The Darkness of Dreamland

by T. L. Bodine

  “You can make a dream of yourself?”

  “You can make a dream of nearly anything, if you believe in it enough.” The queen’s fingers remained, feather light, on his elbow. The chill crept up his arm. She shifted her body closer to his, and Adrian caught a whiff of old-fashioned perfume, rosewater maybe. “The dreams grow, as the children grow. Their very presence in Dreamland helps to keep the Darkness at bay,” the queen said. “And when the dream starts to feel used up…”

  “…It throws itself into the fire,” Adrian finished. His eyes flicked to the strange contraptions along the stone wall. “…And you…gather up whatever’s left of them. To bottle and sell.”

  “Precisely.” The queen smiled. Her fingertips curled around the curve of his arm, slid down his forearm as she entwined her arm with his. “It’s always worked well enough, although in recent times we have suffered. Fewer children visit us, now, than they did in older times, and the Darkness is stronger. And the dreams are weaker.”

  “But you don’t trade corporeal dreams to the other villages,” he said, remembering Lorelai’s wistfulness about powerful dreams. “They all live in Darkness, while the good dreams live here.”

  “Generosity can be taken to excess,” she said, and her grip tightened. “Would you have me give dreams away to those who would mistreat them? Those who would destroy them for their own consumption, rather than cultivate them?” Something flickered in her eyes. “The lesser folk are not to be trusted. They are vulgar beggars and thieves.”

  Adrian wondered what made someone qualify as “lesser folk.” He tried to ask this, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. He felt the warmth in his side leech away, replaced by the icy coldness of her grasp. He tried to pull away. His brain would not give his arm or legs the signal, as though his body had fallen asleep as he stood here.

  “You’ve met them. Would you trust your sacred treasures to the likes of Lorelai?” The queen asked. “And now, we come to the point. Come away with me from this place, I think we’ve seen enough for now.”

  He obeyed, as though his limbs responded to her orders rather than his. He wondered if he had been drugged again, but knew it was something else — something simpler. The word thrall formed itself in his thoughts. His heart began to speed up in his chest, tapping out a staccato rhythm that ached against his ribs, but his legs continued following the queen’s orders rather than his own.

  “Now.” The queen entwined her fingers with his, leading him back into the palace, down the long deserted corridor. Torch light flickered and cast long shadows along the walls as they walked. She opened a door with a touch and led Adrian inside. It was a bedroom, rather larger than the guest chamber that he had slept in. The door shut behind them and she turned so that they were facing, her fingers still laced with his. Her eyes locked onto his, and though he tried to look away, he found he could not shift his gaze, or turn his head, or blink. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Running a kingdom requires an immense amount of energy. You must understand. The dreams the children give are so weak…so fragile.” The queen ran the fingertips of her free hand down his cheek. “But you. You can see us, touch us, survive the ravages of night…better even than the strongest dream, your mind could sustain us.” She pressed her body against him, curling her hand around to bury her fingers in his hair, drawing him close as though for a kiss. His heart beat so quickly it threatened to break the wall of his chest, and a thought burst into his mind, a screaming panic that begged for him to run, but his legs refused.

  “I’ve paid dearly for you, human,” she whispered, breathily, into his ear. “Now, it’s time to see what I purchased.”

  A NIGHTMARE IS BORN

  He felt her, then, inside his mind: an intrusive, hungry presence that rifled through his thoughts, accessing his brain as though he were nothing but a computer. He felt her hands on his body, fingertips brushing smooth flesh, but the sensation was distant, like his body was no longer his own. Her presence in his mind, though, was both intimate and invasive. She opened the doors, unlocked cabinets, overturned boxes.

  Get out, he tried to say, screaming inside his head. His body, pressed down now on the bed, was completely paralyzed, but he hardly noticed. Get out of my fucking head.

