CHAPTER II: FIRST INTERLUDE

A shattering, drenching yellow burst forth in, around and through her, tasting of sun-heated pebbles sucked in the mouth. Violet felt jarring impact but no pain as her collision with the truck reverberated, rippling the yellow blur in her mind. A powerful sensation of constriction brought red and blue gasps from her laboring lungs. She fought to draw in air to power a scream: then her vision cleared, and the scream choked in her throat.

She was not crumpled on an unknown mountain road in Virginia. What her eyes reported made so little sense that she instantly forgot the truck and her pursuers. Everything had changed; reality had been scraped off her sensory grid and replaced by—something that wasn’t reality as she understood it.

She sprawled on a level surface, but planarity was the only road-like quality it possessed, being firm, smooth, yielding, and slightly warm to the touch. It reminded her of Naugahyde, with a pattern of arabesques and curlicues arranged in a reticular system of individual squarish areas, each about the size of a trade-edition paperback, extending as far as she could see. The ground (if that's what it was…it was clearly where ground should be, but it bore no dirt, no grass, no stones) was generally colored a salmon that reminded her of sunsets in Vermont, with the palette varying, in the overall design, from solid navy blue to an iridescent color closer to gold than anything else. It was as if someone had covered the ground with an immense sheet of linoleum patterned like a quilt or a Persian carpet.

Surrounding her, arranged in a loose ring about twenty-five feet in diameter, were several lumpish bushes or stubby trees, like enlarged cauliflower. These grew from the ground (or floor, as she was beginning to think of it) to a height of a yard or two, though some rose higher.

Their stems were a translucent turquoise, with an opalescent and semi-transparent floret cluster on top of each stalk. Towering into the air beyond these vegetable forms were huge stalagmites, tall as trees. As her gaze traveled up these columns, she realized that an odor similar to eucalyptus filled her nostrils. The sky above was a depthless lavender shade, warm and comforting, so soothing that she accepted it as perfectly natural.

“A dream,” she thought automatically. “I'm knocked cold. I'm bleeding on a road, bones could be broken—” The shriek began rising in her throat again as she realized what a return to consciousness must bring her: injuries, great pain, helplessness.

Through the confusion slashed a hiss, a distant crackling strain. She whirled, in a crouch, her hands raised defensively. The noise emanated from the air above one of the nearby bubble stalks. Seeing nothing, her fear phased into anxious alertness. The hissing grew louder, becoming visible as a cobweb of stress lines in space. Alarmed but curious, she squinted at the apparition. The lines originated from a point, radiating out in an annulated circle. Like the flaws in the cooling crust of a lava flow, the lines widened. Something was behind them, on the other side as it were of the air, materializing as the disc vanished. Cloudy at first behind the warped area, it abruptly materialized.

It was clearly a being of some sort, and intelligent, but utterly weird. For an instant she thought Angel, being of light, because it seemed to be glowing but there wasn’t anything the least bit numinous about this creature, with its huge idiot grin and empty orange eyes.

Her next thought was, It’s an electric snake. Wait, it has hands. Salamander?

It spread its fingers in a gesture of theatrical surprise. “You, are, none other, than,” it said, in a high enthusiastic tone, “the conscious mind! Well, tickle my tibias!” It clasped its hands in great satisfaction and sighed. “I told them this would happen,” it added, rather smugly, to itself.

A talking electric salamander. Why am I dreaming this? The thing’s head was ablaze. No: it was a cloud of light, a clinging nimbus. The head was lumpish, like clay, with two dinner-plate eyes lacking pupils and colored the orange of waxy grade school crayons. A large mouth took up most of the rest of its skull, stretched in a wide smile displaying lots of big square teeth. It stared at her—at least, its head was aimed at her—with great interest, its expression madly gleeful. Its aura flared soundlessly. She flinched, but the nimbus gave off no heat. A thicker clot of pale blue light hid the neck and part of the narrow shoulders immediately behind the being’s head. Arms, two, short and thin, jagged back into the air, with spatulate hands splayed in a knuckly row along the cauliflower plant upon which it had materialized. From the shoulders on back, the body was apparently that of a snake, curled around out of sight behind the plant. No rear legs were visible.

Had her surroundings been less bizarre, Violet would have fled the monstrosity. As things were, she felt too unsure of herself. “What is this?” she asked, half to herself. “Where am I? Who, what are you?”

