Guardwalking (Shifts In Otherworldly Places)

Guard House
(first shift)

I had never went there before, the far off wall mostly blocked the strange structure beyond it as just a shadow of an undefined silhouette. I was always perplexed by its presence and the varying tales I'd heard. I wasn't welcome with open arms in the village for I could see inside them. The name given to this matter wasn't for witchcraft, but a form of fortunetelling, although I was just a sentry in the night. I kept to myself. I have no recollection of uttering any portends of any event or saying a prediction of any person.

But the silhouette of the dark abode seemed to know, the empty castle stood off in the cold distance. I could brave that way, I could walk there, for I have seen the shapes of the dwellers of the dark. They always moved in scurried pace.

The local folks had begun to bring in their wares for the night, wares that could not be left outside. The axes, the gardening tools, the water vessels. I thought that odd. The moon was hidden behind the clouds. Alone I sat in the guard house, not too far from the well.

The far off castle echoed with the wind. There was something. As my hearing upon night's darkness increased, and those could have been mistaken for footsteps rapidly pounding upon the cold, stone floors inside that empty ruin.

I turned to look at the time. It was 2:34.

The midnight had passed and with it, the sense of ordinary night. The hour was something else now, a timid shutter, as if something in limbo had struggled to escape. A sense of suspension hung in the air. Yet, what is suspended? What nature has subdued itself unto the unknown? The distant castle now seemed more awake, alive, and stirred. The guard house door of oak wood made no indication of the moonlight that spilled all around the outside. I felt its presence, nonetheless.

With even more concentration, I could feel the presence from within the abandoned castle. There was something dull and forlorn about the echoes between the walls of stone and the trees out in the fields.

I walked outside and went to gate of the wall, and took the key to open it, to venture towards the abandoned castle that had stood so long as a mere shadow that cast itself against the nightfall of the village. Two different darknesses between one and the other. Something that seemed to recoil. It seemed the empty place felt as if more afraid than anyone looking in from the outside.

I went in through an open window, where once a stained glass window had been. The broken pieces still on the ground outside of it as well as on the inside. I lit my torch and walked in further.

Night Watches
(second shift)

The floors were solid stone but little else seemed solid. The walls were more twine and broken pieces of the structure than what it appeared to be on the outside. Empty. Dull, and muted. No sounds came from anywhere here. I sensed a time from before its ruination. The faces that were shown to me were those of the villagers. But in much younger days. I was from the deep forests and my work as a guard, a maiden watcher, was not yet a part of my life. But this place seemed to be the dying memories of the villagers. Their past deeds. I began to understand why they wanted to keep it hidden. There was darkness passing through. The ghosts wandered but their tales were kept guarded. I felt that my task was more about whatever I was guarding back in the village, wasn't for the village against this place outside its walls, but more likely guarding the abandoned place from being forgotten by the village. And this was something that some really wanted forgotten.

I went back to the guard house. I rekindled the small fire, and wrapped up in a simple wool blanket. The faded stone of the gates were silent, and the movement of wind had died. Nothing but the anticipation of first light. Twelves hours was exhausting and began to weigh heavy on my eyes. There was stirring out in some grove or forest nook but I paid it no mind. Too far off to concern anyone in the immediate time. I'd drift to a blissful oblivion. The night would come again, soon enough. On my way to the guardhouse, I'd bring with me this time, a small, golden shield. It had been years since I used it last.

During the parallel age between the village and the forests, there was a time of Graveyard Dreams. A few hundred years before, in a time when life had been mirrored by some other world that folk could come, and go in between. Like an alternate dimension into what seemed like a timeless realm. A passage into what could be some near future but more colorful from the bleak reality of the age we knew. It began to absorb in a way, woven intricately into life, and trapped a traveler or two. The only way they could speak to the villagers was through dreams, where they'd see images of them standing or walking in a graveyard that was situated into a back way of a forgotten part of the village. The rock walls that surrounded it always seemed to keep a soft shadow over it.

I laid the shield against the wall beside my sword next to the fire in the guardhouse. Now something else had emerged from the foreboding castle beyond the walls of the village. A visitor came to the iron gates. A cloaked figure with a long staff. I greeted this persona, and he spoke as if far beneath the deepest castle but the feeling was as if he spoke from a place more lofty than the unseen mountains of legend.

"What do you seek, in the night, in this village?" I asked. His eyes narrowed and focused on me tightly. He spoke with an ancient voice, an elder of some far off age who seemed to have gotten lost. "Soon you will have to find your way. Past the villagers. They do not move forward, and they cannot move backward for the limbo they inhabit. But you shall find your way out." As he spoke this, I felt a sense of dread, but ultimately it sounded as if the guarding would cease and the shadows would depart this little gray village.

With the golden shield I could hear things more distinctly in the night. I could see clearer. And in the dawning of the day to come, I again, saw inside the villagers' hearts once more, and I saw death and their wrath to bring death. At first saying nothing, they went about their daily affairs. But as I rose again, I was greeted with queries of why I hadn't used my sword and shield against the night visitor. "He disappeared past the gate, I never opened it." I explained. "The visitor works in Necromantic Ways!" They exclaimed.

This village was becoming more and more clear to me as a place that was built away from the living lands. But what lands I could not name. I was not in this village so much as I was walking along inside a place and time where it is. Or was.

Dreaming Back Awake
(third shift)

The abandoned place outside the village was no longer a point of fear. It was something now in the background. The gold shield had been taken with the sword back to the forests and enshrined by the night visitor. That's what they had told me. I was no longer needed as a guard at the wall and gate of the village, and that when the night came again it would be my last watch, although I wasn't fully aware of this. And the place that had given the villagers so much worry, was to be burned to the ground. They made a spectacle of it.

I watched as the flames engulfed it and I wondered about the graveyard behind the village in the opposite direction. Something instinctively lured me toward it. That a gate was opening somewhere. That it was time to go back to the forests. But the villagers came and wrapped me in a blanket as they lead me to another guardhouse on the darker side of the village between the center castle entrance and the path back into the forests. Here I would meet other guards from the village who once stood watch a long time ago. They wanted reassured that no truth of the past would be visiting anywhere inside the village and wanted to lure that strange night visitor in. So my last night of guardwalking would be deeper inside the village and not in the usual lookout.

Later that night, a few priests came and spoke to me. They seemed agitated and annoyed. They were sarcastic in tone. Sinister in appearance. "What or who is your god?" The mocking priests asked. "Truth." I answered. It wasn't as if I were suggesting any one truth to another, just the idea of it. What it was to me. I kept wondering if I was dreaming all of this. The village seemed overcast with an even heavier cloud. This one was layered and still. There was no movement. The night drew on. This night seemed to have no end.

There was a question of my faith. Secretly I denounced the false prophets, the wicked priests and their gods...whom did not exist but for the evil that could be done in their names. Names that had to be imagined before they could have solidity in the minds of the weak. "You can burn!" They screamed. I wasn't phased. It was as if I was walking through some other place and time.
"I burn with a fire, already." I said. "It's truth! I'll speak of true things and the darkness wails in my utterance. I burn with delight that I know who walked here, and seen the face of the creator! I know his face. His face was once seen here. I remember."

They faded from view as they wandered in confusion, as if walking in circles in unfamiliar lands. I wasn't the only one who had seen beyond the earthly planes. There were others and I couldn't reach back into ancient lore without leaving the walls and I had to stay awake on the nightwatch, and I wasn't able to stay there for more than nine hours at a time. I had to shift back to the sun and live in the light for a time. That was what I had and believed of how time would go here from now on. That I would simply return to the guard house, and my night watch, and walking as a guard when night fell. But that was just my routine that I felt they would bind me to. That the threat of the following night to be my last watch was something of a foggy retreat behind the castles of the lands. Out of some angry backlash about a visitor they didn't know.

But this was not to be. I paused and remembered all the things I'd seen before, and how they'd come to pass.
"There are those who see, those who know how tragedy unfolds in the darkness." I said amid the now muddled voices inside the guard house. "And they weep."
After an hour passed, I was being lead to where others had been before. It was now that I had no sword and shield to defend myself. Now that they were taken away, I was at the mercy of these same angry villagers. They were going to the entrance of a dungeon.

In A Darkened Abode
(final shift)

This place was underground and massive, the floors and chambers were grand in size and the stones laid out were different between one chamber and the next. Some of the chambers had earthen floors, simply smoothed rocks of the cavern they were hollowed out of. Past one area there were huge blades that circled in the middle of the giant room. Like a mechanism that ensured no one would either come into the deeper chambers without harm or to keep anyone from escaping. That's what I'd concluded as they lead me past the blades, from a safe enough distance, as they blocked any way back through by locking chamber doors behind them. If I tried to run, I would have been forced to step into the circling blades. So I had no way that I could see.

