Darkness.

No, my eyes were closed. I opened them. Still, darkness.

I turned my head. I was lying down, my head on something soft.

I moved my arms, felt my body, felt my surroundings. I was in a bed.

I breathed in, smelled. A feeling of nostalgia hit me. I remember this smell.

I sat up, listened. Crickets chirping. An owl hooting. It was nighttime.

I hopped off my bed, felt my way to the open window, and opened the shades. A cool breeze flew past my face. The room lit up in the moonlight.

Then, silence.

No.

The breeze stopped.

No.

I turned cold.

No.

The sound of crickets died.

No.

My heart rate quickened.

No no no no.

“NOO!” I screamed to myself. Nothing came out of my mouth. I knew exactly what was about to happen now.

A cry. It was a girl, a toddler. It was from the house I was in, the same floor, just two rooms down in the hall. My body twitched, and then I was running.

I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to see what was about to happen. I wanted to stay in my room, to go back to sleep and forget about the scream, about everything.

But it was useless. I couldn’t control my body. All I could do was watch as the events unfolded. I was still running: across the room, through the door, down the hall, through another door, across another room, and into the room of my little sister.

The lights were already turned on, and my mother was standing by my sister’s crib. She was cradling my sister in her arms. My sister’s name was Alice. She was still crying.

I looked around frantically. My father was sleeping in the room I just ran through, snoring loudly.

“What’s wrong, dear?” I heard my mother say to me. I looked back at her. She was tired. I could see the dark bags under her eyes.

I felt that something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my mind on what it was exactly.

“Go back to sleep, Damien. We’re going to the city tomorrow, remember?”

I stubbornly stood there. For some reason, I didn’t want to leave Alice.

“I can’t sleep, mommy. Can I stay here for tonight?”

She sighed, but she reluctantly moved a chair next to the crib. I sat on it, trying to relax, but I kept on fidgeting. My mother noticed my nervousness, took another chair, and sat next to me. She put my head on her lap and began to hum my favorite tune.

I tried again to ignore that feeling that something terrible was about to happen. In a few minutes, Alice stopped crying, and I eventually fell asleep.

Darkness again. This is where it would end. Each time I had this dream, and each time I tried to remember, it had always ended here. I knew, however, that this was not the real ending. There was supposed to be more. But I had never wanted to know the ending. I had always been afraid of what the truth could be, of what more pain it would give me.

But I had changed. I had made a vow, a vow that I would break through that barrier preventing me from the truth. “Wake up, Damien,” I told the kid in my dream, “don’t just leave me here on this. Wake up!”

BANG!

I opened my eyes and sat up. I was still in Alice’s room, so I hadn’t been asleep for long enough for my mother to bring me back to my own room.

I looked around, wondering where that sound had come from.

Then glass shattered.

My mother stood up, my sister still in her arms. It seemed that Alice hadn’t heard the sounds. My mother was looking into her own room. That was when I noticed that my father’s snoring had stopped too. My mother put Alice in her crib and started walking to the doorway. I, with my curious nature, rose from my chair, wanting to follow her. But my mother turned around and stopped me.

“Stay where you are. I’ll go investigate,” she whispered to me.

I sat back down when she left, looking into my parents’ room as I waited for her. The sense of panic and danger returned. I wanted my mother to come back, but I was too frightened to say anything.

The lights of the master bedroom turned on, and I could hear my parents talking to each other. I guess it wasn’t a break-in.

“It’s okay, Damien,” my mother called out to me from her room, “a bird had flown into the window and broke it.”

I knew that a bird breaking a window in the middle of the night was not normal, but my mother’s reassuring voice calmed me. I stood up and walked over to the doorway. But I was stopped again. This time it was my sister. Alice had started crying again.

I turned back around and called for my mom, but there was no response. My parents talking had stopped, and it was silent except for Alice’s crying. My heart rate quickened again. This time it wasn’t just a feeling. I knew that something was happening.

I started to run to my sister’s crib, but I tripped, and my face hit the ground hard. When I lifted my head up, I felt warm blood make its way out of my nose and to my lips. The metallic taste filled my mouth. I lay there, looking helplessly at Angel crying in her bed.

Then I noticed it. A faint aura surrounded Alice. I knew what was about to happen, but I didn’t want to see it happen. I wanted to wake up from this dream, so I can act like this had never happened. I closed my eyes and buried my head in my arms.

Darkness.

When you wake, the first thing that comes is the sound. For me, it was birds chirping, leaves rustling, and the sound of a squirrel scurrying past me. I opened my eyes, but immediately closed them and opened them again, this time squinting. The sunlight was shining right on my face. I lifted my hand and blocked the sun from view, allowing me to see better.

