I&H Chapter Two | Games With Stories

Chapter Two:
Flood

May 17, 1997

Next to the possibility of summoning nightmares from the Realm of Dreams, sleep deprivation was the most challenging hazard in my life. After the events of the day, I knew I needed to get some rest. As I curled up in bed an hour later, I reached for the copy of Sabriel at my bedside. I often read before bed to increase my chances of calm dreams. However, when I looked down, I wasn’t holding the book I expected, but the tome I had brought from my dream. This was the third time the book had found its way into my hand tonight, despite my best efforts to unbelieve it.

With resignation, I turned the book around in my hands, brushing the supple leather with my fingertips and then cracking it open. The cover was empty except for a single embossed word, “Oneiroi,” the name of the Greek personifications of dreams. Surely not a coincidence.

I held the hand-made binding in one hand and bent the soft cover to fan the pages with my other. The book appeared empty until I stopped and opened it to the page where my thumb rested. The left side featured a simple sketch of the welcome sign I recognized from the Pasco city limits, where highway 285 entered the “Tri-Cities” of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick. On the right was an illustration of a mountain highway, with a small figure on a motorcycle. The bike was an unmistakable, rich burnt sienna, just like my BMW.

I sighed in exasperation. Blatant hints from a nightmare book were unlikely to convince me to change my mind. Tucking The Book of Oneiroi into a drawer, I found my novel where I had left it. Opening the book, I found it difficult to immerse myself in the story as my mind kept returning to Jesse’s parting suggestion. In all these years, I had never seriously considered the upside of dreams intruding on my reality. Out of a lifetime of habit, I wanted to reject the notion altogether, but it was hard to deny he was right. I was stuck, forever, with the consequences of this bizarre circumstance. It would only be fair if I could reap the rewards.

If only I knew how.

As nights went, it was a good one. When I awoke the following day, I had a hazy recollection of a dream featuring Jesse playing one-on-one football against a girl with bright blond hair. But whenever the girl controlled the ball, it was somehow ten times the size. She struggled under the massive weight of it but carried on without complaint. As was my habit, when I awoke, I quickly cast away the mental images and focused instead on the light streaming through the window and the birds calling in the trees outside. No unfortunate dream manifestations awaited me.

I was running late for my regular Saturday lunch with my uncle. I’d gotten absorbed in writing a particularly touching scene in my current story, and by the time I’d cleaned up, I was already over an hour late. Fortunately, everything in Richland between the Yakima and Columbia Rivers was less than a half-hour’s bike ride away.

The trip to my uncle’s home was faster than the ride to campus. He had suggested multiple times it would be wiser for me to stay in my old room; I’d be closer to the campus and could put my meager earnings into a savings account. But as generous as the offer was, I needed a space to call my own, for his safety if not for my sanity.

His neighborhood had been owned by the government in the 40s and housed scientists employed during World War II to help refine the plutonium for the bombs dropped over Nagasaki. It was all Loop property now. Like the scientists who had leased from the government decades earlier, my uncle paid the Loop a pittance for the honor of living a convenient distance from the nuclear plant to the north.

Turning onto Horn Avenue, I spotted my uncle in the front yard pushing a powerless reel lawn mower in clean rows. The curbside impression of my old home was spartan at best. The house was painted a stark white, and there were no trees and few plants to soften the angular symmetry of the architecture. An obligatory garden ran the length of the home and featured a few uninspiring but carefully manicured bushes. The lawn was a healthy green and always trimmed with precision. The neighborhood association provided landscaping bots to manage the properties, but Uncle Henry declined the help. He claimed he enjoyed the exercise and insisted the robots could never do the job to his exacting specifications.

“Take that as a lesson, Heather.” He’d told me, “The first step to gaining a customer’s loyalty is understanding their requirements.” There wasn’t a conversation my uncle couldn’t turn into an exciting learning opportunity for me.