Finally we were halted at the place where I would be chained to the stone wall. But that was to be later. They snapped whips at my arms and back when I turned my face away and fell down. I wanted to escape if only to another corner of the chamber. I felt the trickling of blood on my wounded flesh. The walls of the dungeonous chamber where I stood now shackled and gazing at the angry faces of my oppressors, were ominous and from the dim edges of what I could see, shone candlelight from the four corners thereof. I had been chained to the wall for some hours but I could not recall how long I'd been that way. I felt the bruises but didn't recall when they were inflicted. I took blows to my middle, and arms, and head. I felt a chill that embraced me. But a heat of the wounds at the same time.

While the villager lords grabbed at my long hair and gazed at my closed eyes, as if to get one last tear to escape from under my eyelids, I felt no pain. I knew if death were near that it'd be all over and I'd be back home. The cloth I wore as the last remnant of my guard regalia, was a thin white under layer of woven silk, but the back was ripped off when the lashes were struck out at me. I felt tears on my face, but could not remember crying. I felt the strong sword hand of my captor let go of my hair and back away. I looked at them standing in the center of the chamber now, while my wrists were numb and bruised by the iron cuffs that I wore from the cold, stone wall.

"She has to be tried for witchcraft! She has left all behind on this quest for freedom! She must die!" I heard one of the lords declare. But there was a few that wasn't so bloodthirsty, but their courage was lacking. Only words were used as some last miserable defense. No bravery was among any of them, just an attempt to save a life but the most regarded of things was not life itself, but the appeasing of those who held power here. That was what was most sought after. To never offend those that abused power, and if someone's life was to be spared, it surely would have to suit in proper form.

"But surely she has done great good for our people. Can't it be that we may try to understand the reason why she spoke with an unknown at the gates? And saw us as enemies?" Another lord spoke on my behalf but it was too late. I could sense their voices getting louder and louder. I could feel the air around me grow warmer as the fires from the deep parts of the dread dungeon of shadow churned below several chambers of granite and brimstone. As they glared over at me, I looked past them, I saw in a copper bowl's reflection that a hazy, soft expression filled my blue and watery eyes and pierced through the dim lit chamber, and for one moment they stood silent and motionless.

I felt no pain, I felt no sorrow, I felt no remorse for that which I knew I had done in purity, love and honor. The visitor wasn't a stranger to me deep down inside. I somehow knew him. This wasn't his land, but it was obviously not mine, either. I leaned further back until the blistered flesh of my back almost melted with the cool stone wall. I felt a brief moment of relief and I looked up and I heard a soft tune. Vague at first, but unmistakably the same melody that I would hum to myself in dark places when'ere I'd go on high adventure with my now scattered comrades, who had either been sold as slaves or killed.

I began to look past the enclosed gloom of the chamber walls and ceiling. I began to hum my song and it echoed through the vast emptiness like a soft breeze of Spring and I saw that no matter what had happened....what had passed...that those few notes and the feeling of them were more solid and everlasting than anything of this dark turn of events...or of the world. I forgot about the urgency of guarding anything. That was passed.

Finally I closed my eyes again and the voices of the enraged lords were fading as if into nothingness. Then silence.

