by BOLA ILUMOKA
The white stranger swung his sword and in one wave, multiple darts of white light came out from the sword and severely wounded the hounds from hell and they all fell mid-air. He levitated towards Dennis as he pointed his sword towards The Executioner and then he placed his left hand on the head of Dennis and said. “Dreamer, awaken.”
All that Dennis could remember was another flash of white light come out from the sword and he awoke. Dennis found himself sitting in the settee of his living room. He was shocked to find out that he was still in pain from the bashing he received in his dream. He painfully made his way to the bathroom and he looked at his face in the mirror and saw that there was a fresh burn mark on his face that came from the axe of Nero. Dennis was bewildered with his mouth gaping wide at the mirror.
Chapter 4
Dennis felt like he was coming up with a fever so he decided to take a bath and clean his wounds.
If I have injuries and pains, how come this apartment building isn’t destroyed like it was in the dream? he asked himself.
After he had had a bath and cleaned up his wounds, he felt a pang of hunger and decided to get something to eat. He was very concerned and he was wondering how he would solve this problem.
Should I see a psychic or I should probably go to a church. I haven’t been to a church in years. I have heard a lot about those pentecostal churches.
While he was considering his options, it was around 3 am in the morning when his cell phone started ringing. That was particularly strange, he had no girlfriend or anyone that would call him at that time of the day.
“Hello?” said Dennis.
“Am I speaking to Dennis Riley?” It was a British accent. He knew he had heard it before, but he couldn't place his finger on where.
“Speaking, may I know who this is?”
“Dreamer, thank God you are okay.”
Dennis momentarily froze. He remembered that voice and accent, it was the fighter in the white suit from his dream. It was the fighter that called him Dreamer. Dennis was speechless. He didn’t know what to say. “What! Who is this, who are you?” Dennis was confused, he was lost for words.
“I’m Joshua, you may find this hard to believe, but I’m the one that saved you from Nero in the dream you just had.”
“What! I don’t know what you are talking about, you’re mistaken.”
“I’m not mistaken, I can hear it in your voice. You can’t deny this, I shared your dream with you, I was dispatched to help you.”
“That’s impossible.” Dennis was in self-denial.
“How is the injury from the axe on your face?” Joshua asked.
Dennis instinctively felt for the wound on his face. “Who are you?” Dennis demanded. “And why do you call me Dreamer?”
“I’m a dreamer like you and even more. What I can tell you is that you are among the chosen.”
Dennis was quick to respond. “That is completely ludicrous. Where do you get these lies from? I have to admit that you’re good, I don’t know how you inflicted these wounds on me and poured those dreams into my subconscious, probably through hypnosis I guess but your scam won’t work on me anymore, and besides, I don’t have any money to give you.”
“You think this is some elaborate scheme Dreamer? Then how can your scientific mind explain away the plane crash and the killed school children amongst other things?”
Dennis’s mind was racing. He didn’t have an explanation.
“No response?” Joshua asked. “I thought as much. I know it may be hard for you to believe and too much for you to take in at once, but your circumstances are quite unusual and it didn’t happen this way for the others.”
“There are others?” Dennis asked.
“I’m afraid yes.” Joshua answered. “We can talk about that later. Right now, your life is in danger, you are not safe where you are and more attempts will be made on your life.”
“What do you mean more attempts?” Dennis asked. “No one made an attempt on my life.”
“But The Executioner did.”
“But that was just a dream.”
“That was no ordinary dream. Make no mistake Dennis, the physical world is controlled by the dream dimension or more accurately the spirit realm. If Nero had sliced off your head in that dream you would have perished in your sleep instantaneously to wake up no more. Your physical body would have started to decompose almost immediately and an autopsy would have revealed you died of nothing but natural causes. Why do you think a lot of young people die in their sleep for no explained medical reason?”
Dennis shuddered at the thought. He became afraid and confused. He began to believe Joshua. “Should I call the police or FBI for protection? I could explain to them what’s going on.”
If it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the situation, Joshua would burst into laughter. “Are you still asleep Dennis? Can you hear what you’re saying? What do you intend to tell the police, that someone that you don’t know and have never seen before attacked you in your dream and you now think your life is in danger. They’d sooner commit you to a shrink house.”
“Then what do I do? Can’t you come over and help me out?” Dennis was scared.
“Not feasible at the moment, I live across the Atlantic, which would take some time.”
“In the UK?”
“Right.”
“Great, some help you are.”
“You would have to go underground and seek sanctuary.” Joshua said. “There you could learn how to fight back and manipulate your dreams.”
“Manipulate my dreams? How is that possible?” asked Dennis.
“Dreams are in different categories Dennis. Some are historical, they reveal things that happened in the past, you can’t manipulate those because they are done and it’s just meant to reveal things to you for the purpose of information alone. Some are current. They’re happening as you dream it, while some are futuristic, they are yet to happen, but the future is subjective. Your actions coupled with other people’s actions determine what your future is. But these futuristic dreams tend to manipulate what you do or don’t do in order to change your future. The last two can be manipulated if you are strong enough. You can actually stop disasters from happening if only you will it.”
