Strange whisperings came from above, similar to those which had emanated from the door mouths encountered within the keepers of the chasm’s domain. He looked up and saw the mannequins – those that had been the theatre audience – gazing down to him with unblinking stares.
Stave reached the end of the corridor.
On the table stood a cardboard model of the stage he had left behind, the size of a shoe box, stylised in every detail. The cardboard arches stood no more than two inches high. The stage lights were a row of beads, the marionettes at the sides, just cutouts made from thick paper. Even the horse skeleton hanging by its hooves from the rope was there, small and made from cardboard, painted in silver. Laying below it stood a tiny cardboard box and a trapdoor.
In this version, the stage backdrop of the cottage in the woods was a framed painting. Stave picked it up to study it more closely.
He knew he must hang the painting on the first wall with the brass hook on it, although not quite certain why. However, in this dream environment, it seemed a sensible course of action.
Dream logic again.
With the picture firmly in his grasp, he walked slowly back along the grey and cold corridor, inspecting the lifeless walls as he did so, sometimes peering into the other corridors leading off. They all seemed as featureless as each other.
More whispering from the mannequins. Then, joining that sound were clattering, clacking and squawking noises.
He turned the corner into the first corridor to see the skeleton horse trotting towards him in an ungainly fashion. Blue steam came from the skull’s nostril holes. Its eye sockets were filled with maggots and in its ribcage squirmed snakes of different lengths and markings.
It broke into a canter and began to shriek, heading towards Stave, who stepped back into the side corridor with a nimble step. The bony entity galloped past.
Stave turned quickly left into the main corridor, looking back to see the nightmare creation disappearing into the distance.
A sudden thought came to Stave’s mind, that the corridors were his coffin, an wicked maze with no exits, and that he was trapped without food or water. Not that he had thought about eating or drinking since entering the tunnel on the bus those hours ago.
Upon reaching the beginning of the first corridor, he hung the small painting onto the hook on its back wall. And as he did so, the wall moved back slightly. He continued to push the wall, a sense of the unreal enveloping him. He was extending the grey painted corridor, the more he pushed. It was easy to move, only the minimum pressure required by pressing his palms to it.
He exposed long cardboard boxes, the height and width of coffins, standing at regular intervals, inset into the side walls. In each one stood a cardboard articulated figure. Their hands and feet were together as if laid to rest standing upright. Their cardboard faces showed eyes shut, scrawled in black, and mouths turned downward, painted roughly with grey paint.
After he had pushed the end wall another fifteen feet, he exposed a thin lift with its single door open, standing on the right-hand wall.
He inspected it with suspicion. But still, it seemed the only means of escape…
He stepped inside and turned to face the corridor with its lines of boxes. The figures inside them twitched and jerked. He was about to press one of the buttons in the lift but before he could, the door slid over of its own accord and plunged him into semi-darkness. Only the bulbs from a control panel gave out light as they glowed in neon, showing the numbers seven to one. He pressed one of them but there was no movement, only the sound of sarcastic chuckling. None of the other numbers worked either, except to promote the same mirth.
Stifling. Trapped, going from bad to worse.
Stave became claustrophobic, and worriedly shouted, ‘Got to get out,’ and he beat upon the sides of the lift.
Only then did he notice an unlit button, further down the side, marked with the letter “H”.
He pressed it with urgency despite a gnawing feeling that his situation could only worsen.
I could be sending myself to Tremelon Zandar’s hell. Why is heaven always above and hell below? Then what manner is hell when different for everyone? Is it banal to say that my life might flash before me? Then at least I’ll remember my life…
Immediately, the lift shuddered with an excruciating sound as if nails were being scratched across a blackboard. Then the sensation of moving down in the cold metal box.
After a few minutes, Stave convinced himself he would be travelling downwards forever. But just as he thought this, the lift came to a sudden halt and the door slid open. Orange light bathed him. Stave stepped into the interior of a vandalised cottage.