I had found my way.


~~~

Originally written in October 2002
 
The first parts of this story were written a year or so after the last part and included in its file in August 2005. It was meant to be a short series or 'shifts' of medieval events subtitled: Various Scenes, Acts, And Deeds.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams

A Prologue

Distorted Chambers in the Realm of Dreams focuses on dreams and nightmares that have had something going on in them that flowed like a tale. I've only included those which had some sort of 'story' to them. Even if they don't make a lot of sense. But that's how dreams work. Also the focus on time and the lucid dreaming factor. I have seen events unfold right as they happened in real life, but the dream itself would come off as boring or unresolved. In this book of dreams, subtitled Dream-Nightmare Sequence, I have offered up the most vivid of dreams from this time.

The passing of time is different here, there is no hour in minutes of sixty. An hour here can be quite a lengthy travel, or suspended in some backward way. No time is considered. And it can be gone in a microflash, and begin again with no tracking of the previous time, and unlike the first hour, may hold the turn of a day within. Repeating and playing itself back as if recollecting its own raison d'etre. In the same hour. All in the same hour.

If you find that you stand on a shore and see the ocean, as far as the eye can see and it looks endless and wide, but then find that if you run a few paces ahead into the water you risk traveling through the water and on to another place, and you find that there are strange corners or pathways that you cannot reach but see, and there seems to be a boundary there and the water ends at those points. That's when you'll know that you are in a such distorted chamber somewhere out on the Ley Lines.

This could be connected to an ocean in the present time, but it could also be an ocean that no longer exists in the waking world. That is how going from place to place is like in dreams. There's a connection to that dimension, to the present, and to the past. And sometimes if you can walk through certain points where energy flows and you're dreaming lucidly, you can see the future.

Of all these boundaries, like the seas of dreams, you can reach those places, if you know the way. You have to know how to use sound and other elements around you. You won't have the use of your body. Your body isn't here. And that's what allows one to travel through these places. Your body is an anchor, but you are free to go wherever you will. Remember though, there are other entities sometimes.

As there are for the most part no dates for these dreams, I have tried to give an outline of the timeframes they had occurred. At given times I try to point out a date as close as I can figure. I cannot give exact dates for all. But there are some that I can. It is important to note while reading through these recollections of dreams and nightmares that sometimes I'm relating a feeling or what something seemed to me, to be. A lot of feelings are within these pages. What images I cannot conjure to accurately describe the dream, I'm telling you the feeling of that dream and what it was to me.

This little book of dreams and nightmares I had saved in a journal before setting them in proper order for this work. As I seemed to be in the right frame of mind to do justice to the descriptions I had earlier jotted down, I was able to finish a task I wanted to complete. I've written this during what seemed like a lull in time itself when it was dreary outside and there was nothing but an ill wind stirring, between October and December of 1997. A God-forsaken season. 

The chapters pick back up after that time at number seventeen.

Chapter 1 Approaching Darkness On A Wall
Chapter 2 Jagged Desert Of Desolation
Chapter 3 There's An Exit
Chapter 4 The Stairs Beyond The Basement
Chapter 5 'Nowhere' Roadways
Chapter 6 The Stairs Beyond The Basement (Gray Basement)
Chapter 7 On A Balcony Waiting Out The Dark
Chapter 8 Dwelling Before An Evil Fortress
Chapter 9 The Stairs Beyond The Basement (Green Basement)
Chapter 10 The Black Tower Of The Black Desert
Chapter 11 Airplane Anxiety
Chapter 12 Crumbling Churches
Chapter 13 Violence Of Demons
Chapter 14 Onslaught Of Nightmares
Chapter 15 Gray Creature Boy Falls
Chapter 16 Other Distorted Chambers & Night Images On The Hour
Chapter 17 Mammoth Waterfall
Chapter 18 Colliding Spheres
Chapter 19 Driving Towards Desolate Land
Chapter 20 Mars Or The Moon (A New Red Planet)
Chapter 21 Escape From The Moon
Chapter 22 Eyes Of The Dead
Chapter 23 Grave Road
Chapter 24 Light Within Darkness
Chapter 25 The Fountain Of Blood And Water
Chapter 26 Hour Ends

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 1

Approaching Darkness On A Wall

It was daylight that seemed to bend around a heap of darkness. There were dark clouds that hung high in the air. No storms, or rain. But the sheer stark bluish-grey was vivid, and the only light came from even higher in the sky but it was a soft grey light. I stood on a bridge that had elements of the Great Wall of China, but it was much taller and built with large slabs of granite and iron. I looked over the side. Everything was normal. Everything seemed normal.

My mother was driving in a truck to the store. Momentarily we were stopped on the bridge, whether it was the road being too bumpy or car problems, I didn't know. I saw that I was the only one who stood on the bridge and I couldn't climb down over the side. I was a little unnerved at how high up it was. I knew something was wrong. I looked behind, almost stiff with fear I saw a mass of shadow creeping toward the bridge and on toward the area below the bridge. The shadow crawled on to the town, to the people, to my family who were now just below the way. I knew something was dreadfully wrong. I cried out "Look! Look!" and the sound was as if nothing had escaped my lips. "Look! It's darkness! It's coming right this way!" But no one heard me. There seemed to be a vacuum between me and everyone else.

I watched as the mass grew and thickened, softly and subtly. Never did it explode onto the scene, it just crept like a dust cloud. Not unlike pollution from an industry plant nearby. With one last effort I gave one more cry "Look!" and no one heard or gave the approaching mass any attention as it took on a stronger and darker accumulation. With the last breath I cried out again and the bridge shook and began to collapse. Then I awoke.

The tragic form of loss went into memory to filter information received and in a way dulled into escapism. In dreams sadness is felt so much stronger, but a dream is an escape at the same time. I began memorizing every bridge and wall around any city that I could. The unreal lingering in the waking world. Walking on that side of conscience to absorb and count what in real life would now and again unfold. It wasn't just a shadow that would pace the floor wondering what would happen to an unstable bridge. I would be prepared if any instinct may persuade me that there was danger. I would speak long before any bridge was crossed, should that sense fall on me.

The dreams from the night before being disturbed and unspoken. "It's just a dream" they'd say. But there was truth in those strangely lit images, and there were stark coincidences.

With all the constant moving around in the beginning of life, learning the scenery of northwest mountains to desert valleys of the southwest to the coasts of the east, massive paths and memories were embedded early on in life. There were many levels of place, time and memory. And we would always see the ghosts. Seas out in distances, shadows up in the clouds. We had flown and glided above them without fear that gravity was beckoning us back.

When the ghosts were dense. We had to cope. Thus, the nightmares could be overwhelming. But remember this, dear reader, there is nothing that can ever harm you there. It's only in the flesh that we are unable to remember how we do those supernatural tricks.

Circa 1985

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 2

Jagged Desert Of Desolation

The desert was covered with a molten lava and fumes of fire leapt up from the ground and distorted the distant road ahead. Short, sharp peaks of jagged rock formations bolted out from the dry, cracked canyon we were traveling through. We were in an old car, trying to drive it through the desolation as the ground rumbled outside and shook the vehicle. It seemed we were still alive, but wondered if we were already melted along with the rest of the world. The conversation went in an odd way. Comparing the car to some metaphor of willpower that only holds together because of the engine rather than having a tank-like outer shell. The roads and the mountain terrain surrounded us in a landscape of Hell.

The glass of the windows seemed to turn into outward vents of steam and I could see the ground rising up ahead. There were streams of lava unrelentingly pouring out of pulsating hills of an angry earthquake. I wasn't sure if I was in shock or if I was succumbed by the heat. I didn't feel any discomfort outside of what I was seeing.

I was in the back seat and looked out of the front window and wondered why the car wasn't stopping. Surely this would be a bad situation to keep going on in this Venusian environment, but also stopping would prove fatal if the car was our only means of survival and protection. I thought it curious that no comments were made about these being the worst driving conditions ever. I wondered even more as to why we were driving in these horrid lands. I questioned my family's sanity and sat back with my eyes tightly closed and felt a cool, soft air against my face.

The car came to a stop. The lava seemed dried up and long crusted over as we stepped out of the car. There was a store just beyond a few swirling fumes of underground pressure. We walked over the tarred surface and went in to ask if they had any ice cold water. They did. It came from an underground stream nearby. A stream that was an iceberg that had been carved out by the lava. And re-cooled by an overcast sky of acid rain clouds. We believed we were somewhere in Arizona, but I'm certain we were nearer to Venus than we were to Phoenix. But it was all the same anyway.

In those days chance meetings were swift but remembered. Yet no certainty, no real knowledge of what the future might bring. It was as if we lived in a state of waiting. Traveling was what we did, and what we dreamed. We were always on the move.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 3

There's An Exit

The night was a calm, muggy summer. The weather hadn't let up on no one. The humidity was like mist clinging to everyone, but it was pleasant when evening had finally fallen. There was a dewy scent in the air and I had rested and slept.

In this dream no one seemed terribly unhappy and I felt forgetful. I was enjoying my hours, days and nights in a pleasant environment. There were no nightmarish landscapes and all seemed well. It was less stressful in that time. There were a million things going on but they were ordinary things looking back on it. I was somehow oblivious to the chaos. I really couldn't remember what the event was about. But there were a lot of people shuffling around.

I was standing in the lower level of some building. There were no windows, but sunlight came in from somewhere. I could sense it. I looked around and I noticed that I was standing with all these other people who I couldn't see for they were wearing bulky, dark brown robes. Like monks of old. They silently stood there as I stood with them but couldn't figure out how I got there, and noticed that I, too, was wearing a robe like theirs. I wondered at that. I felt that somehow I was either tricked into wearing it or I was merely trying to escape detection.

They started to move and walk up the stairs that wound around the sides of the walls, in two single files. I followed their steps to blend in.