As I pulled up the driveway, my uncle paused his work to tap his watch, “You’re late.”

“I got caught up in writing.” I admitted, looking away to avoid eye contact. “I would have called, but I canceled my phone last month.”

He didn’t reply, his eyebrow raised, waiting for a reasonable justification for the decision to cancel my service.

“It just didn’t make any sense to keep paying it when I don’t have anyone to call!” I sounded like a child to my own ears. Would I ever feel like a responsible adult around him?

“You will when your house is on fire, and then you’ll regret it.” He wiped his forehead with a small towel he’d tucked in his pocket and changed the subject. “Well. It’s too late for lunch. I ate the tuna fish. But come on to the back. We can sit and have a cold drink.”

I nodded and reached out to take the lawnmower from him, but he shook his head, “I got it. Go grab us some soda. I’ll meet you out back.”

I let myself in and passed through his stark, utilitarian living room on my way to the kitchen to grab two Cokes from the refrigerator. The decor was sparse, but the room was exceptionally clean and well-maintained. The mustard-yellow upholstered couch facing the TV set was entirely for show, as my uncle preferred his recliner and rarely hosted guests. Not a speck of dust marred the surfaces of his furniture, a lingering scent of pine cleaner filled the air, and I could still see the regimented lines of the vacuum cleaner cutting across the carpeted floor. Uncle was both meticulous and predictable in all he did.

On the wall opposite his recliner hung a collection of framed photographs: a portrait of his parents, my Aunt Emily with a bright smile and flowers in her hair, a wedding photo, and a candid of the three of us on my fourth birthday. Such a small number of mementos of a life lived, but they each were a link to a different, happier time. If he kept any photos since, I had never seen them.

When Aunt Emily left, she took the sunlight with her. The weeks, months and years following her departure were hard, drenched with lingering sadness that flooded every corner of the house like shadows. He accepted the reality of my sleep disorder with no comment, and he filled the void of Aunt Emily’s departure with routines and regimens intended to bolster my defenses against the world of dreams.

As I grew older, each night before bed, he gave me a sleeping pill that fogged my mind and blurred my dreams. I took the bitter medicine, convinced of my own culpability and willing to pay my penance. But the pills' effects lingered through the day, leaving me feeling detached and disengaged. Each morning as I awoke, he walked me through the drill of forgetting and unbelieving. “Focus on what’s real, Heather,” he would say. “We give fantasies no quarter here.” Throughout my youth, I was listless from the sleep meds, bored to tears with the routine, and dreadfully lonely. Until I met Jesse.

I cracked my Coke open with a hiss and took a long sip, the effervescent sweet flavor a contrast to my bitter memories. I couldn’t help but wonder what life would have been like if I had not summoned the monster and driven Aunt Emily away. With a sigh, I trained my mind to the present, denying the melancholy thoughts like I denied the flitting creatures that followed me out of my dreams. I tucked a second Coke into a koozie printed with the words, “Never trust atoms. They make up everything!” and made my way out the rear door.

We sat down in the chairs in the back and were quiet for some time; no doubt my uncle was catching a breath from his exertion while I considered him wordlessly. He wore his typical casual weekend attire: khaki shorts and a white short-sleeved polo. He had a seemingly endless collection of those shirts in various colors, each proudly bearing the logo of the Richland Loop. His chin was already showing stubble, indicating he’d been up early in the morning, and he was sporting a new pair of mirrored sunglasses with reflective green lenses. With his eyes hidden in such a way, his expression was unreadable.

He broke the silence, “I hope you’re ready to put your best foot forward in that interview next week. I traded in some valuable favors to make sure you got that chance.”

Across the ascetic back lawn, a raven was perched on the wooden fence that divided my uncle’s home from his neighbor’s. It cocked its head to the side, staring at me intently with one brown eye.

“I know. You told me already.” I was a child. After a pause, I tried again, “Thank you, Uncle. I appreciate your help, and I’ll do my best to make you proud.”

