Somewhere else
"What do you see?" a man standing behind her asked a women sitting on a chair in a dark empty room.
It was a cellar, with naked walls of grey concrete. Only a few candles standing at it´s edges were lighting the room.
The woman looked tired and distant and her eyes absent, as if she was not looking at the room around her but something else.
"I see... war?" she said. "No - it is more like rampant carnage. People are killing each other on the streets.
I see a tall man with a riffle, walking along the sidewalk and shooting anyone he sees.
I see a man and a woman having sex against the walls in a street corner, next to the body of a man they had just killed.
I see a group of young people with swastika and SS symbols attacking some people with dark skin with clubs knives... and guns.
I see crowds of angry and crazed people rampaging over the cities, breaking windows, destroying cars, setting houses on fire.
I see a line of paniked policemen open fire on one of the rampaging crowds."
The woman was now halting for a short moment.
"But... it are not just humans," she continued. "I see tentacled creatures moving across the streets... And bizarre tall beings with grey skin and overlong limbs with clawed hands cutting down people.
I see a second and third moon appearing in the sky... one of them red like blood.
"But then..." she hesitated once again. "Someone - something else is coming... coming out of the dark. But I can not see him."
"Nobody can," the man standing behind her said. "No normal living being ever will be able to."
He let his hands slowly and softly over her shoulders and her face.
"You did well my dear," he told her. "You have started to open your eyes. You are right. He is coming."
He leaned down to her and they kissed deeply.
xxxxxxx
Northern Regions of Germany
Prophets, seers, augurs, magicians, people who had the the `second sight´, these terms he had red about from history were going through Peter´s mind. He knew that in some sense all of these titles could he used to describe him as well.
The question was, was any of it true. Had maybe some of the people giving these titles actually been people like him? Or had they all only deceived others and even themselves about their abilities?
Was he deceiving himself? a quieter voice said in the back of Peter´s mind. No - he knew what was real. He had seen the proof of it more than one time.
xxx
About fifteen minutes after Sarah had arrived at his appartment, after he had his coffee and gotten fully dressed into casual clothes - a shirt, jeans and a jacket, they had left. Peter and her were now sitting together in her car on the way to the closest larger train-station in the area.
Which happened to be the one in the town Oldenburg in the region of Lower-Saxxon, close to the coast of the North Sea in Germany.
The two of them, just like the rest of their close family and most of their extended family, had grown up here in this countryish region, close to the coast. And also like most of the rest of their relatives they both had spend most of their lives and were still living here today.
The difference between Peter and the rest of them however was that he had managed to become an internationally recognized and well-selling novel-author. While for example Sarah worked as a cashier in a supermarket close by and her boyfriend had a job in a small local recycling company.
Not that the rest of his family was exactly poor. They were what you would generally call `middle-class´.
Just like Peter himself had originally been. But after he finally had his break-though with his novels, he was now earning more though his money than the entire rest of his family combined.
And that while Peter, just like the rest of his family, had barely left his home-region during most of his life.
Well - in today´s time, with handy, internet-connections and social media etc, it was not really necessary anyway.
In the last few years however, after his first success, he had actually started to make regular `vacation´ trips to other countries and across the world. Normally once per year.
To places he had found interesting and had always wanted to visit - New York, Egypt, Tokyo, Rome to name a few.
Places that he had so far at best been writing about in his stories. But now he also wanted to see them in real life. Well - seing more of the actual world would certainly not hurt him as an author either.
With his new income he could affort this. Still, for most of his life Peter had been more than used to have a `low budget´ for his life-expenses and it still showed.
Right at the moment Peter sitting on the passenger seat and was in thought. His mind was mostly swinging between two different things.
The first was the newest journey he was about to beginn. This one would go across several places all over Europe. Like all of his journeys it was mostly for relaxion and to a small part for inspiration.
The first part would go out of Germany, over the border, to France, the first major stop being Paris. Then a few days later, it would be over the channel to Great Britain - London, Edinburgh and a few other areas. After that back to the continent and then finally Greece.
He would have also visited Italy too, if he had not already been there a couple years ago - Rome, Venice, the Toscana, Venedig.
And then last year he had been travelling to Egypt, seeing the city of Kairo, but especially the nil and the pyramids and also the ruins of a few other ancient sights and towns.
He had also always taken some time to look for good price-offers, but the trips would still cost him a larger sum of money every time. Not that it mattered that much anymore. He had more than enough now. But that didn´t mean that he had to throw it out of the window.
The second thing on his mind however was the dream he had last night.
