And, most important, he had beat it.
Yes, it. For the author, one James Randall, now apparently deceased, claimed that this wasn’t an emotional enemy. No, sleepers were facing an actual enemy. A demonic enemy. Something alive. Something that fed on humanity like a damned vampire. A vampire of pleasant dreams who stole them away and left in their place, nightmares of unspeakable terror that would torment the sleeper every time they hit the REM stage of sleep.
It’s not my imagination, she had kept telling herself as she read. It’s real. I knew it was real.
The nightmares that had plagued her for most of her adult life had, in fact, seemed like a personal assault. Except that she could never get anyone to believe her. Yes, she had thought she was going insane. That is, until today. Until this book.
Mercifully, blessedly, the author not only described how to beat the creature...but to destroy it once and for all.
She thought about that now as she sat back in bed and closed her eyes. As she did so, the familiar dread overcame her. Dread to close her eyes. Dread to let her mind go. Dread to let sleep overtake her.
Because that’s when the nightmares came.
That’s when the demon came.
A real demon – the vampire of normal, pleasant dreams. Normal dreams were the sanity clause of humans, when the anxiety of the day would dissipate and truly, tomorrow would be a better day. If not for a visit from Nightmare, who was relentless and gave no relief from the stress of daily life but added his own terror to torment and enslave his victims during their most vulnerable state. REM-stage sleep. Night after night.
Susan shuddered.
There’s hope, she thought desperately. There’s hope.
And that’s all she could ask for.
The fucking thing had taken so much from her. It had destroyed any hope for a relationship. Any hope for normalcy. Often, she wondered what it would be like to dream peacefully. To actually awaken refreshed and full of life and hope for the new day.
She had no idea. Or, rather, she couldn’t remember.
Why had it chosen her? She had no idea. The author claimed the entity was a psychic vampire. A living creature that preyed on its host.
Yeah, that felt right. She did feel preyed upon. She did feel used and abused come morning.
And the more she read the book, the more pissed-off she became.
This fucking devil had ruined her life.
No more, she decided. Never again.
She would follow James Randall’s steps to the T. Even more so, she was determined to once and for all destroy the wicked thing. Granted, the destroying part she wasn’t so sure about. The destroying part turned her bowels to water. But she would try, dammit. She would try.
The book had been clear: she had to feign sleep. And there was only one way to feign sleep. To enter into a deep meditation. A trance. The author, God bless his soul, had also detailed how to do this.
And so she had memorized the steps as best as she could, going through them one after another, and felt herself entering a deep meditation, a trance unlike anything she had ever experienced.
And this is where she found herself, hovering somewhere between sleep and wakefulness—when she felt a cold chill that made her skin tighten in self-defense.
Nightmare was near.
The chill was followed by a faint but pungent smell. She had never noticed the smell before, but now that she was mostly awake, she was aware of it.
It was all she could do to remain calm, to remain in a deeply meditative state, so she did her best to ignore the rotten-meat smell of Nightmare.
Bile rose in the back of her throat.
Her hands rested at her sides. She breathed easily through her nose. Her hair was still wet from the shower. She had delayed this confrontation as long as possible by wasting time in her apartment, first by taking out the trash at eleven p.m., and then by taking a midnight shower. Finally, after applying far too much lotion to her body, she tossed aside the nearly-empty tube and told herself that enough was enough.
It was time to face down a monster.
She wished she could have had someone by her side right about now. Anyone. A boyfriend or a husband would have been nice. She had neither. A friend would have done the trick, too, but she could not bring herself to ask if they’d stay the night with her. She was both ashamed and terrified. In the end, she realized this was a very private affair. She had found the book today, and she would finish it tonight.
Alone.
At the back of her mind, exactly where Randall said the feeling would be, something touched her softly, almost hesitantly. It was the place, according to Randall, where Nightmare penetrates into your private dreams, enters them like a thief in the night.
He’s here, she thought.
* * *
She felt a caressing in her mind—a disturbing feeling really, like someone running a spider web over her exposed brain, sticky, delicate, and clinging. She fought the urge to shudder in revulsion.
He’s going to know you’re not dreaming! Panic surged through her.
The coolness in her brain—his probing, according to the book—stopped. And then the coolness was slipping across her forehead—actually just underneath it.
He’s running! Christ!
She lashed out with her right hand, striking like a cobra, striking where Randall told her to strike, just above her face.
Her fingers sank into damp muck. She dug in her nails with a fierceness that surprised even her.
* * *
Nightmare’s screeching reached only my ears.
He threw back his horse head and emitted a truly horrible sound. It went from a high-pitched, jaw-rattler to a low, warbling moan.
Hang on, girl! I thought.
I only wished I could help her. But how?
Nightmare grabbed at her hand to no avail. His ethereal form mostly swept through her. I say mostly because his passing hands—or claws—left behind a gunky, slimy residue on her skin. Nevertheless, she persisted in gripping tightly, gritting her teeth, her veins popping up on her forearms from her years as a data entry typist.
And then he stopped screeching—and stopped struggling, too.
He’s going to do it, I thought. This is it.
You see, there’s a reason why I hadn’t held on all those years ago. There’s a reason why Nightmare had escaped my clutches, and why I had failed to once and for all destroy him.
Years ago, as I had been in this very same position, holding the vile creature, he had fully revealed himself to me. The sight of the demon standing before me had been so unexpected, so unnerving, that I had shrieked and very nearly had a heart attack and had...let go. That was my mistake. And it was weeks before sleep would find me again.