26 : WITNESSING A DAY TERROR
From within the interior of the rubbish-strewn living room, Stave peered out of one of the smashed leaded windows to the outside. Deep orange light from the sun that was like a gold plate scratched with lacerations streamed through the damaged panes of the derelict cottage. Grey birds hung in the air over a wide expanse of blackened earth, within a valley barren of life. Parched grass turned yellow on the hills somehow avoided the sun’s orange rays. And all around the rim of the valley crept dark blue filaments under the contaminated sky. The soil was furrowed at random with craters and piles of earth desecrating it. Between those craters and piles, tree stumps lay, their trunks strewn between them. In the distance an object reflected the light, glowing as if a candle flame.
Looking back to the inside, Stave viewed with dismay the damage to the living room. Part of the ceiling including some of the oak beams had fallen in one corner in rough mounds. Battens from the walls lay on the rolled-up carpet along with peeled wallpaper and the dusty mess. The rugs had been stuffed into holes in the exposed floorboards. Stave identified the upturned settee and mahogany sideboard, pulled to the floor and strewn with debris. They belonged to him.
Sudden recognition now. This is my cottage, my dwelling. But with so much ruination; I feel despair…
And upon going into the sitting room, he found more destruction – chairs were upturned, shelves ripped from the walls, desk broken and drawers scattered on the floor. His modest library was no better, with books ripped from the bookcases and laying on the defiled carpet in untidy heaps, some with pages ripped from them, others half-burned.
Perhaps the damage to his property was an attempt to damage his psyche? If that was the case, it had succeeded as a dark mood overtook him, as if even his mind was being covered by fallen beams and dust.
The pine kitchen door had been pulled from its hinges and lay flat on the floor.
Stave heard grating voices, and clicking and grunting.
He reticently peered into the kitchen, hiding behind the wall and one of the doorposts. Two agents of Tremelon wearing full masks sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. One of the masks showed the closed eyes of a woman in her thirties, while the other, a man of similar age. They sat with grey bibs around their necks, knives and forks held upright on the table each side of their grey, square plates.
Above them, the beams in the kitchen ceiling were groaning and breathing as if an alive creature.
Stave stepped back into the sitting room with its destroyed library. He must leave immediately. But then he heard seemingly normal voices and was intrigued. Furtively, he looked around the doorframe again to the kitchen interior.
The woman at the sink draining board stood preparing salad vegetables; the man, by the wall cupboards next to the fridge, stuffed a chicken with chunks of red meat on the works surface. Both had their backs to Stave.
‘How are we doing, my dearest Tacie? Getting there?’ the standing man said.
‘Oh yes, I particularly love this dream,’ the woman by the sink replied while slicing a stick of celery into small pieces. ‘Although I really don’t understand why you are wearing cardboard shoes.’
The man turned to her with a pleasant smile. Stave recognised him: it was Konie. He realised that the mask worn by one the agents matched Konie�
��s face precisely.
‘The same reason your right hand is turning to cardboard,’ Konie said, his smile growing the more but eyes showing grief.
‘Oh, that’s making sense,’ Tacie replied and she laughed, and continued laughing. She turned around. Her face was a laughing version of the other agent of Tremelon’s placid mask.
‘You can stop laughing now,’ Konie said. ‘I have finished stuffing the chicken horse.’
At those words, Stave felt something taken from the pit of his stomach. Then something given: a dull aching and sickness starting. The situation seemed deeply disturbing.
Tacie immediately stopped laughing and took hold of a tomato in her left hand. She closed her eyes, this time with no laughter, her facial features relaxed, mouth slightly downturned, matching precisely one of the agent’s masks.
A grey shadow fell over the windowsill and a whispering came from outside, dull, like the shadow.
That you, dear?’ Tacie asked.
‘The beautiful voice? Or the uncanny whispers? Or the beautiful life, as is? ‘Tis not my doing, fair one. How’s the salad now? Managing with your arm turning to cardboard? Rather worrying.’
