Lady of Sorrow (Preface: The Nightmare)

     Before we sped off on our death-ride, the full moon shone through the windshield of Billy’s red Ford pickup, which was idling in the hazy chill of an early spring night in front of our buddy Taylor’s porch. Quite inebriated, I had sat myself in the passenger seat.

     After raining all evening, the air was thick and damp. And my eyeglasses fogged over. Gripping the neck of a bottle of Maker’s Mark, I took another swig. Then I turned to the apartment and out came Jason stumbling down the porch steps to the driver’s side door. Swinging it open, he had his bottle gripped by the neck.

     “Cigarette?” Jason offered.

     “Sure,” I answered emphatically. “Where are we going?” I added.

     “To the store for more cigarettes and grub.”

     “Ok, why is sober Billy not driving?” I inquired.

     With a laugh, Jason answered, “he’s upstairs screwing Karen!”

     Just as Jason had shut his door, Taylor rushed out excitedly, and after nearly tumbling down his steps, his hand grasped the door handle as he looked at Jason and said gravely, “Remember, you’re just going to the store down the road but I’m sure you won’t be long.” Here Taylor relaxed and asked, “You know you’re wasted – wait for Billy?”

     “Nah, Dan and I got this,” Jason slurred looking over to me.

     Answering, I cheered the bottle and slurred drunkenly, “We’re ghosts already in this two-door coffin with four burning wheels!”

     Jason was amused, of course. Taylor merely grinned and finished off by wishing us luck as he withdrew from the truck and stood on the steps with his arms crossed exclaiming, “No speeding!”

     “Time to go to La La Land with you Dan!”

     “Jason, I think you got this, I think I’m gonna get out and chill with Taylor.”

     Jason suddenly shifted gears and revved the engine just as I had my hand on the handle of the door. Then with a kick, and head falling back, Jason sped us around the apartment and down the driveway onto Bumstead Rd, heading south where the road becomes narrow and windy.

     “Jason, isn’t the store the opposite way?”

     “Maybe, Dan, maybe…” Jason said with a grin.

     From the start, Jason’s foot was heavy on the pedal and even heavier on the brake. The result was us sliding along the wet asphalt. We started fishtailing, and it was at that moment that I knew we were going to die. As the truck fishtailed one last time, I spotted the large trunk of a tree that my very side would impact. The tires screeching is the last thing I remember before blacking out…

     I came to without pain, but with numbness and an airy feeling. I could see the full moonshine through the shattered windshield. I turned to my right and saw we had impacted that tree which was now barkless. The truck had hit and then bounced off, and my door was bent inwards. Then I turned to see Jason’s moonlit face streaming blood which was black in the moonlight.

      I realized my glasses were off my face and I immediately noticed them wedged in between the bent door and busted glass.

     Jason stuttered, “Are you ok, Dan?”

     I answered, “I don’t know if I’m dead, Jason!”

     “What do you mean?” Jason kept turning his head looking for a passing car to flag down as he was able to open his door and set a foot onto the ground while keeping one hand gripping the steering wheel.

     “I mean, I don’t feel pain, I don’t feel alive, yet no angels in the bright moonshine.”

     I turned to Jason and he responded, “You’re drunk, Dan.”

     Suddenly as if I had seen a flash of lightning before that shattered windshield, white-hot pain shot through my upper leg, and looking down at the source, a splintered piece of ivory bone jutted out of my leg as a compound fracture and I screamed in traumatic pain.

     My eyes fleeted aimlessly until they came to focus on Jason slumped over, his still arm on the steering wheel kept him from falling out onto the mud.

     “Jason!”

     Then panic set in, and I somehow got my warped door open which struck the barkless trunk as it squealed open. Then I became conscious of the fact that the cab was filling with smoke. 

      “Fire! Jason, fire! Get out!” I looked down at the rocky mud and crabgrass and prepared myself for the most traumatic pain I would ever have. I inched to the edge of the seat and even that brought the pain surging to my brain. Again, I gazed down at the ground feet below and gasped before making the effort. Then the smoke both thickened and blackened. My breathing became labored. Then before things would get worse, I turned to Jason and rested my hand on his slumped body, saying, “Buddy… I’m sorry!”

     And it was at that instant that the flames sputtered from beneath the steering wheel, the flames licking his jacket. Then in this instant of sheer panic, I remembered a curious fact… we had two handles of flammable booze which poured everywhere! “Jason!”

