by Brian Hodge
The woman was already screaming as Earl wrenched the passenger door open, his snarling teeth gnashing down into her lips like a rabid dog, his hands pulling her face into his from the back of her head. She continued to shriek—her cries wet from her blood soaked throat. Earl pulled her from the car by her neck, still chewing ravenously into her face, gnawing on cartilage and pulling back only when his teeth struck painfully into her howling skull.
By the time Earl pulled away, his feral face glimmering in the headlights, the woman had long ceased to move. Steam was smoldering from her mutilated face, rising upwards before being devoured by the chill.
“Jesus, man,” Saint said, a droplet of blood falling from his chin. He had just cut the index finger of the man off and was placing it in his backpack. “When you say you don’t need a weapon, you mean it, my friend.”
Earl giggled, the laugh escaping his lips in a guttural growl of foggy breath, and looked up to the billboard. He whispered the last ten seconds to the new millennium, the words coming out of his mouth in blood tinged bursts. When the numbers reached midnight, he waited for a brief moment, wondering if the world would, in fact, end.
Earl looked over at Saint—his grinning teeth caked with the flesh of his victim. “Happy New Year, man. Feels fucking good to be alive.”
They All Dream About Them Here
“Ah, new cellmate? Hello there, pardner,” a man’s gravelly voice asked from a dimly-lit corner of the room.
I just stared at him as the cell door slammed shut at my back.
The man’s face illuminated as he struck a match and lit his cigarette. He had a long nose and a face full of scars and lines. His two front teeth were unusually long and jutted out like a rodent. Messy blond hair stuck out from his head in stringy slivers. He gazed back at me, shadows dancing around his dark blue eyes. He finally waved the match out and studied me as he took slow puffs from his cigarette.
“Friendly, aren’t ya?” the man finally asked.
I sighed and threw my extra set of clothes on the top bunk bed. The cell smelled of sweat and shit.
“Look, you don’t gain anythin’ by being rude to me,” the man said, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. “My name is Robert, but you can call me Rabbit. Everyone else does. Even my own momma calls me Rabbit on account of my teeth. I know how to survive a place like this, so you should stay friendly with me. I’ve been here for ten years now.” He held his hand out for shaking.
I stared at him a moment before speaking, ignoring his hand. “Listen, I spent two years in a Texas prison. I think I can handle a stay at this place. My name is Frank Morrison.”
“Do you dream a lot, Frank?”
“What the hell kind of question is that? It’s none of your damn business whether I dream or not.”
“See, that’s why I’m still sane,” Rabbit whispered I couldn’t stop staring at his teeth. “On account that I don’t dream. I haven’t dreamed in a long time.”
“Listen, Rabbit,” I said. “I don’t care about your dreams, either. I just want to serve my time and get the hell out of here. I want to do it quietly with no trouble. Understand?”
“I don’t dream on account of my brain damage. I shot myself in the head after murderin’ my cheating wife. I found her in bed with a fuckin’ Bible salesman. You believe that shit? I shot them both up real good. I regret it now, but what can you do? I must have shot away the part of my brain that dreams. Travis, my last cell mate, he was a dreamer. Dreamed every damn night. It drove him mad. He only died two days ago, you know. Bashed his head into the wall on your left there. See it? They cleaned it as best they can, but you can still see the splatters. I have more I want to tell you, but I don’t know if I can trust you yet.”
I looked to my left. The cell wall did indeed have what appeared to be a large blood splatter I could see droplets on the floor too. A fly buzzed in one of the darker areas Some guys do not handle prison well. I’d seen my fair share of men losing their minds when I was in the Gulf War. They get to the point where they will do anything to destroy themselves.
I turned back to face Rabbit.
