Echo of a Nightmare

Gabrielle found herself in a dimly lit hallway, where the floorboards screeched underneath her feet and the people in the pictures that hung on the wall glared at her maliciously. She had a vague recollection of why she was here and how she got here, but her end goal was fuzzy to her. Gabrielle gulped as she kept on walking down the hallway, towards an end she could not see. The lights above her flickered dangerously as she hunched towards herself in an attempt to make herself smaller.

Why or from what, Gabrielle did not-

Bang!

Gabrielle nearly jumped out of her skin when someone, or something, knocked on the door next to her.

Only to realize with a blink of her eyes, Gabrielle wasn’t in the hallway anymore.

She...was in her room?

Gabrielle lay in bed for a moment before she figured it out. She had been dreaming. It was only a nightmare. She wasn’t in the middle of a creepy, endless hallway with an unknown person or thing out to get her. Gabrielle was safe at home, with her roommate sleeping upstairs. She smiled as she snuggled in deeper underneath her blankets and closed her eyes. Only to open them wide a second later.

Then where did the bang come from?

Did...it come from the front door? Someone did knock on the door in her dream…

Gabrielle closed her eyes tight, telling herself that the noise hadn’t been real. That it had only been in her nightmare.

But then...what woke her up?

Gabrielle tossed the blankets off, a part of her knowing there would be no one at the front door. But even so, her legs swung over the edge of her bed, and before she knew it, she was at her bedroom door. Gabrielle’s hand hovered over the doorknob, already thinking that whoever, or whatever, made the noise was on the other side of the door. Ready to attack her, to erase her presence from the world in a gruesome, painful way.

Because what sane person would knock on the door in the middle of the night? Well, maybe the police would, but Gabrielle’s mind was only thinking of the worst-case scenarios.

But she couldn’t just stand here. Gabrielle shook her head as she grasped the doorknob tightly before slowly opening the door.

There was nothing there. Just darkness.

Which was almost worse because the dark of the night looked particularly uninviting tonight. And Gabrielle had always been a little afraid of the dark.

She gulped as she walked into the hallway and slowly headed towards the front door, her feet sinking into the carpet. Gabrielle was tempted to turn on the light, but what if that brought unwanted attention from the possible intruder?

Which was silly, Gabrielle knew. Why would someone knock on the front door if they were going to break in anyway?

Even so, Gabrielle didn’t turn on the lights.

Gabrielle turned left and saw, in plain view, at the top of the stairs, the front door. Their front door not only had a typical window near the top, but it also had a big window beside it. Again, Gabrielle only saw darkness and not a thing or a person.

But then again, thanks to being made out of obscure glass, the window wasn’t completely transparent.

Gabrielle inhaled as deeply yet quietly as she could before she ascended the stairs. When she reached the stairs, Gabrielle hesitated. What if there was...someone or something bad at the other side of the door? Waiting quietly, waiting patiently for their time to strike after only knocking once in the middle of the night.

...The more she thought about it, Gabrielle knew that she was being stupidly paranoid. That she should just go back to bed. She had stuff to do tomorrow morning. That her roommate maybe accidentally made noise in the middle of the night. That even if there was danger on the opposite side of that door, the smart thing to do was to keep the door closed.

But Gabrielle had to see for herself what was on the other side of that door. The possibly real danger would keep haunting her like a persistent spider otherwise.

Her mind made up, Gabrielle reached for the doorknob and opened it by an inch. With terror in her heart, Gabrielle poked her head around the door.

There was nothing there.

But that didn’t mean there hadn’t been.