Aural Hallucinations (originally written for the Halloween Vault 3)

Jenny bolted up out of sleep, her heart pounding against her ribs.

Moonlight fell through the slats of the window blinds onto the carpeting, creating a fairy ladder of light across the floor. In the reflected, milky glow, the wardrobe and bookshelf took on a hulking, sinister air. Jenny clutched the patchwork blanket to her chest with fear-pale knuckles.

The shrieking! She'd heard it again. Her eyes searched the room for danger. . .only to find Rosemary curled in her basket, her tawny flank rising and falling rhythmically in the shadows.

Jenny's shoulders slumped. If the cat were still asleep, it couldn't have been real, could it? It must have been in her own mind. A sound clip from a dream about drifting fog on a lake, two abandoned rowboats rubbing sides in helpless dismay, a Victorian folly gleaming in the half-light, swan feathers floating on the water and the wailing. A long, painful wailing that echoed over night-dark water to where she stood.

She nestled back into the covers, and waited for dawn.

Days later, in the cold, clinical light of the surgery, she felt awkward speaking about it, but what if something were wrong with her?

The doctor shook her head. "Aural hallucinations. People often hear doorbells, ringing phones, crying babies and, oddly, women screaming. Especially upon waking. It isn't as uncommon as you'd think. As long as you aren't hearing voices telling you to set your workplace on fire, you're fine." The doctor smiled. "Have you been under stress lately, or feeling unwell?"

Who wasn't under stress? But no, not more than usual. Jenny left the surgery with a recommendation to try and relax more before bedtime. No caffeine, no media consumption.

And that worked.

For five days.

The lake appeared, then disappeared. The rowboats drifted on a stream that sent them plummeting over a roaring falls to their destruction. Jenny sat stock upright in bed, trembling as the banshee wails dissipated into the darkness of her bedroom.

That's what she'd come to call them: the banshee wails. Cries from the dusty pages of legends that were mostly likely nothing more than aural hallucinations, as the doctor had said.

Life went on as usual. Of course it did.

Jenny got up and went to work, met with friends, watched her favourite programmes, but she was distracted and fidgety, forgetting details and missing meetings. But that wasn't all.

Sometimes she thought she could feel lake water pooling around her ankles as she sat at her desk. The dank, wild reek of bird feathers sometimes rose on her fingers, and a diaphanous fog would drift through the office, unseen by anyone but herself.

After about a month, she noticed a small grey shadow hunching at the corner of her vision. But when she turned her head to look at it straight on, all she saw were shop fronts and people passing by on the street.

At odd times, Jenny found herself opening her mouth to tell a friend or a co-worker about the dream visions, the smells and the sounds, but embarrassment closed it again just as promptly. She was fine. They were just. . .hallucinations, brought on by stress. The doctor had said so. It was more common than one thought.

She was fine. No reason to bother, no reason to unsettle.

No reason at all to be afraid.

And yet she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something hiding behind the sheen of reality, in the folds and cracks of what lies beyond.

Something hiding. Watching, and waiting.

Then one night, Rosemary refused to sleep in her basket. She hid under the settee, shrinking away from Jenny's hand, not to be tempted out with treats or cajoling.

That night Jenny slept alone in her bedroom, and that night, the banshee came closer. No longer on the other side of the lake, but now on her side, on Jenny's side. A squat, ungainly shape in the twilight far off to her right.

Night after night, the shape, the wailing, came closer. Jenny continued to get up, go to work, meet with friends, and watch her programmes, but dark rings formed under her eyes. She took to drinking copious amounts of caffeine in an attempted to stave off sleep for just a few more hours. . .but then she was standing on the pier again, gazing out over the lake.

Then one night, the rowboats were no longer adrift, but tied to the wooden bollard. Safe, serene, as yet untouched by tragedy. The white shape of a swan sailed past, then flickered and disappeared. In the sky, a full moon gilded the edges of a single cloud silver.

This is what it was like before it happened, Jenny thought in the last calm seconds before the ear-shredding screams began, moving closer and closer to where she stood, rooted to the spot and unable to flee.

Closer and closer they came, until they were so close, she threw her arms over her head to protect her ears, her mind, from the onslaught.

Closer and closer.

Until the banshee wails were so close, they could have been coming from her very own mouth.