The Darkness of Dreamland

by T. L. Bodine

  “Sonia?” He gasped. His arms shook. He retched.

  Something slithered against him. He felt warm breath on the back of his neck.

  A pale blue light flared, then, in the distance — as though coming at him from a very long tunnel. It moved forward, growing in size and intensity as it rushed forth. In the approaching blue light, Adrian could make out dim shapes of small, hunched creatures, but he couldn’t make them out clearly in the gloom. They moved together, a seething mass, scampering away from the glowing light of the dream.

  The dream galloped into view. It was a horse, a white horse with fur that was shiny like plastic; it circled him, its long mane and tail streaming behind. It looked exactly like a toy horse Samantha had, and he knew before he looked that she was sitting on its back, simultaneously three years old and older, grown-up, ageless.

  The horse stopped, and Samantha looked down at Adrian, smiling. Her blue eyes glowed in the night, and light glinted off the golden hair that tumbled down her shoulders. The horse pawed at the ground with one great, plastic hoof, and then turned to gallop away, fading into the night. A dim blue haze hung over them, washing everything in faint light.

  “Adrian?” Sonia stood, a few feet in front of him. She held an empty glass vial in her shaking hands. “Are you okay?”

  He looked up at her, suddenly very aware that he was kneeling in his own vomit. His cheeks were damp with tears.

  Sonia knelt across from him, green eyes burning with concern. “I’m so sorry. The Darkness fell just as we were crossing…and it’s the thickest here…you always do so well, I didn’t think —”

  “It’s okay,” he said, thickly. Every word took effort. His arms trembled and threatened to give way, so he leaned back onto his heels. “I’m…fine.” His eyes ticked to the vial she held in her hand.

  “I took it from you,” she said, guiltily. “I…it’s the only one. I didn’t sell any. It’s just that this one…”

  “So you knew,” he said. “You’ve known, all along. About the dreams. About my sister.”

  “Not everything. But enough.” She shrugged, grimacing as though expecting him to lash out at her. “You…you cry out. At night.”

  He keeled over sideways, then. Somehow, Sonia was beside him, catching him, holding him against her bosom. He didn’t cry, but he shivered uncontrollably, and wondered what would have happened to him if Sonia hadn’t kept his stolen dream.

  * * *

  Rosalie awoke with a start. She didn’t know what had woken her; a sound, perhaps, or a sudden absence of sound. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep, and she looked around, disoriented, trying to get her bearings. Where was she? Why was she outside? What was this warm jug of dreamstuff doing in her arms?

  Then she remembered.

  She sat up, her joints creaking from the cold of sleeping on the hard earth. No one had found them yet. That was a good sign, she guessed, but it disappointed her too. If they hadn’t been caught, it meant that they would need to travel more today, and she wasn’t sure she could handle any more running. Her legs ached. Her feet hurt. She had no idea where they were or where they were going or what Lorelai planned to do to her when they got there.

  Nearby, resting in the shade of a towering elm, was a carriage with spindly legs and a dark, hunched body. Lorelai’s carriage.

  Rosalie’s brow furrowed. Hadn’t it been missing when they left? Had it run away?

  The carriage lay quiet and still, and Rosalie crept to her feet, edging away from it, suddenly uneasy. Where was Lorelai? Rosalie didn’t see her anywhere in the woods. She wondered if she was in the carriage, and decided she’d rather not find out.

  If she left now, she thought, perhaps she could slip away before Lorelai found out. She would have to go into hiding, of course. Maybe she would live out on the border, tend to the addled-minded adults and harvest their dreams. Her mother had always wanted her to do that, anyway. Her mother had never approved of The Swaggering Spider, and until recently Rosalie had never been able to figure out exactly why. The patrons weren’t so bad. Sure, occasionally one of the northern folk would get rough with her, but they paid well enough. Occasionally a feral dream — a real, corporeal dream — would arrive, and if Lorelai was feeling generous, everyone would get to enjoy it before she had her fill.

  But when dreams entered Lorelai’s private chambers, they never returned.

