We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories

by C. Robert Cargill

  “Do you know where the door is?”

  “Of course I know where the door is. It’s my job to know.”

  “So which way is the door?”

  “It’s every way.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “On the contrary, it makes nothing but sense. You just don’t know what sense to make of it.”

  “You’re not answering my questions.”

  “I’m answering everything you ask, but you’re asking such terrible questions. Ask better questions, get better answers.”

  She pointed a stiff arm led by a stiffer finger out into the twilight ahead of her. “Is this the path to the door?” she asked.

  “It’s a path to the door, yes,” he answered.

  “Will I find the door at the end?”

  “The door is at the end, but there’s not only one path to it. Every way you walk is a path, and all of those paths lead to the door. Some of them just take much longer than others. Some of them are more difficult than others. There are some paths so scary, even I never wander them. This is a land of lost children, filled with children who never find the door and those who have lost themselves trying to find it. Odds are you’ll end up just like them. I haven’t met a child yet who could find their way. But prove me wrong, I dare you. I double-dare you. Come find me and I’ll show you the way back home, the way back to the door beneath your bed.”

  “Why don’t you show me where the door is, then?”

  “I just told you, I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re just being confusing.”

  “No, you’re just confused. I told you exactly where the door is. I can’t simply lead you there because the door can’t be shown; it must be found. You have to find the door, and to find it, you have to pick a direction and then you must walk in that direction until you can’t walk anymore. And that’s where the door will be. That’s where you’ll find me. And that’s where I’ll show you the way home.”

  And then The Thing on the Other Side of the Door stepped backward, his body melting into the shadows whence he came. For a few seconds, only his blue eyes were left staring out at her from the dark. Then they vanished, winking out, leaving the little girl alone on the cracked cobblestone path.

  She walked along the path for what seemed like hours, the twilight hanging over her head but refusing to bear any stars. The whole world was bleak, neither light enough to see nor dark enough to produce a moon. Streetlamps flickered on and off, fading with a buzz as she neared, snapping back on after she passed.

  And then, without warning, she saw the clown. He stood there in the road, back to her, staring down the path at nothing in particular.

  She ran to him and tugged his sleeve to get his attention. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’m lost! Can you help me?”

  The clown turned around and smiled through two rows of razor-sharp shark teeth, his makeup caked and flaky, his red nose battered and dirty. His hair was stringy, greasy, matted in places; his clothing stained with dirt and blood. And every few seconds he glitched like the tracking on a videocassette, his entire body going wobbly, bending impossibly, parts of him becoming squiggly moments of static. “How can I help you?” he asked, quite excited to have her attention.

  “Where am I?” asked the little girl.

  “We are where the nightmares go, the nightmares go, the nightmares go. We are where the nightmares go, but not from where they come.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happens when a dream ends? Where does it go?”

  “I don’t know,” said the little girl.

  “Well, it has to go somewhere, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “A dream is whole only as long as it’s dreamt. Once that dream ends, it begins to fade, to get rough around the edges, to erode like a sand castle lapped by the waves. Most dreams fade into nothing, drifting away like wisps of smoke. But some dreams, they last. They take root in the soul and hold strong against the tide. The nightmares that survive, the ones that come from the darkest places of your heart and refuse to fade away, they have to go somewhere. So they end up here, cast out like the trash, dumped where no one knows where to look, in the dark space beneath your bed. Well, we are where the nightmares go. That’s us. That’s this place. Right now you’re just a dream. Be careful that you don’t become a nightmare; otherwise you might never leave.”

  “Like you?”

  “Like me,” said the clown, head bobbing comically.

  “You’re a nightmare?”

  “I am.”

  “Were you always a nightmare?”

  “A nightmare isn’t how a dream begins, but how it ends. Some of the worst nightmares I’ve ever known started with the best of intentions, with bright smiles and twinkling eyes. Bluebonnets and picnic baskets. I like to think that I started out that way. But that’s not how I ended up. And by the time the dreamer who made me woke up, I was the awful thing you see before you. The thing that would like to eat you now. The thing that can smell how tasty you really are.”

  “You . . . you want to eat me?” asked the little girl, suddenly very frightened.

  “Of course I do. You look delicious. I can’t help it. This is how someone dreamed me, so this is how I am.”

  “You’re going to eat me!”

  “No, no, no. I won’t eat you; I just want to. It can’t be helped.”

  “How do I know you won’t eat me?”

  “Do you wanna know a secret?”

  “Yes,” said the little girl warily.

  “Nightmares have rules.”

  “The rules are a secret?”

  “Of course they are. Has anyone ever told you the rules to a nightmare before?”

  The little girl thought for a moment. “No,” she said, “I guess they haven’t.”