He was smiling, teeth gleaming. “So you fought in the war, huh?” he asked. “You should be a hero. How did you manage to fuck things up so much that you ended up here? Life is almost funny the way things end up. Hell, you made the world a free place, and now you are stuck in a very small cell with a convicted murderer.” His southern accent was so thick he almost sounded like a cartoon. He pronounced the last word “murderah.” He was like a dangerous and feral Forrest Gump.
“What I’d like to do is get a little peace and quiet in here so I can get some sleep, Rabbit,” I said. “Think you can handle keeping your mouth shut until morning?”
“I’m looking forward to gettin’ a good night’s sleep myself,” Rabbit said as he laid back, arms behind his head. “Travis talked in his sleep. Anyway, I hope you’re friendlier in the mornin’.”
I didn’t answer him as I removed my shoes and climbed into bed. I stared at the black ceiling and thought about my fate. It was 1999, and if I played my cards right I should be able to get out of this place in about four or five years with good behavior.
I got sent here for robbery. Why? I guess you could say that the war fucked me up real bad. I had a hard time adjusting to regular life, and it wasn’t long before I was struggling to make some cash. When the judge found out I was a veteran, it only seemed to make him meaner.
I was sent here, one of the world’s most hardcore prisons. This prison was much worse than I expected it to be. It looked ancient for one thing. This place must have been built over a hundred years ago. The black-gray walls were covered with strange scratch marks. The lighting, a sickly fluorescent, was so dim you had to squint in many places.
The guards here also seemed odd. They had a strange zombie-like look about them, like their minds were other places. When they did look at you it was with a cold and murderous gaze. I hadn’t seen one friendly face since I got here. The prison seemed like something out of the early 1900’s. You would think Georgia would have all modern prisons by now. Last I heard they were building a new one, but that they wouldn’t be moving the prisoners for another few years now.
The smell was something I didn’t think I’d ever get used to. There was something just underneath all the damp mildew—something decaying.
It was also unnaturally quiet. Normally, a prison would be loud with all kinds of different noises—men laughing and shouting, guards giving orders, etcetera. Not one single prisoner shouted out at me as I was being led to my cell. I was greeted only by the same I-am-dead-inside eyes from all of them. It was like they were listening to a mysterious song that only they could hear. There was such a strong sense of despair about the whole place. It felt as if something was about to happen. There was a kind of tension in the air.
I fell asleep staring at the ceiling, imagining that I could somehow see the stars above
When I awoke, Rabbit was standing right next to me, staring into my face.
“They visited ya, Frank,” Rabbit said. “And look, you’re bleedin’ on the corner of your eye. What did you dream about?”
I jumped out of the bed and grabbed Rabbit by the throat, slamming him against the blood-splattered wall. “Stay away from me when I’m sleeping. In the future, if I say anything in my sleep I want you to keep it you yourself. I just want to do my time and get out of here. I don’t want to make a friend of a brain-damaged, inbred, buck-toothed murdering fuck named Rabbit, you understand?”
As I let go of his throat I felt something wet drop down the side of my right cheek like a teardrop. A droplet of blood landed on my foot. I touched the side of my face and I felt a small burning spot where I was missing my flesh. My chest was burning too.
But I did dream. It was one of the most horrifying dreams I’ve ever had.
“I can help you, Frank,” Rabbit said. His voice was raspy from being choked. “I know a lot about them. Travis told me all abou
t them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“They walk on their knees,” Rabbit said. He rubbed his throat as he moved to sit on the bed. “But they move with the grace of wild cat. They have long nails that scrape and click when they walk. Their faces look painted—almost like them Japanese geisha girls.”
I froze. How the hell could he know? “What the fuck are they, Rabbit?”
“Travis called them the dream demons. They live in this prison.”
“Your last cell-mate dreamed about them?”
“They all dream about them here, Frank. All except me. They dream about other things, too. Tell me what you saw in your dream, Frank. Maybe I can help ya.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to tell this crazy fucker anything about me. But something seemed too real about the dream. And as fucked up as my head was from the war, I knew there was just no way that my mind could dream up that thing. The only place that a thing like that could come from was Hell. Plus, how the hell could he know what they look like?
