Olivia sensed my sudden hesitation and spoke without looking at me. “This is the way. You’re safe with me here.”
The ocean was warm with a heat that radiated from deeper than man was ever intended to go. It was a heat from the center of the world, aroused by the machinations of a waking beast.
Trusting in my guide, I allowed Olivia to guide me further into that oily soup. The water climbed over my ankles and then my knees. It wasn’t more than two steps and it had climbed to my chest.
Trust or not, I couldn’t stop myself from closing my eyes and holding my breath as my head was encompassed by the disgusting water.
The very top of my head hadn’t been submerged for more than a moment before I was suddenly under the impression that I was being painfully squeezed. It felt as though my skin had suddenly become too small for my body, and the feeling was only getting worse. In a few moments I’d be broken and crushed; a fleshy bag of fluid.
As quickly as the crushing feeling hit, I was suddenly free of it. Before I knew what I was doing, I opened my eyes and gasped for air.
I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was when my lungs actually filled with oxygen and not oily black water. Somehow, I was on dry land with dry clothes, without any water in sight at all.
I stood, grateful to be free of that oppressive force, and spun around, taking in the view. I was in a large field of blue grass. It wasn’t just a slightly blue shade of green, it was sky blue and bordering on turquoise. Aside from the grass and Olivia only a few feet from me, I couldn’t see any other defining characteristics of where we’d ‘landed.’
Olivia had done it. She had brought me to the Dream Lands.
“Lose the surprised look before I slap it off,” she said with a smirk. “This was just as important to me as it was to you.”
I waved my hand at the blue grass. “A chance to frolic?”
Olivia nodded, “As well as a chance to help you. Helping you is essentially helping myself.” She smiled at me and said in French, “We work better when we work together.”
I hated it when Olivia reminded me of her part in the largest self-delusion of my life, but I wasn’t about to let my annoyance with her poking and prodding me ruin the alliance we had formed. I ignored the remark and began walking through the field.
Maybe my anger wasn’t fueled by her entirely anyway. I still had the residual pains in my mind from that nightmare version of myself I had been faced with before Olivia had come to my rescue.
“Where are you going?” Olivia jogged to catch up with me.
I pointed ahead of me. “That way.”
I didn’t have to look at Olivia to know that she was rolling her eyes.
“I see that. Why are you going that way? You don’t even know where we are.”
She had a great point, but I had a pretty strong counterpoint. “Neither of us do.” I pointed again, this time more specifically. “That is smoke.” She noticed it for the first time. “Smoke means fire, and fire means people.”
Olivia ran ahead of me and shook her head. “No. Smoke means fire in your world. Fire means people in your world. This is not your world. This is a world of beasts and realities that don’t exist. Here smoke could mean a river, and a river could be a vast sea filled with creatures that live to torture idiots who believe that smoke means fire.”
I didn’t slow my stride and pushed past her. “Either way, it’s the only option we have. Don’t tell me why my ideas are wrong, tell me better ideas.”
That seemed to shut her up, and I silently enjoyed it. I didn’t mean for it to sound so harsh, but she knew that I was right. There was no sign of anything in any direction other than the smoke. We could either walk blindly in any direction, or hope that the smoke meant what I thought it meant.
Nazis, zombies, wizards, and beasts be damned, I was still a man of hope.
A smile crept across my lips as a small cabin crested into sight. It was almost childish how much I was enjoying Olivia being wrong, but that realization didn’t change how I felt.
The cabin was directly from a fairy tale. It was slatted wood with several small and round windows. The roof was made of thatch and climbed to a very steep peak.
Without meaning to, Olivia and I both sped up as we approached the cabin. We were practically at a sprint when we finally reached the large door. It looked like it had been cut from one piece of wood. I knocked loudly and the resounding thuds of my knuckles against the wood confirmed that it was a very heavy door.
The door swung open so easily that I was startled by it. I stepped back and almost didn’t see the small boy standing in front of me. He had bright blonde hair and rosey red cheeks. He didn’t belong in the Dreamlands, he belonged in a magazine advertisement for school supplies or milk.
“What were you doing in my field?” He demanded. His voice didn’t match his features at all. His voice was deep and hoarse. It was the voice of a very old man.
That was when I remembered the most important thing to never forget in the Dreamlands: Nothing and No one are what they seem.
This boy was anything but. He was an ancient soul who had chosen to present himself as a child. The desired effect was to be underestimated, and it worked.
The other surprise that faced me, was the boy’s language. The Dream Lands are filled with people from every century and location in more than our own Universe. The chances of us speaking the same language were astronomical.
It only took a moment for me to get over that second surprise. This was the Dream Lands, and the Dream Lands were a world dominated by the mind and spirit. All languages were the same, because everyone who traversed the Dream Lands spoke in the language of thoughts.
I was going to be constantly surprised if I didn’t adapt soon to this new world.
I looked closer at this “boy” and could see that his eyes weren’t hiding his age. Inside that shell of a child was something very ancient.
