Excerpt: Whispers.

“Help her. . . she’s dying without you! Dying. You have to save her! You have to… Wake up!”
Ashton Black’s blue eyes flashed open suddenly. Looking about his shadowed room, he watched, waited. The cold night air briskly pricked at his face, as he wiped his eyes of the sleep that clung to them. Scanning the room again, he searching the shadows for the voice he was sure that he had heard. No one. Nothing. Not a soul, not a creature. Just him and the darkness that surrounded him. Falling back in bed, he tried to shake the feeling that was growing inside him.
Ashton Black had heard the voice before, clear as if speaking right in front of him. Impossible, to be sure, but there all the same. He didn’t believe it. Somehow, someway, someone was speaking to him, whispering constantly in his ear. How then could he just stand by and not listen? The thoughts rang through his head as he lay back down. He had told his sister, of course, but she had simply told him that it was just a dream. All just a dream. He didn’t believe her. Not at all. It was more than a dream. How could he feel its presence, hear the voice, and yet it all be a dream?
“Help her… she’s dying without you! Dying, Ashton…” it had said. Who is dying? It just didn’t make sense. All of the words echoed through his head, beating like the pulse of his heart. Brushing a lock of long blonde hair from his face, he lay there in the darkness. Sleep would not come. Try as he might, he was awake. The voice had woken him. The voice.
His sister had told him to respond, to reply, but how crazy could he be? To answer back to someone that isn’t there? To have a conversation with a something that doesn’t exist? Smiling softly at the thought, he wondered if it would work. With voice cautious and rather childish, he whispered, “Hello? Is anyone there?” This is nuts, he thought, and no one’s there!
Yet he clung to the hope that he wasn’t just dreaming, that someone was out there, that he wasn’t just hearing the voice.
Silence.
He sighed, shaking his head, and closed his eyes once again. Then, he snapped them open again. Was he insane?! He had actually, for a moment, believed that the voice existed.
Yet, someone was dying.
Someone that he had to save.
That’s what the voice had said.
And he wanted to believe.
Sleep overtook him, but in that brief moment he heard a whisper.
“Save her.”