The Dreaming Dark--Ch. 1

Poor caffiene-soaked, sleep-deprived college boy...what have you gotten yourself into now?

 

“This is not a dream,” said the man who had walked through the door in my ceiling. He was dressed in a much-abused gray suit and a mismatched black top hat. Neither he nor the door were normal features in my little ten by twelve dorm room. I’m sure the look on my face was priceless.

           

            “Everything you’ve seen before, that’s the real dream.” He braced himself as best he could atop my lumpy, broken-spring dorm mattress and held the new door shut. “I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But now you can see where dreams come from; where all the memories you had before you were two have slithered off,” the door under his hands gave an unsettling thump, as though something massive had hurled itself bodily into the frame. “Don’t ask,” he added, smiling the most cynical smile I had ever seen. “Just run.”

            And with that he turned and ran for my dorm-room’s door, tearing at the knob and hurling it open. I had never seen anyone run so fast. The fluorescent light which buzzed noisily beside the ceiling-door flickered once and died, leaving me alone save for the resounding thuds from the thing in the ceiling and the harsher thuds of my rapid heartbeat.

            I stepped gingerly over the chair that I had managed to overturn when I wheeled to face the intruder and made to follow him out of my door. I had no desire to see what was making the mysterious new oak-paneled portal in my ceiling reverberate so unhealthily. Certainly it had terrified a madman…what would it do to a sane one?

            More importantly, how far could I trust my own sanity?

            Questions for a later time, I decided. My feet quickened my pace of their own accord, pausing only to allow me to shut my bedroom door behind me. I doubted the press-board barricade would last long, but it might buy me several precious seconds.

            My eyes were unaccustomed to the dark of the dorm hall, coming as I had from the lurid glare of standard-issue fluorescent lighting, and I hugged the wall in the direction of the sound of quickened footsteps. I didn’t even spare a moment to ruminate upon the irregular darkness; the hallway was generally well-lit by night, a commingling of incandescent fixtures and the ever-present red glare of the exit signs above landings at the head of the four-floors-worth of stairs which led to the glass and steel portals to the rest of the campus. In retrospect, the oppressive absence of the comforting glare of eighty-watt illumination was most unprecedented…and had I known then what I know now, I most likely would have been terrified.

            But I didn’t know then what I know now, and so I hastened after the man in the shabby top hat who had climbed through the new door in my ceiling.

            Don’t look at me like that.

            I didn’t have a prayer of matching his pace down the stairs. I only caught glimpses of him from the top floors as he hurled himself headlong, vaulting entire flights of stairs in his haste, utterly ridiculous in his suit, a free-hand holding tight to the brim of his hat. I had to content myself to taking the stairs three at a time.

            As we both neared the door which lead to the open night air, he quirked his head over his shoulder and smiled with something that might’ve been approval, or perhaps simply polite acknowledgement. To this day, I can’t be sure. He threw the door open as though it were made of balsa wood and feathers, rocking the hinges back just as the heavy thudding of something on the stairs at the end of the hallway reached us.

            And he beckoned me through. With a flourish.

            I didn’t move at first, my head still craned to see what it was that was pounding down the stairs. In retrospect, again, not my smartest move. But what I saw certainly gave spring to my stride.

            They seemed to be dogs of one sort or another. Assuming, of course, that dogs grow to be the size of jungle-cats. Their bodies were long and lean, built for speed and endurance, and covered with short bristly gray hair; greyhounds grown to enormous proportions. However, instead of the winsome face of man’s best friend, these creatures had only elongated jaws filled with bloodied shark’s teeth beneath the rounded face of a stopwatch, the seconds rapidly ticking backward.

            My mind reeled under the unrelenting strangeness of it all, and I hardly noticed the Ceiling-man’s second flourish.

            It seemed then that he lost his patience completely for there was no third offer. Instead he took me by the scruff of my neck and hurled me bodily through the door. He swung the door shut behind himself and muttered a few incomprehensible syllables under his breath.

            “Come on, then.”

            I had stumbled and fallen, rolling across the wet concrete in front of the Elizabeth Hall doors. My shoulder ached. The falling rain had already soaked through the meager protection of my t-shirt. I tasted blood. But I took his hand when he offered it to me, and the Ceiling-man drug me to my feet just as the dog-things ran headlong into the door.

            The first plowed head-first into the glass surface of the door, tucking his head low and doing his very best battering ram impression. I winced as the dog-thing and glass collided, waiting for the sound of my last barrier shattering and the feeling of serrated teeth ripping into the too-thin sheath of my skin.