I fell to the back of the line when we all had reached the second level. It seemed that the building was some kind of hotel and there was a huge lobby area with chairs facing some kind of little stage. There were glass doors and windows along the hall and they let in a cascade of sunlight. And there were two main glass doors that lead outside. There were a lot of other people in the lobby walking around, they were dressed in normal gear. The robed people of which there were about fifteen to sixteen individuals, still seemed to blend in.

No one seemed to notice them as they walked past, in and out of the foyer and halls. I knew that was odd. But I felt I couldn't mention it.

I continued to appear like one of them. But as the hooded 'monks' reached two wooden swinging doors that led to the main lobby area, I ducked behind the right side door and hid behind it. I slipped off the cloak and let it fall to the floor, kicking it further into the corner, I didn't want anyone to see it discarded there. I was wearing a white short-sleeve shirt and a yellow skirt. I knew somehow I'd still blend in. Nobody saw me. This was what I wanted but I felt nobody would have ever seen me anyway. There was a clatter of a lot of people talking as the lobby was quite crowded. They were waiting for something to start - a show perhaps.

I started walking at a good pace, but not to appear suspicious. I felt apprehensive and that I was in danger if I were discovered, but for the life of me, I didn't know why. I felt as if I were some spy and that my life depended on staying invisible. There was no open reason to my understanding of why this was, but it was. I had nothing to do with the robed people or this place. I just appeared there. But I felt the fear and danger was based on them.

I started for the two main exit doors that led outside of the building. I was halfway to the doors when I felt someone was watching me. I looked around. A few people glanced at me but they were obviously not paying any attention. I breathed a sigh of relief. I kept walking. Up ahead of me from another hallway corridor, I saw mingled with other people who took no notice, a huge dark shadow, like a cloud that grew black and glossy. As it moved in my direction it started to take the shape of a person with horns. I ran top speed to the exit and made it outside. I went into the parking lot and looked around for a car. There were a few scattered here and there. The next moment it changed. The lot was filled with cars and it was evening. The landscaping was the same though, very well taken care of with trees and flower-beds around the curbs. It was definitely a hotel parking lot.

I stood still as I noticed that just a few seconds before, it was fully daylight outside, just a little grey here and there, a soft grey, and very warm but the moment I exited, it was fully night. I longed for that hour because it was so pleasant but there was that shadow loose in that hotel building. So I resigned to the exiting of that hour, and felt no unease. I stood and heard the silence of night's cover, the crickets and peacefulness. No one had followed me through the exit doors. No one even seemed to notice what I had seen. No one was screaming and running out the doors.

I stood under the glow of the parking lot's lanterns and the protection of night's cover. I moved forward through the hours away from the shadow of the halls. It could not follow me then. There was no moon in the sky. I knew I could exit at any time I wanted. And there was a calm silence where only nature could be heard. I opened my eyes and all sounds from outside the window, were the same.

Circa 1988

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 4

The Stairs Beyond The Basement

"Those were some foul ghosts, they came in here last night." Debbie said. Motels are magnets for them because so many people come and go through.

"We're all a little tired, it was an exhausting trip, we're gonna have to get home and see what's up." I said after we had all realized that we might have some relatives staying with us. It felt odd, liked mixed feelings.

Debbie looked through the papers, looked up from the table and finally asked me why I look into those dark places like that. I was confused even more why she'd ask me that. I have this gift. But I always thought that everyone had it. It made me feel alone. Because of what I see. Because of what I can do.

I had no answer, I never intend to seek them out. I just want to light up the place so we can live and have a home that is mapped and never lose our way going through all the rooms. The knowledge I sought. But I hated the task of finding anything in shadow. I wanted to help any prisoners of the darkness. So I never let the darkness kill me. I was always two steps ahead.

I paused. There was an open door to the basement.

"You shouldn't feel alone." Debbie reassured me.

But "I do feel alone sometimes. Often."

We were a normally dysfunctional group of people having done amazing feats of survival. Of this day-to-day life and still can't find the stairs to the basement. How long have we lived here, anyway? A month? Two? I'm lost because I'm fighting something bigger than the system of stairs here, I don't know.

I must turn in, the hour is unknown. I can't see it from here. If I walk toward the sound of the clock, I could reach the dining room where it was located, if I keep going on through this hallway.

I had tried to see the clock-face. It seemed to be half past seven now. It can't be that early still, it was eleven forty-five the last time I checked and that was at least an hour ago. This hallway is horribly dark.

"Look! Look! There's that guy!" Rachel screamed as we saw a shadowy man head down the stairs in our basement. Rachel was in the living room area of the basement and she startled me.

I ran after the entity with an intense willpower. I saw the figure disappear into the deep, downward stairwell. I paused. The unknown was no longer a factor and I knew I was in the other realm.

I stood by the basement door that led down the dark, cement stairs. There was very little light coming from the basement room though, when I strained to look further. Then I wondered at the structure I was surveying.

This house's basement has another basement! How could that be? Giving no more thought to it I went down the stairs. I hated this. Everything was so dark but outside light still barely lit the room. So dull and depressed. The paint was peeling. The other basement had to be pitch black. The scent of concrete was strong and earthy, so a flat floor still prevailed below.

The light shrank smaller and smaller as I followed the thin shadow. As it faded into nothingness, the light too completely disappeared. I proceeded. Catching the last trail of the escaped ghost, I gave chase, now the stairs turned into rough slabs of stone, with no solid edges and they seemed to be crumbling under the mounting dust and soil from far beneath the stairs. I choked but I could still smell the cement from up away. The stairs had stopped and ended, and now there was just some tunneled passageway that became so boxed and cramped that it was a struggle just to make any attempt at going through. But it lead to somewhere even further down. If only a few inches down, to a single box or chest containing something antique. I could see even in the dark that tools would be needed.

Time to turn back. It was so dark, so deep. I thought; What the hell is beyond this point? How could we have lived here for a week or was it a month and not even notice this stupid basement? I don't wanna know what's in the next passage! I stood for a moment.

One day I'll shake these foundations with a word or with fire from the sun. I could embody flames and walk like a spark on a fuse. It will be so pronounced that this place will be given to the light. I could attach the vibrations of the earth itself to my footsteps and open the gates of the arch of heaven to see into this place.

With that I fled back up the stairs. Suddenly the coldest touch of vapor rushed up against my spine and blew through my hair. I stopped. I uttered the same thought towards the void around me. My heart was beating so fast as I leapt up and headed for the dining room.

Okay, it's four o'clock in the morning. I guess I'll try to go back to sleep.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 5

'Nowhere' Roadways
 
Days and weeks passed, then months. Smaller circles were made up of ones living in the West and ones living in the East.

I yearned for the breaking away of any ties. I was never meant for this world. I used to be all about sticking together and growing the overall numbers. But deep down that was not who I was. I felt that freedom was somewhere in outer space, or somewhere faraway and a sanctuary where only I could dwell. That's where my spirit was, I never longed for things of this world. My body was always tired, but my soul had learned where all the lines were, and I navigated them with ease.

There was a distinct sadness of things that I could still reach in the past, but I could only go there where they were already decayed. Some places and things having not aged, and some having aged so much that they would crumble at the slightest breeze on the wind. But wind was rare in so many places of the past. Everything was still.

I would dream of being totally alone and without a navigational sense of what borders I could reach and what ones were too far away. They would be stretched out over fairly organized cities and suburban areas. Stopping would bring the infinite ways to measured area and location within any place I'd halt and travel by foot. Any whim to flee once taking to ground would be difficult without knowing the hour, or a tune.

The grounds were solid but there was something frail about anything above them. I could see time within walls and windows, but it was slow and tedious, as if they were taking long amounts of time to fall into dust. It wasn't in everything, but mostly it was.

I would find myself in the middle of all these house and neighborhood roads that were all strewn together like giant spider webs. I'd be looking for our house but then I'd stop and think 'Wait, we don't live here anymore. Why am I here? I want to stay here always though. I loved this place.'

But any house in my pathway was there as we had left it. But things were missing. I would look for them. I remembered things and the place itself, that just wasn't in the waking world. Feelings really. Just remnants of memories that took on times of their own. Like a hidden layer of experiences that only happened in dimensions accessed through dreaming. Where a table would have been polished in ordinary waking life, in the dream, it was used to place things on from nearby trees and old flowerbeds, an ancient stone or a lost ornament from a chime, and restored with ghostly hands. Things that never were, were very real here. I repaired so many things that others had carelessly broken.

Sometimes I'd walk, but other times I was riding a bicycle. It was faster for me to walk because the bike only slowed me down.

I would be getting so near to a place that I went to before. I was almost sure this is the right street. I'd think I remember all these houses. I'd come up to what I thought was our old house and upon closer examination I would find that it was the wrong house, and then to my horror I'd find that it wasn't even the same neighborhood. I thought I'd navigated the right area and found that it wasn't so. Everything looked the way I remembered it. But it wasn't my living memory exactly.

Long deserted roads, they were. Lonely grey-brown pathways. Then I returned to the wrong place again and there stood someone or a few family members and they'd be looking through the same place, too.

"It's so abandoned now, did we actually used to live here?" I'd say, approaching them.
"It wasn't taken care of once we moved." Rachel answered.
"Why does it look so dead? The walls are so decayed that it'll all need to be rebuilt." I pointed out.

I felt like crying because it seemed so lost, so utterly gone. Whatever memories we had were dying and I tried to remember what songs we sang there. What we did and what games we'd play. Yet amid the sadness I would be marking points in a sub-conscience way to remember the pathways. I was still navigating. I have found there were many places that I remembered in dreams that never were in real life.