  For a few seconds, staticky light flickered across his face and his body squished into a horizontal line before popping back into shape. He cocked his head to the side as if nothing had happened, and continued. “Rule number one: You can’t change the lighting. Flip a switch, it won’t come on. Turn on a flashlight, it’ll flicker before sputtering off. The light is the light and you best get used to it, because this is all the light there is. Rule number two: A nightmare can hurt you only if you let it. It can scare you only if you let it. It can get you only if you let it. A nightmare can’t do anything without your permission.”

  “So if I don’t let you eat me—”

  “I can’t eat you.”

  “And that man who was here before?”

  “What man?” asked the clown. “There are no men where the nightmares go. Only boys. Only girls. We’re all just children here.”

  “The one with the blue eyes and the bushy beard.”

  “Oh! You mean The Thing on the Other Side of the Door!”

  “I guess.”

  “Oh, he’s not a man at all.”

  “So The Thing on the Other Side of the Door is just a nightmare?”

  “Oh no, he is something else entirely. Something terrifying. I dare not discuss him at all, for if he hears even a whisper about him, he’ll do such awful, awful things.”

  “He told me if I walk in any direction, I’ll find the way out.”

  “He never lies,” said the clown. “He just doesn’t always tell the truth.”

  “So the way out isn’t in any direction?”

  “Oh, it is! But you don’t want to go in any direction. You want to go in the best direction.”

  “Which direction is that?” asked the little girl, eyes wide and hopeful.

  “I don’t know,” the clown said, flickering.

  “So you can’t get out of here either?”

  “Why would I get out? I belong here. I’m a nightmare, and we are—”

  “Where the nightmares go.”

  “Exactly! So are you picking me?”

  “For what?”

  “To be your clown.”

  “My clown?”

  “E
very child gets a clown.”

  “Why does every child get a clown?”

  “Probably because there are so many of us here. They have to do something with us. So we help the children find their way out.”

  “Oh yes!” said the little girl. “Please help me find my way out.”

  The clown smiled wide, all sixty-four of his shark teeth showing at once. “Okay,” he said. “But no take-backsies. I’m your clown for good and for all.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Shake on it?” He spit in his hand and held it out. He flickered in and out.

  “Shake on it,” she said, spitting in her own hand and shaking his.

  She looked down at their hands, disappointed. “I thought there would be a buzzer.”

  The clown lost his smile, shoulders drooping. “I wasn’t dreamed with one.”

  “Were you dreamed with a name?”

  The clown shook his head sadly. “No. Most clowns don’t have names.”

  “Would you like one?”

  “Yes!” he said excitedly, flickering.

  “I’ll trade you.”

  “For what? Anything. I’ll do anything for a name.”

  “You have to tell me rule number three.”

  “Oh,” he said, “most children don’t ask about rule number three. And rule number three is the best rule of all.”

  “What is it?”

  “What’s my name?”

  “You get the name after the rule.”

  “No take-backs?”

  “No take-backs.”

  “Rule number three is that you don’t have to do any of the boring stuff.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means you don’t have to walk the whole way. You can just skip to the next interesting bit.”

  “Skip?”

  “It’s a dream. We are in a nightmare, and a nightmare doesn’t have to make sense and it doesn’t have to obey any rules but its own. A nightmare can just happen. So what’s my name?”

  The little girl thought for a moment, hands on her hips. She looked up. “Siegfried,” she said. “You look like a Siegfried.”

  “Oooh, I like Siegfried,” he said. “I like Siegfried a lot.”

  “What’s the fourth rule?”

  “There are only three rules.”

  “Good. So can we skip ahead to the next part?”

  “Turn around,” he said with a flicker, almost completely winking out as he did.

  The little girl turned, and behind her in the distance was a vast amusement park, its rides broken down and still, its lights flickering, dimming in and out. Most of the park was dark, save for a tiny strip of games, filled with kids.

  She ran toward the games. “The other kids must know how to get out of here,” she said.

  Siegfried chased after her. “No, they don’t,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they’re all still here.”

  The little girl slowed down, then came to a stop. “You mean I might not get out of here?”

  “Most children don’t.”

  She looked up at her clown. “They don’t?”

  “Didn’t The Thing on the Other Side of the Door tell you that?”

  “Yeah, but I thought he was just trying to scare me.”

  “I told you, he doesn’t lie. He never lies. A lie in a nightmare simply becomes the truth, so a lie is just another way of looking at the dream.”

  The little girl narrowed her eyes. “I am going to get out of here.”

  “You’ll have to do whatever it takes.”

  “I can do whatever it takes.”

  “Whatever it takes is always harder than you think.”

  “I’m going home. And if I can’t lie, then that must be the truth.”

  “Well, find your way out of here, hotshot.”

  She looked around. Everything but the games was draped in darkness, all seeming to shout GO AWAY! The little girl pointed to the well-lit arcade alley. “Let’s try there first.”

  As they approached, they could hear carnival barkers hawking their amusements. “Step right up!” they yelled. “Right this way! Strike the bell!” or “Toss a ring onto the milk bottle!” or “Knock down all the cups!” or “Spin the wheel! Win a prize!”

