"Do not call me Jorogumo! Who dares to call me by this name? I am Nephila. Who goes before me and orders me as such? I demand you show yourself!" There was a rustling, and the wind picked up a notch, blowing both Annaleah's hair and that of the terrifying woman before her. The air to their right began to shimmer. A form began to appear before them as if being formed from the rippling, spinning air solidifying before them. The air began to trace the form of a woman, who spoke as she gained more physicality.
"I am Marchosias, and it is time for you to go, Nephila. You have done enough. You do not have permission to be here." The woman who spoke had now become fully solid and every bit as beautiful as the one called Nephila. She was taller than Annaleah, with long, blonde hair, her face slim and fairy like. A pair of ebony wings were folded against her back, large like the creature the Professor had become, at least ten feet over her head, even as they were folded. She wore a white Grecian style goddess dress.
A look of fury and fear crossed Nephila's face, and it was clear she was livid as she focused on the newcomer. The woman who seconds ago was so beautiful suddenly opened her mouth and, with eyes impossibly large, made a terrible sound, like a scream and wail both at once, painfully high, loud and shrill. From her stretched lips came a tearing sound that, even over her wailing, Annaleah could hear clearly; the separation of flesh from flesh. Blood began to flow down the woman's face as her mouth tore open, and large shiny black mandibles emerged from the broken hole her mouth had become. Her widened eyes began to cloud over, becoming large black eyes that continued to split and divide until there were eight of them. Still, she screamed. Her body began to jerk as if she were wracked with strange spasms, the sound of broken bones accompanying each spasmodic movement.
The woman who called herself Marchosias seemed unfazed, though Annaleah was frozen in terror, unable to move or speak. Turning towards Annaleah and whispering in her ear, the woman said, "It's time to wake up, Annaleah." Still the sound of screaming, flesh tearing and bones breaking continued. Yellow and black arachnid legs began to protrude out of the body of Nephila. The woman with black wings placed her hand over Annaleah's eyes so she would see no more, and said again in a soft, comforting voice, "Wake up, Annaleah. Wake up."
Then, thankfully, the sounds of terror began to fade, and Annaleah felt herself falling backward, into total darkness.... Falling awake.... Falling blessedly awake....
Chapter Nineteen
Dream Walker
It only took Seth about fifteen minutes to get to Annaleah's house. She’d been sobbing as she’d asked him to come over. Though he could barely make out what she was saying, he was out the door in a flash. Always the night owl, he had been up anyway, doing a bit of reading on his day off from his artwork, which he sold to collectors around Atlanta for a decent price. His work was good, mostly paintings in an abstract style, of things of an occult nature. He enjoyed painting pagan deities or dragons, some fairy folks or mythical creatures. He did a bit of sculpture too, and those got the highest prices, as they took the most time and were a bit more difficult to do.
Seth let himself in with the key Annaleah had given him years ago when they had been friends for about a year. It had been a sign of her trust and faith in his loyalty. They had been so young back then, he recalled, smiling fondly. He hoped she had calmed down a bit so they could talk about what had upset her so much. He knew it had something to do with a dream she’d had, and that she was frightened. She hadn't wanted to wake Uncle John and worry him, and Seth understood that. She said Uncle John had to come home from work early that night, something he rarely did. His hours had been cut and he worked every chance he got, even though he was a sick man. He must have felt for him to come home from his job as an ER triage nurse at the Doltree hospital.
Uncle John took pride in his work and in his ability to take care of himself, as well as Annaleah. He had worked through being sick before, and, Seth guessed that knowing this too was partly why Annaleah was so upset. Uncle John was the last family she had left, and watching him get sicker and having to suffer with his chemo treatments broke her heart. She hid this from Uncle John though and was always cheerful and hopeful, full of nothing but helpful words and love, never letting him see how much it hurt her when he had one of his bouts. He had been doing well for a while now, both of them had been hopeful when none of his hair had yet fallen out from chemo. He had seemed to be getting better.
