February 15, 1986 - The Dreamlands, Part 2

700 steps. He wasn’t exaggerating. There really were seven hundred god damn steps to go down before we even reached the Dreamlands.

Occasionally we’d hear the Grotesque Reverie’s music, and have to hide in the shadow of a giant step as a group of its distorted carnie freaks passed by, but most of the trip was exceedingly dull. At least it gave us plenty of time to talk.

“Why’d you save me back there?” I asked around step 120.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not exactly on your side. And I kinda forced you to help me at gunpoint. It would have made sense for you to leave me back there.”

Dan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on our side or not. I’d rather not see anyone get caught by the Fears.”

A few hundred steps later… “You know, you’re really not what I had in mind when I imagined a crazy cultist.”

Dan laughed at that. “No, I guess not. There’s a couple of us that are a bit fanatical, but most of us are people with a bone to pick against the Fears.”

“Oh? And what’s your problem with them?”

“Long time ago. Back when I still had a normal life. One day I started hearing voices. Whispers, really. I was hearing all the things people were saying behind my back. All the lies and insults that I suspected people were saying, but had never known for sure. At first I was hearing my coworkers’ voices. Then I started hearing strangers on the street talking about me. Then I even started hearing my wife saying things about me. I became irritable and started lashing out at people for what I heard, but they denied saying anything every time. I lost my job, my wife left me, and for a while I was contemplating suicide. But before I could, I was visited by Grendel. He told me about the Fears. That all the voices I had been hearing were caused by one called the Choir, which tortured its victims by distorting and obfuscating their senses. By then it was too late for me to fix my life, but he said there was still a way to get back at the things that had done this to me.”

“And that’s why you joined him?”

“What else was there for me to do? I’d lost my job, my wife, my house, my money. Why not join a cult dedicated to getting revenge against the things that had done that to me?”

As that conversation tailed off, I finally saw a light at the bottom of the staircase. After so many damn steps, I was almost ready to sprint down to it. I’d read a lot about the entrance to the Dreamlands in Carter’s journal. It was a place called the Enchanted Wood, cliché as it sounds. The descriptions had been very vivid (and just as cliché as the name, honestly,) with towering ancient trees and strange mysteries. But a real (well… dream-real) fantasy forest? I had to see that.

At the bottom of the staircase was an archway, beyond which was white light. I stepped through, and the light became so bright I had to close my eyes. When I felt it dim, I opened them, expecting to see the Enchanted Wood.

Well… it was kinda a forest that I saw. What was left of a forest, at least. There were still trees, but they had been burnt black, without any leaves left. The ground was covered in a layer of gray ash almost an inch thick, creating a smooth canvas that was only broken by patches of unidentifiable bones jutting out.

“Not what you were expecting?” Dan said to me.

“What the hell happened here?”

“It was burned.”

“By who?”

“If the answer to that isn’t clear to you now, it will be by the time we’re done.”

“Are you intentionally being vague just to piss me off?”

“No, I’m intentionally being vague because nothing I tell you about the Dreamlands will have the same impact as me letting you see if for yourself.”

“That’s a stupid reason.”

“Maybe. Now where is it you want to go now that you’re here?”

Good question. There were a lot of places I wanted to see in the Dreamlands, but I needed to keep focused. “Where is it Grendel sends you people once you get here?”

“All over the place. Most of the time we’re just scouting, trying to map everything out and keep tabs on what the current situation is. There are also several cities which we frequent, the port city of Dylath-Leen being the most visited due to its size.”

“Alright, let’s go there. How long will it take?”

“On foot? Three days.”

“Wait, days? What, are you just going to be sleeping that whole time?”

“Not exactly. A week here is only half an hour in the real world. From that perspective, it will take us less than half an hour to reach the city.”

“Yeah but from our perspective it’s still going to be an ungodly long walk….”

Three days of traveling. Three blasted days. I suppose I could have tried warping there, since the few test I ran showed I could still do that in the Dreamlands, but that would mean leaving Dan behind. Plus I had no idea where I was going.

The trip did give me the opportunity to see more of the Dreamlands. However, it wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned. It kinda resembled a generic fantasy environment (by which I mean it looked like New Zealand,) but something about it was off. Everything looked like it had a slight gray filter over it, making the place seem dull and colorless. Various signs of destruction were scattered along our path. Massive craters which scarred the ground. Ruins of once massive buildings, torn into pieces which were thrown for miles. Until we reached the city, neither of us saw another living creature. Saw plenty of dead ones, their unearthly bones lying uncovered on the ground. But apart from the two of us, the place seemed empty.

