Night Terrors

As a child, I had horrid dreams of the fire that took the life of my parents. My adoptive mother would always calm me down back to a light sleep, and I would have no memory of it the next morning

As I grew older, I realized that the night terrors weren't as frequent as they used to be when I was younger. In fact, by the time I was seventeen, I couldn't remember the last time I did have an attack. I had a somewhat normal life, nothing unusual. Eventually, after I finished college I moved from my small town home of South Bend and traveled to Seattle. That was where I met Daniel, my husband. After about a year of being there, we figured that going back to South Bend would be a lovely idea. At the time I was almost a month and a half pregnant with our first child, and we thought that living in a small town would be best for him or her.

For the first two weeks of house hunting, we lived with my adoptive mother(her husband recently passed away of lung cancer). I noticed that the old house I used to live in was reconstructed, it was as if there was never a fire to begin with. Daniel and I figured that it would be a great idea to live there, considering that he'd be close to his new job, and there were great schools near by. After a few weeks of planning and getting the paperwork finished, we had owned my old home.

Life continued, we had our child, we named her Angela(my mother's name) Alexandra(female version of my father's name). Seven years later, Angela was on summer break and Daniel's job was anything but boring. Eventually he began traveling all over the world, he'd bring back little toys for Angela and clothing and jewelry for me. Needless to say though, he was gone often. And that didn't work out too well when Angela began having night terrors.

It was so odd that she began having them, what was even more disturbing was that they were constantly of fire.

She cried in the dead of the night. I rushed to her room, "Angie, what's the matter?" She only wept in my arms, wanting Daddy and Mommy. After a few more minutes of her crying, I had calmed her down, but this time, I kept her up. She sat across from me at the dinner table, drinking her hot chocolate. "Sweetie, what did you dream about." She took one more gulp and answered, "A man and a woman. You looked a lot like the woman, only her hair was darker."

I felt my stomach twist, I had always been told that I looked like my mother with lighter hair. But there were no pictures of them around, Angela only knew their names, I hadn't even told her that they died in a fire. "What was happening?" I asked. She bit her lip, "They were on fire, screaming, saying 'Get Haven out!'" I sighed, that was what my uncle told me they said before they died. I sent Angela to bed and called Daniel, which it was nearly noon for him and explained everything that happened.

I called a doctor and he said that there was nothing out of the ordinary with Angela, that it was all just a very bad dream. Eventually, I had no leads, and neither had Daniel. For a while, the night terrors stopped, and we lived peaceful once again. But the first time we attended church, the preist looked at me funny. At the end of the sermon, he pulled me aside and said that my daughter was having horrid dreams. I nodded, but before I asked him how he knew, he had a look of great alarm on his face, "Get her out! And if you can, get out! Leave all possessions behind but the essentials, but please get out!"

I was confused, but I thought logically: Maybe he was hinted that some gangsters were gonna set the house on fire?

I came up with a good idea to go visit my adoptive mother for a week, I took all of the clothes that would last a week and even our dog.

The next day, we awoke to strange news that our house was burned to the ground. What was even more odd, was that it burned down the exact way it did twenty five years ago. Down to the very last ash.