From the journal of Kelly Vargas, July 5

July 5, 2017

     The last couple of days have been uneventful, but my mind was still back at that gated community. It seems like every time I blink or close my eyes, I see those skeletons with the strips of decomposing flesh and remains of cloth. I see the remains, splayed out where they'd fallen. I saw the larger skeletons with the smaller ones, trying to cover the smaller ones with their pre-decomposed bodies. I saw the pictures on the walls of the two houses we'd gone through. The smiling faces of the families, the happy life they'd lived, shown through pictures, snapshots of normal lives.

     Then, I'll flash back to the skeletons on the lawns, some dragged there before death, some after when they'd managed to kill themselves before the bad men got inside their houses. All of them had been hit with blunt objects, the bones showed the cracks and breaks. Hopefully, most of them were already dead or too far gone to feel the additional pain from the breaks. That was just adding insult to injury.

     The last few nights, I've dreamed about that place. In the most horrific dream I remember, the skeletons started moving. At first it was just little wiggles, like someone starting to turn over in their bed. Then, they started getting up, if their legs were still close enough to the rest of the skeleton, others just dragged themselves on the ground. Even the arms and legs that had been separated from the rest of the body were moving, wiggling, and pulling themselves towards me.

     The skeletons started making that horrible moaning and growling noise that the undead make and I turned to run. But, you know those dreams where you try to run and try to get away, but no matter what you do , it's like you're standing in molasses and you can't move. Well, that's what was happening in my nightmare. I kept trying to move and trying to run, but my feet just wouldn't move. They were stuck to the ground like they'd been super glued and the skeletons were coming right for me from all sides. I was alone and screaming and trying to push them away from me and then I could almost feel their hands grabbing onto me and that's when I came awake.

     Now, I don't want to sleep and keep trying to think of anything else to keep my mind off that place and those skeletons. That's when my mind starts wandering towards what happened at the church and last night I had a dream that combined the two. Not only were there skeletons coming after me and mixed in with them were the undead from inside the church. It was terrifying but at least in that dream I had Manny, Connor, Alicia, Alex and Marny at my back. That made this dream, even with skeletons and the undead coming after us, not as scary as the one where I was alone with just the skeletons.

     Today, we pulled into this little market on the crossroads in the countryside. When we went inside, I found another skeleton, this one all by itself, lying on the office floor with a letter very messily written on it's lap. It was so far decomposed, I could only tell it was guy by it's hair and by finding it's wallet on the floor beside it. We took all the snack food and drinks left in the back and went to find a house for the night. I'm going to include the short letter in my journal, just in case someone besides me is interested in what it has to say. I wrote down the location of the store where we found it and the date and time, at least to the best of my knowledge.

     Tonight is going to be another hard night. Seeing that guys remains has brought back all the other messed up stuff I've seen lately. Please, let me get some sleep tonight without nightmares!

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.