“Good. Don’t let yourself get distracted with your scribbles like you did today.” Even through his new sunglasses, I could sense his look. “Review those questions I sent you. Practice your answers in the mirror. Get a copy of your resume printed at Kinkos, and don’t forget it at home.” He paused his litany of instructions only to ask with concern, “What are you planning on wearing?”

“I can dress myself!” Before he could remind me about the time I had worn a witch’s costume to church when I was twelve, I changed the subject. “I might go on a trip with Jesse.”

I wasn’t seriously entertaining the idea, but the petty part of me wanted to push his buttons.

“A trip? To Pasco?” referring to the city right over the Columbia River.

“No…” I did my best to sound enthusiastic about the idea. “To the East Coast. He wants to see his dad, and he invited me along.”

I could see his eyebrows draw together in a furrow above his sunglasses. “There’s no good reason to leave the Tri-Cities. What’s his father doing out in the east?”

I shrugged.

“This Jesse, what’s his family name again? Who’s his father?” Uncle Henry had a tier system for everyone in town. At the top were those who worked at the Loop; a second tier for those who worked for OCP and the half-dozen other research companies in the area; and at the bottom was everyone else.

“Davis. His mom and dad work for the paper.”

“Davis…” my uncle echoed, letting the s draw out until it became a hiss. “You should be careful who you associate with, Heather. ‘He who walks with the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer.’”

“Jesse’s not a fool, Uncle.” I had to defend him. “He’s already got a job at Cyberdyne working with their neural engineering team. He impressed them during his internship last year. He’ll be working on a defense contract for NORAD.”

My rebuttal fell on deaf ears, “If you want to see sites, you don’t need to head cross country. Pasco’s right across the river.”

He was right, of course.

I was dreaming, but I didn’t know it was a dream.

I was carried on the wind by dark wings. The sky was an inky black all around me, without even a single pinprick of a star. I could see a solitary square of golden light in the vast emptiness and shortly found myself passing through it into an extensive book repository lit by a flickering amber glow. There were no orderly shelves and card catalogs. Instead, books lay in disarray and scattered piles, some shorter stacks containing only a half dozen books while the taller stacks contained hundreds.

I brushed my hands across the top of one and picked up the book to read the title on its spine. “Oneiroi,” it read. I registered a passing annoyance but didn’t stop to question why. Instead, I set it down with a sigh and followed a narrow pathway through the stacks.

The aisle meandered for a while, but time is strange in dreams; it may have been hours, or it may have been minutes. As I walked further, the path became more labyrinthine and narrow until I trod on the books themselves. At some point, the way became a staircase, and the stacks became tall walls to either side of me. I traveled for an age, or maybe mere moments, becoming increasingly frustrated with the path.

“ENOUGH!” I shouted, my voice reverberating across the vast space, and the towers of books shook. One particular stack swayed alarmingly, and I was concerned it might come toppling toward me. I rushed forward with a long stride and pushed against it, hoping to steady it. But I miscalculated, and the stack toppled away from me. The books scattered across the floor revealing a passage to the room beyond.

As I crossed into an endless expanse, a low fog rolled across the floor, pale blue in the diffuse light. The stacks of books were gone and forgotten; before me, some forty yards away, stood two gates, each standing over twenty feet tall and about ten feet wide. They were mirrors of one another, side by side. The first was dark and, at first glance, made of intricate knot-work, but on closer inspection, the large knots were formed of the dark horns of some fantastical beast. The second was nearly white and was fashioned into a delicate filigree pattern made of carved ivory.

I beheld the gates with awe. I’d never seen anything like them in the dream world, and knew somehow deep within me that they were important. I stopped in my tracks as the mist began to gather and churn in the space ahead of me. It circled inward and formed a vortex that rose to rival the height of the gates. Fly-away hairs escaped my braid and billowed around my face as a wind picked up, twisting the mist into a thick gray smoke. I watched in rapt fascination as the wind turned into a gale and blew the smoke away with a force so great I had to steady myself.

