Dream War

by Stephen Prosapio

  Sometimes, when Alexis thought really, really hard about something, she could make it move. The only time mommy had seen her do it, mommy had looked really scared, so Alexis only did it when no one was around.

  Or when she was really excited.

  Or angry.

  Or scared.

  Maybe, if she thought about her blanket, she could get it to come to her, or maybe she should just go back for it. Before she could decide, she heard a soft rustling sound behind the closet door.

  Granny?

  She didn’t ask out loud because she was too scared to say anything. She really wanted to go back for her blanket but her legs wouldn’t move. They wouldn’t bend (even a little) for her to take a step. For a while, in the quiet darkness, she just stood there remembering the shadow.

  He had tied those boys up to a pole with their arms behind their backs. They were older than her, at times they had looked like grown ups, at others, just like scared boys. Even before the shadow started yelling at them, they pulled their knees up to their chins like they were trying to hide. He flickered around them, whispering words she didn’t understand. Alexis didn’t know what the shadow meant when he had called them “pupils of destruction.”

  In Granny’s room, it was quiet. There was no rustling, no bells, no noises. Granny wasn’t really in the closet. This was all just silly. It was like when she played with her friends at school and sometimes things got too scary. Then, once a big person calmed her down, it was easy to see the stuff that had frightened her had never been real.

  She decided to move closer to the large wooden door. She tried to lift her leg. Her knee bent and her foot rose. Alexis took a giant step, making sure to land softly. She did one more like that. And another.

  She was at the closet door.

  “Granny?” she whispered.

  There still was no sound. It felt harder to breathe than normal and her stomach hurt. But she was okay. Her mommy’s words came back to her again, “Don’t be afraid.”

  Alexis reached up for the handle, and turned it. The door swung the wrong way. It pulled her into the closet, into the dark.

  The floor was gone.

  She looked behind her, hoping to swing back into Granny’s room. That was gone too. Looking up, all she could see were the white knuckles of her hand gripping the doorknob. Her hand hurt from holding it so tight. And then the doorknob was gone.

  She felt herself falling. A lightning bolt crackled past her.

  Alexis screamed.

  She hit the ground, but before she could get up, the gray monsters grabbed her.

  “No, please? Please!” she yelled.

  Like always, one of the creatures put its snout in her face. Its eyes made her look in them. The shadow was waiting. He glared at her, then turned to the tied up boys.

  Above a lightning flashed. The boys had become ugly men with hate in their eyes.

  The shadow hissed at one of them. “How many can you kill?”

  “Thousands…thousands!” he screamed.

  The shadowy thing whipped him with its thorn-covered tail. It wrapped around the man’s stomach, and then snapped back, ripping away bits of his skin. Blood sprayed Alexis in the face. She got up. She had to get away from here.

  The shadow thing saw her and pointed. “You stay there!”

  Alexis’s legs felt like wood.

  He turned and screamed even louder at the other man. “How many can you kill?”

  “Millions…millions!” the man roared. He tried to hide his face as tears ran down his cheeks.

  “Good! Remember it!”

  The tail struck the second man. His mouth opened wide and let out a terrible scream, more as though angry, than in pain.

  The shadow-thing turned and glared at Alexis. She was frozen. She was shaking. It seemed that the shadow’s terrible eyes were going to make her cry and cry and cry until she had no more tears. His hissing lips curled.

  “Alexis, you are next!”

  “No. Please?” she cried.

  The shadow moved closer. “Well perhaps, if you pulled just one of the dreamers from the sky for me, I’ll let you go back to your bed.”

  “You mean my granny’s bed?”

  The shadow looked at her as if he’d never been mean, and then stared at the dark sky.

  “But of course child,” the shadow said. “Just one…”

  - Chapter Thirteen -

  Three days prior to Night of Nights – The Spatium Quartus

  Faint images hung from the starless sky. The three-dimensional scenes revealed the visions of people far away, sleeping; these were their nightmares.