The creature hunkered down on top of the plant, apparently making itself comfortable, and a blue lowlight crept along the underside of its orange eyeballs. “You is this,” it said. It tried to gesture sweepingly but its arms were too short, and the attempt became an awkward shrug. “This is you. The inner self! You are inside your own mind.”

Violet started to speak but could find no words with which to respond to such absurdity. Staring at the weird creature, a realization struck her. “I'm dead,” she said, sitting down heavily on the arabesque ground. “The Kawasaki; I hit a truck, and…” She swallowed. “I died.”

“Oh lord, no,” said the being. It smiled, its teeth shining.

“The only thing is…” Her tongue pushed against her molars, seeking words. “This…is nothing like the after…death, experiences I've read about, in the Church or not…Are you supposed to be the Being of Light?” She felt her stomach expand as she stared at the creature. Of course: what else could this thing be? “You’re supposed to appear to deceased people, to guide them…aren't I supposed to be, uh joyful?”

Warm, she was warm, too warm: It was the ground, like flesh. It radiated heat.

The nimbus-headed creature laughed, a high giggle.

Nervously, she rummaged in her shirt pocket for her cigarettes, found them, and with a shaking hand placed one between her lips. It took her three tries to strike a match. The sting of smoke in her lungs seemed to clear her head a trifle. “I still,” she realized aloud, “have all my clothes on. So, this has got to be a dream, right. No spiritual body or robes or whatever. And I'm sure they don't smoke in Heaven.” She inhaled again, the scent of mint in her nostrils ruining, somewhat, the taste of the tobacco.

The creature had been (as far as she could tell from its blank eyes) regarding her with complete absorption. Now it shook its irregular head. “Wro-ong,” it said. “You are in your own thought space. If you were dead, this entire area would not be, and since it is, you are.”

“Crazy, crazy.” She shook her head. Crazy!

“Not at all. You've projected your ego, or your spiritual body, to use your phrase—you haven't got the linguistic equipment to understand the true definition—use 'ego' if you like—into your own mind-space, Ms. Conscious Mind. You are turned inside, and outside you are lying on a wet road in rural Virginia.”

Once more she dragged deeply on the cigarette. “No way,” she said. Her right foot began to tap, a gentle sound, against the ground. “If I'm all here, I can't be inside my own brain, walking around in boots. There wouldn't be the room, and brains don't look like this, or have talking electric snakes in them. It's all just jelly, gray jelly.”

“Perhaps, physically,” agreed the creature, in an offhand manner. “Your brain is a slosh of organics, stung constantly by electric impulses. However, I said nothing about your brain. I said 'mind-space', and I meant it. Non-physical…you see. If you died, your brain would remain, until it rotted, but we would all vanish.”

We? She looked around at the peculiar landscape and the glittering sky flowing overhead. “I need to wake up. This is some fantasy, it doesn't exist. I haven’t seen anything like this since I stopped doing drugs.”

“Existence is relative,” was the reply. “To you, the almighty” (it sneered) “conscious mind, this Inside does not exist, most of the time…although you showed up here in a somewhat staccato fashion, occasionally, while you were taking blotter acid in California, as you say. That's when I got my nimbus.”

“I had my reasons for that,” she said. “And what do you know about it, anyway?” The acid sessions…she'd told no one, back East. The opening-up, the slithering Flow past words and their meanings into a Taoist Sufi oneness. A warm glow of flux…What in God's Name is happening here, anyway? One does not customarily argue with one's dreams.

“I know more than you do. I prompted you to take that stuff!”

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“I'm an impulse,” said the being smugly. “You know; impulses seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle. Drugs felt good, you had fun—that’s my doing. The id sends us out all the time.”

“The…id,” she said. “Wait a minute,” she said, remembering her college psychology courses. “That’s Freudian psychology you’re talking, here.” She waved her hand at the impulse. “Okay, okay; impulses supposedly come from the id, right, and get modified by the ego and the superego so that they don’t swamp the personality with involuntary behavior.” She cast a narrow glance at the snake-headed thing. “But all this Freudian stuff is outmoded, isn’t it? The field was trending toward biopsychosocial approaches when I was in school. God, I haven’t thought of this stuff in years.”

The impulse made a rude noise. “Those cognitive people, what a bunch of goobers! They still think they can figure out artificial intelligence, some of them.” It giggled again. “As if!”

