Summer horror story: The Necks

This happened a few years back.

It was a hot summer evening and I was dozing off in my sweltering apartment. In the dream I was out jogging at dusk, and I ended up passing by this pharmacy my middle school friend's parents used to run back in my hometown.

There were a few people clustered under the awning, peering through the glass and whispering to each other. Inside, the lights were off. But the floor was just... gone. Completely sunken away. And this pale, cold light was seeping up from where it used to be.

The light was coming from steam that filled the space where the floor had been. When I got closer I finally understood why the people were whispering like that.

Black spheres were floating up from the dark below. Rising slowly, then sinking back down. Over and over.

My eyes adjusted.

They were heads. Necks. My friend's family's heads, bobbing gently in that pale vapor. Every single one of them looked calm. Almost peaceful. Like they were just sleeping.

They kept rising and falling in this slow, steady rhythm and I just stood there staring. Then suddenly one more shot up from below.

This one didn't go back down.

It started drifting toward me.

I panicked. Tried to run. My body wouldn't move.

As it got closer I could see whose it was.

My friend's.

We were face to face with only the glass between us. Her mouth was open. She was screaming. No sound came out. And then black liquid started running from her eyes. From her mouth.

I have nightmares all the time, that's just kind of my thing. But this was DIFFERENT. I woke up and it wouldn't leave my head. I was drenched, armpits soaked, and this pressure kept squeezing tighter and tighter around my chest the longer I sat there.

Next morning I called home.

I was worried something bad had happened to her. Needed to know she was okay.

She was fine.

But her grandmother had passed.

At the exact time I was having that dream, my friend had pulled back her grandmother's covers and found her cold. And she had been screaming.