Within A Dream

by Vincent L. Scarsella

  “It’s you, Andrew.”

  “Hello, Esmeralda,” he said with a sheepish shrug.

  “I thought I would never see you again.” The girl had a funny accent, foreign, broken, but somehow melodic just the same. After a time, she smiled at Andy.

  “Yeah,” he said with a sheepish grin. “This is my friend, Charley.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Charley said, more business-like than either of them seemed capable at the moment. In finding the girl and waking her up with a kiss, they seemed to have forgotten that Zorl was somewhere close at hand. His devil army was lobbing ice bombs into the castle. For some strange reason, they hadn’t been able to breach the walls. It appeared that the best he could do was to lay siege. It was a proverbial stalemate. All they needed was an escape route.

  “What are you doing here?” Charley asked the girl. “In this castle?”

  “It’s my castle,” said the girl. “It’s a place which Zorl cannot enter.”

  “Zorl!” Andy exclaimed. “You know of him.”

  “Of course,” Esmeralda said. “He’s been after me for weeks.”

  “After you?” Andy said. “Why?”

  “After you left last summer,” she explained, “I got sick. Encephalitis, the doctors said. After a few days, I fell into a deep sleep from which they couldn’t wake me. The doctors said it was a coma, induced by a high fever. But in truth, I had come here, within a dream. Then, after several weeks, my father showed up. He hired a lady, a gypsy, to help him dream himself within my dream. Somehow, he created this castle keep out of his mind. He swore that Zorl could never breach it. But one day, Zorl sent a wasp over the walls and turrets, and it stung me. After that, I fell asleep, like you found me. I had fallen into a coma within a coma, I guess. What Zorl’s plan was for me after that, I don’t know.”

  “Don’t seem safe for you to stay up here anymore,” said Charley. “If he can send a wasp to sting you, he can send another. Or send something else over the walls to hurt you, or worse, take you to Hell.”

  The girl thought about that for a time before nodding. It seemed to make sense to her.

  “So what should I do?”

  “Come with us,” said Andy. “We’re running from Zorl and his armies. He will never catch us.”

  Charley scowled at the boast from his friend.

  The girl considered their proposal, and it took both Charley and Andy some time to convince her that it obviously wasn’t safe any longer for her in the castle keep. After a time, she wept into her hands at the idea that her father had ultimately failed to protect her from Zorl.

  She was dressed in a long nightgown and she had to rip off part of the fabric just below her knees so she could keep up with them.

  “You can ride with me on my horse,” Andy said.

  Of course, thought Charley, Andy always gets the girl, with his bright blonde hair and devilish smile, his teeth perfectly straight and bright white. But Charley really didn’t care. He wasn’t jealous. Esmeralda wasn’t his type anyway. Certainly not as a toon.

  “You have horses?” Esmeralda marveled.

  “Yes,” said Andy. “Someone is keeping an eye on us. Helping us fight Zorl.”

  But he’s getting stronger , thought Charley. And the helpers, whoever they might be, seem to be getting weaker. And to make matters worse, they didn’t have Mr. Moss around anymore to rescue them from trouble.

  They bolted from the castle keep just as a fresh onslaught of ice bombs came crashing from the sky. They rode onto a dark plain stretching outward for miles form the castle keep without clear destination, expecting at any moment Zorl’s army of trolls or Tasmanian devils or mutant monkeys to surround them out of the deep, velvet darkness.

  “Where we going?” shouted Esmeralda into Andy’s ear. He shrugged. They had no idea. Just ride into the night and outrun Zorl as they always had.

  But soon the weather turned against them. A thick veil of dark clouds out of the west moved in and blackened the sky. A thunderstorm loomed. A stiff wind soon rose up and buffeted their ride.

  “We have to find shelter,” Charley yelled.

  “What happened to Zorl?” Andy asked.

  Charley had the bad thought that the coming storm was Zorl.

