The Burning Scripture

The house on Maplewood Lane had always been quiet. After Dad passed, Mom and I moved in with Grandma, and for a while, it felt like a shelter. But then Grandma died—October 8th, just like the date on her old pocket watch. The moment she was gone, the silence changed. It wasn’t peaceful anymore; it was watchful.

I started dreaming of her. Not as she was, but as she became: pale, still, her eyes like coal. She never spoke, only pointed. At what, I never knew. The dreams came every night for months, leaving me hollow and scared. I tried to rationalize—grief, memory—but the dreams felt like a summons.

I was in a dark place myself, fighting a losing battle with drink. A friend suggested I find some spiritual anchor, so I went to the little white chapel on Fairview Road—a Pentecostal congregation where they sang loud and prayed louder. I found something there, a peace that pushed the dreams to the edges. But peace, I learned, breeds resentment in certain circles.

It began with small things. A scratch on my arm while I slept. A bite mark on my ankle. Then the pressure—a weight on my chest at night, crushing until I couldn’t breathe. I’d wake gasping, my room stinking of sulfur. I knew something was there, something I couldn’t see but could feel, and it hated me with a personal fury.

Desperate, I did what the pastor suggested. I took the old family Bible—the one Grandma had kept on her dresser—and read it aloud, verses I barely understood, my voice cracking. I asked for protection. That night, I laid on the couch, the Bible under my head as a pillow, and tried to sleep.

I woke to the smell of burning hair. My hair. Flames were licking at my scalp, and above me, twined in the smoke, were two shapes: a dragon coiled like a serpent, its scales like molten copper, and a serpent with eyes like molten gold. They roared—a sound that was fire and hiss. They saw the Bible under my head and snarled, as if insulted. Their breath washed over me, and the fire in my hair blazed.

Pain seared through me. I tried to scream, but my throat was closed. My dog, a scruffy mutt named Rex, began barking wildly from the kitchen—a racket that broke the spell. The creatures flickered, startled, and I rolled off the couch, beating at my burning hair. Rex ran to me, growling at the empty air, his hackles raised. The smell of scorched skin filled the room.

I knelt there, shaking, my head smoking. The Bible lay on the floor, open to a page I’d never marked. It was the Book of Revelation, Chapter 12: ‘And there was war in heaven.’ I looked up, and the dragon and serpent had vanished, but I could feel them watching me, waiting.

Since that night, I don’t sleep without a light on. I carry the Bible everywhere, taped shut with a rubber band. I’ve told the pastor, but he only prays over me. The dreams have changed—now Grandma points to a fireplace, where my hair burns in a grate. And I know it’s not over. They want something from me. They want to finish what they started.