  At times, the Spatium Quartus terrain resembled the red-brown hills and mountains of Nevada before sunrise. At others, illuminated by lightning, it could have been the rocky surface of the moon. Careful to keep his footing, Lopez stayed alert. Attack could come at any moment.

  Save the little girl.

  That intuitive thought continued to plague him. Lopez had learned over the years to trust his intuition, especially when it came so intensely while he was wearing a medallion.

  A bolt sizzled across the sky, its zigzags slicing through five or six dream images. One of them, grazed by the electric flash, enlarged. It displayed a woman enduring a barrage of backhanded slaps, her flayed cheek exposing bone.

  As always after expanding, the dream image elongated and then, slowly dripped from the sky. The gruesome scene blurred and distorted as it sagged lower and lower. With a snap, the long pod-shaped image began to plummet. Lopez knew that inside it, within all of the pods, were unsuspecting innocents snatched to this dimension. Without help, they were destined for torture.

  Save the little girl.

  A familiar stench turned Lopez’s stomach—body odor intermingled with dirty, wet fur.

  From behind, beasts were upon him. Lopez dropped to his knees. With blades in each hand, he pumped his arms back over his shoulders. He sprang forward, and then spun around.

  A pair of gray beasts, the kind he’d battled with ever since that long-ago day on the pier, writhed on the ground blood spurting; they grabbed for knife handles in their legs. He’d slashed arteries. The other three beasts stood stunned and flatfooted. They stared at him with large, lifeless eyes. Used to preying on the weak, individually they’d be no match for Lopez, but on his own, and in these numbers, they posed a threat. The hog-like snouts dominating their faces sniffed wildly, trying to detect fear.

  Lopez exuded none.

  He visualized a long sword and imagined the hilt’s coldness in his hands. He could almost feel the weight of the heavy blade straining his forearms as he swung it back and forth, readying for battle. Lopez exhaled his wish-request, and a sword materialized.

  He swung it to his left. The razor-sharp steel sliced off a beast’s arm above the elbow. As the creature reached for the wound, Lopez drove his weapon through the base of its neck. It went down.

  Two beasts remained. One turned to flee, but the other barked an order. Its voice was deep, with a throaty gurgle. Unlike humans, they spoke while inhaling.

  The fleeing beast halted and repositioned for attack. It tried to flank Lopez, but a sword thrust stopped it.

  The other beast spoke.

  “Come with us, or die here.”

  The pair crept forward, leaving behind their wounded and slain. Overhead, lightning flashed again. Another dream image enlarged and began to drip from the murky sky.

  He moved sideways around his foes. They pivoted, but allowed him to circle. One of the stabbed beasts continued to howl; the other lay dead in a deep pool of black blood. Lopez approached them.

  The vocal beast spoke again. “I said, come with us, or die here.”

  “Let’s put it this way,” he said, moving behind the wounded howler. Lopez lifted his sword with both hands. “No.”

  He forced the blade down at an angle, beheading the howling creature.

  The vocal beast and its counterpart, the silent beast, took small quick steps
toward him. Lopez reset to a defensive position. The vocal one let loose a sound resembling an entire pack of feeding coyotes.

  Then, Lopez saw her.

  A hundred yards away, where the latest dream image had splashed down, a tiny, blonde girl wearing a long nightgown rose slowly from the ground. Lopez’s knees tingled. Icicles shot up his legs and it felt as though he should be running.

  Save the little girl!

  A blade tested his right side. Lopez’s sword whipped through the air ending in a metal-on-metal clank. Vocal Beast’s machete fell and clattered against a nearby rock.

  Silent Beast came at him. Lopez ducked. A knife missed, leaving his assailant exposed. Lopez heaved the sword up, then threw a roundhouse kick that connected with Silent Beast’s pointed ear. The creature flinched but made no sound.

  Lopez swung around behind it, grabbed the creature’s knife hand, and forced the blade into its throat. Blood thick as motor oil spurted out over the handle.

  Sensing, feeling, then seeing a glint of steel coming at him, Lopez shoved Silent Beast toward it. The machete’s curved blade crunched into Silent Beast’s shoulder. Lopez spun away from the impact. As Vocal Beast pried the blade from its dead counterpart, Lopez grabbed his own falling weapon by the handle before it hit dirt.