So, slowly I began to touch the walls and they'd give way and beams that still stood suddenly were shrouded in a shower of sparkles and there would be a faint blue light that allowed us to see into the other rooms in the gloom.

"Look! Hey that old icebox is still in the kitchen!" Rachel exclaimed happily.
"I wouldn't open that." I said back.

For several long moments we stared at the thing and didn't move an inch. Finally the silence was broken. "Are you going back?"
"Yeah, I have to get back, I think it's getting close to four."
"Do you wake that early?"
"Yes. I mean no." I looked around the place again and said "The hour of four is the way out of here."

And with that we left the area. But I knew we'd always be back to this zone, a place, long ago given to the memory of being nowhere.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 6

The Stairs Beyond The Basement (Grey Basement)
 
When the crisp air of the outside world drifted through the windows above the clouds, I could dream long hours, and explore. There it was again, the house with the basement. In this dream it was brightly lit. The sun was outside, and the interior all concrete.

Two large rooms and the grey color was as bland as one would expect. Non-eventful and even forgetful. Again more stairs into further depths under the house. I only went as far as the first two sets of stairwells this time. There seemed to be something down there. However the impression I felt was that as I avoided it, it avoided me.

I tried to grasp things in these rooms, to set up 'markers' but couldn't seem to move in the same way as I would when I was awake and I had to re-establish the movement in this place because there was a slight fog and it made the atmosphere thicker somehow. The markers were for but one purpose, and that was to have recall or some recollection to mark that way back, if I should go venturing into the dark.

I stopped before the door, then I thought of when I was outside I'd go through cities and towns that I knew and everything had changed. I'd search endlessly, just going in circles, round to the same points. Thousands of miles and going much too fast to pick up on small details that I knew were there. Areas themselves would still be as I remembered from somewhere else before, but there was change. There was always a different 'light' and something else was marked. Perhaps by someone else.

So I stood by the grey basement door and I thought how odd that these other places always changed to such a degree that there were no recollections of them that I could name. That not even the furniture and other objects could be in the slightest of corners of memory. But I still remembered them and couldn't figure why I knew the place.

I backed away from the basement door. The door was open but the other passageway below was locked tight with iron bolts. I searched the house and went outside and everything was all wrong, all bent, all distorted. I traveled through the ways outside, out in the light but there died in me the desire to find whatever it was I started to seek. I would go on like some aimless robotic dreamer with no goal. No markers. All these changed familiar places.

I looked back and yet I was glad that I was on the other side of the outer structure rather than on the inside where iron bolts held what, to me, felt like death. The grey basement faded and was no longer 'marked'.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 7

On A Balcony Waiting Out The Dark

"These sliding doors don't have any screens, do they?" I asked. Then I heard a muffled yes. I stood on a balcony where there was a lush green lawn before me. It was a backyard that lead to a line of shrub and tree in the short distance away. The evening was peaceful, and the warmth felt nice. The dullness was welcomed. There was a porch but the brick and stone structure made it seem like a grand balcony that overlooked a secluded yard that was located near the hilltops of some small wooded locale. The only light emitted from a nearby street lantern located near the back dim porch light.

Dusk was just setting in. There was no one in the yard. I seemed to be on watch. I could smell the salty air. The sea was nearby only a few miles away. I faintly recall the moonlight upon the surface of dark water. I stood there and looked out. Something was in the woods. I fell quiet so that even my breathing could not be detected. I waited.

I could hear the ticking of a clock somewhere from inside the house. Something was heading for the house. Others in the house were oblivious to any sense of movement outside. I saw the shadows come out from the green that by now had turned shapeless in the coming night.

A darkness proceeded with no retreat. I turned toward the sliding doors and the screen was blocking me from the inside. I was going to try to lock the door behind me and step out another door to watch whatever it was, like a guardian. I wanted to keep it away. I was doing rather well as I hadn't been detected. Then someone else inside the house slowly slid the door then left the door slightly open. I stood there hiding beside the porch still looking out at the dark shade of the nearby trees, and never really seen anything move or attack, but I felt its presence.

The night hours seemed unnaturally long. I almost forgot and walked back to the door. The humming of a transformer droned on. No electricity was failing, so I knew whatever I had sensed wasn't anything supernatural.

I reached for the door but turned back to see the street lantern again and it was in another place now. There was a white van heading toward the area outside the line of trees and I followed along on the sidewalks next to the newly made concrete ditches that lead to a circular platform where a flagpole stood. I looked up and noted that I was still in America. The presence I had felt before had returned and I ran back toward the house and back door. I couldn't reach the balcony because it seemed higher. The white van disappeared off into the night. The license tag was only one letter. I thought it was odd.

The presence had taken dominance over the platform with the flag but the house changed and made itself difficult to enter. The presence was evil but I remained hidden and safe all the same.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 8

Dwelling Before An Evil Fortress

The sky was a pinkish color as if a storm had been coming. A foggy light kind of afterglow in light hues of pale rose hung overhead. I looked up and then absently back down to the tame landscape that surrounded me. Here and there were shrubs and trees, and other foliage. The trees were dead and blackened, but somehow they seemed as a shelter for the smooth mossy ground below their thick branches. The ground was completely even as a marble floor might have been. The branches never moved with the wind, the charred-black color of them seemed to give off a high gloss of moisture that had clung to the dry bark like large, suspended raindrops until they were absorbed into the bark itself to keep a glossy appearance.

Amid this was a little glass structure, like a greenhouse. I lived there. Inside I had furniture and old lamps and rugs. I'd sit and read and do everyday things. In the open, surrounded by tainted glass and the ever warm atmosphere all around me inside and outside. I went inside to rest. I knew I couldn't be seen but I could see far enough away, through the trees, through the eerie forest-like realm, the dark fortress that lay on its borders. To me, it had always seemed like a fortress. Giving thought to the amount of time I must have been here as I had in some strange way grown accustomed to it and that it was part of the world I inhabited. I knew not of the length of time I was in this realm. It seemed years in this frame but as always, only hours had passed. I was somewhere I had been before but I had no prior recollection. Time was not measured here though.

I sighed. I opened the thick wooden door and went back outside. When inside, the clouds seemed to envelope the small dwelling and all around it. And when looking up, a full moon shown as hazy light that never moved and was best seen in the center of a clearing encircled by trees. As I walked further through the trees I found that the shadowy structure was indeed a fortress. It seemed empty. Abandoned. I heard something from inside. At first an echo and then a loud clanging as if something heavy had fallen from a great height from inside barren walls.

I fled to another side of the fortress and stood upon the balcony of its front structure.
"How. . .did I get here?" I asked myself, and ducked down. I looked around and saw an old garden path that lead to what appeared to be an empty pond, and beyond that, a lone wall as if it was merely built as an obstacle against the wind. At the front there was a dark passageway. I looked up again. The same sky hung overhead. It was night. I looked at the windows of the fortress and peered inside. The windows having a clear glass and framing in sections in modern day style. But the walls of stone were of a long ago era. A time when castles were built. More noises emitted from inside but there was nothing there. No life force of any kind. It was as if the sounds were mute to all else, unknowing to any sense of fear or any outside presence whatsoever.

I sat on a fallen stone that was against the outer wall and must have toppled from the roof, from some past earthquake or strong winds. I felt that within the fortress there was finally nothing evermore to heed. I stood up and shuttered because somehow I remembered that's how gateways were opened and used. When there was no guard. I began to move away and the gravity of the grounds on which I moved, they pulled heavier, so I moved slower. I broke free of the pull when I focused on and connected with the moon, and at a quicker pace I ran back into the forest. I was free of the grip of the fortress grounds. There was something evil there.

I headed back to my hidden abode.

Circa 1996

Because of the vivid imagery of this dream, and how clear and lucid it was, I had written a poem (1998) and a song lyric (2016) dedicated to this one dream.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 9

The Stairs Beyond The Basement (Green Basement)

Dimly the greenish pale walls came into view. The room was small and rather cozy in a quiet, foreboding way. I thought I was standing alone just looking around at the smallish furniture and pillows. The room itself was like a little cubby hole built into a finished basement, fully carpeted, green shag, walls painted all green in streaks with different shades of green as I adjusted my eyes. This was very familiar, but I'd never been in this room before.

We sat down and began to chat about toys, presents and music. The colors about the top of the room were darker than the highlights of green like frost on the pines that stroked down towards the baseboards. Thick green pillows provided more seating in two of the corners. I sat there still, looking at the wall curiously.

I noticed there was a small doorway, not a big, gaping door, but a very small square-like frame leading to a dark set of stairs. Just a very tiny doorway that was built into the wall. Almost undetectable, save for the hair-thin lines. I looked around, the others were playing games and laughing. I casually mentioned that there was a door in the wall and asked if they had ever noticed it before.

The answer was a stunned No...! And they stared directly at it.
"I thought it was just another wall." said Lucy.
"No wait, it may not even open!" Rachel said backing away.
"But there's still an unexplored room in the house, don't you want to know where it leads to? Do we avoid it or find out if there's a monster behind it?" I said. "We'll never know what the door's secret is, unless somebody opens that door."