  Rosalie started into the trees, still absently clutching the jug of dreams to her chest. Maybe she could catch up with the human, if he’d managed to escape, and she could apologize for helping Lorelai, and he could forgive her, and the two of them could go and live on the border. She’d take good care of him. She would have taken good care of the dreams, too, if she’d had the chance. Rosalie wasn’t like Lorelai; she didn’t ache for power or riches. She would never destroy something to consume it. She’d just have to show the human how gentle she could be. They’d gotten off on bad footing, but they could make it up. He would understand. She smiled, and stepped off the path.

  She stopped, suddenly, caught fast as though the air around her had grown solid, as though she were a fly that had unwittingly flown directly into the invisible net of a large, hungry spider. She tried to move, to tug herself free, but she was completely immobilized. She trembled, deep inside, a feeling of cold dread spreading through her.

  “Trying to sneak away?” Lorelai asked.

  Rosalie whimpered. She hadn’t heard the carriage door open, hadn’t heard footsteps on the ground. “N-no,” she stammered, and tried to pull herself out of the sticky air that had engulfed her.

  “Evidence suggests otherwise,” Lorelai said, and now her voice was in her ear, and her hand upon her back. Her face, inches away from Rosalie’s, was contorted and beastly with rage. “Where did you think you would go, Rosalie?”

  “I wasn’t —” she stammered, and Lorelai gripped her right wing at the shoulder, twisting it painfully to the side. “I…I was looking for you!”

  “You’re lying!” Lorelai jerked, and the wing tore off in her hand.

  Rosalie screamed. Blood spattered down her back, staining her blouse. Her shoulder burned.

  Lorelai held up the torn wing, limp and tattered like a bit of scrap fabric, and shook it in Rosalie’s face. “Shall I take the other one?” She asked. There was nothing beautiful, or even faerie-like, in her features now; she looked like a harpy, or a gorgon, or one of the other nightmare tribes from the north. “What did you think? Were you going to creep away — run back to the castle, perhaps — try to sell me out for a pat on the head?”

  Rosalie whimpered. “N-no, I swear! I didn’t — I’d never —“

  Lorelai tore off the other wing.

  The pain seared through her, nauseating, burning, blinding. She felt the hot stickiness of blood drenching her back, soaking through her blouse, and she was powerless to do anything about it. She felt an awful vulnerability spread over her, as though all of her clothing had been torn off, as though she had been laid bare.

  “Pathetic,” Lorelai said, shaking her head. “After everything I’ve done for you — the job I gave you, the home I provided….”

  Rosalie wanted to say something to defend herself, but she couldn’t think through the searing white pain that had consumed her thoughts. The air around her began to shudder. The invisible web gave a great heave and threw her away from the trees; she stumbled, unable to keep her footing, and fell into a heap among a bed of pine needles. She curled into a ball, blood-stained and shivering, and sobbed.

  Lorelai crossed the clearing and nudged Rosalie onto her back with the toe of one pointed boot, forcing her to look up into her face. Her skin, usually smooth and clear, hung loose and grey around her mouth and eyes. Her eyes widened, and she lifted a gnarled hand to clutch at her chest, clawing at her breast with yellowing nails. She made an awful choking sound, the sound of a vulture with a bone caught in its throat. Rosalie had one sick, hopeful thought that she was dying — that her heart had seized in her chest, t
hat she would fall over and twitch and lay still and this nightmare would end — but then Lorelai recovered. She bent low over the bleeding faerie and extended a wrinkled old-lady’s hand, prying apart Rosalie’s hands.

  Rosalie had almost forgotten about the dreamstuff still clutched in her arms.

  “This is mine,” Lorelai rasped. She snatched the jug away and withdrew, clawing it open with shaking fingers. She tipped her head back and poured the dream into her mouth, drinking it in, the whole jug in one long hungry gulp. As the dreamstuff poured into her it seemed also to swirl around her, to engulf her. She stood for a moment, utterly illuminated, and then the light faded. She was almost — but not quite — herself again. Her skin was still wrinkled at the corners of her eyes, and dark spots marred her skin. She looked down at the empty jug, curling her lip, and tossed it aside.

