Unreasonably Disturbed

I had a nightmare.

I've been awake from it for the past half hour, maybe forty-five minutes, and I am saying farewell to any hope of a decent night's sleep tonight.

You know the kind of nightmare, where you're afraid to listen too hard to the dark, or to go back to sleep, or even to turn on the lights and see what's here?

It's that kind.

I've got a startlingly good awareness of dream time. I know when I've been asleep for a while, how long it's taken for a dream to truly go underway, when exactly my conscious mind was stilled and my subconscious took over.

This dream, my subconscious never showed itself.

This nightmare came upon me like a storm. It plodded, gathered, and came upon me climaxed violently, without warning.

I heard howling in the house. A death howl, a winter wind curse, these terrible and inhuman screams, jerking sobs of a woman who is not my mother hunting my sister. Where is she, where is she, give her back to me.

I am terrified of her.

I'm afraid of what she did to my family to convince them that she is my mother.

I'm afraid of what she'll do to me.

I'm afraid of the telltale footsteps in the hall beyond my door.