by T. L. Bodine
Lorelai doubled over, trembling. She clawed at her chest and her face, and her silver hair fell over her face and hid it from view. She collapsed to her knees, throwing out her hands to catch herself. The ground continued to tremble. Doorways shook and revolved; overhead, all of the portals had faded into a bright blur.
Lorelai made a terrible sound, sputtering and trembling.
Sonia started to stand, but the ground was shaking so badly now that she couldn’t get to her feet. “Lorelai…?”
In response, Lorelai’s body gave a full shudder. She made a noise like a wet, strangled scream. Her skin bulged as the things inside of her pressed outward. Then, with a sudden wet tearing sound, the skin burst open. Blood, prismatic and shining, dripped down from a hundred small gashes along Lorelai’s arms and shoulders. And things began to crawl out of her.
Shapeless, wet, slimy, furry, skittering things. Things that poured out of her like roaches scattering away from light. Things that broke through the skin and slithered like centipedes. Things that oozed and dripped like blood.
They seethed out of Lorelai’s body, engulfing it. Her body was covered in shadow, a dark mask that held only a hint of its old shape. The dream-infused blood pooled away and smoke curled up from it as the dreams separated out and escaped into the atmosphere. Lorelai screamed, but not for long.
FLIGHT
The world was crumbling.
The mountain cracked with a sound like thunder, and the ground beneath them shivered and rumbled. The bridge that had once connected this platform to the center dais swung broken and useless over the side; it rattled and cracked against the trembling, floating stone. Other platforms shifted, breaking apart and raining down into nothingness below. Doorways collapsed.
“Sonia!”
“We’re okay!” Sonia held Samantha to her chest, struggling up to her feet. She stood in a half-crouch, wings buzzing in an attempt to counter-balance against the violently shaking ground. “You have to get out of here!”
“We all do!”
Nathaniel cling to his arm. He cried in quiet, low sobs that were nearly drowned out by the explosive noise that surrounded them. Samantha leaned against Sonia’s leg, clutching the dog to her chest, her eyes wide and terrified — but they were locked on The Nightmare Man’s body on the shuddering ground.
A door, Adrian thought desperately. If this is still my dream, then I dream of a goddamn door.
A shaft of light tore through the vast emptiness beside him. It stretched, spreading and forming a small circular hole in the air. The hole expanded, agonizingly slowly. The portal was green and black, like the symbol for poison, and the surface rolled and boiled.
Adrian inched toward it, gripping Nathaniel’s hand in his; he could hardly walk, the ground was shaking so badly. The ground cracked; a long, wide chasm opened in the floor between where Adrian and Sonia now stood. The Nightmare Man’s body slipped through it; the inky black shape that had consumed Lorelai followed, both sliding away from view as they plummeted into nothingness.
Smoke curled up from the chasm, thick and smelling of sulfur.
“Adrian, you have to go!”
“I can’t leave you two! Come on!” He realized as he said it how futile it was. The chasm yawned between them, now several feet wide and spewing yellowish smoke. He could barely see them through the smog.
“We can’t!” Sonia yelled. “We’ll never make it.”
The portal began to shrink. Nathaniel tugged at the hem of Adrian’s shirt.
“We’ll be fine! We’ll find another way out,” Sonia said. “Just go!”
Feeling like something was coming loose inside of him, Adrian nodded mutely. There were so many things he wanted to say to Sonia — and to Samantha — but there wasn’t any time. The chasm in the floor opened wider. The portal swirled and shrank.
Another door, he pleaded in his mind. Anything. Just — please. Keep them safe.
The smog was so thick that he could no longer see them, and he couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the crumbling mountain. He stumbled toward the shrinking doorway, Nathaniel beside him.
Adrian squeezed Nathaniel’s hand in his, and together they crossed through the portal.
It felt like walking through a waterfall. There was no tumbling, no end-over-end falling. Only a shocking, drenching sensation of pressure and cold, followed by a period of senselessness as the world turned itself around.
GOOD DREAMS
“Mr. Montgomery?” Nathaniel’s voice broke through his consciousness. He nudged him.
Adrian groaned and opened his eyes.
He was on his back in a patch of woods. He heard cars honking and dogs barking in the distance. Through the trees, he saw a smog-colored sky and a partially-obscured Stop’n’Go sign in the distance. He was wearing a suit, his tie askew. Nathaniel was on his knees next to him. Neither of them were soaked in black primordial goo, but Nathaniel’s cheeks were smudged with dirt and he had a small scrape on his forehead.