As the dark mist dissipated around me, I could see a monster within. It walked on four legs like a beast but was as tall as a horse. Each of its clawed feet had articulated fingers with huge knotted joints. The claws themselves were as long as its fingers. Long tentacles grew from its back, but it was the eyes that dropped fear like a lead weight into my gut. Above a grisly maw rimmed with fanged teeth were two endless black pits. It was the same beast from my dream all those years ago.

A loud thudding behind me distracted me for a moment, but not for long.

With a howl, the beast lunged forward, closing the distance between us with a single giant leap. I cast about me for a place to hide but saw nothing nearby. I needed a weapon, something I could use to fend the monster off. A bright flickering light caught my attention, and I looked down to see a flaming torch materialize in my hand. I swung it in a wide arc around me as the creature closed in. Sparks flew, landing across the field and setting it alight with small fires. The beast reared back, narrowly staying out of my reach but not retreating.

Behind me, the thudding was louder and more persistent. I took a step back, looking for the doorway I had come through, but it was gone. The beast stepped forward, and I flailed the torch wildly in front of me, setting more sparks flying. It was inelegant but sufficient; the beast held back with a snarl, ten tentacles rising from behind its shoulders and writhing over its head.

The mist on the ground was gone, burning up as the flames crawled across the grass. The air filled with acrid smoke, which soon obstructed my vision. I coughed as my lungs inhaled noxious vapors and shuddered as a loud knock from behind startled me.

I was in my bedroom, sitting up with my blankets twisted around me. My lungs were on fire, and I heaved to clear them with a choking cough, taking only the tiniest sips of air between painful spasms. Each time I took a breath, I inhaled more smoke, causing another round of coughs. The heat was intense, and I was covered in sweat. There was a bright light where one should not have been, and an obnoxious beep erupted from the smoke sensor in my ceiling.

Shit! I must have brought the fire with me! I stumbled out of my bed, nearly tripping over my sheets, and dashed out of the room, making for the fire extinguisher under the kitchen counter. Before I could reach it, a loud hiss proceeded water spraying from the ceiling as the fire sprinklers kicked in, and within moments I was drenched.

There was one more loud BANG! from the door before it burst open.

“Heather!?” I wiped water and soot out of my eyes and peered through the falling water at Jesse standing in the doorway.

I will not bore you with the tedious details that consumed much of the next day. Many calls were made, and many hours of hold music were endured. Jesse’s mother had been generous enough to offer me the use of her phone and a place to stay until I found new accommodations. I thought bitterly back to my Uncle’s advice from the previous day. I would have appreciated the foreshadowing if I had been writing a story.

The good news was that the sprinklers quickly extinguished the flames, and the building sustained no irreparable damage. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of my furniture and personal effects. What the fire did not take was waterlogged or reeked of smoke. Much of it would have to be disposed of, and the bungalow would be unlivable until the landlord could make repairs.

“At least your motorcycle is undamaged.” Jesse seemed intent on looking at the half-full glass. He was right; out in the carport, my bicycle and motorcycle had been safe from the destructive elements inside the house.

I attempted a closed-lip smile and withheld my despairing thoughts about the tragic loss of the novel I had in progress, the dozens of short stories I had written since I left my Uncle’s home, and every last beloved book in my extensive collection. The Book of Oneiroi had returned to me shortly after I arrived. Lucky me.

After allowing myself a few moments to wallow in heartbreak, I focused again on my present situation.

“I can’t stay here long. I’m a hazard to everyone, myself included, it seems.” We were seated in Jesse’s game room, a small private den off the main living room. He had continued to live here through college, so it still contained the trappings of his favorite pastimes: posters of his favorite movies, video game consoles, and miscellaneous sporting equipment.

I leaned my head against the back of the futon and closed my eyes for a moment.