     Instantly following that dawning fact, the dampened fabric of the floor ignited. The flames came up to our knees and the flight reflex within made my reflexes feline-like as I leaned out of the cab, and gravity landed me on my head and my fractured leg twisted as it landed into the mud. All the while the screams were nothing like I had ever made. The flames were climbing up and over the seats. I mustered what strength I had left and propped myself against the trunk of the tree.

     My eyes squeezed shut due to the trauma and the fact that I did not want to witness what I would see opening my eyes…

     Jason’s jacket was consumed and the flames were now blackening his face. Of course, he had been dead and to my relief, he felt no more pain. The horror of it all finally overcame me, and I slumped against the trunk unconscious.

     There was a steady, stale breeze refreshing the skin on my face which felt pleasant. Then I remembered everything and my eyes shot open to mirror Jason’s. “Dan?”

     I gave myself a mental slap and realized that the horrors I witnessed were a dream! I must’ve suffered some brain injury and yet we’re alive. Unbroken and unburned – not dead!

     “Jason!” I leaned forward without pain and hugged him. “I can’t believe it! We’re alive, dude!”

     “Dan we lost our phones in the wreck – I don’t know where they are! We have to walk… can you, Dan?”

     With little effort, I raised myself. Then my eyes darted to my leg… no compound fracture, my jeans not even torn or bloodied. Same with Jason, the blood that had been streaming down his face had vanished! I noticed my eyeglasses then wedged in between the door and the busted glass. Yet, my vision was perfect! I felt, airy and weightless. Almost like a body high with a sudden urge to go do something, anything unfinished.

     “Let’s start the trek back to Taylor’s. I’m up for it,” I assured Jason.

     Jason paused looking at the wreck. “I had a nightmare, Dan, one of me burning alive and I couldn’t move or scream.”

     “Goddamn, man! But look at you! You’re fine!”

     “You ready to flag down the nearest motorist?”

     Jubilantly, I said, “Hoping we can make it back to Taylor’s and drink more! I think we both need it.”

      The shine of the full moon dominated the countryside. The rolling fields that are enclosed by stone walls, their farmhouses, and their barns without a speck of light. There were odd things I noticed and commented on them, “Jason, we’re both wearing boots… I’m not hearing our steps on the wet asphalt.”

     Jason stopped. Looking down at his booted feet he jumped and landed without noise. I did the same with no different outcome.

     “I noticed our voices echo… even when whispering!” I stammered and as I had done so, it echoed across the fields in a long silvery echo.

     Jason gave it a try and whispered, “Dan, do you think we’re dead?” The whisper hauntingly rolled off the rolling fields and down the road.

     And I felt like answering him! For I noticed something else quite striking, and pointed it out to Jason, “The moon is full and we’re like fuckin’ vampires not casting a shadow!”

     We studied this for a few minutes as there was a fence, bright white in the moonshine, lining the road beside us, and we placed our hands between the moon and the white of the fence – yet, no shadow!

     By this point, we were nervous. And we agreed to continue regardless of whatever else we would notice…

     Again, that odorless breeze was constant. It was neither warm nor cold. And there was a mist that suspended in the air all around us and over the fields. As we continued, the late-night chill was gone, and that mist condensed so much we could no longer make out the farmhouses, the large barns, or the distance. It’s like the world had grown smaller, darker, and without the aromas of early spring.

     We were two shadowless figures below a brilliant full moon and I believe Jason and I had a mutual, unspoken suspicion. I suspected I was dead, for I remember the bone jutting out of my skin and the trauma that gave me. The hissing of the truck’s dying engine, the fire! What other explanation could it be, I pondered.

     Further on, we were engulfed in dense fog and by this point, I believed we had missed a turn that would have brought us towards Taylor’s. “So, we missed our turn, dude!” I exclaimed to Jason.

     We paused for a minute and having not seen any passing vehicles, we decided that at the next house we were passing, we would knock on their door and get help. Help… I thought; how useless an effort dead! As we were speaking, recalling the accident and what led up to it, behind Jason’s shoulder about several feet behind him in the fog, stood the silhouette of a tall man with a brimmed hat. Just visible in that heavy fog. Jason noticed my eyes had turned to something behind him and Jason pivoted quickly to look into the face of a man with long, disheveled, white hair and in a suit so old and dirty that it appeared ragged. This would be a moment where my heart would be racing but it wasn’t! I could not even feel any blood surging through me!

     “Young men! New to the netherworld?” He said it with such an expression that it was baffling. He continued, “It’s alright to be scared when you’re newly dead, young men!”