“What?” Dennis was flabbergasted. “I could that?”
“Yes and a whole lot more. Anything you want to happen or exist in the dream dimension will, only if your mind is strong enough to make it happen. You could have stopped or reversed that bus disaster if only you willed it so.”
“But I couldn’t, Nero was in that dream.”
“Yes, because he’s out for blood. His only mission is to catch or destroy souls while taking their blood. But you could have stopped him and fought him.”
“Is that why he’s after me?”
“He’s not the only one after you. A whole hoard is after you. He belongs to a group called the Soul Mongers. When they catch souls, they sell them off to those who need them in exchange for wealth and power.”
“What?”
“Dennis let me assure, there is a whole different world in the spirit dimension, a world that most people don’t even know exist. A lot of people have dreams, but forget as soon as they wake up. A lot of horrible things could have happened to them and they won’t even remember a thing and they’ll begin to have a lot of problems.”
“Oh my God.”
“Then you also have translational dreams.”
“What are those?”
“It’s the type that you just had with me and Nero. They are not meant to manipulate the future or currently happening events. They are meant to touch your very soul and being for good or evil. Somebody could poison you in such dreams and when you wake up you would be immediately fatally sick and medical science would have no solution. They would only see symptoms without the cause of the symptoms. It’s like having smoke without fire.”
“What’s the difference between that and a futuristic or currently happening dream?”
“The futuristic and currently can always be explained away as natural circumstances. They in effect trigger those natural and physical laws to work for you or against you, whatever the case may be. But the translational dreams just make things happen without a supporting and reasonable explanation. Like I said earlier, if Nero had sliced off your head in that dream, then you would have died in this world without a medical explanation.”
“So where do I go?”
“I have a friend, he lives in Chicago, and he can help you out until I’m available.”
“Don’t you know someone closer?”
“At this point in time, you can’t afford to be picky. Only a select few have the kind of knowledge you need.”
“Illinois? Do you know where I live? That’s about 3 or 4 states away from Maryland. I have a research job here, I just can’t up and go like that.”
“But if you are certainly killed here, then you would have no research job to go to and someone else would most certainly take your place.”
“When you put it that away, I can understand.”
“You have no idea how persistent the Soul Mongers are, they will stop at nothing to destroy your soul. They’ll even send their human agents after you.”
“Human agents?”
“Yes, humans who worship the Soul Mongers and have a strong desire to become a Soul Monger themselves.”
“This just gets better and better.”
“You have no idea,” said Joshua.
“So who do I ask for when I get to Chicago?” Dennis asked.
“You’ll know when you get there. But I’ll see you as soon as I get there, I just have some things to take care of here.”
“Are you asking me to go there blind?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have your dreams to guide you. Besides, the less you know at this point in time, the safer it is for you. I’ll advise that you make your journey today.”
“Okay, I guess-.” Dennis heard a sound from his front door.
“Dennis, what’s wrong?”
“I think I heard a sound from my door.”
“Are you expecting anyone, it’s about 4 am in your local time.”
“No way, my social life is zilch.”
“Then I’m afraid those human agents have caught up with you sooner than I thought. Dennis, I will need you to calm down”
“What? Calm down?” Dennis was afraid and his voice began to rise. “That’s easy for you to say, you’re not the one here. Can’t you do something from where you are?”
“I’ll try my best and all I can say is that do not be afraid and that God is with you.” Immediately the phone went dead.
As soon as Joshua finished saying those words, Dennis started looking for a place to hide, but it was too late. He heard his door being broken down and he could tell by the sound of the footsteps that at least ten different people had stormed his apartment and within moments they had reached his bedroom where he was talking to Joshua on his cell phone.
“FBI! FBI! FBI!” shouted the intruders as they invaded the apartment. The men nearer to him were fully clothed in FBI SWAT gear while the other FBI agents in the background were in plain clothes with bullet proof vests and FBI jackets. “Put down the phone, put down the phone!!” They shouted at Dennis.
Dennis was terrified. Instinctively, he removed the cell phone from his right ear and dropped it to the floor. With his hands raised up he knelt down as two SWAT agents brought him to the ground brutishly and cuffed him. The pressure from the two agents on top of him was so much that he felt all breath going out of him, he felt like he should reach for his inhaler but his hands were already cuffed behind his back.
“I can’t breathe,” he pleaded in a struggling whisper, but in all the commotion, no one could pick out what he was saying. His head felt light and he passed out briefly. He was out for about twenty seconds, but for that brief moment he saw himself being led out of his apartment with an oxygen mask over his nose. It was like an out of body experience, only that he wasn’t lying down lifeless. Just outside the entrance of the building there were about a dozen FBI and law enforcement vehicles parked outside his apartment building. He watched from afar as he was being led to an FBI vehicle.
Joshua appeared by him without uttering a word, tapped his shoulder and pointed to about three different men at different vantage points in the cordoned off crowd in front of his apartment building. Dennis saw the men bring out sub-machine guns aimed at Dennis and they started firing. He shouted “Noooo”, no one could hear him and he saw himself get riddled with bullets along with the two FBI agents closest to him. All three of them crashed to the ground in a hail of bullets. It was mayhem. Instantly Dennis woke up from his slumber and realised it was just a very brief dream that would most likely happen. He noticed that the paramedics had given him an oxygen mask, probably because he was asthmatic. The two FBI agents brought him to his feet and began leading him out of his apartment.