Or more precisely the unsettling feeling that someone - or something - from out there had been watching him. It was a feeling that seemed to have burried itself right into his bones. The mental picture of some unknown `thing´ watching him from somewhere in the dark.
He could not completely shake up the feeling even now.
"Are you alright?" Sarah asked him.
"Yes - I am. I just didn´t sleep to well," he replied, telling a half-truth.
He had never told Sarah about his `gift´. Or anyone else for that matter. He had never told anybody.
It was something he had never told a single person a word about and kept it as his personal secret.
That of course didn´t mean that he didn´t trust Sarah... or their parents. He did trust them in nearly every way - at least with practically any other matter.
But here?
To be honest, `how did you even tell your parents and sister, who were just spending a normal day, that you had a bizarre sixth sense and saw visions about the future or about other worlds and strange monsters and alien creatures and actually believed they were real? And even more, if you told them that you actually believed all of this was real?´
How would you react if your brother - or son - told you this? Probably not so well.
Maybe they would claim to believe him - `technically´ - but actually think that he was not really serious. That he was just joking. That he was just talking in a exaggerated way about his own imagination. Maybe even that he was trying to form some kind of legend around himself for marketing reasons.
But it was not simply imagination, he knew this.
Imagination didn´t show you things that `just happened´ to become reality later. At least not many times over again like it did for him.
xxxxxxx
At the same time at the train station Peter and Sarah were just driving to, a train was arriving in this moment.
As it had come to an halt, the doors were opening and a swarm of people stepping outside.
Under these people was also a group of three young women, all of them somewhere in their early twenties.
The names of these three were Carrie, Elisabeth - or short Beth as she was mostly called, and Kana - whose family originally came from Japan. They were college students from the USA who were spending their semester holidays here.
The station building itself was actually a quite eccentric construction. In particular because the five rail-tracks, that were coming from different directions and were connecting the town to different locations, were actually running over the roof of the building and not on ground level as you would expect.
As strange as that sounded at the first look.
In fact when the railroads were reaching the city-limit, a few kilometers from the station-building, the tracks were lifted off the ground and were moving on long railroad bridges into the air, running about ten meters above the town´s streets and it´s traffic without interrupting the flow of any of the other vehicles.
The trains were not running through but above the city, before they arrived at the station-platform that was placed on top of the building. And built over this `roof-platform´, was a large superstructure made of metal and glass, that protected it from rain.
That you were actually on top of a building and over ten meter over the ground, was something you only fully realized when you were standing at the outer edges and looking down on the streets of the town below.
The five railtracks that were running over it, however also divided the platform into four separate segments. The only ways enter or leave this segments were a set of stairs at the middle of each of them, that were leading downwards into the actual station-building.
Down there you were then greeted by a large corridor, filled with a large number of shops, diners and a Mc-Donalds. And the only way to get from one segment of the platform to the other was to walk down into the building and from there to the stairs that led upward to the next segment.
As the three were walking down the stairs.
Carry had long blonde hair, very light skin and bright blue eyes. Beth´s hair and eye color on the other side was dark brown. Kana, being asian, had of course black hair that reached just to her shoulders. All three of them were wearing simple combinations of shirts or blouses, thin jackets and trousers for the journey.
Kana suddenly felt dizzy for a moment. She was gripping the railing tightly not to fall.
Everything around her seemed to be turning grey.
And for a split-second, the place she saw around her seemed to be replaced with another one.
Instead of the stairs leading down into the building, she saw some kind of old and somewhat middle-aged looking tunnel, with walls made from large brickstone´s and only lighted by a few torches that were attached to the walls.
Then a moment later the scene she saw around her returned to normal.
"Is everything alright?" Carry asked her somewhat concerned.
"Yes," she replied. "I guess the long time in the train has gotten to me."
"Okay," Carry replied.
But that wasn´t it. Kana did have this kind of dreams her entire life. The ones where she was seeing things that sometimes didn´t seem to be from this world
But seeing something like this when she was awake, on the bright day, was new to her.
"Maybe we should sit down for a few moments," Beth offered.
"Alright," Kana said.
The three continued walking downstairs.
xxxxxxx
During the last half of the drive to the train-station, Peter had another kind of vision.
Sarah didn´t notice. Peter was able not to let anything show. To her he was just sitting silently in the passenger seat.
Having a vision while he was awake was not nothing unusual for him.
He saw asian looking young woman. Who was for some reason walking through what looked like an ancient tunnel, made from crudely cut bricks and only lighted by a few torches that were mounted at the right side-wall, that was leading downwards.