What is your deepest fear?
“Dinner is ready!” Avery’s mom calls from the other room. Avery jumps out of her chair in the living room, and cheerfully walks into the kitchen as her mother removes the lasagna from the oven.
As she opens the oven door the smell of the freshly melted cheeses fill Avery’s nostrils. “Smells good!”
“Aw, thank you!” Her mother pulls the dish out of the oven and places it on the stovetop. “Would you mind setting the table for me?”
“Not at all!” Avery walks into the dining room with a handful of utensils and napkins when suddenly a loud crash from the kitchen startles her. She sets everything on the table before rushing to investigate. “Mom? You okay?” She enters the kitchen to discover her mother staring at two shattered plates upon the floor.
Her mother looks up to her and says, “I feel…” Then she collapses to the floor without making a sound.
Time slows, Avery finds herself in disbelief during this moment of shock and tribulation. “Mom!” She yells as she rushes to her fallen mother. She lifts her mother’s head from the floor and continues to shout, “Mom!” She then puts her ear to her mouth and hears nothing, and no pulse can be felt as she presses her fingers onto the side the neck. She lays her mother back on the floor and performs CPR. She toils fervently as she desperately attempts to bring her back. After two minutes of pushing down on her mother’s chest repeatedly she quickly listens for a breath, but immediately resumes pushing when she hears nothing. Her arms and back begin to waver, sweat runs down her forehead, past her eyes, and drips off her nose. All the while she vocalizes her wishes, “C’mon mom! Don’t do this! Come back to me! I’m not going to let you go!” She pauses and listens again for a single breath, silence. Her tears mix with her sweat as they both run down her nose as she bows her head in defeat. Angrily, she resumes her efforts to resurrect her, “I will not give up! I will not give up!” She continues until her own body breaks nearly an hour later. She collapses next to her mother’s body and weeps, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
A masculine, malicious, and airy voice suddenly speaks throughout the house. “This? This is your deepest fear?” Avery looks towards the dining room, the direction in which she believes the voice is originating. When she looks back towards her mother, she is simply gone, as if she was never there.
Out of thin air, a silhouette made of fog appears. It stands before her, tall and motionless, the edges of the fog swirl and emanate into the surrounding air. This other worldly figure then kneels, the fog trailing behind it for a moment before fading away. Its thin, red eyes comprised of the same eerie mist, stains the air; Avery can’t help but tremble harshly as they peer into her soul. Surely she must be dreaming.
It extends a hand and gently caresses her cheek. A cold sensation is all that confirms its touch, yet it wipes away a single tear. The entity before her speaks again, “When the future finally reveals itself, we can relax and put our fears to rest. For the mystery has finally been solved, but a new one will always arise; and our fears will once again, return.”
The man made of fog and the kitchen surrounding her disappear, and Avery finds herself in complete darkness. Out of the blackness, the voice screams, “Our fears always return!” Avery frantically spins around to see anything, but the darkness harbors nothing for her eyes, that is until her mother reappears, hovering before her, with her eyes and mouth contorted to uncanny proportions.
Avery’s initial fear returns with a vengeance, and she collapses while crying out, “Make it stop! Please! Stop this!” Her mother disappears, and the blackness around her fades into one of the rooms at the nursing home, Bilborne Assisted Living. She finds herself wearing her work clothes, and standing in the corner of the dark room. Looking over to the window, she can see the full moon in the night sky, which casts its light into the room. It is in this faint light the entity appears, and as it does, Avery backs into the corner.
“Leave one alive to tell the tale. You are the one. So, tell the tale. For your mother’s sake.” Then everything Avery has experienced, from the horror of her initial dream to the moment she witnessed Denise fall to the floor, flashes before her in an instant; invoking all the emotions felt in each moment. Once the flashback reaches the present moment, she opens her eyes to discover herself lying in bed in a hospital room.
Her screams are slightly muffled by the oxygen mask strapped to her face, which she rips off as James leans over and places his hand on her shoulder, “Its okay, calm down, calm down, you’re safe, you’re in the hospital, you’ve been unconscious for almost fifteen hours.”
The sight of the tall, blonde haired, middle aged man both comforts and frightens her. Once she’s taken enough breaths, Avery manages to ask, “How long?”
“Fifteen hours.”
“My mom! Is my mom okay?!”