Before I could answer his question, the ancient boy stated, “She is not as she seems.”
I nodded, because lying to our first encounter in the Dream Lands seemed the wrong direction to go. “I know,” I replied.
The ancient boy looked from myself to Olivia before returning his gaze to me and nodding and waving us into his home. I didn’t get much of a look around the tiny, and incredibly dark space before he spoke.
“What can I do for you?” He asked. It was a simple question, and the only logical question he could have asked, but I still felt that there was a double meaning behind it.
I decided that it was Olivia’s job as my guide to lead the conversation and stepped back while she spoke.
Olivia fell into her role easily. “We seek the whereabouts of a man in the waking world.”
The ancient boy nodded again, slower this time. “You arrived on the outside of the Enchanted Wood. Many show up here.” He looked past us and to the colored field. While in the field I couldn’t see an end to it, only more field, but now I was able to see clear across it and to the dark and thick woods that were on the far side of it.
I tried to hide my renewed surprise. I was beginning to look like some poor farm kid who just got to the big city. I was looking like a tourist. That was going to get me killed.
“I can help you with your answers. I know where you can find them,” he hesitated, “but nothing comes for free.”
He looked away from the distant field to Olivia, and then slowly brought his eyes to me. “It will cost you a spell.”
That look confirmed for me much of what I had already been thinking. Not only did this ancient boy know that Olivia wasn’t what she presented herself as, but also that I was the mortal partner in our duo. He knew that I carried the knowledge of spells. It left me wondering how much more he knew or was capable of surmising.
Seemingly from nowhere, the ancient boy was chewing on something. It looked like the end of a stick of wheat, as if he were channeling his inner Mark Twain. I doubted it, though. The nature of this world meant that it
could be anything, and I was betting that it was some sort of self-defense if I chose to decline his price.
I frowned at him. I’d haggled in a thousand different marketplaces for a thousand different things, and while the ancient boy was probably the most dangerous being I had ever haggled with, it didn’t stop me from noticing him for the swindler he was. It was a perfect scam, as well. He was housed on the edge of what he knew to be a regular entrance to a place that everyone travels to when in the most desperate of needs.
Swindler or not, I was at his mercy unless Olivia had a better idea, and she hadn’t spoken up yet.
Raising an eyebrow, I asked, “Do you have a particular spell in mind?”
An eerie smile that stretched just a little too wide, crawled onto his face. “I believe that you know which spell I might be interested in.” He spoke around the straw. “There’s only one spell that could be useful to one of both worlds such as myself. You learned it during your time with the Night Watchers.”
Almost a year previously, I had infiltrated a dark sect of cultists that call themselves the Night Watchers. They worship the Dream Lands, and specifically the Night Gaunts who haunt the pathways between day and night. Night Gaunts have been known to steal away with the spirits of people and deposit them into the Dream Lands and are the only creatures that can easily traverse both realms.
Night Gaunts are faceless creatures, shaped mostly like people, but with the tight dark skin of a naked rat, and the vein covered wings of a bat. They are terrifying creatures with feet that can grab the spirit of a person and tear them from the reality they know before dropping them, scared and alone, in the Dream Lands.
My time with the Night Watchers was an ill-planned attempt to tear them down from the inside. I spent a long time earning their trust, but they fooled me into thinking that I had succeeded. Once they had grown tired of the entertainment of their failed infiltrator, they tied me up in the desert to suffer and die. I only didn’t by the intervention of the previous Dean of Miskatonic.
I also hadn’t advertised this fact to anyone, yet this ancient boy hadn’t only known I had lived through it, but also that I had learned a few tricks while I was there.
“What could you possibly want that for?” I demanded.
That eerie smile of his only grew worse. “You’re not that dense, Dr. Doran.” When he saw that I wasn’t surprised by his knowing my name, his smile dimmed. “Do you know what I am?”
I nodded. “An old soul. You reside here instead of dying with your physical body.”
“I miss the real world. Your spell can give it back to me.”
Anger surged through me. “At what cost?” I demanded. “You would need a body!” I was raising my voice. “I don’t even know who or what you are.” I crossed my arms. “It’s too dangerous.”
The ancient boy sighed and looked to Olivia. “Is he always so ridiculous?”
Olivia laughed, but said nothing.
“If that is how you feel,” the ancient boy continued, “then leave.” As he said the last word, my feet came out from under me and I was thrown through the doorway of the house by an invisible force. Olivia came running after me as I landed. The ancient boy stood in the doorway of his house. “Good luck finding what you’re looking for elsewhere.” He looked to the left and right of his house exaggeratedly. “Wherever that may be.”
I was on my feet in a second, but I made no move in either direction. Time was different in the Dream Lands, and the longer we stayed the more likely my body was to experience some sort of failure. We needed answers in the quickest and safest way possible, but safe wouldn’t guarantee any sort of results.
If it was a less dangerous spell that that ancient child was asking for, I would give it to him without hesitation. That wasn’t the case. He wanted the Song of the Gaunts, and there was only one purpose for it.