Knowing he had to come home from work must really have upset her. He knew she helped her uncle, as much as he had helped her since she was little. The oncologists had been quite surprised when they told him it was Hodgkin's disease. "This is a cancer we rarely see in adults. It tends to be a childhood disease," his doctor had told Uncle John. Seth knew Annaleah had wanted to burst into tears, but she had told Seth that she had grabbed Uncle John's hand instead, and told his doctor, "Well, if Uncle John has to get cancer, it would have to be the one children get. He is, after all, only a child at heart." That had been two years ago, when Uncle John was a stage two. He was a stage three now.
As Seth walked through the door, he looked at Annaleah, his heart sinking with concern as she slowly sat up on the couch. She was wearing her lilac colored silk robe over her nightclothes and had been curled up into a ball, her arms wrapped around her knees. Tears still stained her cheeks, and her eyes looked red and puffy from crying. Normally she would have jumped off the couch and ran to him, throwing her arms around him, but tonight he knew she just didn't have it in her.
"Hey Seth," she said simply. "Thank you for coming over."
"You look terrible. What happened?" Seth sat beside her on the couch, his concern blossoming in his heart and quickening its pace. She looked slightly dazed, and this worried him. He took her hand in his and held it gently, waiting for her to gather her thoughts.
"Can you make us some tea first, please?" Annaleah asked. "I would have made us some but.... I just feel so out of it right now, so drained. I have some chamomile and hibiscus in the cupboard over the stove. You know where everything else is." Her voice sounded so tiny as she spoke, as if she truly had been drained of all her energies.
"Of course," Seth answered. "I'm on it." He rose from the couch, kissing her on top of the head before making his way to the kitchen to brew their tea. He didn't say anything as he brought the teapot to a boil and prepared their mugs with four sugars each. Though it might have seemed a lot of sugar to most, he and Annaleah had bonded over the knowledge that they both shared an insatiable sweet tooth.
He let her gather her strength and her thoughts, not wanting to push her. It had been a long time since he had seen her this upset. It hurt him to see her in this state, but knowing he was there with her also made him feel better.
After a bit, Seth returned to the living room with two steaming cups of chamomile and hibiscus tea. He handed one mug to Annaleah and set the other on the coffee table in front of him before sitting down again beside her. She cupped the warm mug in her hands, seeming to gain strength from it. She looked even more pale than usual and a bit dazed. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, and her face was almost expressionless. Her dazed demeanor worried him.
"I think I am dream walking again, Seth."
Seth leaned closer and put his hand on top of hers, his heart sinking in his chest, knowing whatever it was that she had gone through had shaken her terribly. She didn’t look like herself, and for her to act like this frightened him.
"Tell me." Seth said, leaning closer to her. Seth remembered the time she had dream walked when she was younger, just entering puberty, and it had proved to be quite an issue for her, and for Uncle John, too. They had thought it was simple sleepwalking at first, when the police dropped her off back at home early in the morning. They had seen her walking barefoot in Hideman park, almost six miles from their home.
After it happened for the third time, the police told Uncle John if they saw her out past midnight again, he would have to go to court for violating a number of child safety laws.
She had been insistent that she had been dreaming, and since it had been impossible for her to walk that far in such little time, with no blisters on her feet, he and uncle john had believed her.
In some dreams Annaleah had said she had fought these angel beings before, and indeed, the marks of her dreams did show up on her skin, which prompted Seth into doing research on dreams and dream walking. He had found out how rare it was to be a natural dream walker, and that most spiritualists had to train diligently for years to be able to dream walk. Usually it meant walking into another person’s dreams and interacting with them there, but Annaleah seemed to be able to take it even further. The idea that she could slip from dreams into reality was a disturbing one. What if she found herself on top of a building and in her sleep, walked off of the roof, thinking she was somewhere else in her dream? Or what if she was dreaming of breathing underwater and transported herself to the bottom of one of the real world’s oceans?