‘What is, dearest?’
‘The cat, stepping quickly on the railings, without a head or tail,’ Konie said with distress.
‘But that’s all down to me, I’m almost certain. My dream takes funny turns sometimes. I feel the presence of a never-ending void from without and within.’
‘How poetic of you, dear Tacie. From without and within. I know not which. Isn’t it the most real dream you’ve ever had? Like reality, only more real, don’t you think?’
‘I agree. I even feel cold all over now. Colder than I’ve ever felt before. Though I’m embracing it like I should – the colder I feel, the warmer I feel. The warmer I feel, the colder I get. Our eminent visitors are encouraging it. My entrails are…’
‘Don’t be mucky, dearest one,’ replied Konie. ‘Stick to the salad. Eventually, you will be sensationless in the body and mind, like they told us. Can’t hurt, only temporary, they said. Effects of dreamtime, that’s what they told me; then the restored cottage given to us as they promised.’
‘You are funny. Even my cardboard arm and hand are funny.’
‘They are. You’ve grey paint spilled on them, in spatters.’
‘So I do,’ said Tacie. Her face changed to wide-mouthed fear as if she were witnessing a dreadful horror and she whined, ‘Help me, dear.’
The agent with Tacie’s face showing on his mask began to take the mask off but upon Konie answering, the agent’s crab claw hands picked up the cutlery again.
‘Slice the tomato for you?’
‘Of course, loved one,’ she said with a sob in her voice. ‘But mind the snakes on the floor.’
‘What snakes would they be, Tacie? I can’t see any snakes.’
Konie left his place by the refrigerator and hobbled over to his wife.
‘Foot’s playing up,’ he muttered. When next to Tacie, he picked up a knife and began to slice the tomato. ‘Keep going, keep going,’ he said, with anxiety in his voice. When he had pressed the knife down to the middle of the fruit, he stopped, and announced, ‘Something inside.’ He peeled off the cut slice from the half of tomato which had turned grey, and retrieved two tiny bronze feathers from its pipped centre. ‘Out the window, there they go, where this dream’s going, nobody knows,’ he said as he opened the window above the sink and threw the objects out. ‘There, all done for you, dear. You’ve still got to chop, chop, chop more celery,’ he added.
Tacie looked past him to where he had been standing, and said in return, ‘But first, you still have to finish stuffing the chicken horse,’ and she began laughing again. ‘Is that what they called it? Am I right? Was I right at some time? When can we dislike this dream, dear?’
Stave became increasingly disturbed. He sensed that behind her happy face was another with a look of horror, covered as if her real face was a mask after all, like the agents sitting like mannequins at the kitchen table.
Then the dull, staccato voice of one of the agents, ‘Don’t. Hurry. Don’t. Be. Quicker.’
He was uncertain whether or not to confront the evil pair. Then he decided that if he did, it could put Konie’s and Tacie’s lives at risk.
Not knowing of any way to help them from inside the cottage, he backed into the destroyed library. From there, he returned to the living room, opened the front door, and went outside into the unusual sunlight. Perhaps he could convince the couple to escape via the back door after talking quietly to them from outside the kitchen window.
27 : LANDSCAPE OF MIRAGE ECHOES
From the front steps of the cottage, Stave peered at the barren landscape devoid of features, bathed in the hot, orange light.
He tried to recall what had been there before. A forest, that much he did remember, but now all that remained of it were the scarred tree trunks laying on their sides with shrivelled leaves, and stumps scattered across the dark earth.
After going around to the side of the building – the epicentre of the barren landscape – he came to a simple gate, and opened it. From there, he made his way around to the kitchen window. While bending to avoid being seen by the agents of Tremelon, he picked up the bronze feathers and placed them into his trousers pocket with the others.
He bobbed his head up in the hope of talking to Konie and Tacie through the window but he was too late. Both of them had turned into grey-painted cardboard. He was overcome with a deep sadness.