  The little girl eyed them all suspiciously. “My daddy says these games are rigged.”

  “Of course they are,” said Siegfried. “That’s the point.”

  “That they’re rigged?”

  “You have to know the trick to them. Everything’s rigged. Once you figure out how, then you can learn how to win. What fun would they be if you just walked up and won them?”

  The little girl looked for a carnival game she thought she could win. She didn’t like the ring toss, wasn’t strong enough to swing a hammer, hated that game with the gophers where they all jumped up at once. But then she saw the shooting gallery. Point and shoot. That seemed easy enough.

  A carnival barker clown stood behind a counter that had half a dozen rifles sitting on it. “Step right up,” he said, through a thick, well-chewed cigar. “Hit a clown, any clown, and win a prize.”

  “What’s the prize?” she asked.

  “A ticket out of the carnival,” he said.

  “What kind of prize is that?”

  “The only prize here worth winning.”

  She picked up a rifle and stared down the range. Six clowns cowered atop rickety barstools twenty feet away, each shaking and frightened. Their eyes begged her not to shoot them. They were so close they were impossible to miss. “That’s it?” she asked. “Just hit a clown?”

  “That’s it. You get three shots.”

  She smiled. This was too easy.

  The little girl raised the rifle, aimed carefully, then squeezed the trigger. Bang! The bullet veered up and hit the roof. The clowns each sighed with relief.

  “Wait a second! That’s not where I was aiming!”

  “Hit a clown, win a prize. Never said the rifles shot straight.”

  “But that’s cheating.”

  “No. That’s the game.” The carnival barker clown pulled the gooey cigar out from his mouth and smiled with yellow teeth, blowing several lungsful of smoke into her face.

  She furrowed her brow with determination, raised the rifle, aimed really low—well below the clown she wanted to hit—and pulled the trigger.

  The clown winced, shivering in fear.

  The shot veered to the right, missing all the clowns completely.

  “This is rigged!” she yelled.

  “Only one more shot,” said the clown.

  “What happens then?”

  “Then you stay here forever. You only get three shots.”

  “I can’t stay here forever!” she cried.

  “Then you better hit a clown,” he said, smiling.

  She thought for a second. The first shot had gone too high. The second shot went high and to the right. She tried to do the math in her head where it would go this time. And then she figured it out.

  The little girl raised her rifle and said, “I’m sorry, Siegfried.”

  Then she turned the rifle on her clown, pressed the muzzle against his arm, and pulled the trigger.

  Siegfried jumped and cried out in pain, grabbing his bloody bicep. “Ow! You shot me!”

  She looked at the carnival barker clown, who angrily stubbed out his cigar in a cheap tin ashtray. “You said any clown.”

  He tore off a ticket with a sneer and handed it to her, pointing a stern finger at the other end of the game alley. “Way out is that way.”

  The little girl took the ticket, smiled, and ran off, Siegfried close behind.

  “I can’t believe you shot me!”

  She stopped for a moment, turned to Siegfried, and took him by the hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to be trapped here forever.”

  “Neither do I,” he said.

  “Do you want to find the way out with me?”

&nbs
p; He nodded excitedly. “I’ve never seen it.”

  “Well, we’ll find it.”

  And together they ran off to the exit, where she turned in her ticket and was allowed out back onto the path.

  The path was dark, a poorly lit street in a bad neighborhood with monsters and angels lurking in every shadow. The little girl peered into the shadows as she passed, but could never quite make anything out.

  “What are those things?” she asked.

  “Those? Those are the nightmares no one ever sees—the things they know are there but are afraid to see what they look like.”

  “I want to see them!”

  “No you don’t,” said a frighteningly familiar voice.

  From one of the shadows stepped The Thing on the Other Side of the Door, his blue eyes glaring at her. Siegfried hid behind her, shaking.

  “Who’s this?” asked The Thing on the Other Side of the Door.

  “Siegfried,” she said.

  “You gave it a name?”

  “Yes. Everyone deserves a name.”

  “Everyone, yes. But not everything.”

  “Well, Siegfried is helping me find the way out, so he gets a name.”

  “No he isn’t.”

  “Yes he is.”

  “You beat the park. Few children ever beat the park. Did you tell her how to beat the park, Siegfried?”

  “No!” said the clown. “I swear I didn’t. I SWEAR!”

  “Good. Because if I found out that you had . . .”

  “He can’t help me?” asked the little girl.

  “No, he can help you. He just can’t tell you.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “Maybe.”

  And once again The Thing on the Other Side of the Door disappeared, leaving the little girl and Siegfried alone on the dark street.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Now we get to the next part.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Turn around,” Siegfried said with a razor-sharp smile.

  Before them lay a wide field of towering brown bramble bushes, each with branches twenty feet high and thorns two feet long. The bushes formed a maze and the maze went on seemingly for miles.

  “Do we have to go this way?” asked the little girl.