  * * * *

  “What’s taking them so long?” Mrs. Finch asked. She had been pacing back and forth, the full length and width of the waiting room, ever since Dr. Arambaala and that other witchdoctor, Strang, had left them to zap Charley’s brain with a jolt of electricity. Mr. Finch sat on a vinyl sofa like a stiff sourpuss, his right hand cupping his chin, staring straight ahead at nothing. Mr. Finch felt in the bottom of his soul that his only boy, the one he had ignored too much, was facing life or death at that very moment. “Why’d you have to bring him here?” he muttered while Mrs. Finch paced. She stopped and whirled around. “Don’t blame me,” she said. “You think he’d have just grown out of it? His nightmares about Andy?”

  “Yeah.” He turned and gave her a sharp look. “Why not? Once that Moss kid croaked…”

  “What if Andy stayed alive for years?” she asked, looking at her husband of fifteen years with a bewildered gaze of scorn. “People in comas sometimes do, Ed. So, eventually, Charley’d be in exactly the state he’s in now. They didn’t do anything in here tonight except watch him sleep.”

  Her back-talk caused Mr. Finch to stand. “But they got the ball rolling, don’t you see?” he argued. “They set it up in Charley’s mind, and somehow in that Moss kid’s mind, that this was going to be something special, about their dreams.” Mr. Finch sighed, the puzzle of the whole thing causing his brain to hurt. After a moment, he said, “I’m going in there. A father has the right to know.”

  Mr. Finch stormed out into the hallway with Mrs. Finch close on his heels.

  “Ed!” she shouted after him.

  Mr. Finch walked into the sleep room just as they were jolting Charley’s brain with a mild blast of electricity.

  “That oughta do it,” he heard one of the technicians say.

  “We hope,” said Dr. Arambaala.

  Dr. Strang spotted the Finches enter the room and held them back with both arms. Then, she nodded to Charley.

  The electricity pulsed through Charley, a mild wave, causing Charley’s entire frame to spasm.

  “Charley!” squeaked Mrs. Finch.

  My poor boy, thought Mr. Finch.

  Chapter Seven

  The Sleeping Princess, Part III

  The storm enveloped them like a thick shroud of black smoke bellowing out of an old steel mill. Charley could smell the dank presence of clouds, electricity and sulphur. There also seemed to be something growling without and around them. A kind of evil panting. They slowed the horses to a walk then stopped.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Andy said. The princess was silent, deathly afraid.

  “It’s him,” she finally said.

  “Who?” Andy asked, the tension in his voice up a notch. “Zorl?”

  “No,” she said, looking at Charley. “Him.”

  “Him, what?”

  Charley frowned at her. It felt as if she was accusing him of something.

  “He’s brought…” But she never finished. A dazzling white bolt of cartoon lightening suddenly materialized out of a black space in the clouds above them, streaked down and struck her square in the chest. She was knocked off the horse and Andy with her. In the next moment, Charley saw an impish version of Zorl, looking more like a leprechaun than a demon, rushing out of the periphery. Before he could move, Zorl snatched the princess and carried her away. Andy lay spread-eagled on the ground, helpless to stop Zorl; by the time Charley jumped off his horse, Zorl had escaped with her into the velvet blackness.

  Forever, she was gone.

  In the moments afterwards, Andy groaned, twisting on the ground. It was obvious that Zorl had wanted Esmeralda more than Andy, or Charley for that matter. But, with that project complete, Charley feared that they needed to get out of there as soon as poss
ible, and go up into the hills to the hiding place in the forest where Mr. Moss had taken them in the past. The land of limbo trees , he called it, adding with a smile, “Without capital letters”.

  “C’mon, Andy,” Charley said. “Wake up.”

  The storm seemed to have settled around them, dissipating, directionless. Without Zorl, it had no mind. This might be their only chance to escape. Andy sat up and rubbed his eyes. After a breath, he looked around. He was looking for her, the princess. His poor cartoon horse was dead, lying in a heap a few yards away.

  “Zorl got her,” Charley told him. “The lightning knocked both of you down. Killed the horse.”

  Andy drew another breath, then got to his feet.

  He whimpered something, close to tears. His princess was dead. Gone to Zorl’s eternal, dark kingdom.

  Charley and Andy would learn, in the days ahead, that Princess Esmeralda had indeed died, passed away in her coma, at the exact moment when Zorl had captured her in their dream and taken her to the Door to Death.

  “C’mon,” Charley said. He led Andy over to his steed and hoisted him onto her.

