All I needed were ZZZ’s and good dreams. Nightmares found me instead.

They never begin. You’re always just IN dreams, right? In my dream I roamed through a hazy landscape. White light shone through the surrounding mist. Then I came to a graveyard. The mist cleared around a section of tombstones, my sister’s grave the centerpiece. A tear escaped my eye.

I hadn’t thought about her except for fleeting memories I let drift away. Life and death situations make you think about, well… death. I missed my sister so much. I heard footsteps on my left.

There she was, my sister, a little older than I remembered. She had Anne of Green Gables-red hair, but it was beautiful just the same.

“Hey Bro,” she said, like a surfer. That always made her smile.

“Hey Sis,” I started, stunned for words.

“Been a while.”

“Yeah.”

“How’s my Aiden?”

“Growing up.”

“You takin care of him?”

“Trying to. Mom is mostly.”

“Gavin?”

“He moved up to Washington by himself.”

She walked as she spoke, moving under a large stone archway held up by rectangular pillars. Stone skulls stared from the pillars in bas relief. The space between the pillars was very wide, like a massive maw open to the living. As I observed it a raven alighted on the archway and croaked.

My sister spoke up again, calling my attention back to her. “That doesn’t surprise me. He was always such an introvert. How’s dad?” she asked.

“You haven’t seen him?”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Never mind,” I said. It was only a dream anyways.

She pursed her lips. After a long pause she said, “You need to avenge my death.”

“Why does that fall to me?”

“Why doesn’t it? Sometimes life happens. Sometimes responsibility falls in your lap.”

“I’m already knee deep into some serious stuff Sis.”

“I’m stuck Sean. You’re stuck. Stuck until you resolve it. Kill the monster that killed me.”

“I’ve got my own monsters coming after me now.” This was getting irritating. “This is a dream.”

“Might be,” she said. “But the guilt is real. You know my death is your fault.”

“Mine?”

“If you’d been a good brother, you might have rescued me. You failed to be there for me.”

Tears ran down my face. “I don’t need this right now.”

“You think you’re this macho guy, but you couldn’t pull me out of the water.”

“Stop…”

“All you had to do was lift me out.”

“Don’t go there.”

My sister vanished and someone else screamed at me. “You killed me!”

It was her, the Banshee. She peered over the edge of a tombstone at me. I felt the Chaos emanating from her and it repulsed me. She flickered between her three forms like a strobe light.

Old Hag.

Middle-aged woman.

Hag.

Forever 21 model.

Hag.

Woman.

Hag.

Hag.

Model.

My stomach churned.

“You thought you could run?” she cackled. “You thought you killed me. There is no where you can run. Nowhere you can hide. I’ll always be after you. You’re in way over your head.” She clawed my stomach open, and I saw my guts. I embraced myself, trying to stop the bleeding.

When I looked, the Banshee disappeared. Instead Nicolas Cage appeared looking apathetic. “You’ve got to find the treasure before he gets it.”

“What?” I asked.

Cage spoke again in his dry, nasal voice, more breath than vocal chords. “Stop him from destroying the tree. It’s the only way.”

I spared a moment to check myself finding my stomach wound nonexistent. “If it’s so dire Nick, why can’t you convey real emotions? This is why you’re a bad actor.”

“What!” he screamed. His anger ignited him and suddenly the skin on his face burst into flame and I found myself face to skull with Ghost Cage. He sat atop his motorcycle from Hell and lashed me with his chain whip while laughing, his face a floating skull on fire. I fell to my knees as the pain overtook me. The chain worked its way around my body, constricting my legs and arms, getting tighter around my neck.

Behind him stood a figure shrouded in darkness and carrying a scythe. Under his hood his eyes burned red. And behind him loomed the silhouette of a massive creature. The defining facial feature was one glowing eye in the center of its forehead. The three of them fixed their gaze on me like I was under a microscope.

“We’ve lived for hundreds of years. Thousands. You’re a mere speck on the line of infinity. You’re an amusement nothing more. You’ve destroyed the Banshee but we’ll make more.”

They howled wicked laughter, chilling me to the bone. Was this a dream anymore? Were these Fomorians? Could they use Bad Luck to attack me in my dreams, my nightmares? Why not? Dang.

Somehow I wrestled out of the chains only to fall into an open grave. I hit my knees hard at the bottom and the mud slid under my fingernails and into my clothes. As I tried to climb out of the hole, increasing amounts of dirt and mud piled on me. Water rushed into the grave and soon I was up to my waist in filth. The more I struggled the more I sank. I panicked, hyperventilating. The murky water was up to my neck.

“Help!” I screamed.

“Now you can see how it feels,” said my sister as she joined the other figures, all of them laughing at my plight.

I battered my arms against the mud water slinging it everywhere but it kept pouring into the grave like overflowing lava, threatening to suffocate me. I could barely move now and it was hard for me to breathe.

The black water covered everything but my eyes. It poured down my throat, into my lungs, and stomach. I screamed a muffled scream, but it rang hollow. Laughter drowned out my cries.

Perhaps I was in a dream, or this was somehow real in my mind or subconscious. Either way screw those guys! Especially Ghost Cage. I did not need these negative voices beating me down. I should have known when to give up, but I’ve never known how to my own detriment.

I screamed. This wasn’t a panicked, I’m afraid of what you’re saying scream. It was a Gerard Butler, “This is Sparta” yell, a Samson bringing down the house cry. The mud and dirt covering me exploded. The four flew back. I climbed out of the grave. I was no longer clothed in my street clothes but a cloak of green and underneath light leather armor. In my right hand appeared a sword of light. Straight Wheel-of-Time style. I laughed at the silliness of it. But the silhouette figures weren’t laughing.

“You might have been chasing me. But no more Fomorians. You’re done wrecking lives. This ends here. Now. I defy you.” I lunged at them. “Most importantly you’re ruining my REM sleep!”

My sword of light lopped of Ghost Nick’s skull head in one fell swoop but he caught it in his hands. Next, I leapt up to meet the behemoth face to face and plunged the blade into his glowing eye. His horrendous scream sounded like someone dropping a hot iron on a tiger’s tail. The eye plopped out and I realized it was actually a large gem. I tried to lift it but it burned to the touch.

Forgetting it, I faced the shadow figure, the one dwelling in a cloak of darkness. I swung again but he caught the blade in his black hand. Blood ran down the blade of light. His hand sizzled like an Outback commercial but the reaper held fast. The darkness in him crept out through his wound and began corrupting the blade of light. Despite his injury he was laughing again. “It’s mine and with it I’ll strike down Duir to the root!”

“No!” I cried as blood orange lightning flashed from the sword causing the reaper to fall back, retreating into shadow. Then the shadow exploded into a flock of ravens that took flight to skies.

And just like that they faded. Except for the first raven I saw. It flew down and landed by me on the ground.

I was left standing there in my green cloak and still holding the sword of light. I looked at it and tried to study it. As soon as I did it just kind of fizzled out like a dying candle.

“That was weird,” I said to the raven.

It croaked and bobbed its head in response.

Then I felt the ground give way beneath me and I fell. I fell so fast I didn’t have time to scream.

Right as I was about to cry out, I hit the bottom and I awoke with a start in my bed. I opened my eyes.

It was morning. Sunlight shown through the blinds. I felt so groggy.

“You awake?” my hearth hob asked. “I’m making eggs.”