  “No, please? Please!” the little girl cried.

  Three beasts towered over her. One of them pushed the little girl to the ground and covered her head with a hood. Then, it lowered its head under the hood shoving its snout to her face. The monster’s red, fluorescent robes billowed in the escalating winds. It was scanning her dreams, and would soon begin injecting nightmares that would poison her brain. She screamed and went limp.

  Save her!

  There wasn’t much time. Lopez sprinted toward them. He glanced down; his medallion was still around his neck. As he closed the distance, it bounced on and off his chest and began to glow. He dropped the sword and materialized a dagger in each hand.

  Approaching quietly to catch them by surprise, Lopez barreled into the hunched creature, knocking it away from the little girl. He leapt up and stabbed it until, robes drenched with blood, it collapsed.

  Still beneath the hood, the girl was catatonic. The two beasts went for her. Lopez scissor-kicked the legs of one; its head hit hard on the ground knocking it unconscious. The other beast grabbed and held the little girl like a shield.

  “I will kill her. Get away!”

  She stirred and began to cry. “Granny! Are you there?! I can’t see! Am I having another bad dream?”

  Lopez dropped his daggers.

  “Sure, honey,” he said softly, hoping to calm her with a white lie, “it’s all just a dream.”

  He pulled off his medallion and lunged, pressing it to her chest. With a swirling flash of sparks and a whiff of ozone, he sent her back where she belonged. The medallion burned in his hand, but he was used to the heat.

  The beast lay smoldering, but the stink of burning hair couldn’t distract Lopez from Vocal Beast’s nearing footfalls. He spun and positioned defensively.

  Vocal Beast stopped ten feet away, even though Lopez held no weapon. Its dead black eyes betrayed a hostile indifference.

  “The Night of Nights is almost here. You shall not survive.” There was a ring of certainty in its throaty proclamation.

  A flash of lightning revealed a white horse galloping along the ridgeline of the nearest hill. Its muscles rippled with each stride. Overhead, thunder boomed. Winds kicked up.

  The rider, silhouetted against the sky, his face obscured, readied a bow and arrow.

  “Come and see!” he hissed.

  Vocal Beast charged.

  With the freezing tingle returning to his knees, Lopez held the medallion to his chest.

  He was gone.

  - Chapter Fourteen -

  Two days prior to Night of Nights – Naples, Italy

  Similar to Santa Ana winds, which at times scorched southern California with desert air, Sirocco winds punished southern Italy. Pulled by low pressure systems in France and Spain, the hot, African-based air stream sucked moisture from the Mediterranean before colliding with the European coastline at the heel of Italy’s boot. Even during winter months, Siroccos brought high temperatures and intense humidity to southern Italy. By the time these breezes reached central Europe, they picked up dust and dirt, causing breathing difficulties for asthmatics and those with allergies.

  Dr. Ponterosso gazed across the dull, turquoise gulf of Naples at Mount Vesuvius, and smirked.

  How much earth will be transported north with these Siroccos?

  The sun rose over the city that would soon be destroyed by the most horrific natural disaster the world had ever known. The fact that it would be the most dramatic, televised event in human history made it all the more momentous. Ponterosso found it difficult to submit to anyone or anything, but the omnipotence of Luzveyn Dred could not be ignored. The Sirocco winds were merely one element of the plan.

  Ponterosso walked to the kitchen to prepare some espresso.

  Miles to the north, the Tangenziale, Naples’s bypass freeway, ran northeast toward Naples and southwest to the Tirrenian Sea. On the day of the eruption, northbound traffic fleeing to Rome would be diverted from the A1 freeway, to the Tangenziale. The winding freeway cut through massive hills via long concrete tunnels. Inside one of the tunnels, just east of the seaside town of Pozzuoli, a bus laden with twenty pounds of TNT would conveniently stall, detonate, and obstruct the detour.

  The only escape route to the south, the A3 freeway would experience a similar fate, creating a logjam of traffic that would trap as many as three million people inside the destructive zone of Vesuvius.