“If I find that you told any of the other prisoners about my dream I will choke you in your sleep,” I finally said. “Do you understand, Rabbit?”
Rabbit offered me a smile, his blue eyes seeming to glow with excitement. “Tell me, Frank.”
“It wasn’t like a dream at all,” I said, shuddering as I saw its eyes in my mind. “I was sleeping and I awoke to the sound of heavy breathing. I couldn’t tell what it was at first so I waited a minute for my eyes to adjust. He had these long arms that bent in all kinds of weird directions. This fucking thing was stuck to the ceiling above me, hanging by his nails like a spider. What kind of sick bastard would create a being like this? Its face was white and it almost seemed like it was covered in some kind of thick make-up, red lipstick and black mascara. The mouth is painted in a smile, but the lips cover long, sharp teeth. The eyeliner looked Egyptian almost, like King Tut or some shit like that. He was just staring at me with these crazy eyes, not blinking.” I stopped talking. I hadn’t felt this unsettled for a long time.
“Keep goin’, Frank,” Rabbit said, nodding his head.
I continued “I tried to move, but I found that I was paralyzed. Then the thing dropped down on me. It just stared into my eyes. I could feel its hot hands on both of my sides. He leaned back and thrust his face right into mine. His breath smelled like flowers. He brought his sharp fingernail under my eye and just gave it a little cut. Then it cut my shirt away and started writing in my flesh. It was so goddamn real, Rabbit. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. Not words, something else. They looked like symbols or hieroglyphics. After awhile, I couldn’t even see the symbols anymore because there was too much blood. When it was done, it skittered back up the wall and literally disappeared into the ceiling. I still have fucking goose bumps here, Rabbit. If that was just a dream how the hell did that thing get in my head? I would never even in my darkest imagination create something like that.”
I looked at my chest, expecting to see some of the strange markings. There was nothing, but I could still feel it burning my flesh.
“It wasn’t really a dream, Frank,” Rabbit said. He stood up and looked at the ceiling. I followed his line of sight and saw that the corner was unusually dark. Or maybe dark was the wrong word. It was more blurry, like it was underwater or something.
“I don’t understand what you mean. My chest isn’t bleeding. So how the hell is it not a dream?”
“Your eye, Frank,” Rabbit said. “It’s not still bleedin’, but it was.”
I stopped breathing for a second. “Holy shit, you’re right. But how do I know you didn’t cut me in my sleep?”
“And cause you to have a dream where somethin’ cuts you?”
“I guess you are right.”
A voice boomed into the cell from the corridor outside. A message from the warden. “There is a lockdown currently in progress. All men just hold steady. We will get breakfast to you as soon as possible.”
“What the hell is that about?” I asked.
“They had one yesterday too,” Rabbit answered. “John Manson was murdered in his cell. A man named Riley Walker was murdered last weekend. All cut up, they was—even though there wasn’t a knife in sight. I’m sure you have a good idea what cut him, Frank, don’t you? It was all this prison talked about yesterday. It must have happened again.”
“Are you trying to tell me these dream demons as you call them are murdering people in their dreams, Rabbit?”
“No. They aren’t quite doing it in dreams, Frank. They are real. I think that you can just see them better in your dreams. And not just the dream demons are killin’ people. There are other things, too. They are just as unspeakable from what Travis told me.”
“Why do you keep saying they aren’t doing it in dreams.”
Rabbit picked up a bar of soap from the sink and held it out to me. He smiled, his buck teeth appearing even larger. “Watch this. Travis and I discovered it a few weeks ago.”
Rabbit threw the bar of soap right into the ceiling above his head. To my astonishment, the soap vanished with a soft pop.
I felt my goose bumps rise. “What the hell was that? Is this some kind of trick?”
“I told you it wasn’t a dream. That’s how that thing got into the cell. It’s some sort of a doorway.”