That idea that she could travel in the real world using dreams as a means of transportation was just thoroughly frightening. At least, it was if she had no control over it. What if she got stuck in a dream, and never woke up again?
Seth closed his eyes and sought his strength. “Well,” he told himself, “That means potentially good things could come through too.”
It was hard for Seth not to express his concern for her, but he knew she would shake him off if he did so. Instead, he squeezed her hand. He sensed there was more she needed to say, and her dazed demeanor told him it was going to be disturbing.
"The night before I went to my first class," Annaleah continued, "I dreamed an awful dream. Uncle John had to wake me up. He said I was screaming.” Annaleah paused, her face crumpling with the force of her emotions. Seth could tell she was trying to control herself, but she was having a hard time. She needed him to be strong for her, so he reigned in his concern. He swallowed hard and waited for her to tell him the rest of what she had gone through.
“I dreamed of a war, but not between men. I was standing on the bloodied ground where angels fought with one another. Those with indigo eyes fought with the ones whose eyes were silver. The sky was dark, swollen and bruised, as if it suffered from battle wounds too, yet it continued to bleed forth more and more angels. Some were screaming and some were speaking in a language I have heard before in other dreams but could not understand. None of them seemed to know I was there. After Uncle John left, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I had mud on my feet. How on earth did I get mud on my feet when I was in my bed dreaming?"
Annaleah looked at Seth, her eyes now greener than usual, the tears bringing out their color all the more. Panic gripped deeply inside his chest, its icy fingers making his heart beat even faster. Why was this happening again, he wondered? What did it mean?
She took a sip of her tea and continued. "Tonight, my dream started out rather nice. I was in the woods, where my mother used to take me. I was on a path that led to a clearing in the woods, and there stood, of all people, Professor Bainbridge, only he wasn't really Professor Bainbridge.”
The professor...? Seth was now certain he had something to do with all the strange things that had been going on ever since he had entered Annaleah’s life. Even though he felt certain Professor Bainbridge was some sort of catalyst, Seth felt an odd certainty he wasn’t quite as bad as he seemed to be. Perhaps he was here to protect her in some way. She had said the dream had started out nicely, so it made sense.
“I mean it was the professor, but he was.... different. He had wings, huge wings, and they were so beautiful. He was beautiful. His eyes were silver, not just the iris part, but his entire eye; he had no pupils at all, like his eyes were mirrors. He called to me and I felt like I had known him forever, so I went to him.” She took a deep breath and looked off for a moment, as if her eyes were focusing on something Seth couldn’t see. “It was so real.”
For the first time that night, Annaleah smiled, the dazed look gone from her eyes and replaced by a gleam of wonderment.
“I could smell the crisp night air. I could feel the grass under my feet. I could hear the crickets in the woods and Gods, when he kissed me..." Annaleah trailed off, smiling just a bit.
Seth looked at her, amused. Kissing the Professor? That seemed a bit odd. It wasn’t something he had been expecting to hear, but he was glad to see her smiling. He thought briefly of teasing her to break the lingering tension, but knew right now wasn’t a good time.
If she was attracted to him, he was happy for her, she deserved a good man in her life. Assuming the professor was good, that is.
"Wow. I didn't see that one coming." Annaleah's eyes gained focus again almost at once, and she looked defensive.
"No, it isn't like that," Annaleah said. " It was like I said, as if I knew him forever, not as the Professor, but as the creature he was. He looked like one of the angels that were fighting in my other dream. Only his eyes didn't have pupils like theirs did. And Seth," Annaleah paused and looked him in the eye, "I had wings too! Though I didn't know it until just before I woke up."
"It doesn't sound that awful. I mean, the dream before that with the battle scene sounds terrifying, but the dream in the woods, it sounds like you kind of enjoyed it. What makes you think that one was dream walking?"