The rest gathered behind me, peering over my shoulders. I slowly opened the door, turning the tiny knob that was only a foot above the floor. The door itself was about two feet in height and two foot in width. Standing straight up again I said, "There, you see, there is a room in here." The others moved back and stared straight into the opened passageway. I thought for a moment that they were scared. But they stayed there looking on.

Everyone suddenly gathered round the opened doorway and peered inside. I looked deep into the darkness, and far, far away I saw a faint glow.

Oddly, there was so much darkness between the opened doorway and the faint glow that it seemed light years away in a terrible black void. It was stunning and coldly stark at the same time. I thought; What's this gate that leads to outer space? What's it doing in here?
"Well, I'm not going in there first." Lucy stated.
"Na-uh, me either." Rachel said.
I looked straining my eyes to see what the light was made of afar off. It looked as though it was the sun, and that we were in a doorway very far from it.

I felt around for a solid footing while bracing the edges of the small open doorway. There were stairs. I stepped through and a cold, freezing air brushed lightly up against me. The others followed behind me, but one by one, they started to pause in their advancement and I saw them turn back. Fear had won over them. They could not make this journey.

"Dipshits." I muttered. I knew they were too afraid to seek further into this new and rather expanded room. My reasoning was, of course, to keep looking. I called after them but it was of no use, the only thing I could see now was the doorway several yards behind me, a dark void in front of me, and the glow way ahead of me.

Then walking on a level floor slowly, knowing they were all still next to the doorway being chicken, I stepped down suddenly and felt with my foot a stair that descended. I began to walk down the stairs. The cold was beginning to flow upward. Beyond the large, black room that I crossed I stopped for a moment to put up my hand and strangely the far off light signaled to me. I continued. Had it been so hard and bitter I'd have turned back. I looked back and I still saw the faintest sparkle from what I knew was the now far-off little square door of the green basement.

"Well this sucks." I said into the darkness.
"You are the fire and flame here." I heard a voice say, it startled the hell out of me. Shaking off the cold, I headed further.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 10

The Black Tower Of The Black Desert

How deep and severe those stress levels ran. The effect of the servants of the dark had on everyone. Did they have any other plans? A long-robed spectre came into view. Of course they did, and I knew it. They just had this flair for being unglued about imagined towering mountains that had to be climbed within seconds, as they'd emerged right up in front of them. It was all an effect to send out to various targets. To stun, and cause feelings of urgency.

I was lowering my words to almost a whisper. Low vibrations pitched out in a perfect flow. The frequencies of my voice were mastered. I was going to deliver a deathly blow to the power their darkness had. I knew I could speak softly and it would still strike like an arrow. I knew the words but the apparition disappeared behind someone before I could speak them. I felt a nervous, cold anxiety creeping up as the now reappeared form shook rapidly with a wind that I could not even feel. He turned into a grinning desert land-monster and sunk down into a pool of quicksand. I thought that was an asshole thing of him to do. My anxiety disappeared. I walked away and off to this place. I wasn't following anything, but I was determined to see if the area of the quicksand lead anywhere else.

The torpid stiffness of the ground creaked beneath my feet. This was a dead world. A dead planet. Nothing grew here. Was this an earth of the spectre's past? A long, long pathway of hard, dried out soil lined with pebbles and small stones went along like highways. I was deep within  another realm, I thought. I walked on and wondered what direction I had come from for as I looked all around me, the grounds, the whole area turned black as a deep midnight. Dark as if all light had never been shed and the appearance of it was like a gaping hole had all but swallowed the place itself.

It sprawled before me like a heavy passage force-field that was pulled open by a force from behind me. I moved out of the passage and walked with the wind and it began to slow and then finally cease to a small breeze. I looked around. What I saw was the most horrible, despairing landscape I had ever seen. I'd never seen anything like this before.

I felt perhaps it was named 'Bottomside' as opposed to 'Topside'. So I had a name for it. It seemed to fit.

The area was rounded, closed in by large black hills surrounding it. The entire ground was charred black as if a great, all consuming fire had burned it and left even the layers underneath to total destruction. All about the lifeless grounds flat stones here and there were strewn. There were some dead withered branches lying about, sparse driftwood that seemed to blend so well with the dull landscape that one had to be looking right at them to see them.

My eyes adjusted. A few flames, like small campfires lit the whole area in an eerie glow. In the middle of this hellish realm there stood a menacing, tall black tower. The base of the tower was empty, a structure barely standing. The sole support of the structure was that of four rounded sides which arched over the barren ground inside, and resembled more that of an empty silo rather than an ancient tower. Seeming more like an open guardhouse that was gutted. From far away it looked to be a dread tower of darkness. Yet up close it was the very essence of nothing. There was nothing there.

I walked closer, toward the tower. "Frodo?" then I thought for a moment. "Wait a minute, why am I calling for Frodo? He got out of this place a long time ago."

I came to the outer walls of the tower, I studied the outside fading bricks and saw that it was not as it appeared to be. Maybe three, four floors, instead of eight. Looking inside the tower I saw that there was a fire in the dead center, encircled with a strange assortment of wedged-in stones in the ground. An ancient watch tower it seemed now. The unfriendly atmosphere now took on an eerie glow from within its base and I felt warm and feverish. A feeling of long ago death was so thick in the air that I choked and wondered if I really stood in the midst of what was possibly Mordor. I stood still for awhile and just listened. It was neither warm or cold. No temperature. So still, so uneasily calm and I felt no presence of anything, good or evil. That felt worse, somehow. Nothing to fight for or fight from. I took it all in stride.

I went to the center of this tower and looked around. Nothing. I looked up and at first it seemed that there was a ceiling. Then I looked into the fire once more. It was slowly burning. Almost suspended in some repetitive way. I looked up again, all I saw was a hollowed out, black withering tower clear up to its rafters. It was abandoned thousands of years ago. The bricks that were built of it were so deformed with time that they appeared to be only dissolved pieces of rock. It was the strangest decay as the lacking elements made it last longer.

I saw a winged demon beast as it flew across the sky. Its whole being was more like a canopy of dust. As if it was a lost air pocket searching for its altitude. I watched it fly behind the mountain, yet still could not bring myself to feel fear, because there was no feeling of anything to be feared.

Then I felt a wind, then it turned to a small breeze. So I knew there was something of an airy domain to this god-forsaken place. I looked out towards the direction I had come, and where I had came through, the area was no longer there. I was enclosed in this place that was an infinite desert in a strange night's darkness, alone. I closed my eyes and thought I should wake, but, there was a small breeze indicating some kind of life was still lingering. The breeze I felt now had died down for long eons along with everything else before I had even entered this hellish realm. But here it came to me, to move with me. I looked back up at the upmost flimsy ceiling of the tower, the roof was almost as dissolved as the bricks that supported the beams were close to the point of crumbling. Suddenly a horrible voice spoke out from the darkness and I went to the inner wall's archway on the south and stared outwards. Neither did it comfort or frighten me.

"They've all been here and now they're part of the withered stones before you!" the voice boomed in my ears and shattered the breeze. The demonic voice pierced through the deserted landscape. I went to another archway and looked out, there was nothing. The various angles of mountains peaked in upward formations as sharp as blunted giant spades. I watched and listened. The air, the atmosphere, and even my heartbeat hadn't changed, or flinched at this demon's voice. I looked back at the fire and just sensed a scene to some ancient past. Other than that, nothing could be focused on by me. I had no attentive aim to give anything else as I surveyed everything that was literally nothing all around me.

I noticed that in and around the fire there were grey fragments of cloth, possibly garments, but so old and so aged with time that even touching them they would fall apart. I looked back to the outer area around the black tower. I saw nothing. I didn't expect to either. I studied the tower itself, looking over it up and down. The tower had been burnt and still covered with flaking ashes from the fire left burning for time to do the rest of its demise.

"What do you mean they're all part of the withered stones?" I said to the darkness and then softly to the fire, "Why would they be here?"

"You'll never see them again! They are dead here!" The demon's voice boomed louder this time and it almost shook me. But at the same time, this dead zone of a place made me as catatonic as it was. It just didn't phase me.

"Good. Does that mean you have nothing to torment now, oh demon? You've deceived them when they didn't know what you were." I answered back.

"They have no power to deliver torment to demons!" the dark voice returned. Somehow I felt the stupid idiot had no idea what I said, or simply misunderstood it.

"How are they dead? How did they die?"

Laughing, the demon said "Look on their garments they no longer wear!" Suddenly I saw an arm like a smokey, paper-thin formation point to the center of the fire. It startled me a little. Then I looked in the fire and saw no change although I could see the grey fragments a bit clearer. They seemed like garments. The ghostly arm that had extended through one of the arches of the tower, quickly snapped back out. I also noted that my question was not answered, so whatever death had happened, the demonic entity had no clue about it.

"Those rags are thousands of years old, you dumbshit! Come on! You can do better than that!" I said to the disembodied demon.

"Dead! And they died right here, right before you came here! Time passes like that here in this place! You've been on a long road." The mocking demonic voice was cruel and yet spoke with soft tones and it was almost soothing.

I stared into the fire and then focused on the wretched walls within the tower. I stared at the scorched landscape and actually considered the demon to be background noise. Something that was just annoying, like a TV commercial being too loud. I hadn't been here all that long, well I've been here longer than I had been on the road to this infernal realm. There was silence.

"So what do you want me to do about it? Them being dead, that is?" I mocked the demon again and there was a dead silence. I began to walk away from the tower and laughed at the demon, or whatever it was.

"You cannot leave here!" the demon's voice shattered the silence and I casually stopped to look in the direction of the tower. "Sure I can! I can leave anytime I want. I'm dead too, and I came here to find somebody and, of course, they just died so they'll be no company. I came to gather their otherworldly belongings, but since they were lost in the thousand years prior to now, and nobody's here. . .then. . .see ya!"