“Yes, she’s fine. She just left to use the restroom. She will be back shortly.” Avery relaxes and leans back onto her pillow.
Her mother enters the room, “Avery! Oh thank God!” Her mother rushes to her side as James steps back. They embrace each other while her mother asks question after question, “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay mom, I’m okay.”
“You were out for so long, I was scared you weren’t going to wake up.”
“I’m awake now mom, I’m awake.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
James cuts in, “My apologies, Mrs. Thompson, but I need speak to your daughter about that in private, then you two can talk for as long as you want.”
Before her mother can say anything, Avery says, “Its okay mom, just let me get this over with, and then we can talk some more.”
Her mother sighs, “I’ll be waiting outside.” She smiles and then leaves the room, shutting the door behind her.
James pulls up a chair beside the bed and takes a seat before speaking, “My name is James Myers, I believe we spoke to each other yesterday morning.” Avery nods. “So as I’m sure you’re probably aware, we have a lot of questions for you. We found you unconscious while every other person in the building was deceased. I would like you to walk me through what happened as best you as can remember.”
Leave one alive to tell the tale, this thought rises within her mind as she considers where to begin her story. For your mother’s sake. Images of her mother, laying dead upon the kitchen floor, invade her thoughts. She speaks her mind, quickly, before any other thoughts persuade her otherwise, “Well, it was like any other work day.” She pauses and struggles to hold eye contact with James. “Until around nine that evening. I was just walking down one of the hallways, and my co-worker, Denise, was walking towards me from the other end of the hallway. Then, once she was about thirty feet in front of me, she collapsed to the floor. She didn’t move once she hit the floor, she just laid there, and before I could say or do anything the screaming started.”
James raises his eyebrows, “Screaming?”
Her voice shrinks and her speech quickens, “Yes. Screaming. From what it sounded like everyone in the entire building was screaming.”
“But not you?”
“Not at first, when it began I was so scared I just covered my ears, then I began to scream.”
James leans in, “Why didn’t you call 911?”
“You weren’t there!” Tears form in her eyes, “This was the most frightening thing I’ve ever been through! Can you imagine three hundred old people screaming in pain as loud as they can!”
James leans back, “Okay, okay, please calm down, I meant no offense. What happened next?”
At this point Avery no longer cared what she sounded like, “I’m not sure if I went into a state of shock, or passed out without knowing it because what happened next can’t be real.”
James’ eyes remain unmoving, and his focus narrows, “What happened?”
“The screaming continued for, I don’t know, a minute? Then all at once, together, the screams turned into words, three phrases. Now, it was three separate phrases that I believe I heard, but I was screaming too, and beyond scared so I can’t remember what the first two were, but the last one they yelled was, times of madness. Then the screaming stopped, the entire building went silent after that.”
“Okay.” James re-adjusts himself in his chair, “Everyone is screaming, you’re screaming, you’re incredibly frightened by all this, and then all together, everyone who is screaming at this point, yells the same three phrases. The last one being, times of madness. Is that right?” Avery nods. “Then it all goes quiet, no more screaming, what next?”
Avery looks away from James towards the foot of her bed, “I remember hearing the last phrase because I heard it spoken a second time. Except this time it was as if whoever was saying it was right there next to me, whispering it into my ear.” In a trance like state, Avery slowly repeats the phrase, “Times of madness.”
“You heard this spoken directly into your ear? Was it the voice of a man, a woman?”
She looks at James, “A man, it terrified me to hear words so clearly spoken by something that wasn’t there. Then I heard a low, quiet rumbling sound, I felt the building shake a little, and then I saw what looked like smoke, or fog. I’m not sure what it was, but it started at the other end of the hallway; and it slowly moved closer to me, while all the lights began to flicker on and off. I was so scared, then after it passed over Denise’s body it stopped and the same voice that whispered in my ear spoke again. This time I wasn’t screaming, and no one else was screaming; the only sound I could hear was the subtle shaking of the building itself. So when the voice spoke, I could hear every word as clear as I’m hearing you speak now.”
“What did it say?”
“It spoke slowly, almost to a rhythm. It said beware, beware, the one who kills with fear. He prowls, he searches, for victims old and gray. At night, at dusk, he arrives in mystery. Mourn, grieve, for your loved ones’ misery. Beware, beware, you know you feel he’s here. Tremble. Cower. What is your deepest fear? To die? To suffer? Now into your mind he will peer. Are you strong? Are you weak? He will know, and he will jeer.”