“Remember when we used to spend hours here playing Centipede on your old Atari?” I’d been pretty obsessed with the game during our Junior year. His parents had always offered me a warm welcome, and their dynamic had reminded me exactly what family life could be.

“Yeah, and you always won.”

I cracked a small smile but didn’t respond, thoughts returning to the present.

“I definitely can’t sleep here.” I should have listened to his advice on Friday. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’d been ignoring a lot of advice to my detriment.

I don’t know what response I expected, but it wasn’t silence. I cracked an eyelid and peered at Jesse, only to find him with a thoughtful look on his face. He was gathering his words and perhaps his courage.

He broke the silence with a large inhale, “Look, I want to suggest something, and I want you to hear me out. I’ll stay here with you and make sure nothing happens. I’ll wake you if there’s any indication of danger. But tomorrow, we need to leave Richland first thing in the morning.

“Mom and I got a visit from the Sheriff last night. They didn’t seem to know a lot, but they were asking about Dad and my ‘vacation plans.’ Heather, did you tell anyone about our conversation?”

My heart skipped a beat, and I forgot to breathe for a moment, “I had lunch with Uncle yesterday and told him I might go with you. Geeze, I’m sorry, Jesse.” Clearly, my uncle meant business when it came to my association with the Davis family.

He shook his head, dismissing the apology. “Well, that answers that. You see, Heather? I hope you see.” His gaze was pleading.

Despite what I owed him, I shook my head. His face fell. “This whole thing, Jesse… you’re not making any sense. Why don’t you just reach out to your dad at his hotel or… wherever he went.” I didn’t understand much about the situation with his father. I should have asked more questions, especially after all the kindness Mr. Davis had shown me. “It seems like a bit of an overreaction to leave town. How are you even going to get there?” The Richland airport had been closed for over a decade, and I vaguely remembered the Tri-Cities airport being under renovation… or something.

He interrupted me with a correction, “How are WE going to get there.”

“Ok… how are WE getting there? And why me? Why do you need me?”

His expression softened, and his eyes snapped to the ground. He swallowed. When he spoke again, it was in the measured tone he took whenever the topic arose. “You, um… need help with your dreams. I can help you if you come along. Also…” His eyes found mine again, his tone pleading, “You’ve got my dad’s picture in your book. And… you’ve got the motorcycle.”

I frowned. He thought I would ride to the East Coast on my motorcycle?

Before I could decline, he leaned forward, something fierce and intense flickering in his eyes, “Please, just hear me out. Tomorrow morning, come out with me to the edge of town. I’ll show you everything I know, everything I’ve discovered. And you can make the decision then. You need to see this. It’s important.”

Given everything that had happened over the last few days, I owed him, and it was a reasonable request. He smiled with relief when I nodded.

I searched around for a new topic to relieve the tension. Before I could stumble into awkward questions about the weather, Jesse had already started recounting his trip to the library the day before.

“I don’t know if it’ll help, but I found a book there on lucid dreaming.” As he presented the book to me, he continued, “There’s a lot here, and maybe a bunch of it is nonsense, but there are some things you might try.” I flipped through the book's pages as he summarized what he had learned.

He gave me some new notebooks to record my dreams, though I was tempted to fill them with stories instead. Nonetheless, I had made the mistake of ignoring good advice before, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Committing to the new direction, I poured through the book as diligently as my university text books. That night, as I drifted off to sleep on the futon in Jesse’s childhood playroom, I set my intention by repeating to myself like a mantra, “I will remember I’m dreaming when I fall asleep.”

I was dreaming, but I did not know it was a dream.

I soared through the pale sky on dark wings. Beneath me was nothing but fog. I sought the gates of ivory and horn through the haze, at last spotting a dark speck in swirling mists. As was often the case in these dreams, my notice of them brought them ever closer, and in a blink, I stood before them, the endless fog at my back.

