The news caught her attention on the television. It also showed images of a recent incident at the local cemetery. The reporter's voice started to tremble as she described the unsettling discovery of a charred wooden casket. Sherry's heart skipped a beat, and she turned to Joseph with wide eyes.
“That's… that's the same casket from my dream,” she whispered, her voice filled with disbelief.
Joseph frowned, his concern deepening. “What are you saying, Sherry? It's just a coincidence.”
But Sherry could not ignore the nagging feeling that there was a connection between her nightmare and the news. She felt an inexplicable pull, urging her to investigate further. Now, she has come up with a plan.
After their breakfast, they continued with their life. With their father nowhere to be seen, everyone started their day with a calm façade filled with anxiety in their minds. Sherry went on with her school life in fear of the terrible sights that she saw. Her whole day passed, and it did not even feel like an hour. Vividly remembering what she did, but not the sequence.
Later that night, as everyone was asleep, she sneakily walked to the living room from her bedroom, tiptoeing so as not to wake her brothers up.
“It’s just to keep me from being hysterical,” she said. Believing that nothing was going to happen. That “Maybe it is all in my head.”
As she walked through the night, she eventually arrived at the local cemetery, named “La Cementerio de Herencia.”
As soon as she entered from the spiky steel gates, she saw this towering statue of a man welcoming her to the place where the dead sleeps.
Beneath was written:
“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
Scavenging at night, looking for the charred casket, she felt it was idiotic to even try. But then a glimpse of a flashlight flashed through her face, caressing her with tingly heat. Sherry's heart raced as she followed the beam of light, curiosity and unease guiding her steps. The flashlight led her through a dark corner and into the depths of the local cemetery. The air was heavy with an eerie silence. She could only hear her own shallow breaths.
As Sherry approached the area where the charred casket had been discovered, she felt a chill run down her spine. There, amidst the gravestones, she saw a figure hunched over, examining something on the ground. The figure's back was turned to her, but Sherry could sense a sinister presence in the air. Summoning her courage, she cautiously approached the mysterious person. With each step, the intensity of the moment grew, and her heart pounded louder. As she drew nearer, she could make out the person's features – it was a man, dressed in dark clothing, his face hidden beneath a hood.
“Excuse me,” Sherry called out, her voice quivering with a mixture of fear and determination. The man did not respond, his attention fixed on something. Sherry took another step closer, trying to get a better look. She saw what the man was looking at. It was the charred casket from her dream.
As she scanned through the weird man to the casket, she caught a glimpse of what was inside. Empty as it was, a pattern of circles and lines that looked like a sigil engraved on the bottom. She then asked the man, “Who are you?”
Suddenly, the man towards her. Sherry gasped, freezing in her tracks. His face looked like a void, endless and dark, but his eyes were visible, gleaming with an unsettling intensity. She could feel a wave of malevolence emanating from him. Watching his eye sockets tear up with blood and his pupils palpitate as it turns upward to its back. Before she could react, the man lunged at her.
Screaming, she then woke up from a hallucination. And then heard a man’s voice calling out to her, “This sounds familiar,” she thought.