My Dream: The Eyes of the Dead

         It is evening, and the sun is setting before us. Across from us, the wooden shack we are to sleep in looms up, seemingly touching the sky. However, to get to it, we will have to cross the lake, which, though shallow enough for a child to walk in, will make for a wet and tiresome trudge, and we will not reach the safety of the house until nightfall. Yet there is no choice. Tall pine trees make the surrounding forest pitch black, and we - Mandy and I - are accompanying a group of almost twenty children no older than seven. Water over mud and roots anytime, I decide.
         We exchange scarcely a word as we usher the children into the water, biting on our own lips to keep the chattering of the cold away, but without sympathy for them, who tug on our clothes and flesh to be carried, an insistent nuisance. Finally, Mandy snaps at one, and, resigned to our callousness, the children begin to walk behind us in scattered formation and at a tedious pace.
         On the horizon, a sliver of orange and pink remains, a reminder of a day already long gone in our minds. Glancing upwards, I see how the vibrant, warm colours gradually transform into duller versions of themselves, slowly becoming a blanket of blackness, engulfing everything but the smallest specks of light left behind. A silver circle lingers behind a fog of murky clouds, too shy to follow the sun's golden rays.
         Our tired, sore legs continue to drag us along at this sluggish pace. The wind whistles; the water rustles; a bird's distant twitter is barely audible. Otherwise, silence reigns. Everything is predictable and dull. My thoughts are tainted by this greyness, so I won't share much. It suffices to say that they are as dreary as my surroundings.
         Suddenly, I feel something beneath my feet, other than the usual soft, damp mud. It's still soft, but it feels far more solid. I stop walking and tap at it with my feet, wondering absentmindedly what it could be. I glance behind me, still feeling sort of disembodied. Mandy and the children have also stopped walking, and are looking at me impatiently. I need to get moving again, I realize, so I return my gaze to the area in front of me.
         Just before I take another step, it occurs to me to look down at whatever I'm stepping on. I don't really care, but a little bit of childlike curiosity is left in me, it seems, so I do it.
         Dead eyes stare back at me.
         A corpse; pale, ghostlike, and somehow not rotting, with dark strands of hair swimming around its face, blue lips sealed shut in a thin smile, and somehow, a glimpse of cruelty in those cold, glass orbs, illuminated by the faint moonlight, floating in their sockets.
         I can't even scream; I'm that terrified. My mouth opens, but the only thing that escapes from it is a hoarse gurgle of primitive fear. I can't let the children see this, is the only thing my panicked mind is able to think. I back away slowly, feeling the sickening smoothness of the cold flesh beneath my bare feet.
         But then, the water and that face rise up to meet me. I feel my body collapse into the freezing water, and then onto the corpse, its glassy eyes still haunting me as I black out. Death. I have seen death.