by Mandy White
“Go then! I’m staying! I’m not giving up.”
Oh my god! They aren’t going to give up! I’m being stalked! What the hell did I do to deserve this? Go away! Just go away!
I wondered if I should call the police and report the intruders. Then it occurred to me that the intruders might be the police.
What have I done?
I scrolled through my memory, looking for things I might have done to make the police want me.
I owned my house, paid my taxes and all of my bills were paid up to date. I was quiet as a mime; my neighbors barely knew I existed. I didn’t do drugs other than my prescriptions and didn’t associate with unsavory people. Hell, I didn’t associate with any people.
Colin, where are you when I need you?
Colin would make everything ok. I just needed to get back to my bedroom, where my laptop was.
Afraid to breathe, I crept backward a tiny step at a time. When I reached the bedroom, I ducked inside and pushed the door shut. I leaned against the door frame, listening.
In the living room, the phone started to ring again. It rang once, twice, three times. Four times. Maybe the answering machine had gotten unplugged somehow.
I had better check – wait – what?
Midway through the fifth ring, a woman answered my phone.
“A mitten,” she said.
What? A mitten?
Someone had answered my phone. Which meant that someone was in my house!
Why, oh why didn’t I put a lock on my bedroom door?
I’d never considered putting a lock on my bedroom door. Up until that moment, I’d felt secure enough in my own home that I didn’t feel the need to install additional locks inside the house.
I listened for footsteps but heard nothing.
Colin! Help me! I didn’t know what he could have done to help besides talk to me, but I would have given anything to feel the comfort of his arms around me.
I needed to get out of the house. Too much freaky shit was going on. I needed to get outside and get some fresh air; get a change of scenery.
I needed to find Colin.
I didn’t dare boot up my computer to talk to Colin because the trespasser would hear me. I tiptoed to my bed and burrowed under the duvet, curled into the too-familiar fetal position and waited for the intruder to find me.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep.
* * *
It was dark when I woke.
Darker than usual.
I didn’t remember turning off the lights, but perhaps I had done so to hide from the intruders.
The intruders!
Were the intruders still in the house? Had they stolen anything? Why hadn’t they found me?
I had no answers to any of those questions. I got out of bed, groped my way to the doorway and fumbled for the light switch.
Nothing.
The power was out.
“Shit!” I shouted, momentarily forgetting about the intruders. I clapped a hand over my mouth.
Shut up stupid!
I stood statue-still and listened, hand still covering my mouth. The house was as silent as it was dark. I heard no voices, and no sounds to indicate a storm outside. Then why was the power out?
Maybe the intruders had cut the power. Which meant that they might still be in the house… waiting.
Darkness frightened me. I never allowed my house to become completely dark; I slept with the TV on, and every room contained an LED night-light with a rechargeable battery. Even in a power outage, the house would be dimly lit.
It should not be this dark!
Why was it so dark?
There was only one of two logical answers:
The intruders were still in the house and they had cut the power and taken the batteries out of the night lights.
Or, I had gone blind.
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them as wide as possible. Was I blind?
I waved my hand in front of my face. I felt a slight breeze from the movement, but saw nothing. I touched my eyes with shaking fingers to confirm that they were in fact open, but I couldn’t visually detect even the hint of a shadow.
Breathe. Don’t hyperventilate. This is no time to panic.
My body disagreed. It insisted that this was actually the perfect time to panic. My knees buckled and I crumpled to the floor.
I needed to get my bearings. From the doorway, I could follow the wall to the closet, where I could hide. I crawled slowly to where the door should have been but my hands touched nothing but empty space. I groped around in all directions, but found nothing but floor. No walls, no furniture, even my bed seemed to be missing. I was lost.
I felt like Helen Keller. Yeah, and she didn’t give up, so neither will I, I thought with determination.
I crawled forward further. Sooner or later I was bound to run into something.
The basement stairs. Oh, no!
Maybe I wasn’t in the bedroom anymore! For all I knew I was about to plunge headfirst down the stairs into the basement.
I’d reached my limit. Newfound courage melted away and violent tremors shook my body as sobs took over. I curled into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest. The feel of the cool floor beneath me was comforting. I caressed the polished hardwood with my hand, relieved to feel something solid, a familiar texture.
My hand touched something soft.
What is this? A piece of my clothing?
I touched the object again and it was definitely fabric, with something solid underneath. A piece of furniture, perhaps.
And then it moved, and something grasped my wrist.
It was a hand.
I screamed, long and loud. I no longer cared who heard me because the intruders had already found me. My only hope now was that one of the neighbors would hear me and call the police.
“HELP ME! HEEELLLP!” I screamed over and over, until I ran out of breath and my voice went hoarse. My face was soaked in sweat. At some point during my screaming fit, the intruder released his grip on me.
I covered my head with my arms and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for daylight or death, whichever came first.
“Help me,” I whimpered. “Please, somebody help me.”
