The Women and The Cross

It was dark and the night was crisp with a dense fog. Lillian had a nightmare in the middle of the night and no one was there to comfort her this time. She had recently lost her boyfriend to a freak welding accident. It still bugged her to this day about the loss of him.

She had been having the nightmares for a good 5 years and they seem to manifest more after the death of her beloved Joe five short months ago. The nightmare seems to be the same almost every night with different surroundings, some familiar, some unfamiliar.

What bugged her the most about her nightmare is that there was always a woman with a cross clenched tightly in her grip and she had no idea who or why she was there. The nightmare would end all the same with her falling or being crushed or being thrown to her unfortunate demise.

Tonight was different though. She felt a weird presence as if someone were in her house with her. She had no roommates and no animals,  no kids to make the house feel less empty than it has always felt. But tonight was just different. She scurried around the house checking all the locks on the doors and windows, everything was secure. She measled her way back to bed and slipped by off to a warm gentle sleep.

Again woken up by the nightmare, startled and breathing heavy as if she had just went for a five mile run, she sat up quickly. It was the nightmare again. But it has never shown the insides to her own house. This time she was stabbed in a got fashion that left her guts on her dark brown hardwood floors.

She heard a creaking from down the hallway. Then a knock on the wall accompanied by a door slamming shut. What on Earth could be going on she wondered. So she got out of bed and walked around the house checking every room in her house to make sure no one was there. No sign of any sort of entry. Weird she thought. She started walking back towards her room when suddenly she felt breathing down her neck. She turned around to find… Nothing….

I must be going crazy she thought to herself. She decided she would go back to bed and ignore the creaks and cracks.

She was laying comfortably in her he’d when suddenly her door swooshed open with a bang like a cannon in the distance. She shot straight up to find a rather dark looking figure standing in her door way. Panicked, she thought what do I do? She quickly grabbed her tennis racket from the other side of her bed and took off out of the bed with full swing. Assuming she made contact when she heard a loud bang, she opened her eyes to find she struck the vase that carried her deceased significant others ashes.

Swelling with tears she completely forgot about the dark figure and turned around to find it lurking around the other side of her room. She picked up a crystal ashtray and threw it point-blank at the dark figure and it seemed to phase right thru it. Still panicking, she thought this was surely what her night mares have been telling her, that she was going to die by an unknown figment.

She quickly grabbed her today and broke down to her knees praying to God for forgiveness and protection in a last effort to save herself from the unknown entity. She prayed as loud and as much as she could. When she opened her eyes, the entity was gone. The sun was shining and she was sitting on the floor with the rosary clenched tightly in her hand. She then realized the nightmare wasn’t just a nightmare but a premonition of the events that would take place on that specific night. The woman with the cross was herself pleading for protection from a higher power when all else failed. She counted her blessings and laid back down for a brief sleep just to see if the nightmare was gone…