Get Out of My Dreams

by Fernando Trujillo Sanz

  “Damn it, this one doesn’t go here,” mumbled the man.

  “What’s the book about?”

  For the first time, the man stopped rummaging through the pages.

  “What do you mean, what’s it about?” Smoke began seeping out of his mouth. “Within the pages of this book is the greatest secret imaginable! It contains the answer! For millennia, crimes have been committed to obtain these page—”

  “Easy, buddy,” I said, raising my hand up. The poor guy was acting like a lunatic, obsessed with a torn-up book that actually contained nothing but scribbles. “I can see you’re trying to concentrate. I’ll let you get back to putting everything in order.”

  “He won’t be able to do it,” came the voice I’d been waiting to hear. “I hid some of the pages.”

  So, the two sisters were here. The blond, who’d climbed up a bookshelf that was more than six feet high, smiled at me and greeted me with a wave. She was changing around the order of the books and then piling them up to make a castle. The brunette was on the floor, twirling the stick in her right hand. She was not smiling.

  The defining moment had arrived. I pictured myself taking hold of my fear, wringing it out, then stomping on it and kicking it into the corner of my mind. Nice try, but I hadn’t managed to completely suppress it; it was still there, like an annoying buzzing in my ears.

  “That’s just like you,” I said to the girl. “Instead of helping him put his book back together, you hide the pages. That’s in perfect keeping with your character.”

  I couldn’t have cared less about that book and its missing pages. I just wanted to test my voice, to prove it wasn’t shaking or betraying my emotions. And I had to humor the brunette until she passed the stick to her sister.

  “It’s just a game,” the girl pointed out. “Like everything. I hid them in other books. Some day he’ll find them. So don’t you worry, dimwit.”

  “That’s an impossible game. There must be millions of novels in here.”

  The girl tossed her black hair back. “Would you prefer that I make it easy? There’s no point in that. Anyway, it’s not enough to have the pages. He’ll also need a password.”

  “And I’m sure you won’t be telling him that. You like seeing him suffer.”

  “I don’t know it. Only an old man and a boy that are never separated know it.”

  I let out a long sigh. I was getting bored with the topic of the torn book. “You know something, brat? I’m not interested in your games. I’ve come here to give your sister a gift to repay her for how generous she’s been with me—something I can’t say about you. So, do you mind?”

  She bit her lower lip and exhaled furiously, then smacked the stick on the floor. I did not react. Her sister jumped down—leaving the books in a mess—and grabbed the stick. Donning one of her most enchanting looks ever, she asked, “You brought me a present?”

  “Of course,” I said, inching forward a little to shorten the distance between us. “Do you want to see it?”

  “Yes! Yes! What is it? Tell me!”

  I carefully set the backpack on the floor and took out a cage that I kept covered with a sheet. The little girl was impatiently tugging on my arm and giggling excitedly.

  “I hope you like it.”

  I pulled back the sheet and took out the yellow canary I’d bought before going to Ivan’s house.

  “He’s so sweet!” The girl took the bird and immediately started petting it gently as she sang it a lullaby. Her sister was glaring at me with an evil, nasty expression.

  “I knew you’d like it,” I said to the blond girl while smiling provokingly at the brunette. “I thought you’d be very lonely without your parrot.”

  The canary woke up, stretched and shook its wings, then flew off. The blond girl watched it for a moment then dropped the stick on the floor and took off after it. The stick was little more than a step away from the dark-haired girl.

  We looked at one another for several seconds. I stayed still, then she finally stepped toward me and picked up the stick. Her little eyes were shining.

  “You’re very astute. Now let’s finish our game; you wouldn’t want to disappoint my sister. Come on, follow me.”

  “No.” Now came the really complicated part. “I know all about your game and I don’t plan to continue it. I came here to tell you that.”

  The little blond girl was chasing the canary, jumping from one bookshelf to another. The bird easily avoided her.

  “My sister won’t like your decision. I don’t think you underst—”

  “Oh, I understand everything,” I cut in. “It wasn’t all that complicated,” I added, sounding like a tough, self-confident big shot. “You’re very clever, you devious little manipulator. You taught me how to take objects out of my dreams, each one more difficult than the one before it, just to see if I could learn how. Now you expect me to take you two out. That’s your game—but I figured it out.”

  I knew in an instant I was right when I saw the expression on her face. Her eyes flashed like lightning bolts, then she bared her teeth as she hissed furiously.

  “You think you can refuse? You still don’t know what we’re capable of.”

  “I’ve seen what you’re doing to my friends. I know what you’re capable of.”

  “That was nothing—just a warning.”

  “Well, I have one for you.”

  The dark-haired girl’s face suddenly relaxed. “Seriously? I’d love to hear that.”

  “I brought the canary so you’d know I’ve learned some stuff. If I can take things out into the real world I can bring them in here, too.”

  “I’m trembling with fear,” she said sarcastically. “What do you plan to bring in? A gun? That’d be fun.”

  “I’ll bring my mother,” I stated in my most serious tone of voice. “She brought my father out of a dream—I know that now, too. I bet you don’t want to know what she’s capable of.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Of course I would. You leave me no choice . . . unless you go away and leave me alone once and for all—me and my friends.”