  Before Charley could jump on after him, he heard Zorl’s low growl. Something was streaking toward them. In the next moment, Charley saw what it was. Another lightning bolt out of the sound of thunder!

  * * * *

  The last jolt worked. Charley woke with a start and sat straight up. Everyone, including Dr. Arambaala, exclaimed happily. One of the technicians and Dr. Strang also clapped.

  “My head,” Charley said, feeling woozy as hell.

  “Lay back,” cautioned Dr. Arambaala. He came over and gently pushed Charley down onto a pillow.

  “Ouch,” Charley whispered. His whole body seemed wrecked.

  “What were you dreaming?” Dr. Arambaala asked.

  “About a thunderbolt,” Charley said. But he couldn’t say anything more before his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep. The Finches looked at each other with concern. Dr. Arambaala didn’t look too happy either.

  The electrodes registered nothing that would indicate dreaming. Not a single alpha or beta wave.

  “He’s not in REM,” Dr. Strang told them. “He’s just sleeping.”

  Doctors Strang and Arambaala left Charley alone with one of the technicians and herded the Finches back into the waiting room.

  “What the hell do we do now?” asked Mr. Finch, thoroughly annoyed, as he fell in a lump onto the vinyl sofa. “He gonna keep having those crazy dreams about Andy?”

  Dr. Arambaala shrugged. “It would appear so.” He sat, with a befuddled look, in a chair facing the sofa.

  “Do you… Do you have any suggestions, then?” Mrs. Finch asked. “How can we help him?” She sat next to her husband on the sofa and glanced at each of the doctors. Dr. Strang’s eyes suddenly widened. After a moment, she stepped forward, excited, seeming to have come up with a plan.

  “How about lucid dreaming?” she asked Dr. Arambaala.

  He was vaguely familiar with the concept, but it sounded like more of that New Age pseudo-psychic crap. His response was a tired shrug.

  “Lucid dreaming?” asked Mr. Finch. “I thought that’s what he was already doing.”

  “Lucid dreaming,” explained Dr. Strang, “is a technique employed by a person to become, well, aware that they are dreaming. Once that occurs, the idea is that you can alter the dream and dictate what happens, control it. Then, you can do anything you’ve ever wanted and go anywhere you want to go. You can become like Superman in the dream.”

  “And defeat Zorl,” said Mrs. Finch with wonder in her voice.

  “Zorl?” said Mr. Finch with a scowl.

  Dr. Strang nodded quickly at Mrs. Finch. “Exactly,” she said, “defeat Zorl. Lucid dreaming,” she went on, “is something that sleep researchers believe can be taught, and

  learned. In fact, we have somebody on our sleep staff who is engaged in just such research. Dr. Sybil Galt.”

  Not yet another witch doctor! , thought both Finches simultaneously.

  “What I am suggesting is that we enlist Doctor Galt,” said Dr. Strang, looking directly at the Finches. “To teach your son—to teach Charley, how to become aware that he is dreaming. By learning how to lucid dream, I think that Charley will be able to defeat the creature, Zorl, from whom he and his friend are trying to escape. Once Zorl is defeated, and Andy, in a dream-sense anyway, is saved, I feel that it is likely that Charley will stop having these dreams.”

  She looked over at Dr. Arambaala, who was stretching and yawning on the chair into with he had sprawled out. “Do you agree, Dr. Arambaala?”

  “At his hour,” he said through another yawn, “I would agree with just about anything.”

  It took some doing, but after a time, Doctors Arambaala and Strang convinced the Finches that it couldn’t hurt Charley to try this lucid dream therapy, as they had come to call it. Dr. Strang promptly picked up the receiver of the waiting room wall phone and telephoned Dr. Galt. From the one-sided call, it became obvious that Dr. Galt had some reservations about teaching a young boy how to lucid dream. But after a time, it appeared that Dr. Strang had convinced her to at least give it a try When the call ended, Dr. Strang turned to the Finches.

  “She can see Charley tomorrow night,” she said. “Here, back at the sleep lab, at six.”