    Moments of silence followed, with Jason and me glancing at each other, then back into the dark orbits of his eyes. His face was difficult to make out as the brim of his hat blocked the moonlight casting the face of his soul into shadow. Yet the whites of his eyes shone like pearls in sunlight.

     He wasn’t speaking anymore, just staring at us curiously. Without taking a breath, I broke the silence of death and asked, “You said netherworld, sir. What is that?”

     The man held up his hands and answered, “Well, none of us know.”

     “None of whom?” Jason inquired.

     Here the man shook his arms as if in some frustration when he stammered in a whisper, “The dead.”

     Jason and I glanced again at each other as I mentioned, “Back at the truck, your face was draining blood in streams down your face. Then I saw you on fire until your face was blackened.”

     Jason interrupted, “I died before you then. And thus the one to awaken you against that tree. Dan, you had no visible injury when I found you!”

      “You see now!” The man elevated his voice. “You understand now!”

     “Is this purgatory, sir?” I stuttered.

     With a long look, the man exclaimed, “The netherworld!”

     “Sir, please elaborate?” Jason calmly spoke.

     “There are no pitiless, frigid depths of Hell. There is no Paradiso atop some grand mountain peak in the clouds of the sky! The gloomy Purgatorio is what exists, young gentlemen!”

     I had to then ask, “When did you die? How long can we expect to be in the gloom of purgatory?”

    Then he raised a pointed finger behind him, and we could only see so much in the distance through the draperies of fog. “My grave is over yonder! April 1897 I was laid to rest by my family. I squinted and could not make out a headstone anywhere in the field behind him. Then I had just recognized through the receding fog between him and us, that there was a stone wall.

     As if a breath of wind had passed through, the veil of the fog thinned until it receded from around us, including the field. It was then that we recognized that we were gazing into a graveyard. All the phantom shapes of headstones were scattered about the field. I was curious, I admit now. But that was the opposite of what I sensed Jason felt.

     “So, sir, nice talking to you! We gotta get back to our buddy’s place.” As Jason spoke, he pinched my sleeve to get me to follow. I was obstinate and stubbornly stood where I was. “You are coming, right?” Jason asked with frustration in his voice.

      From the receding fog, about twenty feet down the stone wall, an opening in the wall became visible, with a dirt path leading into the graveyard. I pointed to it and said to Jason, “I want to go down that path.” For an answer, Jason scanned the expanse of the field before us, and as he was now speechless, I tapped him on the shoulder to urge him on.

     Further and further the veiling fog receded until there was a profound reddish glow within it. I stepped forward to the stone wall and gazed in anticipation of what was going to be revealed in the center of that graveyard. As for Jason, it appeared to be trepidation. “Come on, Dan!”

     Jason shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and briskly walked down the road. I looked after him for a bit until he reached a bend in the road where thick brush then concealed him. Then as I lost sight of him, I turned to the stranger and found too, that he had vanished.

      I debated running after Jason and catching up to him, but what I now noticed of that reddish glow within the veil of fog, which had now thinned considerably, what emerged was a small chapel, with tall, arched stained-glass windows that were blood-red illuminated by candlelight within. It looked so inviting as it was the only brilliant color I’ve seen since before the crash.

     I made my way to the path leading into the graveyard and as I had done so, phantom shapes began to emerge all around. I quickly surmised they were the other ghosts, standing by their graves. I didn’t pause once, I continued to the chapel, my eyes merely taking quick looks at the others, who appeared covered in dirt and their suits and dresses ragged with age and mud. There was a ghost, however, of a woman who knelt before a headstone beside the path, she was wearing an ebony Victorian funeral dress. She appeared sorrowful yet surprised to see me. I was struck, so I paused in my step and turned to her to ask, “Tell me, madam, how long have you been here? In purgatory, I mean?”

     Her facial expression turned from sorrow and surprise to a vicious one as she answered turning to the headstone beside her, “This is my husband’s memorial. He was a sailor and he was lost at sea. It is not his grave! A stone slab memorial and a Christian grave are nought in common!” She turned to rest her hand on the headstone beside her husband’s. This is my Christian grave… again, they are nought in common! I don’t know where my husband has been for over a century.”

     I then learned something new, ghosts can cry in sorrow, as is exactly what this lady did. “Look, lady, I’m sorry…” I then continued. More black silhouettes of ghosts beside their slanted headstones, they were men, women, and children. And all appeared in gloom and sorrow.