  The room around them dissolved. Adrian felt that his eyes were wide open and staring, but he could no longer see through them — he could only see inside. Or perhaps the memories had escaped his thoughts, somehow, and overshadowed reality. He could no longer feel the queen’s touch on his skin, but he could feel her inside, the brush of fingertips against his thoughts. He struggled against them. She leafed through his memories like pages in a magazine, flickering past out of order, glimpses of time.

  Adrian tried to think of other things, but his mind felt sluggish, disconnected. He counted, loudly, in his head: counting every step in a mile. He screamed the numbers in his thoughts, but they faded within seconds, the memories pouring out of all the hidden places.

  There was little Nathaniel Weaver, tears drying on his cheeks as he peered out, frightened, from behind a motel bathroom door. There was Jessica, her brow creased, and the memory had no words but Adrian knew what she was telling him: I’ve felt this way for a long time, but I didn’t know how to say it without hurting you…we haven’t been properly married for a long time…maybe we never were. A gray-and-white, massive shaggy dog stood with its paws against the frame of the door, staring back over its shoulder expectantly, begging to be allowed outside. A cold night, children dressed in costume walking down the street, swinging plastic pumpkins or pillowcases full of candy.

  The Nightmare Man.

  Adrian stared into its wide, blank eyes and felt a chill of recognition that reached deeper and further than Nathaniel Weaver.

  Samantha’s funeral was the third week of October.

  Adrian’s parents, trying their best to maintain some sort of normalcy in a world that had been turned upside down, insisted that the boys not miss any school. The continued to take William to his Boys and Girls club basketball practices. And they insisted, although all the joy had gone out of it, that the boys go trick or treating on Halloween.

  Adrian had saved up all of his allowance money since the start of September, when the Halloween store had opened up in the mall, in order to buy the best scary mask he could find. He didn’t really like Halloween, but William did, and Adrian wanted to make sure he had a better costume than his brother. So he had bought the mask — a grayish-white skull with a wide, grinning mouth — and his daddy had let him borrow a big black overcoat that came down to his ankles.

  But after the funeral, Adrian didn’t want to be scary anymore. He didn’t want to be scared ever again, not even for fun. His parents relented, buying him a new costume — Spiderman — and he had gone trick or treating with William, although it seemed very strange not to have Samantha with them, dressed up like a little pumpkin or witch. He had done alright, until they got to the house at the end of the block. It was a big, sprawling home, and every year it always had a spooky yard display with tombstones and fake fog. There was a skeleton exactly the same height as a little boy hanging from one of the trees in the yard. It rattled a little in the wind.

  Adrian made his way nervously up the path, trying to remind himself that it could be fun to be scared if nothing was going to hurt you. He wouldn’t ring the doorbell. William did it, rolling his eyes in exasperation (although, Adrian saw, he looked a little nervous too) and when the door opened the man inside seemed to take up the whole door frame. He wore a shabby suit and he was covered all over with red-black blood, all over his hands and chest, the way daddy had been covered in blood when he’d held Samantha’s body, and Adrian started to scream and cry so hard that William had been forced to take him home.

  That night he lay in a miserable ball in his covers, shivering and sobbing. This was before he had learned about making doors and file cabinets in his mind, and all of his thoughts tumbled around in his head without his control. He fell
asleep, and in his sleep he imagined that his discarded Halloween costume had climbed out of the closet and stood over his bed. In his dream, the costume was more terrible than it ever had been in real life: the gaping mouth was full of needle-sharp teeth, the empty eye sockets were deep as pools, the overcoat was a billowing black cloak. It had bony skeleton hands and it pulled down the covers and pointed at Adrian, and its gaze was deep and accusatory. It didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. Adrian already knew why it was here.

  He had done a bad thing, and now he was going to be taken away.

  Adrian whimpered and cried and rolled in his sleep. He opened his eyes, and, for one terrible moment, the costume was still there. It stood over his bed, impossibly tall, as tall as the ceiling. It glared down at him with wide-open, empty eyes, its teeth gnashed in its empty mouth, and it extended a bony hand out for Adrian.