The weather followed no reason: the temperature would change from scorching to freezing and back in seconds, rain fell sideways without any wind, the sky would turn black even with the sun visible in the sky. I asked Dan about the phenomenon, but he said that the Dreamlands had been like that for as long as he’d visited them.

Most unnerving was the silence. Apart from the occasional talk between Dan and I, the Dreamlands were dead silent. Only rarely would we hear another sound: the melody of that familiar carnival music. Whenever we heard that, Dan led us on a long detour around.

Three days later, we arrived. I cannot express my relief when I saw the black basalt wall on the horizon. Dylath-Leen wasn’t the most inviting looking place. Everything was built of black brick, and the streets were windy and narrow. The people I saw were rude, with the only greeting I heard being a “Get out of my way!” shouted at me as they quickly skulked between buildings. And I don’t even know how to describe the smell that came from the port, except maybe “unforgettable.” But after days in that empty wasteland, I’d take anything!

“Tell me about this town, Dan.” I said after getting a chance to take the place in.

“It’s the largest surviving city in the Dreamlands. Apparently it used to be a trading center, a long time ago, but any large scale contact with other settlements is almost nonexistent these days. Now the city tries to sustain itself through fishing, but that won’t keep up much longer. Whole place is bound to fall apart eventually.”

“And what’s Grendel’s reason for being so interested in an old decaying town like this?”

“Because it is old and decaying. It’s filled with malcontents. People who’ve got nothing to lose rebelling against their oppressors.”

“Oppressors?”

Before he could answer, a bell started ringing from inside the city. Everyone in the streets paused, and then panic erupted. The people ran into the buildings, slamming the doors shut and barricading the windows. I felt Dan grab my arm, and shout, “We need to get off the street right now!”

He pulled me toward a door, but it was closed in our face. Every home was being barricaded, leaving out us in the street. I began to hear screams coming from other parts of the city, while Dan desperately looked around for a building that hadn’t been closed to us.

With no visible escapes, Dan pulled me toward a wall, and placed his hand on the black brick. The wall bent inward, creating a shadowy alcove that blended in with the dark building.

“What did you do?”

“With the proper practice, a Dreamer can manipulate their environment here. This is the best I can do; we’ll have to hope it hides us.”

We got inside the shadows, and I waited to see what the hell was going on. One of the screams sounded like it was coming closer. Soon, I saw a man running down the street. He stumbled and fell, but quickly scrambled back to his feet and looked behind him. When he didn’t see anything there, he visibly calmed. And then the Rake leaped from a roof onto him and tore him apart.

Well that made me jump. Moments later another person came onto the street, a woman crawling across the ground. Large bumps were moving beneath her skin, wriggling through her flesh in writhing movements. She stopped moving, and then hundreds of insects tore out of her body, leaving a mess of blood behind.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Sport.” Was Dan’s answer. “Some of the Fears like to pay settlements in the Dreamlands the occasional visit to kill off a few people.”

The house across the street from us threw open its doors, and the people who had been hiding inside ran out. They were screaming in terror, but I couldn’t see anything unusual around them except for a shimmer in the air. Without any warning, the people started to viciously attack each other with any weapon they could grab, or their fists if necessary. Didn’t stop until all of them were dead.

“The Choir.” Dan hissed.

As if called by its name, the slight shimmer in the air appeared around us. So much for our hiding place. Dan began to scream like the others, and ran out to the street. I tried following him, but as I was reaching out to him, I heard a shrill note echo through the street, and Dan collapsed, blood coming out of his ears.

Then the Choir must have decided I was a fun target, because it turned its focus to me. I began to hear a wild chaos of noise pounding in my ears. I saw all kinds of twisted and impossible images darting all around me. The streets of Dylath-Leen disappeared, and I instead was floating in a place where sight was smell and smell was sound and sound was touch….

One sense was unaffected. Time. I could still clearly see time. And it was shifting again, shifting around Dan’s body similar to how it had when he entered the Dreamlands. The lines were moving away from us, out of this plane and back into reality. Without hesitation, I grabbed onto them, and was thrown out of the Dreamlands and back into the motel room. It took a while for the adrenaline to go away and for me to make sure that absolutely nothing had followed me out, but… when I calmed down, I checked on Dan. He still had a pulse, was still breathing, but he wouldn’t wake up. Didn’t respond to anything. I didn’t want to leave him, but the best I could do was call an ambulance and tell them that there was a man in a coma in the room.

So it would seem that the Fears have turned the physical manifestation of the collective human subconscious into their personal hunting ground. I know Grendel’s a psychopathic murderer, but after seeing that, and after talking to someone as sane as Dan, I dunno. Can’t call it sympathy for the cause. Maybe just uncertainty. Still need to figure out exactly what it is Grendel’s planning. Then I can figure out what I’m going to do about it.

I-330