The Evil, swift return

It was outside. It was as big as the world or bigger, but we could sense it, it spoke to us and its voice froze the blood in our veins. I was in my old house in Catia, exploring some rooms I’d never seen before for some reason. A friend was with me, a female friend dressed in rather little, not provocatively in that she was not attired like that to tease me, it was just the way it was. It still was arousing but there was nothing to it. In the room there was rotten furniture, bits of wood would flake off the large desk as we touched it. There were drawers full of yellowing, curling papers and small ordinary things; paper clips, staples, bits of ribbon, old odd looking plastic credit cards, the flotsam of past lives. There was a book which I picked up -raising a cloud of dust- when my friend stopped me. “Leave that where it is”, she said. “It is not meant to be seen by you”. Her voice was changing as she said this and I could see that she was part of It now. It was too late, picking the book seemed to have been enough, now I ‘knew’. I made for the door, she called out my name but her voice had changed and I knew she no longer was there, it was something else. It’d become night outside, the yellow moon climbing over the Avila mountain, black clouds with silver rims running across the sky. But I knew this was not real, it was an illusion to prevent me from seeing what really was there. I ran downstairs, the earth shook, the voice -it wasn’t a voice, it wasn’t sound waves breaking through the air, but I could clearly hear it, whatever it was- called out again, filling the whole space. I had some idea that I could fight it but was very afraid. I knew instantly that all over the city people were hiding in basements, everybody had heard it as clearly as I had. I could also ‘see’, across the city, people being picked from their hiding places and disappearing screaming, up into nothingness. But that was not my fate. I knew I was of the same nature as It, although infinitely less powerful. I was afraid and trying unsuccessfully to wake up. There were things to do and I did not know what. Please, let me wake up, let me wake up...