Finally I decided I was only being fanciful in thinking that anything at all untoward had taken place in the room and decided to face my un-needful fears. The mirror stood as it had done the day before. Only the degree of sunlight having severely diminished its surface appeared even more misty than before. Tentatively I reached out and touched its tarnished surface. I poked at it brazenly enjoining myself to stop being such a feint-hearted fool. My fingertip vanished.
Because the element of shock and surprise had gone I did not this time pull back in fear but was instead curious at this trick, this odd phenomenon. Several times I inserted a finger into the glass pulling it back out quickly again. I then immersed my whole hand before rapidly withdrawing it. After repeating this some half dozen times I became more adventurous and inserted my whole right arm. There appeared to be no harm done to my skin, tissue or muscular system whatsoever. I tried a leg. Nothing. Then I inserted both arms at once. This really was most curious! At this point I took my pen from my inside jacket pocket and placed it on the glass. It went through easily and without resistance. And back out again. I then pushed it in up to the tip of the thing. As I was holding it there, unsure what to do next I suddenly lost grip of the end of it and it fell from my grasp. I looked all around at the foot of the mirror but it was nowhere to be seen. It was clear. It had fallen inside!
Now came a more serious decision, one which somehow I felt I had no choice but to try. Should I risk my head in the thing? With great pains and much returning fear I placed my forehead upon the cool glass. I was unaware of any change. I pushed forward a little harder. Suddenly my eyes became misted at the point of contacting the mirror surface and I reared back in utter terror.
It must have been an hour or so before I inexorably returned to the room. I felt I must face my fear. It almost felt like voices in my very own head cajoled me to do so.
Once again I stood before the object of my fear and curiosity. With only a few moments delay I made my move and, touching my head against the cold surface I pushed forward with determination. All I saw at first was blackness . . . but no, it was not black, it was brown, and there upon the loamy soil just two four feet from my bowed head, was my pen.
I brought my gaze upward then and it was met by a scene which could well have been from my direct surroundings in the garden of the house. I was in a forest glade. Tall pines soared to the sky around me and many other forms of deciduous tree also. The forest floor appeared soft and covered in both pine needles, brown leaves and a healthy-looking brown soil.
It was then I stepped through into another world.
I looked round and the mirror was gone. I dashed to the spot where it had stood. But there was nothing there. I was trapped here. I had no way back!
I cursed myself for my foolishness. Yet, deep within I allowed that there was an inevitability about what had happened that I had been powerless to resist.
What was I to do now?
I sat beneath a nearby pine, fearful of leaving this place in case I could not find my way back here. It was possible the mirror would appear at any moment. But, what if it never were to appear? What then?
Night began to fall and slowly I came to accept that there was nothing else I could do here, that there was no other course but to press on.
Hastily I arranged several fallen branches into a cross on the pine tree I had sat under as a marker should I be driven to come back to this spot either out of fear or necessity. I felt lost and hopeless. What was to become of me?
I looked around me one last time trying to memorize each and every detail though it has to be said there were few distinguishing details about this particular glade, save the cross of branches I had built.
Through some primitive instinct I then began trudging mournfully and dreadfully low in spirits, toward the setting sun.
I must have fallen asleep as I walked as I had no memory of coming to the place I found myself next morning. The tinkle of the running stream was first to greet my ears. And then the soughing of the breeze high up in the pines. It was then I heard their voices. Distantly at first and then closer and closer they came. Curious, cackling voices, who’s meaning was lost, garbled yet frustratingly familiar, like a word on your tongue you cannot recall yet it sits there tantalizingly spurring your recognition.
As I listened intently they seemed to become clearer, more intelligible and indeed louder. Then, all of a moment I heard them clearly and understood them!
“It is awake and it is confused, poor ugly drake that it is.”
“Awake it is. Awake it is.”
I looked round me but could see nothing which could be making sounds such as these.
I made a short perambulation round the nearby thicket, infested as it was by brambles and bracken left decaying from summer’s crop. But no sign of sentient life could I find.
“It moves, the thing moves.”
“It does. It does.”
I was beginning to think I was losing my senses as the words continued to inveigle their way into my increasingly confused mind. No one was here. I began to shout “Who’s there! Show yourself!”
“It cries, the sorry object, the ugly drake.”
Yes. It cries.”
In my forlorn state of desperation to find the source of these critical comments so clearly directed at myself I began searching with my eyes in every possible direction. It was then I saw them, some distance away across the clearing. Two coal-black ravens pecking amongst the shell husks at the bottom of an old tree.”
“He sees us, the ugly one.”
“He does. He does.”
I am not sure now if I had perhaps become inured to the strangeness of this place or that the balance of my mind had already come askew, but I took this new turn of events as a somewhat natural consequence of my present state.