Annaleah considered this for a moment. "The dream was just, so intense, as if I really, truly were there. I woke up after this dream, but only for a second.”
Annaleah smiled at Seth and gently moved his hand off hers. She picked her mug up and took a sip. Seth was glad she had calmed down a bit.
After she had set the mug back in its place, she took a deep breath and went on. “It was the dream I had after that which really upset me, and is the one that frightens me. I think there is something in my dreams that is trying to escape into this reality to harm me. I know that sounds crazy, but it's the truth. If what I dreamed of is going to try to come out of my dreams, then I'm afraid of what will come of it.”
Annaleah hung her head, as if it were too full of emotion to hold upright anymore. A tear fell from her eye, and Seth gave in and wrapped his arms around her. He held her close to him, his mind racing. He would die in a heartbeat to protect her.
He hadn’t heard of anything coming out of a dream into reality before, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. The ramifications of this could be devastating. He could feel her shaking in his arms, and was surprised to feel himself shaking too.
"I need your help Seth. You know so much about dreams," Annaleah whispered against his shoulder. "I don't mind the dreams of walking in the woods and seeing a beautiful creature, but I have to tell you about the next dream."
He released her from his protective embrace, and she pulled away from him slowly, still shaking. As she lifted her head to look at him once more, the tears had come back, leaving trails on her cheeks.
Seth brought his hand to her face, and carefully wiped a tear away with the pad of his thumb.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, though another tear fell. He gently wiped it away, too.
“I may not be the biggest or the roughest guy around, but I promise you I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise to protect you in any way I can.”
Annaleah took his hand and placed a kiss on it, splashing it with another tear.
“Thank you,” she said as she tried to smile for him.
Seth slowly moved away from her to grab a tissue from the coffee table. She took it from him and began to dab at her face.
"I was in the woods on the path to the clearing again," Annaleah swallowed, "only this time I felt as if something terrible was there with me. The darkness in the woods seemed to be alive, and it was! I was being spied on by hundreds and hundreds of spiders. They dropped from the trees and came from the woods onto the path I was on. At first I didn't know what they were, but when I realized they were spiders, some of them as big as a basketball, I ran to the clearing to a hunched over figure. I thought it was the Professor, having just seen him moments ago
in my other dream.”
She looked down at her hands that held the tear stained tissue, wringing it as though it might give her some answers. “
“It wasn't. It was a beautiful Asian woman who called herself Nephila."
Seth gasped audibly.
"What is it?" her green eyes looked at him expectantly.
"Nothing, I'm sorry," Seth apologized. "It’s just that name sounds familiar.” Seth searched his mind for a moment, knowing that name meant something, but he came up with nothing. “I’m sorry, please go on."
Annaleah drank the last of her tea and then put the empty mug back down on the coffee table. "The woman knew she terrified me," Annaleah said. "At first I wasn't sure why. She was a beautiful woman wearing an elaborate kimono of black and yellow, but I knew she wasn't what she seemed. She spoke threateningly to me, but in a roundabout way. Something about offending her spider babies by running from them when all they wanted was to say hello. Something else about them coming out when it was going to rain and when war was afoot. I was so scared I couldn't speak. She got mad when I didn't say anything.”
Annaleah stared blankly at the mug on the coffee table for a moment before she went on. “Then, suddenly, another woman appeared, forming herself out of the air. She was only a bit taller than me, with straight blonde hair a bit darker than mine, and she had wings like the creature the Professor was; only hers were black. She called herself...Marchosias."
Marchosias…. That name seemed familiar too, though he couldn’t remember where he had heard it before. Why was he unable to recall such important sounding names, he wondered? Annaleah lifted an eyebrow, looking closely at him.
"Anyway," Annaleah continued, "Marchosias called this other woman Jorogumo, which really pissed her off. That's when she said her name was Nephila, and asked who dared to call her Jorogumo. None of this makes any sense, Seth."
The Otherling Page 10