The Risen: Dawning Read Online Free PDF

of a nightmare is lurking for me to sneak a peak? It feels as if the whole building just inhaled a deep breath, drawing in all the sounds and time itself as it waits. It is waiting to see what happens next. It and that damn sun with its ever cheerful singing birds.
    The disengaging noise of the door signaling that the handle has done its job makes my stomach clench. Any hopes of going unnoticed are dissolving with each metallic scraping taunting of my attempt to slowly open the door. My body clenches as I hold the door frozen in less than half swing. No boogieman reaches through the crack to grab me. No sudden screams of horror-filled panic reaches my ears. Whatever monstrous mystery I had allowed myself to mentally invent is not unfolding before me as I had feared. I allow myself a small self-mockery of a laugh in my relief.
    Glancing over my shoulder to double check Mary’s locked room, my smile fades. The monster is finally creeping out of the dark but it is not behind me. It is in front of me with boldness that only pure Evil can hold. That only true Fear can embrace. It is flirting with my senses. It dares me with the truths of its twins. It is waiting to share with me the secret joke I was only so curious about a few moments ago.
    It is the smells that hit me first. Smells that will forever haunt me now as smells often do. It surrounds me with its dare to “come look” like phantom fingers caressing my face.
    “Come look. You remember me.” It hisses in my mind’s ear, and I do. I hear my small escape of a whimper and I know now why the silence has been mocking us the whole time. Each unsaid word drawing us closer to this sick twisted truth. Evil’s cruel joke.
    We are here now. We are right where everything has been waiting for us to find it and I do not know if I have the strength to look even as my head spins around in defiance of my fear. A train wreck curiosity of morbid style causes me to inch the door wide enough to see the room before me. I will forever hate myself for doing it. The sight before me will stalk my dreams for years to come.
    The sounds bring back every shiver of fear I have felt today. Every brightly colored memory of this morning stares back at me with this new form. I can feel the sweat forming over my body as I awaken to the vision before me. That same wet, slick sound that I had only just worked so hard hours ago to refuse is now all around me again. Kneeling bodies are working in tandem, mocking the motions of a single fragment of my memory who wore a yellow nightgown. The fear this time is being escalated by the facts before me from which I cannot escape this time. These are children and I know what they are doing. God help me, I know what they are doing and I cannot look away.
    I stare in horror at the sights before me even as I desperately desire to look away. Candy apple red streaks line the mascot-covered walls of the room. Their angled arches are marred with random downward rivers of flowing red patterns. It is such a contrast from all of the children’s artwork I have passed and I lose myself for a moment staring in the disbelief of it. On the other hand, perhaps my mind is just attempting to hold out as long as possible from seeing what else is before me. It is a stubborn fit of refusal to store any more visual nightmarish scenes to chase away the safety of closing my eyes at night. For that is when the most monstrous mental ghosts come out to play with their evil intentions.
    The floor is a finger painting of red smears and mysterious pools of thicker fluids surrounded by random petite sized prints of shoes. There are thick pieces of red clumps with a slick gleaming shine in various spots. My brain tries to let me know what the objects are, but my mind slams that door shut with its refusal. Human limbs in different sizes with their slack fingers extending forward, begging for help that never came, lay about like life sized Lincoln Log toys. Each new discovery tugs at a cord to