Chapter 2.2 : Screaming Cliffs continued

Chapter 2 continued

“Dreamers… umm… from where?” he was staring over her shoulder his eyes still unfocused. Though he already knew the answer, he has simply asked the question in order to fill the void of speech while he was making sense of the other statements.

“Why from earth of course. They go to sleep there and their soul comes here to dream. This place is called The Cliff of Screams, and for good reason it is where people have falling dreams. Those things that followed her, those are called Leechers. Leechers are beings the evolved along the cliff and feed off of the screams of the dreamers as they fall to the bottom. There are a lot of things in this world that you will find strange, the beings that were given birth from peoples dream.” She spoke while playing with piece of grass. She wound it around her finger and let it slowly unwind itself.

“But how, how would something eat screams.” He asked now resigning to simply lie on his back and stare at the sky. After seeing him lie down Margaret slowly lied next to him. He could hear her breath in slowly, then she sighed.

“I don’t know, no one does. They probably don’t work, at least not properly. When someone dreams if it is extremely strong or emotional dream it will stick around after they wake up. Some only stick around for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but some, for reasons we don’t know, stick around permanently. Maybe they were given some spark, some piece of pure imagination that others don’t have, but there are here to stay. The Leechers are one of these things. They now live here feeding off the screams.” She said, their feet facing opposite directions, their heads close to one another’s.

“We better get going, we need to reach the bottom of the cliff before night fall, or else Leechers will be the least of our worries.” She got up on one elbow and looked at him. “So now that I have ripped open what you think of as reality it’s time to head down this cliff.” She got up and walked back towards the door and her pack, now accompanied by a pile of equipment. He followed her to this pile, then she picked a harness and stood to face him.

“Put this on, I am going to go down first and you follow, all you have to do is hook into the rope.” She started to put hers on and as he attempted to imitate her he became hopelessly entangled in it and even more entangled with the idea of that it was for.

“Really?” She said as she finished. He had somehow managed to not only entangle himself within the harness, but to do all the buckles, in the wrong places. This had thoroughly cemented him in a position at was neither comfortable nor correct. “Oh, how could I have expected you to get it right anyway. It’s not like you have ever had to use one of these.” She walked over help him with his, showing how to buckle it properly, eventually he had it on correctly; though still uncomfortable it was better.

“There now, climbing isn’t so hard, just use this” She handed him one of the squarish latch things   “, to attach to the guide wire I’ll be putting down.” She looked towards the door, and without another word she walked towards it. The door was still open and still showed the field on the other side. She reached for the doorknob, and closed the door. Then she opened it again, the field was gone. It had become simply a empty door frame.