  Her cold eyes darted to Rosalie, lying bloody and shivering in the pine needles. She raised her hand, extending it before her, and clenched it suddenly into a tight fist. Power flowed through her. Rosalie made a terrible wet choking sound, as though she were being crushed, and Lorelai turned without a word to climb back onto her carriage, leaving the bar-maid alone to die under the trees.

  Lorelai climbed into the front seat of her carriage, seeking it out with her mind and the dream energy that flowed through her veins. She spoke to it, inside of her mind, and it spoke back in whispers and images and dreams — and what strange things it told her.

  The human and the dream-harvester. The great purple peak. A doorway that would lead to every doorway. And a dream…a dream that had been stealing other dreams from the queen’s own courtyard. Dreams that were, strictly speaking, no longer anyone’s property.

  A smile tugged at Lorelai’s lips. Take me there, she whispered in her mind, and the carriage obeyed.

  THE GATEKEEPER

  By morning, Adrian had collected himself somewhat. He hadn’t slept most of the night, but lay curled up in a shivering ball with his head in Sonia’s lap, desperately ashamed of himself but unable to do anything about it. The pale glow of the dream-trail faded sometime around dawn, replaced by soft grey light as the sun began to rise around the curve of the peak at whose feet he lay. In the light, Adrian saw the full glory of the mountain. It was as vibrantly purple up close as it had been from a distance. It appeared to have been carved from an enormous chunk of amethyst, all smooth sides and sharp angles. A single path was carved in a jagged line up the mountainside, made up of thousands of stairs, each barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast.

  “Can you walk?” Sonia asked him at last, looking at him gingerly the way one approaches the seriously ill. “We can wait, if you need, but…I think we’d best try to make it to the top by sundown. I don’t want…”

  He shook his head. He didn’t want her to finish the thought. The idea of being clutched by the Darkness halfway up the mountainside was too terrible to consider. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  Sonia bit her lower lip, her eyes glinting with concern, wings held high and nervous at her shoulders. He wasn’t fine. That much was obvious. He still felt shaky and empty inside. He stank of fear and vomit and he was desperately ashamed. He wanted a shower more than he had ever wanted one in his life. But he could walk, and that would have to be good enough.

  If they were right, it would all be over soon.

  “If you want to talk about —” Sonia started, tentatively.

  “I don’t,” he said, a little too quickly. “I just…it’s a long walk.” He followed the stairway with his eyes. It faded from sight, a hundred feet up, and continued to wind up forever to the very apex of the gleaming purple mountain. The smooth stone of the peak had been carved as though by giants into a building, a rough-hewn castle chiseled directly out of the stone. Grass grew in soil that must have been imported, the only living thing on the cold purple face of the mountain; stairs, uneven and crumbling in places, grew in a strange mismatch up the side of the building. At its pinnacle, thin white clouds covered a black, star-lit sky like scant hairs on a balding head; up there, the air was thin and it was night all the time. “…So, this Gatekeeper guy. What is he, anyway? A faerie, or a dream or…?”

  “A little of both, maybe,” Sonia said, shrugging. “If you use dreams enough, they poison you. You lose yourself in them. The power is great…but the consequences are irreversible.”

  As he made the laborious ascent up the mountain, Adrian was grateful for his years of running. Out of habit, he counted his steps and focused on his breathing. Normally this had the effect of clearing his mind, of sweeping stray thoughts into their associated mental file-cabinets and locked trunks so he could face his day. Today, it seemed to have the opposite effect. There were no more locked doors left anywhere in his mind. His thoughts and memories kept interrupting themselves, rolling over each other like waves in rough seas.

  He thought about going home. He thought of the stacks of mail he would need to sort through from his overflowing mailbox.

  Stacks of mail fluttering to the carpet like falling leaves.

  He wondered if anyone was looking for him. Maybe there was a news story being circulated now: Social worker disappears while searching for missing child. People would have a heyday with that, wouldn’t they?