I was sitting in a forest, leaning on a tree. The ground was covered in leaves of red, yellow, and brown, marking the middle of autumn. The trees blocked out some sunlight, but there was a hole above where I was seated, allowing a ray to fall onto me, lighting my body. I looked down. Somebody had taken off my jacket and shirt. When a slight breeze came by, I shivered. But what alarmed me the most was the dry blood crusted on my skin.

Then I remembered. My head became light as images of guns firing, people screaming, and blood spilling came to my mind. I stood up slowly, still leaning onto the tree next to me, and put my hands on my head as if that could push away the pain.

The pain.

My arms instinctively moved to my shoulders. There was no pain there, however. I felt them, and there were no wounds. My shoulders had healed entirely. I stood there, confused, as I kept stroking my shoulders.

But why was I here in the middle of a forest? And why was it the middle of autumn? Then it hit me. I remembered the scene just before I had passed out. People, bullets, desks, and everything else were moving backward. I had traveled back in time. No. This can’t be real. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity and almost everything I had read on the internet, time travel to the past is impossible. That aside, how had I even traveled to the past without a time machine?

But my thoughts were soon broken when I heard leaves crunch. My head cleared, and I became alert. I took a step forward and whispered silently, “Who’s there?” I looked around. All I saw were trees, bushes, and a squirrel or crow here and there.

“Who’s there?” I called out, this time loudly in fear.

When I finally turned to my right, I noticed. A girl was lying on the ground on her side, facing away from me, only five or six feet from where I stood. Angel! I quickly crouched down and crawled to her side, putting a finger on her neck to check her pulse. She was still alive. I sighed in relief, but my mouth opened in shock when I turned Angel over, sending the sound of crunching leaves through the forest again. Her back was to the ground now, and the view of her front sent chills down my back.

Her clothes were entirely covered in dark blood, but I could still see the even darker spots where bullets had gone through her. I backed away slowly, keeping my eyes on the horrible scene. It made me shiver, and a headache started to come to my head again, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Angel.

There was the sound of crunching leaves again. It had come from somewhere out in the forest. And even more, it repeated in a periodic fashion, telling me that it was a person walking. I peeled my eyes off of Angel and turned towards the sound. It was subtle, but I could see the silhouette of a large person looming in the shade. He was walking towards us. I stood up and took a defensive stance in front of Angel as if protecting her from the mysterious person.

“It’s okay,” the person said, just loudly enough so that I could hear, “I’m here to help.”

His voice was deep and firm, but it was the same soothing tone my mother used to use to calm me when I was little. I let myself relax, but I told myself to not let down my guard. He could have been using that tone just to get a chance to attack.

“Then show yourself,” I called out to him.

He stepped out of the shade, and I was able to see his features much better. The first thing I saw was his clothes. He was wearing pants and a shirt of a natural brown color. His trousers were torn at the ankles, and the shirt was crudely buttoned. He also wore a small but thick fur jacket and a straw hat. The hat shaded his face from direct sunlight, making it hard to see his eyes. In his hands, he was holding an old wooden rifle, pointed down and to his side. One thing was sure about him: he was not from the time period I was from.

“I’m just a traveling merchant,” he said, taking off his hat.

I didn’t respond. I just looked. He had large bulky arms, but could a merchant really use those? Perhaps he carried heavy boxes as part of his job. I could see his face better now. Light shined off his bald head, showing dark, tanned skin. But what caught my attention was the thick scar across his face. The scar ran from his right temple, under a black eyepatch over his right eye, and ended at the tip of his lips. He looked nothing like a normal merchant, but more like a warrior, or even a murderer with the expression he was wearing now.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” the man quickly added after he saw the fear in my face, “I’m also a hunter.”

He waited, but when he saw that my expression hadn’t changed, he continued.

“I heard a large animal over here, and I thought it was a deer. I came to investigate, but it seems that I was mistaken.”

He shifted his eye slightly, but it was enough to know he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind me—at Angel. He slung his rifle behind his back and walked up to me. I kept my defensive stance, not willing to move out of the man’s way. I still couldn’t trust him.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt her. I’m just trying to help.”

I bent my knees, getting ready for a fight. Who was this person? Why would he want to help a random pair of teenagers in the middle of the forest? He didn’t take my reaction quite well.

“You know what? I’ve had it with your stubbornness,” he yelled at me.

The man whipped his hand out and gave me a firm punch on the side of my head before I could react. I staggered to the side and fell to my knees near a tree a few feet away.

The world spun around me—I had lost too much blood—but I tried to pick myself up, and I saw the man walk up to where Angel was lying. He clenched his teeth when he saw the horrible wounds. Then he looked at me with an expression of disgust. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was him crouching down beside Angel, with a faint aura surrounding them…