laugh, “But yanno what? I’ve had some bad dreams… but they don’t stay bad. That’s why I’m asking about guardian angels cause if this supernatural stuff really exists I think I’d have one.”

The two were quiet and then Chris shrugged and turned her attention back to her computer.

“But I don’t believe in it. It’s just a neat thought, that’s all. Stuff like that doesn’t exist.”

Still, it was certainly odd how she’d been feeling lately. There was a constant sensation of being watched and it felt like someone was standing just over her shoulder, someone that didn’t particularly like her but was amused by her discomfort. It was hard to shake, especially when she was alone. Nerves. That’s all it was. Nerves.

The dreams weren’t too bad though… they certainly had the potential to be though. They would start out awful, just awful. Like last night she had dreamed of being tangled up in golden thread, bound so tightly around her arms that it cut into her skin and blood was pooling drop by drop below her. She’d thrashed and screamed and each movement only bound her tighter… until she felt hands on her wrists, gentle hands, and they’d slipped the threads off one by one. She fell into deep, restful sleep shortly after, cradled in the pool of her own blood by some invisible creature.

Something screamed in the back of her mind that she should be concerned, that something wasn’t right and that she had every reason to be scared. But no, these were just dreams and honestly, who wasn’t to say that she herself wasn’t the guardian angel? Lucid dreaming, perhaps, she was freeing herself from the snares? Whatever it was, she felt little desire to push away that small comfort that was given to her when the nightmares came.

Possession

Hell didn’t come until she tried to wake up. Chris had spent the past couple days wondering if she was going to have another nightmare, if her guardian angel was going to do anything or not. If she really had a guardian angel or if her subconscious was just going crazy on her. Either way, she was glad there weren’t any more nightmares for a little while. At least, not until she tried to wake up.

It was a Friday. She had three classes, two of which were with her roommate. She woke to her alarm and rolled to the very edge of the loft bed, stretching over the wood rail to hit the off button of her alarm. Then she rolled back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling. It had been a peaceful night. A long night of good, dreamless, sleep. She was mostly thankful for this. Part of her longed for the sensation of being held though, safe in the presence of someone else while the nightmare raged just beyond. She chided herself for this. She should be glad she didn’t have to deal with bad dreams on top of schoolwork and everything else.

Everything hit very quickly. Something cold struck her in the back, just under the lungs, like a block of ice was forcing its way into her body and then spreading out through her veins. She gasped for breath and convulsed, every muscle twanging and bringing her body inward into a fetal position. She managed to hit her head against the wooden beam of the loft bed and her fist smacked into her other arm. This happened three times, a soft grunt escaping each time she seized and then the cold sensation faded away and she lay gasping, sweating, and her heart raced faster than it had in a long time. This had happened before. Once before, but not as violently and not like this. What was happening to her? Was that… a seizure? No. No, it couldn’t be. Couldn’t.

‘Shhhh,’ she heard something say, very softly, almost from within her mind, ‘Lay back. Rest for a moment.’

Shuddering, she lay still and put her head back on her pillow, laying on her back with her hands folded across her chest. Yes. She’d just wait this out. Wait until she was feeling a bit better and then go get ready for the day… maybe she should just skip her first class. Take it easy.

‘You’ll be fine,’ the voice reassured, ‘I promise.’

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll be fine.”

She closed her eyes and drifted back into sleep and that was when her hell began. It wasn’t precisely sleep. It was if she were being held there, suspended between sleep and awake, like some force was holding her trapped and was unwilling to let her drift towards either. She struggled but it was only in her mind as her muscles were too far out of her reach now. She tried to cry out but her voice remained silent and she could only watch and feel and grow more and more terrified as to why she wasn’t asleep and yet couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t even open her eyes.

It felt like hours slipped by. Chris lay utterly still, telling herself that she needed to get up. She’d missed her first class, surely, her second one as well, and she had a third. She wondered why her roommate hadn’t checked on her. Despaired at being abandoned. Wished she had her cellphone by her side, in a vain hope she could use it to call for help. Anything that would free her from this place. For it seemed like for terrifying seconds she would stop breathing, that strange force that didn’t allow her to do anything would cease even that, and then she’d gasp in air again, barely conscious that she was even doing that. There was just an overwhelming sensation that something was wrong, that she needed help, and that there was utterly no one who was going to help her.

Distantly, she heard her roommate come in. It’d been five hours then… she’d try and wake her now. Surely. And distantly, she heard her try and again screamed inwardly as her body betrayed her and refused to move.

It was like being dead.

‘Shhh… just rest,’ the voice whispered again and she mentally curled around it, terrified and desperate for anything that could listen to her, ‘Just rest.’

‘I want out!’

‘I know. I know. Take this.’

The floating point between sleep and awake shifted further into sleep and she saw a golden thread. She shrank from it, recognizing it as the same as the ones who had bound her in the past. But the voice… it had protected her in the past, hadn’t it? Part of her wanted to curl up in terror and just remain there, motionless, and wait to die. But what if this never ended? It’d been five hours… what if it lasted forever? She couldn’t stand that. So Chris carefully stretched out her hand and the thread looped around her wrist and drew tight. There wasn’t much other choice.

‘There. Now, go and wake.’

And Chris gasped, hard, and sat up. Her roommate was leaning on the ladder up to the loft and let out a sigh of relief.

“What happened?” she asked, terror on her face, “You weren’t responding for almost twenty minutes. I’m serious.”

“How long was I asleep?” Chris asked, rubbing her head. It hurt tremendously, like something cold had passed through her recently. “Five hours, right?”

And her roommate looked at her oddly.

“No Chris – just two. If that.”

“Two hours?”

That was too much. Chris fell back onto her side and curled into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably. It was bad enough not being able to breathe, not being able to do anything but hang there, but to know that it was only a short span of time when it felt like so much longer…

“Should I stay with you? You’ve got your second class in ten minutes… skipping it?”

Chris nodded mutely.

“Stay with me,” she whimpered, “I’m scared…”

“We need to get you help.”

And Chris didn’t say that she really had no idea who to turn to. But her wrist ached in response to that and Chris only cried harder. Somehow, in some way, she’d just made a mistake.