  Mom started drinking heavily around Christmas. He remembered the first time he found her passed out drunk on the couch, a hard crust of drool on her cheek. He’d thought she was dead, at first, dead like Samantha, and that too would have been his fault. That was the moment the realization hit him with unsettling force, like a sledgehammer to his gut: Everything bad that happened was his fault. Anything bad that happened from now on, that spun out from that one awful afternoon, would all be his responsibility, forever. He started to cry, and even after he saw her move, knew that she was alive, he couldn’t stop.

  He wondered if Jessica was worried about him. Maybe she came to his house, peeked in all of his windows, trying to see if he was okay.

  “Who is she?” Jessica had asked, when he awoke one morning, shortly after they had started sleeping together.

  “Who?”

  “Samantha. You kept saying her name in your sleep.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know anybody named Samantha.”

  His legs burned. His breath came in fast, harsh pants. He chanced a glance down, over the edge of the stairs, and immediately regretted it: The world fell away beneath him in a sheer, steep drop. He couldn’t see the ground anymore. Hurriedly, he looked back up, focused on Sonia’s fluttering wings, on the path ahead of them.

  The Nightmare Man, his eyes gaping pools of emptiness, his gnashing teeth. His long, bony finger curling back toward his skeletal palm, beckoning Adrian into the dark…

  Maybe Nathaniel’s been found, he thought, feebly. Maybe he wasn’t really taken here at all.

  “There’s a difference between helping kids and wanting to be a superhero, Adrian!” Jessica said. “You have to accept that sometimes, you can’t save them. That’s just part of the job.”

  He thought about the Nightmare Man. He wondered why his own nightmare would kidnap a child, why he was stealing dreams. That was the part that still didn’t make any sense to him. Yet he was so sure of it. He had felt him here, in the castle. Not the lingering residue of a relived memory, but the real thing. But why?

  And why did he trust that feeling, anyway? Why, when he had been so deliriously certain of that other thing, the thought that he couldn’t bear to hold because it burned him when he came too close? It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be. People didn’t come back from the dead.

  And there weren’t any faeries. Or unicorns.

  He has her. She’s here.

  No sooner had he thought this than the stairs before him opened up onto a wide landing. Sonia stepped over onto it and glanced back at him, brows raised slightly, and he met her gaze with equal puzzlement. He could have sworn there were at least a hundred more stairs to go the last time he’d looked.

  “Sonia…” he sa
id, as he climbed onto the landing beside her, gazing at the castle’s entry way. The door, fitted into a huge gash in the stone, seemed to have been carved from half of an entire redwood tree.

  Sonia raised her hand at the door. There was no knocker, no embellished lion’s heads with rings in their mouths. Instead, she reached up for a rope that hung at the door, and gripped it hard in two hands, and gave it a heavy pull.

  A series of bells erupted from inside, echoing off the smooth walls, resounding deeply in the mountain. Deep, low brass bells and smaller, tinkling silver bells, all chiming in a cacophony of noise like a castle full of clocks all striking noon. After a while, the tolling of the bells subsided, and the castle, quite apart from being silent, was filled with another sound. Adrian recognized it, vaguely, tangentially, as the sound an old-fashioned music box makes, the sound inside clocktowers and old machines.

  The door swung open and they stepped inside.

  The inside was smooth-polished stone and decorated with brightly-woven tapestries and rugs. Torches burned in wrought-iron holders on the walls, and the light of the fire made the purple stone of the walls glow unnaturally, giving the room a violet haze. The rug under his feet was a single, impossibly long stretch of brightly-woven fabric that led him forward down a long corridor. Other halls branched away, small tunnels that led into dark passageways and, presumably, rooms beyond.

  His eyes slid form one tapestry to the next, realizing that they told a story.

  A figure, tall and skeletally thin with a mouth round and full of sharp teeth, stared down at him from the walls with wide white-blank eyes. Children, fair-haired and bright eyed, gathered around him, gazing up with expressions of adoration, or excitement, or hope. In successive tapestries, the figure led the children to a hidden place, in a mountainside, and they disappeared in the heart of a mountain and clustered in darkness — and then, in the next panel, emerged in the dazzling sunlight of another world, one filled with magic, and hope, and beauty. Perhaps it was the flickering of the torchlight, but they seemed to move, somehow; the subtle inclination of a head, the twitch of a finger, the bat of an eyelash.