“A poem?”
“I guess.”
“And when the voice stopped?”
“I saw something appear in the fog. Just a shape, a, a silhouette of a man, and where the eyes would’ve been were two red shapes, and then after that I know for certain I passed out.”
“How?”
“I had a nightmare, and then woke up to find myself here.” James remains silent, as if he’s contemplating Avery’s story, but his thinking process is interrupted when Avery continues to speak, “There is something I need you to know, and this is just me telling you the truth.”
“What is it?”
“Please know that I’m telling the truth when I say,” Avery pauses for a moment, then nervously continues, “I dreamt this would all happen two nights ago.”James abruptly stands up and walks away from the bed, and remains standing with his back to Avery. “I’m sorry but it’s the truth! And there’s more, I was told by a voice in my dream that I should warn the authorities; and I wanted to when you called me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was only a dream! How was I supposed to know that I should trust it! I’m sorry if this makes me sound like I’m in shock, or, or damaged after what I went through but its the truth!”
James solemnly says, “And your nightmare? Did that voice speak to you again?”
“No, at least not that one. I saw what I saw in the hallway in my nightmare. After my mom died, it appeared and it said, leave one alive to tell the tale. You are the one. So, tell the tale. For your mother’s sake.”
James slowly turns to Avery and takes a few steps closer with his arms folded, and then sends shivers down Avery’s spine with his next words, “He calls himself, the Public Servant.”
Avery closes her eyes and brings her hands up to her face, “So it is real, not all in my head.”
James sighs, “While he gave you your instructions, he gave me mine. If I do not pass on what he told me then I will suffer consequences.”
Avery lowers her hands from her face and asks, “What did he tell you?”
James hesitantly shares what he heard. “There’s a reason for all of this, a terrible one. As I said, he calls himself the Public Servant. He believes what he is doing is, well, a public service to our society. The pricing of food is rising, a virus is spreading across the east coast, and there are too many people to feed and or keep free of the spreading contagion. So, his first step is to eliminate what he called, ‘the expired.’ He wants us to begin putting down those who have reached an age that renders them useless, and no longer necessary to the development of our society.” His self control collapses under the strength of his frustration, and so he raises his voice, “So we either kill off the old in a humane way, or he will do it himself using his own brutal, horrifying methods; and somehow I’m supposed to relay this to my superiors without sounding like a complete fool.”
“Are you gonna do it? Pass it on?”
James begins pacing the room, “I don’t know. Until now I’ve been in the same state of mind as you were. Unsure if what I was experiencing was real, doubting my own sanity; but to have it all confirmed is, is too much. Its too much to just ignore. Seeing all those bodies, their faces left contorted and stretched; I never want to see that again.”
“Who did he kill? To make you share all this with me? Was it your mom too?”
James stops pacing, turns to Avery, and begins stepping closer to her as speaks, “My brother, and I saw it all. His jaw dislocating as his mouth opened wider than I’ve ever seen, I heard his screams, I looked into his eyes and I saw fear in its purest form. It all seemed so real. I’m sorry you had to see your own mother go through that.”
Avery temporarily looks away from James when she says, “She didn’t, in my experience. She just fell to the floor, and went unconscious and then I attempted CPR. I failed of course, she died and then he appeared to me.”
“He knew.”
Avery looks at James, “Knew what?”
“He knew that’s what you would fear more, not being able to save your own mother.”
“He knew? How?”
James approaches Avery and eagerly speaks, “How did the beginning of that poem start?”
This sudden burst of energy from James catches Avery off guard as she closes her eyes as she tries to remember, “Beware, beware… The one who kills with fear?”
James stands next to the bed as he dwells on these words. After for what seems like a minute he looks over to Avery, and speaks solemnly. “Well, I think that’s all I need from you, if you have nothing else to add to this, this mess. You have done your part, now it’s my turn. I’ll stay in touch, take care.” James casually walks over to the door, and before opening it, takes one last look at Avery. She tries to smile, and then he opens the door to face his fears.
Vote on what happens next below! Voting ends on Sunday evening.
Chapter 4 releases on February 25th.