The mist gathered and churned in the space ahead of me, circling inward and forming a vortex that rose to rival the gates in height. And as it turned and twisted, a wind picked up, and the vortex shifted to the dark black color of smoke.

It all seemed so familiar. Where had I seen all this before? Had I lived this moment already? Had I lived it in a dream?

A dream!

Tendrils of the dark fog snaked out of the churning mass. The wind roared from the center of the whirlwind, blowing away the smoke with great force. The monster stood before me, pawing at the ground, and blowing steam from its snout. It lowered its head, ready to charge.

It was a fearsome sight, and my memories of the beast were not so distant this time. Seeing the creature before me, every memory rushed back. I feared. I mourned. I grew angry, and with my anger came a more recent memory.

“Imagine what you could do if you took more control,” someone had said to me. Well, I had prepared for this every morning since that night seventeen years ago, when my Aunt, my home, and my joy were snatched from me.

With practiced ease, my mind shifted away from evaluating the monster as a physical threat. This was a challenge of the mind. As the monster’s great feet pounded the ground and it leaped toward me, I closed my eyes…

...and unmade it with my disbelief.

When I opened my eyes, the monster was gone.

In its place in front of the great gates stood a man in a top hat and tails. Where his eyes should have been, he wore a delicate gold masquerade mask through which I caught glimpses of sparkling universes. We stood regarding one another for some time. The wind had stilled to nothing. No sounds disrupted the silence. When he spoke, his voice was resonant and lyrical.

“Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;

Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn:

True visions through transparent horn arise;

Through polished ivory pass deluding lies.”

As the final word echoed across the empty expanse, he raised a cane and pointed toward the white gate. “Aeneas chose the ivory gate. But which will you pick, Heather? Will it be true visions or deluding lies?”

“It’s you!” I had recovered from my surprise, and now I was angry, “You chased me in the library!”

He cocked his head slightly, his lips pursed, “I wouldn’t call that a fair representation of the event. As I recall, you trespassed in my home, stole a treasure, and ran away before exchanging a hello.”

I couldn’t argue his point. But who was this man, and how was he connected to the beast? “Are you… the… the monster?”

“What?” Around his mask, his expression appeared sincerely confounded, “Oh no. My powers are great, but I cannot take the form of a beast. That is the domain of my brother, Icelos. The aspects of men and women are my province.

“Further, what you encountered just now was no monster. It was an illusion cast to guard the gates from mortals. A manifestation of your own greatest fear, or at least the fear that most threatens your mortal vessel.” His smile was charming, but his words had a dangerous undercurrent. “There are other types of fears, aren’t there, Heather?”

I objected, “I met that monster before. It was no illusion. If you’re not the monster, then who are you?”

He chuckled and touched his fingers to the brim of his hat with a small tip. “You would know me as Morpheus.” He shifted his cane into one hand and pointed its silver cap in my direction, “That is my brother Phantasus.” I looked behind me and, seeing nothing, I looked down, noticing I held The Book of Oneiroi in my hand. “His specialty is the inanimate. He seems to be somewhat taken with you. Or maybe it’s the allure of the mortal realm. We cannot cross over without your help.”

“The beast you met some years past is our brother, Icelos. You should take heed. He caught a taste of mortal blood and has been mad for it since. You bound him to this realm when last you met, and now you’re his only way out. You won’t find he’s as easy to dismiss as that petty illusion. Well, not a second time, at any rate.”

It was a lot to absorb. I filed it away for careful consideration when I awoke.

He continued, “Unless I’m wrong, and I rarely am, we are your relations. Probably someone’s great-great-great-granddaughter. My family tends to dally where they shouldn’t.”

“What?” My newly acquired lucidity did not change the nature of dreaming itself. I was in a fantasy, and it was surreal.

“We are the Oneiroi, the children of Nix, and we number in the thousands. We are quite diverse, but one thing is true of each of us: All dreams fly on dark wings.”

Chapter Two: Flood

Chapter Two:
Flood