Ahleah was sitting in the garden. She jumped up when a scream came from the dining room. She ran into the castle, throwing open the door and racing down the hall.
  She was accustomed to screams, babies screaming for their mothers, her sisters  screaming out of fright, but she hardly ever heard a blood-curdling scream of someone who was actually in danger.
She slammed into the door, finding too late it was locked, and also scorching hot. Smoke had already filled the hall, and the only way to enter the room was through this door.
“Fire!” Yelled Ahleah, running back along the hall and climbing a stairway to a separate room in the castle. She slammed her fists against yet another locked door. “Get up! Morgan! There is a fire in the Dining room!!!” She pounded her hands against the wood as hard as she could, and finally it creaked open.
“There is… a fire… the door was locked!” She said, out of breath.
Morgan followed her in a hurry back downstairs. He ran up to the closed door, fumbling with his keys. However, it opened before he unlocked it, and showed a perfectly normal dining room. Nothing was burned, no one was there.
There wasn’t any smoke in the hall.
“Is this a joke?” He asked suspiciously. Ahleah’s jaw had dropped. She ran a hand down the cool, smooth wood of the door.
“It was burning.” She managed. “There was smoke everywhere. I could hardly breathe.”
Morgan smiled grimly. “Ahleah, this isn’t the first time. Was it yesterday you went to your sister insisting that someone had let your father’s horses out, and they were running away? What has got into you?”
Ahleah didn’t speak. She stared at him. Her heart was still beating fast. She knew it had been real…

She was only three when it began, but then she was silent about it. Out of the corners of her eyes she had seen shapes. Colored shapes, they were dancing around just out of her reach. They made her upset, but she never told anyone. After her fifth birthday she heard them, too. Whispers just quiet enough to not exist, yet they were there.
It had built up. She had nightmares, and woke up screaming, and didn’t understand what she saw. When she told her parents, they had her eyes checked. Her eyes were fine.

But now they realized maybe, since it wasn’t her eyes that were faulty, it was something else. They didn’t talk about it, but they all knew it. Ahleah could see things that didn’t exist, hear words that no one had spoken. And now she was claiming something bad had happened, when it hadn’t.


“Goodnight, Ahleah.” Said her father. “Be careful.” He smiled and kissed her forehead, and then left the room.
She was afraid. She should be used to this, but she wasn’t. She stared at the door and waited for her father’s steps to recede down the hall. When they didn’t, she sat up, curious. She heard a jingle of keys, and realized with horror that she was being locked in. She ran to the door but was too late.
Her own family had imprisoned her!
She kept wobbling the doorknob, but it didn’t turn. Her room had no windows, just plain, stone walls. She sat on her bed, and watched the shapes form and reform along the grey rock. But it didn’t make her stop thinking. Tears ran down her face, and she wondered, Why would they do this to me? Why do I see things that no one else sees?
They think I am crazy.
She realized this was true. They didn’t trust her, and this was all something she couldn’t control.

She woke up to hear flames. She jumped out of bed and ran to her door to open it, but it was too hot to touch, and locked. She heard screams from the other side. Panicking, she ran to her bed and tried to find something with which to smash the door.
It isn’t true! She said to herself, when she could not find anything. It’s only my mind. These stupid pictures!
She looked at the dancing shadows, and anger welled up in her. "Go away!" She said. "I don't need you..."
And they were gone, for the time being. She couldn’t hear anything and the silence was so loud it nearly knocked her over. Pale faced, she edged towards the door and began coughing as smoke crept through.
The fire was still there.