Asking Olivia along with me on my journey to the Dream Lands wasn’t just because I needed a guide. I also needed a safe and relatively simple way of getting there. Having her there to show me the path from my dream to the Dream Lands made everything much simpler, but it wasn’t the only way to go about it.
Some people find their way on accident while others are well practiced in the art of lucid dreaming and are capable of finding their way on their own.
The Night Watchers had a completely different method.
In their worship of the Night Gaunts, the Watchers had learned a few things over the centuries, and one of those was the Song of the Gaunts. Night Gaunts were mostly intelligent beings, smarter than most children and with a basic need to feed on lost souls. That same intelligence makes them impossible to control, but if one knows the Song of the Gaunts they could work out an agreement with the Gaunts.
It wouldn’t be a verbal agreement. The spell is basically a telepathic call to the Gaunt. The Night Gaunt’s curiosity doesn’t allow it to ignore the call and within seconds you are confronted by the beast. If you’re in my home reality it’s just a matter of waiting for it to snatch you up and take you to the Dream Lands.
If you’re in the Dream Lands, it becomes a little harder. Its faceless visage eyes you up and down and you have that moment to present a compelling telepathic argument for why it should help you.
That’s where the complication comes. What can you offer a Night Gaunt? They feed on distress and emotions, so the best argument you can have to is to raise Hell wherever it is you end up. The Gaunt will then hang around and feed off of that emotional discharge without ever having to inspire the terror of the kidnappings that is usually required. It’s a cheap lunch.
Of course, you could always promise to give the Night Gaunt what it wants and then choose to not deliver, but then you would be constantly looking over your shoulder for a very hungry Night Gaunt.
This ancient boy wanted the Song of the Gaunts, and to use it he would most definitely cause havoc every time he came to our world. The spell would give him the power to ride in the bodies of the sleeping and comatose, anyone that a Night Gaunt would have influence over. If I didn’t give him what he wanted I would be faced with a very long and drawn out search to discover information about Dyer.
Olivia could see me wrestling with the idea as the ancient boy watched us both.
“Do it! Give him the spell or our trip here was a waste of time,” she hissed. There was fear in her voice and it sounded out of place. I was starting to understand that an Olivia free from the shackles of my mind was a different beast altogether.
I looked Olivia in the eyes. “Could you defeat him?”
Olivia took on a look that I wasn’t familiar with seeing on her: Fear.
“No,” she whispered, and shook her head quickly.
Mentally, I added this ancient boy to my already too long list of creatures to destroy, and looked back toward his little shack.
“Alright, I’ll give you the damned spell.” I shouted louder than I had intended, but the boy only smiled.
He walked toward us while saying. “Dr. Doran, I understand the moral quandary that this poses to you and I am more than willing to compensate you for your concern.” The ancient boy stopped before us. “I have already promised to tell you where you can find your answers, but for your troubles I am also willing to provide you with the transportation required to locate the individual who will be aiding you.” He smiled his creepy smile up at me. “As I am sure that you’re aware, time is different here, and the sooner we can get you to your answers, the sooner you can get home to your body.”
I spent what felt like the next twenty or so minutes teaching the guttural words of the song to the ancient boy as well as explaining the types of images and promises he would have to work to make the deal work. I should have just skipped the second part, because, as I expected, he already knew the deal he would have to make and only needed to know the command.
I kept my eyes mostly averted of the horrid monster. I have faced my fair share of creatures, including Night Gaunts, but they can usually sense something when
they’re near me, as if I am a predator, and react accordingly. We were fortunate that this one threw its eyeless gaze my direction only once that I noticed before focusing on the ancient boy entirely.
He practiced it then and I was amazed with how the beast that arrived didn’t tear him apart when, instead of riding it to the world of my birth, he simply sent it away.
Oh yes, this ancient boy was going to be a very dangerous foe at some unfortunate later date.
While the beast’s wings were still audible in this reality, the ancient boy returned his attention to Olivia and me.
“I am a man of my word. Please follow me.” He led us back into his shack where he turned around to face us.
The false child eyed Olivia for about the hundredth time, but this time he didn’t stop himself from toying with us. “So many people in your head, Dr. Doran. Would you be willing to house another?” I felt as though he was trying to anger Olivia, but she didn’t take the bait.
“More powerful beings than you have tried.” I knocked on my skull. “No room for rent, sorry.” I glanced around his place again and this time the place was well lit. I noticed the snowy scene outside of the windows for the first time. Everything was covered in a thick layer of mid-winter snow. I glanced back toward the still opened door and took note of the beautiful spring day and tall grasses.
This time, I managed to avoid looking like a tourist and instead jumped straight into business. “How can we find our man?”
The ancient boy looked at me with mock confusion before smacking his forehead lightly as if just remembering. “Come with me.”
He walked back to the door that we had just entered and slammed it shut. Then, just as quickly, he threw it open.
I couldn’t hide my surprise this time. Outside the house was a bustling city and a completely different, and much grayer sky.
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 27