  “Never!”

  The girl was faster than I’d anticipated. She jumped on me, bludgeoning me with the stick in a fit of uncontrolled rage. She hit me in the hip, much harder than she had in the city with no shadows when the angels were fighting with the devil woman. I fell to the floor, rolled, and screamed at the top of my lungs.

  The blond girl stopped chasing the bird and ran to her sister. She tried to hold her back but the brunette shoved her aside and laid into me again, this time in the back and even harder than the first time. I writhed in pain. Between groans, I begged her to stop.

  “Shut up!” shouted the brunette. “You sound like a whiny little girl. Now then, you are taking us out with you. Do you hear me? Or else you’ll really find out how far I can take this. It’s impossible to get away from us. You’ll always end up falling asleep. Do you understand me, idiot?”

  She struck me hard in the shoulder, and would have hit me again but the blond girl stepped in and took the stick from her. She knelt down beside me.

  “Are you all right? Why did you make my sister so angry?”

  Tears streamed down my cheeks a while longer before I was finally calm enough to speak to the blond girl.

  “I can’t take you out of the dream.”

  “Why not?” she asked sadly. “That way the three of us could play together forever. We wouldn’t be alone. Don’t you like me?”

  “Of course I do, but it’s not about—”

  The brunette stepped up beside her sister and glared at me with the most terrifying look I’d ever seen. I shuddered.

  “My sister wants to get out and so do I. You are our friend. If you don’t help us, she’ll never forgive you. She can be very cruel. She’ll invade the dreams of everyone who’s important to you and she’ll do . . . horrible things. Things you truly can’t imagine. Please, don’t make her angry or I won’t be able to contain her.”


  I quickly considered my options and everything she’d just told me. In a split second I was assaulted by at least a million doubts.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said finally. “I’ll take you out.”

  The expression on the blond’s face transformed into a look of deep gratitude. She took my face in her small hands and kissed me on the nose. The brunette seized the moment and took the stick from her before she knew what was happening.

  “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. Now, hurry up. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t get up. I twisted my ankle when you were beating on me.” I pulled up my pant leg to show them my ankle. It was swollen and bruised and looked pretty deformed. The blond girl’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open; I think she would have screamed if she’d had the stick. The brunette looked it over carefully, then leaned her face in close and sniffed it. I yelled when she pressed on it with her finger.

  “So you can’t walk?”

  I shook my head, pressing my lips tight together from the pain. The blond pointed at the stick and then at me, and repeated the gesture several times. The brunette mumbled something I couldn’t hear but it sounded like a protest. After a moment's contemplation, she spoke.

  “Here, take it. Use our stick. But I’m warning you, don’t try anything funny.”

  I nodded.

  She added sternly, “In case you haven’t noticed, here you can’t wake yourself up with the little trick you used last time.”

  She was talking about me committing suicide, or at least putting myself in grave danger, so that the fear would wake me up. I understood now why they’d chosen this closed-in, windowless scenario. One of the security measures I thought I had in place was that I could wake up whenever I wanted if I needed to, but I hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility that I’d be in a safe environment . . . a library. It was clear that the brunette had thought of that. Either way, I couldn’t turn back now.

  I took the stick.

  A wave of happiness washed over me. My plan had worked—at least up to this point. And if I’d been able to irritate the girl enough to pummel me with the stick and then pretend she’d sprained my ankle, it meant Ivan had managed to stay awake, the poor guy, or she’d have seen into his dream and known that I’d twisted my own ankle to trick her and was faking my pain in the dream.

  I kept up with the act and got up slowly, leaning on the little stick. When I was standing up I reached out with the stick, offering it back to the brunette. “Thanks,” I said. But at the last moment I yanked it back and then hit her with it as hard as I could. She fell backwards, landing on her sister. “I owed you that, you horrid little wench.”

  I took off running as fast as I could. Luckily my ankle still wasn’t hurting. And if it had been, I don’t think I would have felt it with the major rush of adrenaline I was experiencing. I desperately searched for an exit or a window to crawl through but there was nothing but books and shelves. I didn’t even want to guess how this was going to end.

  I took as many turns as I could in the hope the twins would also get lost in this maze. Every damn corridor looked the same. The only difference was in how long they were. I never came to any walls, and certainly no exits. In spite of the fact I was dreaming, my strength was limited and I was getting tired. My feelings of desperation were mounting.

  After running for a while—how long I couldn’t tell—I stopped to catch my breath. In spite of my fear, I somehow managed to breathe softly so I wouldn’t make any noise. At first I couldn’t hear anything, but then I heard footsteps; they were fast and definitely belonged to more than one person. It was the girls. They couldn’t speak now that I had the stick, but for some reason they were making a scraping noise as they hurried past the rows of wooden bookshelves. Their footsteps quickly changed direction, sometimes coming from one side and then from the other, and then sometimes from behind me. They were getting closer. I could feel it.

  Suddenly there was absolute silence. I stayed as still and quiet as I could, holding my breath, waiting, wondering with each second if I could go on running from them.