I walked further onward. I continued. By then I had walked a long way and the tower was but a small structure in the distance. Despite my feeling of terror starting to come back, I was still amused at how easy it was to walk away from that nightmarish and surreal tower. "What an ugly piece of shit!" I thought. With one last misguided effort, the demon voice squealed after me from the tower. I saw that it was now standing in the base of the tower looking out toward me. I felt a little unnerved that I had been standing where the demon now stood. Explaining the feeling of terror that started to come back. I spoke in a taunting voice and said; "The ones you really wanted were never here!" I walked a few more steps and unleashed a last mocking goodbye. "They that were here, they have a message for you. Well it's like this, they say FUCK YOU!"
 
The last look I gave toward the tower, I noticed that the ground was now a sandy color, and a bit more light was actually covering the landscape. There was now a continuous breeze.

I continued onward and found myself outside that horrible charred, blackened desert with the withered old dark monstrosity of a burnt ruin. I felt a chilly breeze and the darkness took on a more earthly night hour. Something more normal. I passed by an old pirate ship that sunk and washed ashore. It was dark inside and I saw no one within. My small family wasn't there either, but I felt their presence there, that they were still alive but not in the way I remembered.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 11

Airplane Anxiety

A reoccurring dream I recall has an eerie end that is always right at a critical point. I can relate certain 'same dream' episodes in the way one might return to the same exact place, but the dream pattern being a little different as to the way one might approach the place in that dream. However the end and everything leading up to the end is exactly the same. I only have a very limited number of exact reoccurring dreams, and the few that are have almost always involved either airplanes, traveling, or roadways that lead in unusually angled turns and degrees. Like a maze or a multitude of obstacles.

There are several dreams where I'm going onto an airplane, and always the air pressure inside of any airplane I board is very tight and I feel as though I'm being crushed by so much atmosphere. It's really bizarre but I cannot travel the way of airplanes in dreams. It's much faster and easier without them. But in some dreams I cannot go to certain places without them and it's only something in my psyche that's left over from how things work in the waking world.

But this dream is the one that has the same ending and the last time I dreamt this it was nearing the winter of 1997.

I was trying to get through the airport and I was trying to sneak onto a plane because someone was following me. A murderer, or an agent or spy. Moments passed. I was sitting in the window seat and felt as if though I had been forced onto the plane and wondered if I should get out now. Having no idea where I was going, I stayed in the tiny seat as it seemed safe there for the moment. Everyone else on the somewhat crowded plane didn't know I was there, they couldn't even see me. But I was there.

I looked around and everyone was carrying on, reading magazines, talking and laughing. I looked up at the ceiling and I had this horrible dread. I didn't know what it was and I wasn't sure if it even had anything to do with the airplane. But I felt my stomach tying into knots and I was breaking out in a cold sweat.

I looked around at everyone again and now they're all alert! About what, I didn't know, but something had them spooked. For a tense moment there was dread silence and then they all relaxed and went back to what they were doing. The pilot announced that we'd be landing soon. I knew that wherever it was, we'd be landing and it wasn't the right place. I thought lay-over. The plane started to descend and I looked out the window. There was a city down below that seemed like someplace in the mid-country for the green fields all around the distant runway.

There were big, luxurious hotels here and there. The city seemed clean and rich. There were 15-16 floor apartment buildings and there were various white puffs of cloud in the sky above them. One particular apartment building had a white roof and was built in the shape of a hexagon, with balconies on each floor and on each side of the structure.

The plane began to descend lower and lower, almost so close to the tops of all the buildings that it must have roared to the people in them. I knew something was wrong, but couldn't do anything. It was either the place to be landing or something else that I couldn't imagine at the moment, but just when the sense of that horrible dread deepened, and there was an answer fast approaching, I would always awake.

Three times this dream I've had. It always ended right before the plane landed wherever it was going to land. But I knew it wasn't the runway.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 12

Crumbling Churches

I stood in what seemed like the concession stand at a movie theater. I went through the doors, and it was dark with very little light, with the usual row of chairs and draped walls that a theater would have. In front of all the seats, there was a stage, not a screen. I thought I was alone. I turned around to look at the place, but I wasn't alone and there were people all about the place. Half the seats were empty, while the other half, scattered here and there, people sat as if awaiting a movie to start. On the stage were long, silken drapes of gold, yellow, and white. There was a choir on stage and they were humming while someone was talking to the people in the audience. The talker seemed to be sly, covert, and full of cunning. All the walls changed and were decorated with bright, glaring images of crosses. Of people from a long time ago and statues of angels with trumpets and harps. The choir was singing now. I had taken notice, and they were singing apparently like they were before I had come in, and I stopped at a chair and looked on.

I was trying to be unnoticed. As I watched them singing, it seemed they weren't singing any 'words' and they were, I could almost swear, 'chanting' and their faces and chants were empty. There was nothing there. Their smiles were like grins of menace. I slinked down the aisle towards the exit sign. Like all movie theaters, this church had an exit door that was located somewhere near the side of the stage. A door that one had to make their way past all the seats to get to. I walked purposefully in a 'I'm supposed to be going this way, don't pay any attention to me' attitude. I reached the exit doors.

As I tried to open them they seemed to be locked, but then the knob budged a little and I knew it wasn't bolted. I sensed that a strong wind outside was blowing up against the sides of the building. That was what must have been making the door resist. The situation was now that it was a simple storm that gave me the impression that I may have been locked inside. I pushed the door very hard and found myself in a small little foyer that had a flapping canvas covering the passage to the outside. I felt a tremendous gust of wind and bolted through the covering.

At any costs, no matter what it was like outside, I wasn't going to be in that church or building. I ran towards anywhere I could and I turned after about twenty yards to look back. What I saw was a flimsy, dark tent, ready to be blown away with the next strong wind. The tent itself was faint, weather-worn, and it seemed totally abandoned. I looked and thought to myself; I hate that tent! It's just a tent but it was much different on the inside. How could it be?

The tent was being held up by hollow aluminum poles that were bending and coming loose from their stakes in the ground. The flaps were beating up against the tent. From all the wind the poles were buckling under the pressure and the church, the people inside, their song, was about to be blown away into oblivion.

The entire outdoor area was brown and grey with a storm brewing and very ominous. Very Armageddon. The whole area was abandoned. "This sucks." I said calmly. After all, I had believed I was going to see a movie. I wasn't going to hang around to find out what the words they chanted meant. And I didn't have the words in my mouth so I could never recall what they were.

If the wind were an omen rushing swiftly as part of the unfolding scenes, this was a sustained warning and not an all-out alarming scream of danger. The scream was hidden in their words. The danger was inside. The elements were now free and outside. Then I saw a land ahead, depressing, discouraging, and despairing. These lands I know, I thought. No illusions here.

A row of old 12th century churches rose up on the horizon and crumbled before my eyes. Like sandcastles being washed away with the tide. The crumbling caused massive dust clouds that were guided by the storm to pelt the tent church. There was wrath being drawn upon it. Then the dust settled on the tent church moments away from being swept up by a foul event. I stood afar and waited.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 13

Violence Of Demons

There came a day when it was possible to drive less than 200 miles to visit anyone I knew. The distances had been so overwhelming at times. Long spans of time had passed. We were there at a kind of intermission. No more running from phone to phone and talking haltingly, lest someone walk by and listen. I had seen places like hell encircle them and infest everything and everywhere. The sleep of they who walked were as moving pawns like poisoned servants. Strangers would stand in the middle of such dark scenes and amid such ghastly walls of darkness and dull recreations of some evil ancient time, and would never notice any of it. Like sleepwalkers or puppets with no acknowledgement whatsoever.

Dark blue waters poured upon the earth, and in a clear sky whirlwinds slashed through buildings, radio stations and houses. Two demons stood, appearing large at first and then seeming the size of ordinary men. One of the demons looked at me and accused me. It pointed a clawed finger at me and seemed mute, but then it was heard. Saying that I traveled in their domains uninvited. The demonic figures on the open of a field stood high upon another field that layered over the first somehow. The demon that had been pointing at me kept on cursing me and threatened horrible pain upon me.

Then the other demon struck the first with a blunt object. It wasn't in my defense, but for the competition or the pleasure to be the giver of pain and suffering. I could not see the other demon so well as it was far more elusive and disappeared from sight. I looked all around me. I was afraid. Then in a sudden burst of resolve, I struggled with a fear and overcame it. I knocked the demon that I could see over the side of an earthen mound of soil with a torch-lit staff from a Methuselah tree. As the demon fell a loud shriek went out and it pierced the air and almost shattered my ears.

I stood there stunned. The demonic figure had cracked his head upon a dark blue pipeline. I could see the blood flow down the sides of the protruding apparatus. I had wondered if the demons were once men. There was no sign of the other demon, and the sky darkened. It was still somewhere. I was waiting for it.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 14

Onslaught Of Nightmares

The house stood lonely and dark on a rarely traveled road. Gloomy, a mood of evil hung about it. I was grievously ill and for the first few weeks I had nothing but nightmares after a horrible series of events. The bloodshed and the wars going on in various places rang out like gunfire in the world, and even the semi-automatic weapons were vivid enough to cause very realistic dreams. But waking from them was another story. Too weak. Given up on all chances of survival.

