Hiraeth

Bark at the Moon

Tick

Tock

Tick

Tock


Vivian McAlister felt she might go crazy if she couldn't find something other than her watch ticking time slowly away. With every second that passed on the small timepiece, the twenty-eight year old trauma surgeon found herself feeling more and more vulnerable. It had been nearly ten years since she'd last been here, at her grandparents' home on the outskirts of Greenwood, Mississippi.

It was different now than it had been, with a fresh coat of white paint on the clapboard, beautiful blue shutters edging the front windows. The front lawn was neatly trimmed and lined with pretty flowers on either side of the concrete pathway leading to the front of the house. A white picket fence surrounded the property, giving it a finished look. Her sister lived here now, having inherited it from their grandmother upon her death four years back.

When she'd told her sister that she needed to come home for awhile, Coralee had been confused. After graduation, she had been accepted into Harvard Medical School, and she'd graduated medical school in half the time of her peers. She'd moved from Boston to Atlanta to take a job at a prestigious hospital, and hadn't even thought of returning to her roots.

But that had been then, and things were different for Vivian now, as she paced the yard back and forth uneasily, her arms scratched from where her nails had dug small lines into them. She had been hearing things for weeks now - scratching on her floors, occasional growls in the darkness. But now she was seeing things - shadows passing in front of windows, the scratching on the floor turning to deep gouges now.

She heard a shrill phone ring out in the silence and a short scream fell from her lips as she jumped. It was just her cell phone, blinking in the darkness to alert her that Silvia Pearlman was attempting to call her.

She swallowed hard. The two of them had been best friends for years after meeting in a medical terminology class the two of them had been enrolled in during high school. They'd had a lot in common, the biggest thing being that they both wanted to become successful surgeons. It had been during their senior year that they had gone out with some friends and their fake IDs to a small bar on the edge of town to let off some steam after the SATs.

There hadn't been many people at the bar that night - just a few local drunks and their small group. Their other friend had disappeared with a beautiful woman who'd been dancing alone. She and Silvia had decided to go outside for a cigarette and some fresh air when they'd come across their friend, Sean, and the beautiful woman from earlier.

That was the night all three of their lives had changed forever. The woman wasn't there simply by happenstance; she was granting wishes to all who would seal the deal with a kiss. Sean had wanted to become a genius architect - the very next day, he was drafting designs with ingenuity that hadn't been seen in decades of architecture.

Both Silvia and Vivian had asked for high positions in the medical field, and both had more than received. Vivian had been accepted to Harvard Medical School and had not only graduated in less than half the time as her classmates, but had also been offered a prestigious position as a trauma surgeon in one of Atlanta's best hospitals. Silvia had also taken the fast track out of college and not long afterwards was working as the Chief of Surgery in Boston's top hospital.

The phone rang again, pulling Vivian out of her thoughts. Her fingers were shaking as she answered, pulling the phone to her ears.

"Silv?"

"T-They're coming for me, Vivian!" Her friend screamed into the phone. Silvia could hear the anxiety and the sheer terror in the other woman's voice. It sent a chill down her spine, and she swallowed a shaky breath as she heard a faint growl in the darkness.

Silvia's voice screamed into the phone again and Vivian dropped hers to the ground, crying out. She ran inside the house and slammed the door shut, locking it with shaky fingers. Coralee looked up from her spot on the couch, frowning.

"Viv? Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost," Coralee spoke.

But it wasn't Coralee that Vivian was seeing. It was her sister's body, but with a morphed head with features worse than any nightmare she'd ever had. She screamed and fumbled with the lock on the front door before jerking it open and running out into the darkness. Coralee watched in horror as an invisible force threw her sister to the ground, ripping her legs and torso to shreds, the silence pierced by Vivian's desperate screams.
♠ ♠ ♠
Hi, guys! So, this chapter takes place during Season 2, Episode 8. Throughout the story, if a chapter takes place in a particular episode, I'll link it here in the author's note. Please let me know what you think! I rewrote this chapter three times before I was happy with it, and I'm excited for feedback on my first Supernatural full-length. :)