“Are you referring to myself?”, I asked.
“It talks to us.”
“It does. Yes. It does.”
“You have no business here drake!”
“What do you mean?”
“As I have said, you have no business here. Depart.”
“I would like to, surely I would . . . if only I could.”
There ensued a silence where the two birds continued to peck as if, for all the world, they were normal birds such as I would find in my own world. For I will admit I did not consider myself now in a dream. I considered this experience to be fully and wholly real.”
After an interval of some minute and one half one of the two spoke to me again.
“We can help you back to your world if you will follow our advice?”
“Yes, yes . . . please do.”
“Very well. Listen carefully.”
“Leave this place by the path you will find at a distance of five leagues walking directly away from where we now stand. At the end of this path you shall find a dolmen of great size. Nearby you will find a great pine. At an hour exactly three of the morning on the third day from this, cut a hand-sized piece of bark from this tree. This you should dip in the nearby lake for precisely three seconds, no more. Three hours from this time a message shall appear on the surface of this bark which will relate the means of escape from this place.”
I turned from these two then and made my way through the wood in the direction indicated. It was exactly as they had said and I had no choice but to follow their instructions to the letter, easily finding the pine, the tallest of any that grew in the vicinity. I speedily found the sharpest rock available in the vicinity for cutting and lay it by the tangled roots at the base of the tree.
I still had all that I had entered this world with, including my timepiece. It was my task now to survive three further days in this god-forsaken place. How was I to fill my belly? My spirits were so low by this point and my hunger so great that I hardly cared whether I lived or died. That n
ight I ate whatever came to hand, whether it was worms, grubs in rotten logs or the fungi I found around me.
All I know is, survive I did. At least my resting place was comfortable enough, snuggled up warm in the mossy bowl of a great oak.
Golden-honeyed sunlight met my warily opened eye next morning along with the sound of shuffling and scampering nearby. As I peered round the gnarled bark of the old tree I could just make out a number of rabbits snuffling about in the dew. My heart gladdened to see them for I was sorely in need of some reminders of the wholesome innocence of nature as I knew it.
After a short breakfast of tiny mushrooms I had kept over from last evening’s repast I began to stretch and move about more widely.
I skirted the massive dolmen, that which the ravens had spoken of, and took the straight, direct path from there down a small incline to the tranquil lake which lay beyond. The air was sweet and enlivened by a calming birdsong which, again, gladdened my heart. I swear I almost felt at home in this strange place!
Laying myself down on the soft grass at the lake’s banks I began to feel the sun work its balmy hypnotic spell upon me. Slowly but surely my eyes began to droop.
A hieroglyph of arcane provenance hung in the air above the lake. It appeared as a great green cross with a bow where its topmost central pillar would normally be. Below it, and seemingly holding it airborne, was a great flickering flame which appeared to emanate from the center of the lake. The hieroglyph constantly changed size, moving from medium size until it filled my whole vision before returning to its starting place.
This continued for upward of a minute before all surroundings disappeared from the backdrop of the flame and cross and were replaced by blackness. At this point was a great roaring sound as of anger or frustration, or mayhap simply of some great emotionless machine. Then, a million tiny snake-like creatures enveloped the space surrounding both cross and flame. I began to feel a sickness well up within me at sight of this though I knew not why nor how. Whether in reality or in my imagination only I began to feel the very earth beneath me shudder. Then, just as quickly all was still, the vision gone and I lay as before by the tranquil lakeside.
It was then I heard the whispering.
“Can’t you guess it yet? Are you so VERY dimly lit? Can it possibly be? Perhaps you are NOT whom we seek after all!”
I spun round in fright then drew back in fear, my arms before my eyes. Before me stood an enormous griffin. When I say enormous he was no bigger than myself but that in itself stunned me to the core. It was light brown in color with great plumes of leathery skin flaring up and back from its lizard-like head. But the teeth, the teeth were the most fearsome thing, long and sharp as they were. It stood akin to the many images I had seen of Beelzebub or the great cloven-hoofed god, Pan. And it’s yellow-gold flashing eyes held me with their fiery grip.
“Speak human. I would hear your answer!” it intoned in a gravely voice like no other I had heard.
“I . . . . I know nothing of what you speak”, said I.
This seemed to bemuse the creature for it was silent for several seconds.
“Can it be? Can it truly be . . . ?”
It murmured seemingly unaware he could hear . . .” Were the glyphs so misguided? Yet this cannot be. It is sacrilege to think so. Infallible they be.”
I seemed to have put the beast in a real quandary with my protestations for he seemed nonplussed as to how to go on.