            Instead the door vibrated with a quiet energy and the dogs stopped dead, pacing behind the door for a moment like caged tigers before turning and sprinting back into the darkened hallway…

            “They’ll find a way around. We’ve got to go.”

            “Where?” I found my voice, and the only question I could frame was that single monosyllabic utterance.

            “Away.”

            Good enough for me.

            He led, long-strides blurring from a quick walk into a jog as he struck off in the direction of the cafeteria. How he managed to resist the urge to flat-out sprint, I couldn’t even fathom. I followed, glancing over my shoulder every second heartbeat.

            And that, friends, is how I met Daedalus.

 

i

 

He hadn’t looked back since the dog-things had turned away from the strangely unbreakable glass door and bounded off to find some new angle of attack. He just kept jogging with the unhurried endurance of a career runner, never turning, never bothering to see if the caffeine-addled, sleep-deprived college punk was keeping up.

            I was, but a stitch had taken up residence between my second and third floating ribs on my left side, tunneling like an exotic parasite into my lung.

            We’d taken a sharp turn from Elizabeth Hall, and made a beeline for the cafeteria. At least, that’s what I thought, until he’d shaken his head and muttered something which sounded like “too obvious,” and hustled instead past the now no-doubt locked cafeteria doors and angled for the lecture halls.

            That’s when I heard the first howl. It wasn’t like the horror movie stock-sound, not a wolf’s howl or even a coyote, like I’d heard when I was growing up in the Las Vegas suburbs. Instead, they were more like the cry of an agonized cat, that bray of pain which so often haunted the dark places in the depths of the night.

            Only louder. And hungry.

            We weren’t going to the lecture halls either it seemed. He dodged toward the empty street at the edge of the pitifully small campus and headed for the houses on the other side.

            And then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared from my ceiling, my impromptu guide stopped in his tracks.

            Thankful for the moment to breathe, I drew up next to him and tried not to sound winded. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t fooling anyone, much less the man in the black-silk top hat.

            “Wha…who…”

            Three and a half years of college, an English major of all things, and this was all I managed to string together. Further proof that college does not prepare you for real life. At least, not the parts of real life that demand that you run from Hell-clock-dogs.

            My guide pressed a finger to his lips and turned back with a meaningful glance toward the rapidly gaining sound of hungry yowls. The finger slid from his lips and up toward his cheekbone as he pondered the three houses immediately in front of us.

            I caught his meaning, though not his purpose. Damned if I didn’t just swallow the fifty or so questions which roiled around in the panicked recesses of my logical mind. He was pretty intent on those houses, though, and seeing as how he was the only one who seemed to know what the hell was going on, I decided that I might as well be as well.

            I’m sure we were quite the pair. He in his cast-off elegance and I in my college-chic, staring across the neatly clipped suburban lawns like art-critics with the hounds of hell hot on our heels.

            Then he nodded thoughtfully and extended a hand, pointing toward the house on the right. “That one,” he murmured to himself, cheerily enough to send a fresh wave of creepy down my spine

            Still, when he tramped across the lawn toward the house’s door, I shook off the Gandalf déjà vu and followed him. Mostly because I heard the blood-thirsty howls closing in, now close enough to determine that they sprang from more than the mere handful of dog-things which we had seen. Better the Devil than the unknown, right?

            He moved to the door and tried the knob. It held firm under his hand and his face screwed into a frown. He tried again, muttering something inflected like a curse under his breath.

            I turned and saw the first of the clock-dogs pacing back and forth just across the street, a fibrous gray tongue wetting the pencil-thin lips which covered the steak-knife serrations of the, literally, hundreds of teeth crammed into the maw beneath the stop-watch which formed its brow. It arched back and gave voice to that hideous howl, and I knew immediately that more were on the way.

            My guide drew his leg back and gave the door a savage kick. It held firm, though the hinges creaked, and the wood itself trembled unhealthily.

            Six more hounds emerged from the shadow across the street, the silver glint of their faces catching the light of the buzzing street-lights as they stepped out onto the road which separated us, closing the gap.

            “Uh…” I began.

            “I know, damn it. I know.”

            He kicked again and this time the door swung wide, the jamb coughing splintered wood with the impact. Without turning to look he ducked into the darkened house. I followed, and swung the door closed as best I could, praying that it would afford us a heartbeat in which to escape.

            The man moved through the entryway and angled for the stairs, turning his head this way and that, clearly looking for something.