  The shelf in front of me shook and several books fell to the floor. The twins appeared at the end of the corridor.

  I began running full out. I didn’t dare turn my head, but I knew they were right on my heels, silently pursuing me. I turned a corner and stretched out my strides as far as I could. I turned into another aisle. As I ordered my legs to keep moving, I blamed myself for not having carefully planned out a foolproof way to wake myself up. If they caught me, it would all have been for nothing. They’d make me—

  No. I could not accept that. My legs were longer and stronger than theirs, so I could gain some distance on them. I’d keep running until I came to an exit.

  Something hit my shoulder. I didn’t see it, but it threw me slightly off balance and I bumped into a column. By some miracle, I didn’t fall. I didn’t stop running, but again I felt something bump me, this time in the leg. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I had to keep going. I had to get away from them. When something collided with my chest, it knocked the wind out of me and I fell. I tried to get up but could not. An enormous weight was pressing down on my chest, then spread to the rest of my body. The pressure on my chest faded and moved to my stomach, then to my leg, then to my arm. I fought to get up, but something was holding me down.

  The twins appeared at the end of the aisle. They saw me lying on the floor and smiled. Slowly they advanced on me, savoring my fear. I hadn’t given up; I simply had no strength left. I was completely drained. I remained still, unable to take my eyes off them. They were probably about forty feet away.

  The pressure that had been keeping me from getting up lessened a bit but did not totally subside. And that’s when I understood what was happening. Another error on my part.

  Ivan was holding me down. He’d seen me thrashing wildly on the bed and, following my stupid orders, he’d jumped on me to keep me from moving and hurting myself. I thought about screaming for him to leave me alone in the hope that I’d say the same words in the real world as I did in the dream and he’d understand. But I didn’t do it. I was exhausted and couldn’t go on running anyway.

  Besides, the twins were upon me now, less than six feet away. Just a few steps more and it would all be over.

  All of a sudden, the bookshelf that bordered the aisle began to sway. It teetered and, much to my surprise, came tumbling down on the twins, making a thunderous noise that reverberated through the labyrinth. A small cloud of dust rose up, and amidst the haze I saw the shape of a man who, if I was not mistaken, had been the one responsible for the collapse of the bookshelf. My savior looked around him, his gaze finally landing on me. He climbed over the top of the bookshelf and then stopped and stood at the edge of it. The dust dissipated, and I immediately recognized those unmistakable eyes.

  I had admired those eyes and I had hated them, and I’d confronted them on numerous occasions. I had defied them in every way I could think of. But I’d never been happier to see them then at this moment.

  “Dad!”

  “No! Don’t come over here.” My father held his hand up to stop me. “Stay there!”

  It no longer mattered to me that my mother had brought him out of a dream more than sixteen years ago, nor that he’d lied to me my whole life. I just wanted to hug him, to feel safe under his protection, to hear him say everything was going to be okay.

  I obeyed his order. I tried to speak but no words came out.

  The mound of wood that had once been a bookshelf shook and rose up a couple inches. The twins were struggling to get out. My father was trying hard to keep them trapped.

  “You have to go, Son. I won’t be able to hold them back much longer.”

  It was impossible for me to do what he was asking.

  “I thought I could handle them, Da—”

  “Don’t say that! It’s not your fault! You did great, and your intuition was right on. You discovered the stick
was the key.”

  “But you—”

  “I’m the one responsible. I’m so sorry, Son. I didn’t think they’d find you.”

  “Why are they looking for me, Dad?”

  “Because of me. It’s me they’re after. When I got out I inadvertently showed them how to do it and they’ve been looking for me ever since. I didn’t know they’d find out; it was my mistake.”

  It was he the twins had wanted to kill by using my sleepwalking. It was obvious now. They needed me to get them out and my mother to provide the exchange through her unborn twins. If those girls had gotten their way, the tradeoff would have caused my future sisters to burn in my mother’s womb. Just thinking about it turned my stomach.

  “Dad . . . Are you real?”

  It took everything I had to ask a question that, in a way, would define my own identity.

  My father looked at me tenderly. There was a peacefulness in his expression, and sadness, and regret, all mixed together. But most clearly I saw, beyond everything else, the look of a man in love.

  “Your mother made me real. I didn’t even know it was possible, but it worked. I was able to be with her for longer than I had ever dreamed possible. And I had a son—you, my pride and joy.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I couldn’t.” My father titled his head slightly to one side. “If you had known, they would have found you through your dreams.”

  It was the same reasoning I had followed with Ivan to hide my plan, the difference being that my parents had been doing it my whole life. I tried to imagine the sacrifice that represented for my father. Lying, pretending, making excuses so everything would seem normal, putting up with my protests and my anger, seeing the disappointment in my eyes when I didn’t understand his behavior, relegating to a lawyer the most important moments of his son’s life so I wouldn’t find out the truth . . . and God knows how many other things I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  “I had to keep you safe,” my father continued. “I thought I’d done so. But somehow, they found you when your mother became pregnant. I didn’t realize it until a short while ago. I’m so sorry, Son. It was my fault.”