  Chapter Eight

  The Oneironaut

  “So, you want to be an oneironaut,” said the slim lady, dressed in tight black slacks, and a low-cut, tight black top. She had a pretty face, though it was sickly pale. Her hair was down to her shoulders, raven black, with purplish tints, and she had long, dark eyelashes. Charley immediately thought of Morticia from reruns on the TV Land network of the old black-and-white series, The Addams Family. She was, of course, Dr. Sybil Galt. When Mr. Finch first laid eyes on her, Charley heard him lean over and whisper into Mrs. Finch’s ear, “Dream witch.”

  Charley looked at Dr. Arambaala, not sure how to answer Dr. Galt’s question. For one thing, Charley had no idea what in the world an oneironaut was. Dr. Arambaala nodded, not sure himself what to make of the odd, pale woman who had suddenly entered the sleep lab, asking such a bizarre question as if to highlight her own bizarre appearance.

  Also in the room with Charley and Dr. Arambaala were the Finches, Dr. Strang, and one of the sleep lab’s brooding technicians.

  Seeing Charley’s confused frown, a curl of a smile formed on Dr. Galt’s thin, lipstick-less lips.

  “An oneironaut is a lucid dreamer,” Dr. Galt clarified. “I was told you want to become one.”

  “Ah, y-yes,” squeaked Charley. “I-I guess so.”

  “It’s really not all that hard to become an oneironaut,” said Dr. Galt, now looking at the rest of them. “Anyone can do it, actually, if they really try. All you have to do is follow some simple rules.” She turned back to Charley. “That’s what I’m here to teach you.”

  “O-kay,” Charley said.

  “You’re ready, then?” Dr. Galt asked. “Ready to wake up in your dreams and help your friend, Andy?”

  Charley nodded enthusiastically. He suddenly remembered that this was what learning how to lucid dream was all about. This dream witch was going to help him take control of his dreams so he could help Andy escape from Zorl. And wake up!

  Dr. Galt’s thin lips curled again into that mischievous, odd smile.

  “Alright, then,” she said. “The first thing we have to do is teach you how to wake up in a dream and realize that you are, in fact, dreaming.”

  Charley blinked, then frowned. Behind him, the others, Dr. Arambaala and Strang, and his mother and father, were frowning, too.

  “And then,” the dream witch went on, “teach you how to stay in the dream once you realize you’re dreaming.”

  Charley blinked again, not really following now.

  “And finally,” she continued, “take control of your dream. Become master of it, like Neo in that movie, The Matrix.”

  As confusing as
that sounded at first, Charley soon understood just what Dr. Galt was talking about. The first thing an oneironaut—that is, a lucid dreamer—has to learn is to wake up in a dream, and then stay dreaming. The problem is that the shock of figuring out that you are dreaming has the effect of waking you up from the dream. You’ve seen that movie, haven’t you?” asked Dr. Galt. “The Matrix?”

  Charley nodded. Of course he had. Who hadn’t?

  “How would you like to be able to fly at will through your dreams?” she asked.

  “Whenever you want? Or become as big as a monster, like Godzilla or something? Fight that mean old Zorl on your own terms, not his.”

  Charley nodded. This sounded so neat that he couldn’t wait to get started.

  “Okay,” she said, suddenly morose and grim. “Let’s get going then. We have a lot of work to do. Becoming an oneironaut isn’t easy.”

  * * * *

  “The first thing you have to do, of course,” said the dream witch, smiling, “is fall asleep.”

  The lights had been lowered to a soft, dim haze in Charley’s room, and this time, no electrodes had been attached to his forehead, temples, torso, arms or legs like the night before. Charley had changed into soft, sleep lab issue pajamas. He was on his back on the spongy, narrow bed, propped up on a gentle angle on a couple of long, downy pillows, looking up into the sharp eyes of the dream witch. Upon entering Charley’s room, she had ushered everyone out. If they wanted her to help Charley get over his nightmares, it was going to be totally her show.

  “Then, once you fall asleep,” Dr. Galt continued, “to induce a lucid dream, you have to realize that you are dreaming.”

  Charley blinked at Dr. Galt, suddenly no longer afraid of her. She was a good dream witch, of that he was certain. What really impressed Charley was how much she knew about dreaming, and that, unlike the others, she didn’t doubt anything about his dreams with Andy.

  “There are many different ways people have found over the years to help them realize that they are dreaming,” she went on. “But we have found some tried and true methods that work especially well. For example, there’s the reality testing technique.”