     As I approached the tall, arched door that was crimson-painted wood, I stopped and extending my hand, I nudged it lightly and it did not move inward at all. In frustration, I turned my back up against the chapel door and I heard a low, lengthy creak as I realized the door was moving inwards. My eyes scanned the graveyard, and all the shadowless ghosts with living eyes, living tongues, and living flesh… all staring at me.

     I felt the urge to see inside the chapel so on I went and with some more muscle, I opened the door as its old hinges squealed. There I witnessed, as my eyes glowed with surprise and shock, an aisle flanked by rows of pews, leading to an altar where there was a young, beautiful woman seemingly asleep. And I noticed then, she had a thorned, black rose resting between her praying hands. I was then overcome by the many red candles that were lit. The full moonlight was distorted by the blood-red glass and the whole of the chapel appeared to be painted in blood.

     But the woman! Never had I witnessed anything as such! I crossed the threshold into the chapel and at the instant I was clear of the door, it slammed shut! Startled, I rushed to the door, grasping the handle, and struggled with it. But the door would not move! Then there was a paradoxical sense of both warmth and dread coexisting within that chapel of flame and blood-redness. Had I been alive, I would have gasped before making my way down the aisle towards the altar. And as I approached the young woman, I noticed that she was not in funeral attire like the others. Was she alive, I thought. “Hey!” I raised my voice as if I could awaken her.

     I stepped closer to her until I was nearly right beside the altar where she lay. Then I noticed the large thorns on the stem of the black rose had pierced her skin in a couple of spots, and from which streams of blood traced down her delicate hands. The dead don’t bleed, I thought. Then in a moment of excitement, I delicately rested my hand on her forehead. What happened next filled my very soul with horror. The point of contact between the palm of my hand and her forehead, her skin rapidly decomposed, turning gray and blackish, and as it did so, her head arched back and her jaw opened wide, and out came a terrible, piercing scream of agony. I shuddered and shot back several steps. And as the screaming intensified, every candle flame in the chapel flared up like blowtorches, and their crimson wax candlesticks melted rapidly until there appeared pools of blood dripping over the edges of the tables, dripping and dotting the stone floor.

     And then as if a blast of thunder roared through the chapel, every window of the chapel shattered to her horrendous scream. And as if I were standing in the eye of a tornado, a whirlwind of those blood-red shards circled me at high speed. Naturally, I raised my hands over my face but the glass wasn’t lacerating me. I turned in the center of the whirlwind to catch another glimpse of the young woman screaming as she burned. And as I was nearly blind to seeing through that veil of flying glass, the entirety of her skin was blackened with bleach-white bone visible, and the flames! The flames were now consuming her screaming face. Her eyes were now pitch-black orbits, her hair burned away, and her clothes… the new-looking green tank top and short jean miniskirt were now being consumed.

     As I was just about to pass out, the chapel door crashed open, and it was like a wind tunnel effect. I was sucked out through the opening and flew landing face-first into what I knew instantly to be snow.

     Everything was silent. All was calm. I lifted my head and my eyes scanned the surrounding snow-draped headstones – no ghosts. Then, as a living man writing this narrative, I saw, as my eyes turned to the chapel, that there was nothing but cold, blackened rubble of what was a chapel. It was fenced off.

     Then that sixth sense that most people possess, as I still did as a ghost I sensed something close in the graveyard – staring at me. I turned my eyes back out to the expanse, and as the clouds had just veiled the moon and the expanse was now dark, I could make out a black silhouette of a young woman. Much like the one I saw burning inside the chapel. Her outline against the low moonlight backdrop and the pearly whites of her two eyes are all I could make out…

     Then voices! Loud voices and sounds of computers and machines of sorts. And as if the brilliance of that full moon returned… I was suddenly conscience of my presence in an emergency room beneath the lights of an operating table…

Days later…

     For the first time in so long, I felt the pleasant warmth of the sun on my face as it beamed into my room at Baystate Hospital. I was alive. A near-death experience. Jason didn’t make it.

Years later…

     And as I write this narrative, many years have passed. And so much more is to follow this preface. The story I have to tell throughout the following chapters is the unexaggerated truth. That car accident and the nightmarish symptoms of PTSD I have suffered for years since. This whole preface of The Nightmare is recurring. Even years later as an accomplished writer, I’ll rest on my couch before my fireplace with my laptop, working on the next bestseller, then I’ll drift to sleep and have that same vivid nightmare.

     On the ending note to this preface, the reader will soon find, that the restless dead do not remain restful in eternities of silence!

To be continued…