His head, which he had lowered somewhat he now raised and on doing so raised his left arm straight out and toward me, in a direction slightly above my head. This is the last thing I remember seeing that fateful day.
On waking I fitfully hoped I had been transported back to my proper time and place, but this was not to be. I lay by the lake. It appeared to be mid-afternoon and damsel flies flitted in turquoise splendor in great multitudes over its surface. All was quiet and there was no sign of the griffin of recent memory anywhere in the vicinity. At my foot I spied a small green frog which for the life of me appeared to be gazing directly toward me. I humored this idea with a smile . . . until I heard its croak. There was no doubting it, it was repeating the word “Tonight”, over and over again. I knew then a change had been made. My ceremony of the bark had been brought forward. It would take place in only a few short hours. Soon I would be free!
It was such a still, crystal clear night that night that if circumstances had been otherwise I would have longed to stay. The stars, though vastly different in their configurations than my own home, were incredibly beautiful just the same. The moon hung lambent silver, reflected in the calm stillness of the lake before me.
I walked to the mighty pine just before 3 a.m. by my timepiece. I then stood at its base and gazed up the long straight trunk to the feathery branches and leaves fluttering dark against the stars. Picking up the sharp stone I had put in place shortly after my arrival I nervously checked and re-checked the time.
At last, on the stroke of three I made my first incision and, carefully, measuring against my right hand I cut a square section of bark from the tree. I hurried thence to the lakeside and again nervously watching the second hand of my timepiece dipped the piece of bark in its waters for exactly three second.
It was done. I felt with some shock how hard my heart was beating and how wet my shirt with the sweat coursing from my brow.
Taking the sodden piece of bark to my bower in the oak I then lay down and slept the sleep of the saints.
On waking on the third day it took a few moments for remembrance to stir me to action then I leapt up and grasped the piece of bark and gazed intently at it.
At first I could see nothing. Then, slowly I could make out two somewhat broken lines running down the length of the thing around two inches apart. At least this was something! My focus on this small shard could not have been more intense, looking as I did for the most minute of symbols which could possibly direct my actions and gain me my exit from this place.
Palpitations wracked me once more and my eyes watered terribly as I willed them to see what surely must be there. What was this? Was that a natural spot on the surface or was it significant. And below it, a mark, four tiny score marks and yet a third half as big as the others. It looked for all the world like a tiny hand.
This was all. Though I looked and looked again at the poor piece of pine over the next hour I could make out nothing more.
Then the thought came to me all of the sudden. Could it be the dolmen?! The rough lines . . . did they form its outline, more or less? I rushed to the giant megalith which stood like some great upwardly pointing finger in the clearing before the lake.
Scouring its surface with my eyes my spirits fell, I could see no clue, nothing that seemed to chime with the mysterious marks upon the inner flesh of the bark. Again and again I looked between them. Then, as if a dim sun was dawning in my mind, I saw it. A natural protuberance on the rock, discolored slightly by the grey-green growth of lichen could just be discerned just above eye height. Did this match the spot on the bark I was holding? If it was, then holding my hand to . . .
I opened my eyes to darkness, a total unbroken darkness. Reminded of the dream of several nights ago my heart leapt in fear. But, as my eyes grew accustomed to the blackness I became aware of a pale grey smudge up and to the right of my vision. Crawling at first, then striding, then running I made my way to what I could see was the opening of a tunnel. As I approached it I saw that it was as if a mirage blurred my sight, the opening appeared to sway and dance before my eyes. Beyond, dark shapes rose, loomed and fell in no discernable sequence. Suddenly I was upon it, and with a scream of unbidden and inhuman mixture of rage and defiance, I thrust myself through it.
I must have struck my head upon the other side of that miasma because it was some several moments before I came to and took cognizance of my surroundings.
I was home. At least, I
was back where I had been. Not the room with the mirror, no. But the library. And there on the pedestal where I had left it was the book still lying open at the page unmistakably bearing a face uncannily like my own.
~
My dear Nephew, I have written my unlikely tale in such detail with one purpose and one purpose only. To give you sufficient information for you to gain a fair chance to weigh the decision you have before you.
I regret we have never met. I suspect you may not have even been aware of me until the last few days. I have been a recluse these many years, held within the memory of the mystery I have described to you at such length. Normal, everyday life lost all its charm for me and I rarely left the sanctuary I was bequethed so long ago.
You are reading this now that I have departed the mortal skein of life and am free at last of the mystery which has plagued, restricted, but also greatly enlivened, my previously grey life as a solicitor’s clerk. I know very well that this codicil to my last will and testament may sound odd indeed to you. Now that you have been told by my agent that I have left you all I own, including the great house and its surrounds, you have, as I say, a decision to make.
DREAMWORLD DAWNS Page 7