He went back around the cottage, through the wooden gate, and returned to the dead earth of the front garden. And after looking out across the melancholic landscape, he began walking towards the distant hills, weaving his way between the tree stumps.
He accidentally kicked one of them – it gave a bell-like sound, emitting its remarkable golden tone for a minute.
Purity, like a delicate hum of the divine.
On he trudged, avoiding the random piles of soil, and craters indenting the earth. There was a pungent smell of smoke and ash in the cloying air.
Occasionally, he came across sealed cardboard boxes with grey ticks marking their sides. He was tempted to open them but resisted when, upon touching any one of them, it clicked like a Geiger counter.
As he trod across the demolished woodland, he became increasingly concerned at not remembering anything other than from the moment he entered the tunnel a while ago. Three hours before, six or ten even? The announcer at the gathering was right, time seemed malleable, flexible in these dreamscapes.
Around him were mirages. A stone and wood pavilion, piles of moss-covered boulders, antiquated rose bowls carved from marble, a waterfall, a beautifully landscaped garden – all seen as out-of-focus light reflections.
As soon as he walked through a mirage object, it would fade as easily as a phantom.
He sat on one of the tree stumps.
To be without memory was frustrating. If only he could recall what the mirages meant to him.
The words “Love and Beauty” came to mind. If ever there were such fine qualities, he considered they had long gone from this place.
A vibrancy missing, frequencies lost, now that the beauty is destroyed.
Only repellant thoughts of means of destruction remaining. Innocent people’s soul taken, leaving wrecked bodies before spirit desecration.
He stood and trekked on over the damaged soil, avoiding the holes, those large enough to have been caused by explosions or the impact of small meteors.
The orange sun was debilitating – the further on he walked, the more its rays dried his mouth and sapped energy from his already tired limbs.
The legacy of the blistering tangerine.
He considered he was thirsty and thought as much. Immediately, a wooden bowl filled with water stood within one of the smaller craters.
Dream summoning. It worked well again this time. Cassaldra would be pleased with me.
Stave accepted the existenc
e of thought made real easily. A vague memory sprang to mind of mental energies brought into physicality being a normal part of his existence.
The mysterious sea of the unconscious mind.
He slid down to the bottom of the crater but as soon as his hand reached out, the bowl was dragged into the earth by a swarm of metallic snakes, the size of worms. Each one emitted blue smoke from its tiny, fanged jaws. One of the creatures landed on his thumb and straightaway the skin there began to blister. He shook it off and clambered out of the crater.
He visualised the bowl of water again, wishing for it with all of his mental energy, and it appeared at the periphery of his vision. But as soon as he went over to the bowl to take hold of it, that too was dragged into the black soil by the writhing, worm-like snakes.
A vibrating explosion occurred from behind that seemed to tremble the very earth. Stave turned back to see the cottage wreathed in blue flames.
Alarm gripped his throat, already dried from the orange sun. He licked his dried lips with a parched tongue and stumbled onward. His cottage had been totally destroyed. He looked back again, now seeing only a massive brown cardboard box where the cottage had been, a large grey tick marking its side.
More snakes – this time, the size of pythons and made of blue smoke – slithered fast across the dismal field, away from the destroyed cottage. They weaved around the stumps of the trees, down and up the craters, and over the piles of crumbled earth.
They’re moving too fast for me to escape…
A casement window appeared above him, hovering in the orange-lit sky.
Dream logic is required again.
A ladder, he thought. He retrieved the tiny ladder and the magnifying glass from his jacket pocket.
He magnified the ladder with the glass, the same way he had done with the objects underwater in the underground station. He di the same several times until the full-size ladder lay on the ground. He ran to it and picked it up. Once he had stood it vertically, he leant the top of it on the sill of the widow. While climbing up, he looked over the barren landscape to the smoke creatures coming ever closer. Should any one of them touch him, he knew that would be the beginning of the end, an experience worse even than his spirit trapped in the bones of a horse.
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