Those tunnels lead to enclosed brick chambers, where it'd be possible for hiding long amounts of time but so dim and covered with years of decay and pollution that one would have to be desperate to live in the first place. Only a soldier could endure.

I saw some unknown people hiding there. I could stand right in front of them, and they'd never see me. Then a soldier appeared and walked past a fire within the chamber. Appearing to be some forgotten relic from the Vietnam era and although he looked as any other living soldier from that time, like some animated playback, it was as if he were a shell and that I was seeing just the memory of his image. There was an emptiness and somewhere in that there was something else. Another layer that slowly unfolded. The soldier spoke.

"You ever stand on the Platform of Challenge?"
"Maybe. The dead air in some places is more unnerving, though. That was one just point of origin."
"It's dark. Save for the candles." The soldier said.
"Why are there massive hotels, homes and schools and those immense buildings that within is nobody? No footsteps fall or tread the floors but there's always something stirring in them." I reflected.
"What are you even going in those places for?"
"I thought I saw something. Besides it was cold outside. I sought shelter." I said trying to think of why.

In a way, those places are worse than the tunnels and the dim, distorted chambers, they're reflections of all that is despairing, the greed of the world, murder and death. How full they all are and yet there is infinite emptiness. My thoughts wandered off and I felt beyond weary. The soldier now sat and stared out into space. I was reading his thoughts as they echoed in my ears.

"I see it all, you know?" I said. "I see these things in everything, everywhere, and everyone. They sleep all the time, carrying on in celebration. I don't know what the occasion is, I always come in on another hour."
"Ah, the sleepwalkers. The sleep of they who walk. Then fall down and break all their bones on the deceptions they were shown." The soldier spoke in almost a defeated tone of voice.

"What is their problem? They're there among such chilling scenes of utter evil and don't even notice any of it!" I said. It bewildered me to recall what I had seen, and remembered that any escape would lead to stranger lands. Stress, anxiety and worry were the least of concerns to be addressed here. This is a dark world. With nightmarish experiences. One barely sleeps in solid places but it would all reawaken more vividly in dreams.

It was the second night and the dark creature leapt out from nowhere again. A long series of past days I would witness in the form of years before I even arrived, would begin. With everything the way it was, the soldier would only walk along. I noticed the slight darkness in the air as the end of a century came to a close. Clear and sharp it was. More of a sense of awareness than a sense of abandon. There was a dead, silent air that proceeded the onslaught.

The soldier was gone momentarily but a second soldier came into full view. "You're afraid, aren't you?" The voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
"You are not the keeper of the realm." I told him. He sat near a ruin of stone and bamboo.
"Is there any comfort in the final hours? The torment of an ongoing death? That pain?" By now I felt frozen tears fall and my heart broke into a thousand pieces. It was still cold outside. Then I felt that I was on fire and I stood motionless.
"You could end the suffering and join in on the sleep. Take comfort and be away from all this." The voice now seemed disguised but was so doleful and out-of-touch with time and place. It was both comforting and yet even dreadful.
"Well, I'm not afraid like that. On that count, you're wrong. I've dared many a demon and battled them." I said finally. "But what shall stop death? You can't. Those walls can't shut it out."

"Your father has and will." At that my hands froze against my heart, and I was struck by the beauty of those words. I was listening and there was silence.

As usual, this was some distant drumbeat that never shakes the ground. A justice that never proceeds, it only winks from behind somewhere that can never be reached. The gavel was already shattered. That was what I heard a lot louder than the drumbeats. But I could hear something behind the dead air. Although it was stagnant. I heard the dull winds pick up. I clutched my hands again, still cold but not as frigid.

There was an onslaught of the most evil things that accumulated as I watched helplessly. I could not see everything but felt it all the same. There were a multitude of years of dark deeds that rushed past me like a tidal wave.

"Leave the Platform of Challenge behind you!" The voice seemed to boom behind a wall of haze.
"What about this place?" I felt that I sobbed for hours because everyone was dead but those words were spoken almost as if an afterthought.
"What do you mean?" The voice asked in a softer tone.
"A green place of serene beauty, cleared walkways winding through palms and carpets of grass with the sun shining in a day that never stung and lasted long, has turned into a dank, deep and sunken jungle, twisted with black wood and endless vine."

I recalled what it all seemed to me. Then I spoke again with more resolve. "Once I go over into the other side, I will seek after the enemy there. A bounty I will imagine, a bounty I will remember! I will bring something for the price of pain that I paid." I stood upright and my eyes flashed and pierced all corners of darkness and I was burning with an intense fire.

I continued. "I will be a terror in the blackest hearts and they will loathe my vision for I will see everything and somewhere in their sleep, they'll know I saw them. A fury they will harbor and unleash all battles inside that realm, and there is where I'll bring them to their bones. I was a spirit and they were flesh. I am the counter-balance of nightmares. I dream in awareness."

Then there was a complete silence, the mock voice of reasoning had somehow abandoned the area. Death overcome, weapon given and I walked off the platform of challenge and the soldier was resting. All those structures stood without harboring ill will and they waited for the soldiers who passed, where there was finally a waiting host.

Distorted Chambers In The Realm Of Dreams - Chapter 15

Gray Creature Boy Falls

Where suddenly the ground opened up in front of me, I realized that it was the edge of a cliff. The drop seemed a two thousand foot distance from the top to the bottom. Everywhere was gray and some kind of storm was brewing. I was standing close to the edge and I shifted through the air and floated close to the cliff wall as I looked upon it, up and down.

A grayish layer of mist shrouded the ground like a haunting impedance. There was something already present but it could not be seen. As I dangled there, surveying the surface, I couldn't make out anything because I was still too far up to distinguish any movement on the ground. All I could see was a thick fog and some kind of rock protruding from the ground that ran a fourth of the way beside the cliff wall. It splintered out from the cliff wall and rose out separately, leaving a gap between it and the side of the massive cliff.

I returned my gaze to the top of the cliff where I stood close to the edge. I saw something or someone. I couldn't tell what I was seeing because it was a blur. I walked towards the figure, my hand extended because the figure stood dangerously close and I knew, whatever it was, didn't belong there and could fall unless it was as I was. An observer. As I neared I could see it was like a person, but not human. With almost the body of a twelve year old boy, the figure had a gray transparent skin tone and very dark hair. The eyes were abnormally big and round. It seemed to have a creature-like stature, for its unusual, uncanny way to blend in with the landscape I was seeing below. I paused and shook off a chill so icy that I sensed that I froze solid. Suddenly the strange being turned and plunged down the cliff. I could not tell if it was a move of self-destruction or if the sudden awareness of my presence made the creature boy do this. I ran over to the place he had stood and looked down.

The fall, it seemed, took much less time than normal for the fact that the cliff was very high up and where the creature boy had struck was over a thousand feet below. Everything being so gray and very little light for the immense cloud cover, I could still see the red streams of blood almost sparkle against the protruding rock that he had landed on. Having landed on his back, and because the rock surface on which was struck was smooth and just barely the width and length of the creature boy himself, I could see that from the force of the fall, the spidery arms were completely thrown out from their sockets. Red streams trickled down from each side to the ground. I choked back tears in horror, and wondered why this would be.

On the ground, on either side of the rock formation, lay each arm. I was mortified and I cried out. I felt I was in a state of shock because for a moment it came to me that he fell to let blood flow to the ground because something was just waiting for the scent. The gray creature boy fell as an offering of death it seemed. I looked upon the face and knew it was too late to save him.

He seemed so fragile and near death when he stood atop the cliff but I could not understand why he was so startled as to choose to fly over the edge so quickly. I saw that his eyes were still open, almost completely black except for a small lining of white around the iris. It looked demonic but not in a scary, twisted sense. In a way that appeared to be the work of demons, but not a demon within or of itself. As I looked upon the tragic face it almost seemed that it was still alive. I cringed and thought if it is still alive it must be suffering beyond comprehension. The face so cold and lifeless, so void of any breath of light, like a mirrored reflection of the mist that surrounded the foot of the cliff. Coldly there came a sinking sense of pain and despair from below the cliff. I went over the side, hoping that by some unseen miracle that there was something I could do.

I floated there above the figure and peered deep into the face and saw a slight movement. To my horror it did seem that it was still alive but barely hanging on to its last breath for whatever reason that I could not fathom. I spoke to this boy creature and told him that I would save him and make him whole again. I couldn't take it anymore and I drifted down towards the bottom of the cliff to find some way out of the place, this area of doom.

Now closer to the ground, in the thick of the mist, I could see the ground for the first time. The soil layer was more like clay, of gray and dull brown colors with so much moisture that it almost had a muddy texture. Dead, twisted trees scattered the landscape. Small hills and clay-like piles were here and there. I froze and knew the small grayish piles were hiding something grim beneath. Through the mist I saw a little pathway, like a road paved by dry dirt and rocks.

Almost immediately rescue vehicles came speeding through the dense fog. There were ambulances, fire trucks and even a few army jeeps, coming to rescue the gray creature boy. I watched from beneath the trees and stayed about two or three feet off the ground. Suddenly out of underground spores, holes and cracks in the ground where the grayish piles had begun to open, there came an army of scorpions. Huge, black menacing scorpions. I looked toward a fire truck that was ready to stop. I knew that if the scorpions didn't puncture the tires that they would wait until someone got out of one of their vehicles to strike and devour them. The blood from the creature boy was well absorbed into the ground at this point and the scorpions were hunting for more blood. I hovered above the floor of the great cliff but had somehow moved further away from it and found I was almost a half mile from it now. I felt the uttermost urge to flee. I looked as more scorpions rushed out from the ground.

They were fiercely hungry.

I awoke.

Circa 1997