  He screamed and stumbled out of his bed and fell on the floor, his legs tangled up in his blanket, and when he looked up again the Nightmare Man was gone. When his parents came in to ask what was wrong (a little exasperatedly, as Adrian had woken screaming nearly every night since the accident) he blubbered and gibbered and couldn’t tell them. There weren’t words to describe what he had seen. Weeks later, when his mother first taught him how to hide things in a box in his mind, The Nightmare Man was the first thing he locked up forever and resolved to never, ever think about again.

  * * *

  Lorelai sat across from Rosalie, neither looking at the other. The servants bustled around, without paying them much heed, and Lorelai’s soup had gone cold while she examined the payment she had been offered. She had hoped for a corporeal dream; if not one of the knights, then at least an animal, a little dancing dog or a phoenix bird. But no. There were no dreams to be had, none harvested that lived long enough to be captured.

  “Well, there have been a couple,” the guards had said, nervously, shifting from foot to foot and refusing to meet Lorelai’s eye; she tended to intimidate everyone she encountered. “But they’ve been stolen, see.”

  Lorelai counted her jars of dreamstuff again and sighed. She drummed her fingers on the table. The queen had agreed to pay the other half if her preliminary taste went well; in the meantime, Lorelai was stuck here, waiting. Lorelai hated waiting. She much preferred having others wait on her.

  “How long do you think it will be?” Rosalie asked, stealing a sidelong look at Lorelai, the way a begging dog will sidle up to a person without making eye contact.

  “As long as it needs to,” she responded, rolling one jar of dreamstuff between her palms.

  * * *

  The memory shifted and Adrian watched a stream of images pour through his consciousness. A tiny pink hand clasped in a larger, skeletal one; a young red-haired boy sleeping in a motel bed; the entrance of a cave, tucked away in the depths of a forest, the cave depths glinting with dreamlight. The images were disjointed, nonsensical, and he had never seen them before — but the familiarity was undeniable, like memories of a dream he had forgotten upon waking.

  Which, of course, they were.

  AS ONE DOOR OPENS

  The room materialized around them once again. Adrian realized he was on his knees beside the bed, breathing hard, shaking all over as the chill from the queen’s touch faded from his skin. His body ached from falling, the sharp pain in his knees telling him how he had gotten here.

  The queen lay curled in bed, writhing as though in terrible pain. She clutched her head, tugging at handfuls of raven-black hair and made a sound like an angry bird. He saw her as through a haze: Images from his mind still swam before his eyes, filling the room, and he had a terrible sinking feeling that anyone else who walked by would be able to see them, too.

  “You — you lying — you’re…” she sputtered, dragging herself over the bed to place it between them. She rolled off the bed but was unable to stand, and fell to her knees, head still clutched in her hands.

  The door swung open.

  Something shimmered in the hall, just outside the door; Valor stepped into the room, halting immediately as his eyes widened slightly in shock. He looked much less solid than he had at dinner. He still wore his armor, but he seemed almost transparent. He looked from the queen, to Adrian, then back at the queen, his brow creasing deeply along well-worn worry-lines. “My queen,” he said, nervously. “I…apologies for interrupting…”

  “Valor…” The queen said, climbing awkwardly to her feet. She swayed, slightly, and for a moment it looked as though she would collapse; the knight tensed, extending a hand as though to catch her, but she kept her feet. “Valor, please.” She fell against him, burying her face in the hollow of his neck with hungry desperation. She trembled. “Dispose of the human. He is worthless to me. His dreams taste like ash and blood.”

  “What shall I do with him, my queen?”

  “The dungeon,” she said, withdrawing from him. She looked slightly more stable, but the color had drained from her face and her eyes were wild and glassy from pain. “With the thief.”

