‘Ben, are you okay?’

From the bed came the breathless reply, still not totally in the moment.

‘Yes, yes I am fine. Just a bad dream, that’s all.’

The room darkened, but Ben was awake and could not be drawn to sleep again. So he rose, and dressed in a drifting conscience. Still the memories dwelt in his mind, poising the pool of his mind with it’s dark images. He knew not when he had experienced such terror that it may be reborn in his sleeping brain. He knew, however, that there was nothing in his mind that he did not put there himself and the fear of that promise was the thorn in his side. Wherefore did this terror come? When in the p[ast had he been in such a situation?

His day crawled by under the sun, people and places all shining and good but cast under a dark pall of his mindless, directionless fear. Newly he looked upon people with suspicion, wondering who may have known of his incarceration in that terrible place. He saw nothing to prove his fears and by the sinking of the sun he had almost forgotten his strange, phantom driven quest. Night drew the dark shutters of the world and upon hard swallowing the ashes of his meal, he knew as certain as the sun would rise that he would sleep the dread sleep before it would be so.

As a stalking creature in dark woods of the night so did sleep elude Ben. Tossing the turning, counting sheep, clearing the mind of all thoughts but no rest did come. He was not asleep, but in his waking mind the agent of his previous fears did rear it’s head. The screams, like his own and equally rare, tore through his brain, scraping away sanity, the cushions of his life. The cold sweat of an doomed situation drenched his back. He never once achieved sleep in the long night of relived despair, and on the coming of the sun he rose more slowly than previously. The world he saw was but a gauze over the depths of darkness.

Unable or unwilling to return to his job, Ben went quickly to the Public Library to search for evidence of his foreboding. Amidst the quiet aisles of a history he knew not of did he seek shreds of hearsay to pin his fears to. He could not, would not live a life in the shadow of a unknown fear. Long did he read of what had gone before, of goodness, of peace, of a world where there were no words for conflict. Further back, into the Dark Ages, he looked. His breath grew short as he looked upon evil, each new picture sparking within his mind memories he had no place remembering. He knew that men had done such deeds in the past, but times march has purged the urges from the human soul. Where in modern history was a man so debased, so near to that which is reviled that he could visit upon his kin harms and terrors unknown for centuries? Ben looked long at a list of monsters in the guise of men, seeking to find in the name of the one who had poisoned his mind so. So did the day pass into night, and night into day.

Now looking with sunken eyes at pages of terrible actions Ben was a ghoul, searching for death amidst life. Spinning bloodstained corpses laughing at his despair, turning to screams and twisted faces of the dead. The attendent of the library touched his shoulder lightly, shocking him from sleep into whose silky embrace he had slipped.

A stronger hand replaced it, and he was guided to rise. Two men stood behind him, looking over the matter upon the table, the darkest pages in history. Thin, pursed lips spoke.

‘Come with us.’ Tired beyond reason Ben obliged, and was taken away.