They lay near a hole in the ground, and Adrian craned his neck to peer over at it. It was some kind of fallen-in space — an old cellar, a mineshaft, a long-buried sunken building that had broken through. He looked back up at Nathaniel. His insides shook.
“Nathaniel…” he started, feeling very confused and disoriented, like waking up from a dream. There was something very important that had happened, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was.
Nathaniel grabbed both of Adrian’s hands in his and tugged, trying to help him stand. “It’s okay Mr. Montgomery,” he said, giving him a knowing look. “We’re back home. See?” He cast a glance back over his shoulder, toward the fence of his backyard. “It’s time to go home now, I think. I miss my mommy.”
“Back home,” Adrian echoed. He rose to his feet, looking again between Nathaniel and the half-buried cavernous space. Nothing made any sense. He remembered faeries and unicorns and giant cats, and he remembered a dark slimy place filled with things that slithered. Someone had died — someone important to him — but he couldn’t remember who, or why, or if it had really happened or if it had been a dream, or why he was here in the woods.
Everything jumbled together in his head and the details blurred around the edges. His eyes felt like he’d been crying. His legs ached, as though he had climbed a thousand stairs. But he followed Nathaniel home, walking unsteadily back to Angela Weaver’s dilapidated house, coming back to himself slowly. The fuzzy ringing in his ears subsided, although the fog in his mind persisted.
Angela stood on the back porch, leaning over the railing. She smoked a cigarette and stared narrow-eyed at the world, the crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes making her look older than she was. She squinted, as Adrian and Nathaniel came into view, and she hesitated a moment as though uncertain of her senses. Then she screamed in joy and jumped over the rail — tripping, nearly falling in the planter box below — and ran across the yard. She dropped her cigarette and screamed again and swooped down on Nathaniel, picking him up and hugging him to her chest, kissing him all over. “My baby!” She yelled, and tears sprang in her eyes and her voice caught with a sob. “My baby, oh Jesus my baby.”
Adrian stood there, a little awkwardly, and tried to make sense of everything.
Angela looked up, after a long time, after Nathaniel’s squirming finally made her set him down. She looked up at Adrian — ruffled, wrinkled, dirty, hair going in all directions — and her eyes widened and softened and she looked at him in a way she’d never looked at him before. “You found him,” she said, breathlessly, and flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and sobbing into his shirt. “You found my baby! Oh God bless you, Adrian! God fucking bless you.”
He patted her awkwardly on the back. “Where’s…” he groped around for the name. “Zachariah? The psychic?”
Angela withdrew from him, narrowing her eyes. “Who?”
“The psychic detective —” he started, and then changed his mind. Time works differently here, he thought
, but didn’t know what that meant. “Never mind.”
She pulled away from him and scooped up her son in her arms. Nathaniel smiled sympathetically over his mother’s shoulder, and the three of them went back into the house.
* * *
The rest of the day went by in a blur.
Lots of people called Adrian, from the police department, from the media. They wanted to talk to him — the heroic social worker who had single-handedly rescued a missing child from the caved-in cellar where he had spent nearly two days. It was a big story, much bigger than the disappearance itself had been.
He mostly ignored the calls. He locked all the doors in his house and took a long, hot shower. He stood in the shower until the water ran cold, and then he leaned against the cool tile wall and felt the water hit his back like rain. He was shivering when he got out, but he didn’t care.
When he got out of the shower, he saw that he’d missed a phone call. He didn’t recognize the number, but he checked the message anyway. It was from William.
“Hey little brother,” he said to Adrian’s voicemail. “Saw you on the news. Pretty crazy shit. They were saying something about an old cellar caving in? Call me.”
And Adrian did, for the first time since his wedding.
He bought himself a six pack and called his brother and they talked and he drank and they talked some more, and they reminisced and cried and laughed and Adrian got a little drunk and the battery on his phone wore down. He went to sleep late at night — too late to even consider waking up for a 6 AM run — and slept clumsily and boozily.
He woke up early anyway. The sky outside was pale grey tinged with pink and gold, but the sun wasn’t up yet.
Someone was in his room.
He jolted awake, bolting upright in bed, clutching his covers to his chest. Sitting at the foot of his bed was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, like the best parts of every girl he’d ever loved put together into one person. She had short purple hair and transparent dragonfly wings. There was a golden-haired little girl on her lap, slumbering peacefully against her chest.