“I’m here for you, Dana,” a voice came through the darkness.
It was Colin. I could hear him as clearly as if he were in the room with me. The sound of his voice equally soothed and terrified me. My laptop was turned off, so how the hell was I able to hear him?
Maybe he was the intruder! Maybe he wasn’t a charming psychology student at all, but a creepy Internet stalker.
No! Not him! Not my Colin! I refused to believe Colin was anything but sweet, but an alternative explanation eluded me.
The darkness was darker than anything I’d ever seen. It felt thick, suffocating, like a wool blanket over my face.
“Colin?” I whispered.
“I’m sorry, Dana. I’m so sorry.”
Why? I wondered. Please don’t tell me you’re sorry you’re about to kill me.
“I’m going to stay right here by your side. You’re going to be okay.”
“I’m scared, Colin.”
“I’m going to stay right here beside you,” he repeated, “I’m not going to leave you, Dana.”
“Stay with me, please. I need you.”
“Please wake up, Dana. Please.” His voice broke on the second ‘please’.
Is he crying? What the hell for?
“Please wake up,” he whispered again.
I’m trying to, Colin!
* * *
When I woke, I was safe in my bed. Moonlight streamed through the windows, bathing the room in a soothing glow. Then I realized that it wasn’t moonlight, but my LED nightlights, which were once again working.
What a freaky dream. It sounded like Colin was right here in the room with me.
I got up and checked the light switch and confirmed that the power was on. My laptop sat on its table beside the bed, closed and shut off, ju
st the way I had left it. I opened it and pressed the power button.
The digital clock beside the bed said 4:25.
Wait a minute.
The clock wasn’t blinking. I looked at my computer and confirmed that it was indeed 4:25 am. Colin wouldn’t be up for at least another hour.
If there had been a power outage, the clock would be blinking and the time would be wrong. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and giggled to myself. Of course the clock wasn’t blinking. It was just another one of those damn dreams. That explained the creepy thick darkness with nothing but Colin’s voice.
Maybe the intruder had been a dream too!
There was one way to find out if it had been a dream. I crept out to the living room, glancing furtively around corners, looking for signs of an intruder. Everything was exactly as it should have been.
The phone was in its cradle, where it belonged. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID screen to see which number had called last, and on what date.
The last number was my co-worker Pauline, who had called me the day before the accident to ask me if I’d cover a shift for her. I had told her I wouldn’t be available. (given that I planned to quit the job.)
All of the calls on the list were old. There was nothing new. There should have been at least two new calls. The phone had rung twice – once when I was besieged at the front door by unwanted intruders, and once when one of the intruders had answered my phone. The fact that there were no new calls confirmed that it had all been a dream: the knock at the front door, the phone call, the darkness. My sanctuary was secure.
I made a pot of coffee and returned to the bedroom to see if Colin was around yet. He wasn’t.
In the dream, I had been about to leave the house to refill my prescriptions. In reality, I had actually been planning to do that but now I was having second thoughts. What if the dream was prophetic? What if someone came to my door the moment I tried to go outside? It was a matter of timing; that was all. There was no way there would always be someone on the doorstep. Odds were, I could open the door anytime and find nobody there.
Like right now, for example.
I could open the door right at that moment and nobody would be there. And so what if there was? It wasn’t the end of the world. All I had to do was tell whomever it was to go away, that I wasn’t interested in whatever they were offering.
Open the door. Go ahead. Do it. Prove that there’s nothing out there.
I walked to the front window and peeked through the blind to confirm that the doorstep was empty. The street was empty. Not a soul was in sight.
See? It’s safe. Now open the door.
I placed my hand on the knob.
DING-DONG!
I jumped back at the sound of the doorbell. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a doorbell.
What the hell?
DING-DONG!
I started to laugh when I realized the sound wasn’t coming from the door at all, but from my laptop. The doorbell sound was my email notifier. I ran back to my bedroom to check.
There were two new emails. One was junk mail from a Christian dating site. “Find the match God has chosen for you,” it said. Yeah, right, God needs to use Internet spam to find people dates. The second one was a poorly written letter informing me that I had inherited a large sum of money from a member of the Nigerian royal family. I deleted both.
Damn! Where are you, Colin?
He didn’t come online at all that morning, which sucked because I’d really wanted to talk to him about the bizarre nightmare that was already fading from my memory.
Maybe I should start writing this crap down.
Writing might not be a bad idea, actually. It was therapeutic, from what I’d heard. I’d always dreamed of one day writing a book. Maybe journaling my strange dreams would be a good start.
I sat down at my computer and opened a new Word document. I thought for a moment about where to begin, then started to type. Any plans I’d had to leave the house or open the door to check for intruders were forgotten as I delved into the surreal dreamscape that had been my nightly home.
I lost track of time while writing. I took a break to stretch my legs and drink some water, and then resumed work on my manuscript. I wasn’t sure when it had ceased being a journal and made the transformation into a manuscript, but that was how I now thought of what I was writing: a manuscript. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it when I was finished but I had a feeling that the tale was far from over.
