So, it was something of a shock to find my dream self in a darkened room I didn’t recognize, staring at a shadowy figure I didn’t know. A small shaft of moonlight trickled out from between a pair of green gingham curtains. A woman’s foot was illuminated, and I watched as she curled her painted toes into the carpet in apparent agitation.
I was standing close enough to feel the baby-fine strands of the woman’s hair kiss my face. That was when I realized I was locked into the woman, like a shadow moving just behind her. Not quite a part of her, but existing just on her periphery.
When she drifted, ghost-like, through the shaft of moonlight, I was forced onward, just behind her. And I could feel something—something heavy. Rage saturating the air. My mouth burned, like there was a habanero stuck halfway down my throat. I felt like I could spit pure flame.
But this wasn’t my anger. It was hers.
If I strained, I could actually catch the tenor of her thoughts. They popped like furious bubbles inside my head. As if her anger was my own.
He was upstairs. I could smell him up there.
The odious little man always wore too much cologne. He thought he was so much better than me...
The second the thought burst into my head, I strained to get loose of the dream because it was a type of dream you never wanted to have—one of those nightmares that threatened to submerge you, to take you along for the ride, whether you wanted to go or not.
I tried to separate myself from the woman, tried to wake myself up, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t command my sleeping mind. Usually, I was good at this—usually I had control over my dreaming self—I’d mastered the art of lucid dreaming, but tonight that knowledge seemed far away.
I’d show him he wasn’t any better than me! The thoughts continued to rage. And if I didn’t get what I wanted, he would be the one to suffer…
These weren’t my thoughts, and I wanted no part of them. But whatever the unseen force that had tugged my brain into this nightmare scenario, it wasn’t letting me escape so easily. Every time I tried to divorce myself, tried to take control of the dream, and wake myself up, I only managed to find my dream self right back where I just was, joined to this woman.
She tiptoed down a corridor, and I was forced to follow her. More moonlight spilled into the hallway, so bright I had to blink against it. The door at the end of the hallway was slightly ajar, and I could smell the scent of a man’s cologne, heavy and…
Cheap.
The woman kept moving forward in that eerie, ghostlike fashion.
When we reached the room, there was someone else in it. I couldn’t make out the figure ahead of me, though I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision. Wind picked up outside and the house shifted and groaned, as restless as I felt. The creak of the wooden floorboards beneath my feet could barely be heard over the racket of the tree branches scraping against the windows and the howling of the wind.
I could just make out the lumpy shapes of a couch and armchair nearby. My hand braced the wall, and awareness dawned on me that this was a living room.
Now things were going to change. Now he was going to realize he didn’t have the final say.
Stop! I told myself, but it was as though my own voice didn’t exist. All I could hear was this woman’s angry and polluted thoughts.
He’d tell me what I wanted to know, or he’d get exactly what he deserved.
I hit the threshold of the door and could go no further. I could only watch from afar as the woman’s body separated from mine and I was no longer her shadow. As she moved forward, she disappeared into the darkness of the room, disappeared into the pitch black.
There was a flash of lightning that illuminated the darkness and in it, I saw a lopsided shadow against the far wall. The shadow was stooped over the couch, where someone sat with his head hanging back, like he’d fallen asleep watching TV. And the shadow was enormous, taking up the majority of the wall, looming over the man like some kind of monster.
“Time to wake up,” the creature grunted in a deep and gravelly voice.
Even though the shadow creature appeared almost like an animal, it stood upright and its limbs trailed to the floor, its arms longer than its legs. Long and spiked shapes jutted, antler-like, from either side of its skull.
The man opened his eyes and let out an ear-splitting shriek.
A shriek I echoed as I bolted upright in bed.
I threw a hand over my mouth to muffle my cry, so I wouldn’t wake Finn who was sound asleep in the bed next to mine.
It was just a dream, I tried to calm myself, but my heart was throwing itself against my ribs and my breathing was coming in quick pants.
It was just…
A figment of your imagination!
True, but…
No, buts…
It’s just… that was the same monster I saw in the graveyard, I finally finished the thought.
I took a deep breath at the memory of the woman walking through the gravestones and then the shadowy creature that appeared moments later.
And then I remembered that monsters weren’t real and that the light of the dying sun had simply been playing tricks on my eyes.
Right and somehow you channeled whatever you thought you saw in the graveyard and it appeared in your dream, owing to your hyperactive imagination.
That made sense.
Magic was real, yes, but no one in my family had ever mentioned monsters and owing to the fact that we possessed magic, if monsters were real, I would have known about them.
The things that did exist—witches, gypsies, ghosts, the fae—they were all, ultimately, human. Ghosts had been people. Witches, fae and gypsies still were human—we just possessed magic.
And monsters weren’t human.
At least, that’s what I told myself as I lay back down, taking a deep breath and trying to calm myself.
Chapter Three
Today was move-in day!
I woke Finn up and even though he grumbled and groaned and pulled the covers back up to his chin; he was up and brushing his teeth in another few minutes. We packed our things and then started for the lobby, where I grabbed a cup of coffee to go and we piled into the Jeep, eager to meet the moving trucks.
Yes, tonight would mark our first night in our new house, which hopefully wasn’t haunted. I even crossed my fingers as the thought raced through my head. And of course that weird dream was still lingering, even though I did my best to push it to the dark recesses of my mind.
It was just a dream, nothing more, I told myself. And, besides, nothing is going to ruin this fantastic day! This is the first day of the rest of our lives!
“Are you excited?” I asked Finn as I reached over and squeezed his knee.
“I guess,” he answered.
“This is going to be great,” I said with another nod. “We’re going to have a new start and life is going to be one big adventure from here on out.”
He looked at me and smiled, his braces glittering in the early morning light. “Okay, Mom.”
***
Seven hours later, Finn and I were exhausted. The moving trucks were gone and all of our furniture was unloaded and I was sorting through the myriad boxes that covered the floors. I’d decided to start the remodel in the kitchen area, so I was trying to clear all the kitchen boxes away, storing them in the dining room. Tomorrow I’d start looking for general contractors.