  Carried northwest by the Sirocco winds, pumice stones and volcanic rock, called tephra, would plummet into the heart of the city—the heavier chunks killing anyone they struck. On a more massive scale than Pompeii in 79 AD, the streets would be littered with bodies.

  Moreover, the slaughter would be merely the beginning.

  To further confuse and enrage the public, members of the Sogno di Guerra, impersonating the Italian military, would be seen firing on innocent people. Even as millions watching the coverage on television pitied the dead and dying, they would scream for retribution from the government that allowed such a tragedy to occur. Then, the medallion-adorned Sogno di Guerra fighters would prove that a coup d’etat was not impossible in the twenty-first century. The shamefaced, guilt-ridden, and finger-pointing Italian public would support the new government even before the rain of tephra ended. Then the true terror could begin: executions, church burning, genocide of the weak.

  Night of Nights would begin.

  Meanwhile, in Naples, there would be the coup de grâce—a symbolic, catastrophic event to coincide with the moment when Spatium Quartus would be breached and elements of that dimension would spill out into the world. Similar to the event which buried Herculaneum two millennia ago, a pyroclastic flow of immense heat, traveling at incredible speeds would rush from Mt. Vesuvius to the coast and into the Gulf of Naples, extending the coastline.

  Caused by the energy pull of this world merging with the Spatium Quartus, a flank collapse of the northwest rim of the volcano, much like the one that occurred at Mt. St. Helens in 1980, would spew earth and lava sideways toward the most congested part of the city, bestowing punishment of mythic proportions. By the time the smoke abated, Naples would have been plunged into unimaginable chaos.

  As the first rays of sunlight made their way over the cauldron of Vesuvius and descended upon on Naples, Ponterosso bid farewell to the doomed city.

  “My work has not had such an impact on the world since my days with the OIA.”

  - Chapter Fifteen -

  Two days prior to Night of Nights – Oceanside, California

  Drew awoke to the chirps of a winter sparrow outside his bedroom window. Nadia slept, curled in a ball, on the far side of the bed. He enjoyed the warmth of the covers and the softness of the bed. He could sm
ell traces of her perfume on the sheets.

  They’d barely spoken since his sarcastic outburst on the plane. Looking back, it had been unnecessary; he’d been frustrated at the helplessness of the situation. Amends needed to be made. He moved to her side of the bed, curled up, and gently pressed himself flush against her. He draped his arm over her, his hand just under her breasts.

  She was wearing her black, spaghetti-strap nightie. His lips met her neck at the back, and gently caressed to the soft slope of her nape. The white skin on her freckled shoulder displayed goose pimples. Her body twitched.

  Is she awake?

  She moaned. His heart beat faster; his anticipation grew. He tightened his arm, pulling her firmly against him, and began kissing her neck and shoulder. He enjoyed discovering places on her skin where her perfume lingered; the faint taste of lilac, on her salty flesh drove him crazy.

  Drew elevated and touched his chest on the upper part of her arm. He didn’t rest his full weight on her, but applied gentle pressure. Soon enough her body eased downward until she lay on her back. Nadia groaned and stretched, unfurling her long eyelashes to reveal cloudy, blue eyes.

  “Good morning,” she said, her voice deep and rhythmic.

  Before she could protest his advances, Drew moved his face above hers. “Baby, I want to say that I’m sor—”

  She whisked two fingers to his lips and pressed them there, waiting for him to close his mouth. With her untamed hair sprawled across his blue flannel sheets, she’d never been sexier.

  Nadia moved her hand to the back of his head and rose to him. Her mouth was wet, and luring. His kiss gently pushed her back down to the bed, while his flexed body held her torso in place. She spread her legs, allowing him under her slip. He could feel her warmth against him.

  Drew kissed her neck and moved downwards, nibbling her warm skin, until he arrived where cloth met cleavage. He swept his tongue ever so slowly back and forth over the border, as if the thin, black material prevented it from reaching its desired destination. He stayed awhile and teased her.