“…Sonia?”
She smiled. “You made it. I wasn’t sure you would. I couldn’t see anything, when the door opened I didn’t know…I’m so happy for you, Adrian.”
“Sonia, how…” he rubbed his eyes. He blinked. They were still there, both of them, in his bed. He could feel the warmth and weight of their bodies through the covers. “Am I still drunk?”
“A little. Listen, I can’t stay long. Daylight, in your world — it’s like the Darkness in ours. I just wanted to let you know — we’re okay. All of us. Some of the doors are gone, but…” she shrugged. Her wings hummed. “I’m keeping an eye on her for you. So you don’t have to worry about anything happening. I promise.”
His eyes dropped to the Samantha and his heart thudded heavily in his chest.
“I always wanted to be with the children,” she said, and reached out a hand to grasp his. “But I like taking care of the dreams even better. Thank you.”
“Can…” he started, but his voice faltered. “Could I come back? If I wanted?”
She smiled, a heartbreaking smile. “The doorways are different. They might not lead to the same place, they might not even exist anymore. But…well, it’s not impossible. Nothing’s really impossible in Dreamland, is it?”
She shifted, rising to leave.
“Sonia, please don’t go,” he said, twining his fingers around hers, pulling her back to him. “Please stay. Both of you.” He looked up at her, pleading, childlike. “At least for a minute?”
“Alright,” she said, and crawled up next to him on the bed, curling her body around his, Samantha between them.
He wrapped his arms around them both. Samantha slept, her thumb in her mouth. She flickered, casting a pale glow along the walls like light caught in a suncatcher. He didn’t wake her.
Sonia laid her head on his chest. “Go back to sleep, Adrian.”
His eyes drooped.
He slept, and when he woke again the sun was orange and bright and high in the sky and his head hurt a little. His bed was empty, but his covers smelled like lilacs and he smiled and snuggled back into his pillow.
He went back to sleep and dreamed good dreams.
About the Author
T.L. Bodine writes dark fantasy and horror of all kinds, from the zombie novel RIVER OF SOULS to the Wattpad-exclusive gothic, THE HOUND. She’s interested in uncanny, fantastic things, and the way real people with real problems interact with them.
When not writing, she can usually be found watching horror movies, playing story-heavy video games, or experimenting in the kitchen.
She lives in New Mexico with her husband, David, and two small dogs.
You can connect with me on:
http://www.tlbodine.com
https://twitter.com/glassratmedia
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Also by T.L. Bodine
River of Souls
https://www.amazon.com/River-Souls-T-L-Bodine/dp/1950305015
Undeath is a manageable condition.
That’s what the media says, anyway: with the help of the miracle life-extension drug, Lazarus, the Undead can retain their humanity and live normal, happy lives. Without it, they become violent, mindless walking corpses.
Davin Montoya was eager to believe all of that. Forced to drop out of college to take care of his teenage sister, Zoe, after their father drank himself to death, he was more than happy to sign the no-good alcoholic over to the government’s Lazarus House for treatment. That was one less thing for him to worry about.
Until an accident left him joining the ranks of the freshly deceased himself.
Now, keeping his death a secret is the only way to keep his sister out of foster care. But to do so, he must venture into the underground society of Unregistered Undead - a dangerous world of drug deals and government resistance. But when their access to Lazarus begins to run dry, the truth starts to unravel…and it’s not what anyone expected.
The Beast in the Bedchamber
https://www.amazon.com/Beast-Bedchamber-T-L-Bodine-ebook/dp/B00CCZ6K7S
A goddess, disguised as a cat, chooses a man to be her slave…
A girl is sold into marriage to pay off her father’s debts, but her husband is nothing like she could have expected…
A man is cursed to wander for eternity unless he finds true love - and he must do it as a dog…
The Beast in the Bedchamber features seven modern fairy tales about beastly bridegrooms.
Insomnia: Stories to Read with the Lights Turned On
https://www.amazon.com/Insomnia-Stories-Read-Lights-Turned-ebook/dp/B01NBP8BGV
Reading horror stories late at night when you’re home alone is never a good idea, but that hasn’t stopped you before.
One night, clicking through links, you find yourself on a strange site filled with spooky stories. Inspired, you even try writing one of your own. You didn’t think anything bad would come of it.
You were wrong.
Insomnia is a short story collection and a story in its own right, incorporating 15 original short horror stories set into a broader narrative. Read it in order…and read it with the lights turned on.