            Everything in my body, educated by countless horror movies, told me not to follow him up the stairs where there would be no easy exit should the dog-things enter the house. He must have sensed my hesitance because he turned back for a threadbare moment, gesturing me onward with what might’ve passed for a reassuring smile were it not pitched with such manic fervor, and perhaps just a hair too wide.

            Hell, I’ve never been a man of faith, but he was the closest thing to a guide I had. And I followed him.

            There were thirteen stairs. I remember that perfectly, even though I suppose I was sprinting up them at the point where I must have counted them.

            The man in the silk top hat took a hard left at the head of the stairs, using the banister for added leverage, hurling himself toward the closed door at the end of the hallway. He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow. He just sort of lowered his head and did a little half-turn, putting his shoulder out in front.

            I hardly had time to register the quick horror-show piece of crashing through the door into a poor married couple’s bed-room before the door swung inward under his weight. An apology was already breaking over my lips when I found myself in the alley.

            I turned, just quick enough to see the man in the top-hat swing the chunk of brick alley-wall closed on the scene of the dog-things tearing across the carpeted floor of a suburban second-floor hallway, upending the carefully tended fichus and ripping a full-length mirror from the wall in their desperation to cross the distance before the section of wall swung fully closed.

            My guide was faster. Bricks aligned with bricks and a positive click, louder than any setting deadbolt resounded through the mildly unpleasant air of the alley. 

            Someone was laughing a high, madman’s laugh; the sort which one only hears in the deepest sections of Hollywood asylums. After a moment, I realized that it was me.

            The man who had guided me from my dorm room into…that place…took off his top hat, revealing oiled black hair which did not appear the slightest bit ruffled by the pursuit, and began to dust the brim.

            “Well, that was sporting.” He breathed the sentence like a man much relieved, and turned to rest against the seamless brick of the alley wall. One long-fingered hand swept over the surface of his hair, ensuring that not a lock had fallen out of place before replacing the hat with a shuddering sigh. Only then did he seem to remember me, still gaping at the wall which had recently been a door into a suburban house.

            I tried to laugh again at the sheer absurdity of it all, but it came out more like a strangled baby scream, heavy with all of the questions that I desperately wanted answers. But I, it seemed, was the one destined to be questioned.

“How long?”

            “What?” I managed, prying the dead thing that had recently been my tongue from the floor of my mouth.

            He spoke slowly, like a patient teacher to a particularly dim child. “How long have you been awake?”

            I stared, uncomprehending.

            “It’s important. How long?”

            I thought back. It was finals week, I’d been studying my a*s off; cramming for the battery which would be the final salvo of my senior year. And then there was the thesis. Good god, it had been a Herculean effort. And the editing.

            “Uh…six days. I think.”

            He groaned like an unoiled hinge. “More than long enough.”

            I felt my patience slipping. “For what?”

            “Have you ever had a really bad dream?”

            “Sure.”

            “Not like the kind where you’re naked in front of your algebra class, or the ones with the person who turns into the evil clown, or even the ones where you’ve done something terrible to someone you love and know that the sirens will start screaming any second. The really bad ones.”

            I swallowed hard, letting the solid lump of my heart slide back down my throat. He delivered the speech utterly dead-pan, without the emphasis that you or I would place on any single word; just a sort of resigned weariness.

            “Sure.” I repeated.

            “Good…then you know how this next part goes.” He stuck out his hand, heavy and calloused, the index fingernail chipped and catching the bare sodium bulb which burned somewhere above us. “Nice knowing you, kid.”

            Instinctively, I reached out to take it. Two firm shakes and he turned on his heel and walked down the alleyway and was lost in the crowd. Just like that. Here one moment, and then gone amidst a wash of night-time foot traffic. Strange.

            But not so strange when compared to the clock-hounds that had just chased me through my ceiling, across campus, and through a brick wall.

            That left me standing there in the unfamiliar alley that was, as far as I could tell, on the other side of a door in one of the little row-houses on the other side of the street from the f*****g Fine Arts Building. Even if I could swing the chunk of wall open again, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it with the hounds on the other side. In all likelihood they’d still be aching for a piece of college punk. My options were few. None of them seemed good.

            The alleyway was a narrow little span, much narrower than any that I’d ever seen. Most little nooks between buildings are wide enough for a dumpster on either side, a fire-escape, something to make the space useable. This one was only a foot wider than my shoulders and done in an archaic sort of red brick that looked sickly and decayed beneath the sodium glare.

