The dreams were recurring, and frightening to say the least. Carol had been having these dreams since she was young, but they had stopped for years. Why were they starting again now?

They were always the same. Carol would find herself in the middle of a castle made entirely out of ice. The light was very dim, and outside the caslte there was none at all. Every time this happened, she would feel as if her whole body was being frozen. She would run through the castle trying to find a heat source. 

Finally she would come to a fire and desperately run next to it. The fire wasn't warm though. Carol would almost feel colder when she got close to it. Suddenly a hand would reach out of the fire and grab onto her wrist. The hand burned more than anything she had ever felt. She would pull away from it, but the hand would never let go. It dragged her into the flames until they consumed her entire body. Throughout the process, only the hand would burn, the flames still felt like ice.

Behind the flames was a room of complete darkness. Carol would see something glowing and white in the distance. She chased it, but it only seemed to get farther away. She would try even harder to catch up to it. Eventually it would stop moving away from her. Up close she could see it was a woman. The woman would slowly turn around to face Carol. 

She had stringy black hair and pure white skin that glowed softly in the darkness. She had the face of Carol's mother, only hers had been horribly mutilated. All of her skin was showing the first signs that it was starting to decompose. She had long ugly scars all over her face. Her once blue eyes were now completely black and crying tears of blood. Suddenly the glow became harsher, until it was almost blinding. 

Carol would wake up in her bed with tears running down her face. Her mother had died in childbirth and Carol only knew her through pictures and stories. The dreams had started when Carol was only five years old and continued until she could barely sleep for fear of having the dream again.

After about a year they finally stopped. Carol was 15 now and she had never had the dream again until a few months ago. They had never made sense, and nothing ever seemed to stop them.

This time was different. Yesterday, Carol had met someone on the street who stopped her and asked about the dreams. He refused to give his name or explain what he was doing. At the end of the conversation he gave her a card that only had a phone number on it and said to call him the next time she had the dream.

Carol turned her light on and walked over to her desk. She stared at the card, trying to decide if she should call or not. She wasn't sure if she could trust this man or not. Even if she could, what could he possibly do to stop the dreams?

Despite these questions, Carol knew she couldn't spend another year having these nightmares.

"Hello," she said.

"Carol," a voice on the other line said, "You had another one of the dreams."

"How did you-"

"You need to get out of that house and come here."

"I can't just leave!"

"Carol, you need to leave."

"What's going on?"

"I'll tell you when you get here. I can't say anything over the phone."

"Why can't you come here?"

"It isn't safe for me to leave."

"But it is for me?"

"You'll be fine, just hurry up. We need you right now, and if you don't come it will put all of us in further danger. We'll make sure your dad doesn't punish you. He'll think you were there all night."

"Fine."

"Thank you. Come to 1124 Kimball street. Hurry."

Carol hung up and looked at the picture of her parents hanging on the wall. Was she really going to go over to a strange man's house in the middle of the night. Was this really a good idea? She changed out of her pajamas and got one of her purses. She made sure she had pepper spray, her cell phone, and a small taser. 

She found the house and started to knock on the door. For how strange this person seemed, his house looked almost too normal. It had a big front yard that was very well cared for, and the house was painted a nice peach color.

Before her hand even touched the door the boy opened it and pulled her inside. 

"Do you know anything about what's happening?" he asked.

"Of course I don't! Are you going to explain it?!"

"I'm part of a group of people who protects the world from evil spirits, when they get too powerful they get harder to fight against. Some people can see projections of the spirits. That's what your dreams are."

"Why does it look like my mother?"

"That's honestly the strangest part of yours. It probably isn't actually your mom, it's just how you interpret that because it makes more sense to look at her that way. Or maybe it's doing that on purpose so you won't suspect."

"How do you know it's a spirit and not just nightmares."

"Well, the timing is perfect for one thing. Mostly because there used to be another girl who could see them and her version was exactly the same, except she didn't describe the woman as looking like her mother. Actually she said it looked like her sister. Do you have any aunts?"

"No, what do you want from me?"

"Well, we've been looking for someone new with the dreams for some time now. See, it helps us find the spirits, but there's something else too. They also help us reach the level where we can fight them before they get to our plane of existance. If they make it that far we have to erase memories when we're done. That's just too much of an ordeal, horribly expensive too. We basically have a machine that you will be attatched to, and someone else will be sent in with you. You will work together to stop the spirits."

"And you can't find anyone else to do this with?"

"No, the last time this happened was ten years ago and it took us a year before we could find it and we were only barely able to get rid of it because our last girl died around that time. The fact is, there just aren't that many of you out there, and if you don't help us there will be so many people in danger because of your decision. Is that what you want?"

"No, alright, I'll help you. Also, I just realised, you never told me your name."

"Right now I'm going by Michael."

"Why couldn't you leave this house?"

"Safety reasons. See, you have projections of the spirits, and I don't. What I have prevents me frm leaving the property at night. Even in the day I can't leave for very long. I always start hearing this high pitched sound, and start to feel like my skin is being eaten by bugs. This has been going on since I was a kid. It gets worse when there are spirits around, but even when they aren't it starts to happen after a while. There's only a few people I can talk to in person even inside the house that don't hurt me. The house is protected from spirits getting in, so I stay somewhat safe in here."

"If you're not connected to the spirits, than why can't you get in and fight them back?"

"I can fight them, but I can't quite get to them on my own. Last time this happened I did eventually manage to force my way in, but it was really draining and I almost died afterwards, so it can happen but it's not a good idea. I'm actually the only one they've ever seen who's like this."

"I understand, so what do I have to do?"

"Right now, you need to go home. It's almost morning."

"But what about,"

"Come here tomorrow afternoon, and the others can help explain things."

"Okay."

Carol went home and barely slept after that. she went through the next day at school, and was distracted the entire time. Just as she was leaving and starting to go to Michael's house. He came running up to me and grabbed her arms. 

"Carol!" he said, "You need to come quickly! We can't stay here anymore! It's not safe, even the house isn't safe for us anymore."

He started pulling her towards his car.

"Michael, what's going on?! What are you doing out here?! Doesn't it hurt you?!"

"Of course it does! Please hurry!" we got into his car, "The spirits are a bigger problem than we thought! Some of them have already almost reached our plane of existance. They've killed one of our head scientists and are probably going to come for us soon. The protections on the house aren't helping anymore! We just need to run! There's a place at the headquarters that has always stayed safe. It has stronger protections on it than my house could get. We should be safe there until we can fix this."

"Why weren't you there to begin with?"

"My house already had strong protections on it, and the headquarters bothers me a lot. They were never sure if I could handle it 24/7, but now we don't have a choice. Your family will be fine, and they will never think anything happened, but you can't stay here anymore."