  He nodded, guiding her back to the bed. He touched her cheek almost tenderly before circling it, grasping Adrian’s arm and tugging him roughly to his feet. The soft glow of dreamlight flickered along his skin, but his features shifted and blurred. He looked the way a person looks in an old memory: contorted, blank, nondescript. Adrian tried to remember if he had always looked this way, and realized he could no longer recall his face despite standing a few inches away. “Come, human.”

  Adrian swooned, his vision temporarily replaced by darkness and bursts of light. The blood had drained from his head, and his extremities buzzed with adrenaline — a fight or flight response with nowhere to run to. He could still feel the queen’s touch inside his mind.

  Valor said nothing more. His armored hands were cold and hard as they gripped Adrian’s wrist, and Adrian struggled to keep up with his long stride as they left the bedchamber and walked down a series of hallways and stairs. Adrian couldn’t keep track of the twists and turns. He was only tangentially aware of his body.

  I created The Nightmare Man. He’s my dream.

  The thought came and went, unbidden, in his mind — ebbing and flowing like a tide.

  She’s here.

  This thought was a constant, keening wail that played in his mind, repeating until it had lost all meaning: She’s here she’s here she’s here she’s here here here. The words meant nothing. The thought was too enormous to comprehend, like trying to see the universe all at once through the lens of a telescope.

  He took her. She’s here.

  Valor opened a door and shoved Adrian inside. It was dark and damp and cold, but Adrian hardly noticed. The knight’s faintly glowing dreamlight flickered, for a moment, before the door shut and drowned out the world in darkness.

  She’s here. He took her. She’s here. She’s here.

  * * *

  Valor’s hands shook. The gauntlets rattled, the sound loud and jarring in the silence of the hall. Beneath the cool steel of his armor, his body pulled apart like wisps of cotton candy spinning in a machine, and the dreamlight wafted through the gaps in his armor, gathering around his feet like a glimmering fog.

  Somewhere, someone was dreaming of another knight. Somewhere, Chivalry was being born, or Hero, or Gallantry. There would always be another knight to join the queen’s army, just as there had always been

  “Is it done?” the queen asked. She sounded weary, aged beyond her years from her ordeal in the bedchamber.

  “He is in the dungeon,” Valor agreed.

  Her eyes flicked toward Lorelai, who stood near the doorway and clutched her chest as though in pain. “You seek to ruin me.”

  “I’ve done no such thing,” Lorelai said. The fingers splayed over her chest curled, nails biting into her skin. Wrinkles deepened around her eyes and along the webbing of her fingers. “How was I to know what would happen?”

  Out in the hall, Rosalie peeked through the doorway. She let out a quiet, frightened noise, like
the sound of a trapped mouse, and ducked out of view once more.

  “He is useless,” the queen said. “You’ve wasted my time, Lorelai, and now you seek to rob me.”

  Something flashed in the witch’s gaze; her lip curled with rage and loathing. “Rob you?” She repeated, scoffing. “Isolde, perhaps you forget how trades work. I give you goods. You give me goods in return. I earned what I own.”

  “And perhaps you forget your place,” the queen shot back. She still cradled her head in her hand. “You only continue to exist because of my kindness. I could shut down your tavern. I could destroy your city. I could erase you from Dreamland entirely. I am your queen.”

  Lorelai hesitated a moment, sizing the other up.

  Valor laid a trembling hand over his sword.

  Lorelai looked away. “Yes,” she said, and her tone was scathing. Her eyes drifted to the floor and stayed there, though the open loathing on her face betrayed her. “My queen.”

  Isolde’s brows raised. “You are to return the dreams and gather your servant girl. I want you out of my sight by morning.” She paused, and a smile touched the corner of her lips. “But, because I’m feeling charitable, you can have the human back. Consider it a refund.”

  The grey-haired faerie nodded, giving a short bow to the queen. Recognizing that she had been excused, she turned and made her way into the hall, her extremities trembling with rage. “Come, Rosalie. Let’s gather our dignity and be gone from this place.” She glanced around the hall, realizing that it was empty, and cursed. Where had the stupid girl run off to?