            If I was going to find my way out of this mess, I’d at least have to leave this damned alley. Drawing a deep breath, I took my first steps forward. The ground was slick beneath my boots, and squelched somewhat unpleasantly as I made my way to the mouth of the alley to peer into the passing crowds.

            Now do me a favor and call to mind a time when you looked out on a crowd of people. Got it? Good. They’re all individuals, certainly. A rainbow of ethnicities, ages, even their clothing is different. Compared to the crowd which crawled the street outside that alley, they might as well have been from different planets. Everyone on the street was the same shade of gray-white, clad in muted earth-tones of a vaguely anachronistic cut. There seemed no variance in age. Each of them, male and female, appeared to be riding the swell of early middle-age. No one looked up from their feet as they tramped onward toward their destinations.

            The effect was unnerving to say the least. Where the hell was I?

            Another deep breath, cold and dry, forced its way into my lungs and I took a step out into the crowd. They didn’t part, barely made room for the disaffected student in jeans and a t-shirt which had forced his way into their midst. The endless patter of their feet didn’t end, didn’t even hitch. Instead, I found myself pressed along bodily by a sullen-eyed gentleman who obviously had more important things on his mind than my personal space. His leather wing-tips came perilously close to my Achilles, and I got with the program. I followed the crowd toward…well whatever the hell it was that they were all so intent upon reaching.

            The drones walked on, silent save the steady thrum of their footsteps. As they walked, and I was bustled along, I found that I had the time to fully reflect on my situation. An hour ago, I’d been a senior at a decent liberal arts college, too busy to catch a nap between his thesis, his classes, and his worries about the future. It’d been six days since I’d let my eyes close for more than a minute. And before I knew it, I was on the run from impossible creatures, following a man that had appeared through a door which, by all rights should not exist. I’d wound up in unfamiliar territory, surrounded by people that had more in common with overly-posh zombies than any humans I’d seen. And the only man who could’ve shed light on the situation had disappeared.

            There’s only so long the human mind can stay in that sort of limbo. Eventually I was going to need to get some answers. Preferably from someone who wasn’t shambling.

            The crush of catatonic humanity was getting thicker. While I’d never really had a whole lot of space, I could feel the crowd pressing in, as if the road was narrowing. Unconsciously, I rose onto my toes as the pace slowed. With a little craning, I managed to get a look at the hold up.

            Up ahead, the drones were filing toward a checkpoint of some kind. A heavy, blackened wrought-iron gate had been pulled open and the crowd was beginning to funnel inward. Beyond the gate lay a monolithic structure, squat and gray and ominous; a sort of office-building on steroids. But that wasn’t what made my breath hitch as the crowd pushed me forward.

            The bruisers in fedoras who seemed to be guarding the gate did that. Or more specifically, the chains in their hands, the ones which linked to the collars wrapped around the throats of the lean and lethal greyhound creatures which paused to sniff at each drone which passed the gate.

            I drew up short, breaking stride with the rest of the pack, craning my neck back over my shoulder to look for a break in the crowd. No one stopped. The press carried me forward as I turned, desperate to find an escape. The hounds would know I did not belong. And then what? A flash of the razor-filled maw of the creature which had yowled for its companions as my new friend with the top-hat had considered which door to kick down laced unbidden through my mind. A quick horror show flooded behind my eyes as I was set upon by a dozen such maws, blood-spattered shark teeth and thick fleshy tongues playing with my shredded carcass.

            Getting closer. Only another fifty feet, and then…

            Think, think, think. Had to be a way out.

            “Excuse me,” I said. Perhaps these drones were really just as genteel as they appeared. Perhaps they’d just step aside if I asked nicely.

            Flat features, bereft of emotion greeted my attempt. Nothing. No dice. No joy. Dead meat.

            Thirty feet.

            “Pardon.”

            Twenty.

            “MOVE, DAMN IT!” I was getting desperate. I looked back over my shoulder toward the gate. I could make out the features of the bull-necked thugs in their fedoras now. Too close for comfort. I heard the rattle of chains, the rasp of wet breath above the steady four-four beat of thousands of drone feet in perfect lock-step.

             And just when I was drawing breath to scream, I felt the hand on my shoulder.

 

Reviews

[James Watts]

Awesome start. Way to build up suspense and leave us wanting more.

[joenum83]

well, you've got me hooked!

[deeps]

Wow!, I liked thi alot,
Had me in suspense all the way through!
A most gripping and chilling write.
I throughly enjoyed this.