“A doorway to where, Rabbit?” I asked, still staring at the ceiling in disbelief. “How the hell is this possible?”
“A doorway to where they come from. I don’t know how it’s possible any more’n you do.”
“Could we go in there?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Why would you want to? You really want to come face to face with one of them in their own place?”
“I’d rather find some way to stop them before they visit me again,” I said. As I spoke, I could still feel my chest burning.
A half-hour later our breakfast arrived. We ate in silence. I could not keep my eyes away from the blurry corner of the room. It was like my dream had somehow spilled into waking reality, though I knew that wasn’t the case. Not if Rabbit’s last cell mate had an encounter with these dream demon things.
After some arguing, I found myself sitting on my top bunk with a sheet tied around my waist. We had tied together a bunch of them, creating a makeshift rope. The plan was for me to venture into this damn invisible hole. I had already put my hand into it and nothing had happened other than a slight cold feeling on my fingertips. If the guards came in right now I wasn’t sure how we would manage to explain what the hell we were doing.
“Remember, Rabbit, if you hear me cry out I want you to pull me back in,” I said, readying myself mentally. “If you feel me tug on this I want you to pull me back in, too.”
With a little help from Rabbit, I managed to poke my way into the hole.
All I could see in every direction was a sickly green mist. The cold air snapped into my face, smelling sweet, but with a sense of decay underneath. Off in the distance I could hear someone screaming. Seeing no immediate threat, I managed to climb all the way in. The sheet, still tied around my waist, disappeared into the green mist below my feet.
I walked as far as the sheet would allow, which was about eight feet. I couldn’t tell which way was up, as the greenish mist covered everything. I couldn’t even tell whether it was a ceiling or a sky above my head. What the hell could this place possibly be? The only words that came to my mind was from the old science fiction and horror magazines I used to read as a kid: Another dimension.
Off in the distance I could hear a soft clicking sound. And it was getting closer.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
I knew what it was immediately—one of the dream demons.
The space between the clicking sounds got faster and I could sense that it was coming right for me.
I was about to yank on the sheet to have Rabbit pull me back in when one of the demons flew out of the mist. I tried to jump to the side but only managed to los
e my balance and fall backwards on my ass.
The demon sailed over my head, its geisha face painted into a grimace, and then seemed to vanish into the floor itself.
I waited a second, but nothing happened. Other than the occasional scream off in the distance, everything was quiet.
The dream demon had gone right into the cell with Rabbit. I gave the sheet a hard tug, and to my shock, it was loose. I pulled it again. Rabbit’s end of the sheet was nothing but a blood-covered, frayed piece of sheet. I bit down panic as I fell to my knees and started crawling as fast as I could to the spot where I imagined the doorway to our cell was.
The demon shot out of the ground just in front of my face, spraying me with blood. It ran off into the mist, vanishing.
I stared at the spot where I saw the creature exit, and I fell forward into the cell. I landed on the top of the bunk bed and looked around. The bloodied end of the sheet still lay in the other world and hung from the ceiling as if it was embedded into the stone.
As a war veteran I have seen a lot of horror and carnage. So much, that I thought I was practically numb to it on some level. But what I saw educated me to a new way of seeing what violence could do.
Blood was splattered everywhere. Rabbit was literally scattered all over the room. Pieces of his flesh clung to the wall and cell bars. The only recognizable part of my former cell mate was his head. The head’s chin was missing, the upright skull left resting with its top buck teeth against the stone floor. His blonde hair stuck out in blood-covered tufts, his blue eyes wide with shock and terror. A pool of blood had spilled out of the cell and into the corridor.
From the hallway, someone shrieked—breaking my mind from the carnage around me.
A guard ran by the cell, hit the pool of blood, and fell right on his back. He looked over at me and we made eye contact for a brief second. In that contact our eyes said the same thing: What the fuck is going on?