Dennis’s heart was racing and he didn’t know what to do. He could hear the pounding of his heart from his chest, he was just simply terrified. “Please, don’t take me out there, it’s dangerous,” he said to the agents on his right and left.
They simply ignored him.
“Listen to me! Somebody is trying to have me killed,” he said while beginning to struggle with the men.
His raised voice caught their attention momentarily, but it wasn’t enough. The two agents used greater force to lead Dennis, as they noticed a bit of resistance on his part.
As they arrived just outside the entrance of the apartment building, Dennis decided to give it everything he had. Today is not the day I die, he thought to himself. He placed his right foot back in between the legs of the agent on his right and shoved him as much as he could with every fibre in his being wrestling the agent to the ground. As he and the agent were falling to the ground, he felt the hands of the second agent on his collar trying to pull him back to no avail, and at that same moment he heard the rapid sound of sub-machine guns spitting bullets at his direction and at other law enforcement agents. Within seconds a vicious gun battle had started between FBI agents and the police on one side and the three gun assailants who had superior fire power on the other side.
The battle was fierce and it lasted for several minutes. Though the gun men had sub-machine guns, they were still outnumbered especially by the FBI, especially the SWAT FBI who held their ground. One of the gunmen had been hit and was seriously wounded while the two others fled. Within the brief period of gun fire exchange, five law enforcement officers had been killed, the FBI agent on Dennis’s left hand side was seriously wounded while Dennis himself was unhurt. He lay sprawling on the ground next to the other agent on his right side who had gunshot wounds to the abdomen and lay unconscious.
Within moments several more ambulances and police officers arrived at the scene to attend to the wounded and carry away the dead. That morning officers took down statements from witnesses while Crime Scene Investigators gathered evidence from the crime scene for processing. Dennis was eventually taken away to the FBI field office.
Chapter 5
Dennis was left in a holding room for several hours without anyone attending to him save the agents that brought him food and refreshments. None of them answered his questions, none of them asked him anything and nobody explained to him why he was being remanded in FBI custody. He could only stare at the door waiting for the door to open at any time.
He was confused and very worried. He couldn’t understand what the FBI wanted from him, but he was inwardly grateful they came when they did, or those gunmen would have found it very easy to come into his apartment and finish him off. The long wait was beginning to drive him crazy, it was obvious that they were using this as a tactic to break down any resistance he may have. Dennis had already paced around the holding room several times and he had become so uncomfortable that he felt like screaming. He felt like he was being observed, but he didn’t notice any visible cameras, he
assumed it was probably hidden or it was probably his imagination driving him crazy. It annoyed him to the high heavens that someone could be watching him and he couldn’t see who it was. He believed they were observing him and studying his body movements, but that didn’t bother him, because he felt he had nothing to hide. If this was torture, it was working. His wristwatch had been taken from him and he had nothing to indicate what time of the day it was. He mentally guessed that the time was between 4 and 6 pm but he wasn’t sure. He was more concerned with what was happening and he had no idea why he was being held. He was sitting at his table looking very tense with his hands on the table nervously linked together when someone finally came in to see him. He recognised the agent, he was one of the agents that raided his apartment earlier that day. He was wearing a dark brown suit with well-polished shoes and in his hands was a flat file.
Immediately, Dennis stood up angrily “I demand to know why I’m being held here against my will.”
“Sit down” ordered the agent.
Dennis made an attempt to protest again. “I said I demand to kno-.”
The agent cut him short. “I heard you, now sit down!”
Dennis shuddered, sat down and kept quiet. He was naturally not a violent person.
The agent sat down at the table across Dennis, arrogantly leaned back into the chair and opened the dossier and started scanning through it. He lifted it up high enough for Dennis to notice that the name ‘Dr Dennis Riley’ was labelled onto the dossier in large fonts.
Dennis was taken aback. The FBI has a dossier on me? He opened his mouth to ask why, but he was so shocked that no vocal sound came out from his mouth.
Without taking his eyes off the dossier, the agent introduced himself. “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Marcus Gates, FBI Counter Terrorism Division.
Dennis raised his brow and asked “Counter Terrorism?”
Then SSA Gates started a narrative without taking his eyes off the contents of the flat file. “Dr Dennis Riley, research scientist at Driscoll University. PhD holder in Astrophysics came out top of your class in Harvard, scientific child prodigy winning several scholarships to the world’s best universities. As at the age of 24, you’ve published over fifty scientific papers a lot of which have gained recognition and respect for you in the scientific community, in fact, you’re one of the best. The research grant awarded to you is worth over a million dollars. Both parents are deceased and you don’t seem to be in much contact with relatives on both your father’s and mother’s side of the family. You’re not married, no known girlfriend, no pets, you’re only married to your work. You’re as lonely as it gets, but you’re still young and you have your whole life ahead of you among other things.” Then he dropped the dossier across the table.