I didn’t hear from Colin that evening, so I sent him an email:
Miss you. I’ve had some pretty bizarre dreams lately. I’ve decided to start writing them down. Who knows, it might make a good story one day. Going to go to bed now. Hope I catch you in the morning.
Dana
I nestled into a plush pile of pillows and duvet, floating on a breeze of Valium like a piece of dandelion fluff. Writing about my scary experiences had given me some peace of mind. For the first time in many nights I looked forward to a restful sleep.
~*~
~ 14 ~
The Quake-Maker
I was not surprised to find myself in yet another strange place, given the bizarreness of my recent dreams.
It looked like a factory or refinery of some sort. Metallic structures surrounded me far and wide like an endless city consisting entirely of industry.
Two pale suns lit a clear blue-green sky that reminded me of a tropical sea. Even combined, the twin suns did not match the intensity of the sun on Earth.
Ashen towers stretched toward the aquamarine sky. Pipes coiled up the sides of the towers, connecting one to the next. Layer after layer of steel grate walkways zig-zagged from tier to tier, linked with staircases and spanning the gaps between towers. From what I could see, I could walk from one end of whatever-this-was to the other without ever touching the ground.
I climbed the nearest stairway to the level above ground and followed the walkway around the side of the massive tower. The hollow clank of my footsteps echoed on the steel grate.
I contemplated for a moment the wisdom of venturing deeper into this bizarre place. The thought of getting lost in a maze of steel didn’t appeal to me but I continued forward nonetheless. I followed the walkway, winding upward around one tower and onto the next. It occurred to me that climbing a narrow staircase to a dizzying altitude was uncharacteristic for me, given my intense fear of heights, but I felt compelled to climb despite the growing unease in my gut.
I heard a faraway noise – a dull metallic clang. A few seconds later, the rail beneath my hand thrummed as the sound waves reverberated through the structure. I froze, waiting and listening.
I heard it again. This time it was closer.
CLANG!
It was the sound of one gigantic piece of steel crashing into another with tremendous force.
CLANG! CLANG!
It was getting closer.
With each clang, the sound waves intensified, resonating through my body from the steel grate beneath my feet. Something gargantuan was coming my way.
A metallic cacophony erupted all around me. My ears ached from the sound, but I didn’t dare let go of the handrail to cover them.
The world shook.
Towers swayed and I heard the metallic clatter of pipes rattling against the steel structures. I looked over the edge, regretting how high I had climbed. If only I had stayed on the safe, solid ground.
Giant fissures opened far below. The surface I had deemed safe mere seconds earlier crumbled before my eyes. Massive chunks of dirt and rock fell away from the towers and the place I had stood before starting my climb became a black abyss.
The towers swayed but seemed sturdy. I couldn’t see how far down into the ground they reached, but they appeared to be deeply rooted, as if anchored to the very core of the planet.
No ground was visible anywhere; just more mazes of stairs and walkways leading down into darkness.
An earthquake!
I was trappe
d at the top of a tower in the middle of what appeared to be the mother of all earthquakes. Earthquakes terrified me. I’d experienced a series of quakes during a visit to Los Angeles some years ago – not devastating by California standards, but no less traumatic for me. I never recovered from the realization that the earth could move under my feet whenever it felt like it, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I’d never felt so out of control in my life. Feeling out of control was the most terrifying of all terrors.
As I clung to the steel railing with all my might, waiting for the end, I noticed words stamped on the tower in front of me. I struggled to keep my eyes focused and read from the swaying structure.
Property of Guh-Ptarng-Bdarng
Universal Seismology Incorporated
All at once I understood, as if plucking a lost memory from the back of my brain.
Guh Ptarn-Bdarng was the Universal Quake-Maker. And yes, he was gargantuan.
With each one of Guh’s heavy footfalls, ripples of energy radiated across time and space, colliding with other worlds. When one of those worlds was at a vulnerable point in its physical composition, such as when tectonic plates were under a peak amount of pressure, a seismic event was triggered. I was witnessing the butterfly effect in action, from an alien world. I understood that each action had a reaction, and that each event was the product of a trigger somewhere in the universe.
How the hell do I know all of this, or even understand it? I totally sucked at science in school!
The real question was, why was I there? Of all the places I could have traveled in my dream, why had I found myself on the Quake-Maker’s home world?
I could only think of one answer: It was a warning.
I was about to have an earthquake at home. One of my biggest worries was about to become reality.
* * *
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
I sat up, awake. My alarm clock had gone off even though I didn’t remember setting it.
My bedside lamp was still on, and the novel I’d been reading lay beside me on the bed. If I’d been reading science fiction, it would make sense that I would dream about an alien world, but it was a fantasy novel, filled with warriors, wizards and elves. If anything, I should have dreamed myself into a magical fairytale. Now that would have been a good dream, especially if Colin played the part of the prince.