“So…is the id around here somewhere too? I mean, I don’t recognize this place; I never read anything about a landscape like this inside my head.”

“You don’t want to meet the id, trust me,” said the impulse. “You ever hear of H.P. Lovecraft?”

“I haven’t lived in Providence ten years for nothing.”

“Well, in some of his crummy stories old Howard talks about Azathoth, a sort of brainless monstrosity bubbling at the center of all infinity?”

“Yeah. And that’s the id?”

“That’s the id.”

“And you’re an impulse.”

“At your service,” it said, proudly, and bowed—or tried to. “I am what urges you to try, to aspire, to seek enlightenment. I am a messenger of the Higher Functions.”

“You said you’re what got me to take drugs.”

“I’m also what got you into church.”

“Hmmm.” It was true that one day she had just decided that she’d had enough of her addictive lifestyle and walked into a worship service looking for…something.

So, did that make this “impulse” a spiritual being of some sort? It seemed to be saying that it was analogous to an angel. What a dream of marvels! Sad, of course…so sad. Years ago, such a dream would have initiated a sweet tension in her muscles, tension straining for release, like a years-long orgasm. The intensity would be at its peak when she was alone, no coupled man necessary. Milder than sex, behind the day's activities and responsibilities. Bearing her up. Supplying answers to her semi-articulated questions about existence, this Faith (?) could also supply guns to Hare Krishna people and tuna fishing monopoly to the children of Reverend Moon. Well, now, that sort of materialistic stuff didn't seem like God-like virtues and had eventually prompted her to abandon religion. Fish, maybe, but the guns…?

It had taken years for her to work her way through that metaphysical knot, but Calder had been there to help: Calder, who would certainly be more than a bit suspicious of this blur-head beastie. “How can anyone see an impulse?” she asked.

“Pretty goddam interesting, isn't it?” it said. “I've had a lot of fun with you…you never come in here, so we have the place pretty much to ourselves most of the time. You know if you bothered to meditate more this wouldn’t be such a mystery to you. Times like this…well, it's uncommon, I must admit. Your husband gone, this accident, now, you are one hurting little buckaroo!”

Could a dream be so cruel? She prayed for forgetfulness upon awakening.

Upon awakening…well, that was it; all this craziness was simply an unusually vivid dream. She compressed her lips. “Go away,” she said flatly. “I'll dream about something else.”

It snapped its fingers at her.

She stared at the nameless being, too indignant to speak. The impulse said, quickly, “This is the only way that you, O Conscious Mind, can visualize the way your mind works. The rap on the head, combined with your emotional stress, has brought you into your own mind space.” It chuckled, obviously pleased with itself. “This is all absolutely real. Call it, oh, self-hypnosis. If you, the conscious ‘you,' want to maintain control over the physical you, you must survive in here and prevail! Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, what?”

It shrugged. “Otherwise, someone else gets to work the controls.”

“Why do you repeat yourself so much?” Violet asked because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

“Haven't you ever tried to talk yourself into something?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then there you are,” it said, drawing itself up.

“Yes, but where?” She looked down at the patterned ground, up at the rippling sky, and took a deep breath of aromatic air. “I do not have stuff like this in my mind,” she said, softly, to herself. All of it pressed in on her senses, suffocating her in insanity…the impulse laughed once, explosively.

“You don't know, you conscious, you, what goes on down here, down in the mind! You don't know what a hell it can be!” It paused, suddenly angry. “You load yourself up with neuroses, guilt, repressed desires…and you expect to function normally while we slug it out amongst ourselves. You expect us to fight your battles for you. This place is a squawking madhouse most of the time! If you knew how crazy you really were, you'd gladly aspire to suicide. Out there, it's wars and starvation, and disease…people killing people, hurting people, degrading them and forcing them to live in filth and poverty, subservience and oppression. And that isn’t enough for you…oh, no, you have to do it to your own self!” The creature seemed almost frenzied. “Just because you, the almighty conscious mind, have control over the cognitive functions, you think you can just turn us on and off whenever you want! Your existence out there is futile, you've got to see that! No one cares about you—they've all got problems of their own! You've seen it: the gas lines, hostages, sex murders, chemical waste dumps, starvation, foreclosures, unemployment, the economy heading into the toilet…”

Violet, shocked at the intensity of the impulse’s ravings, began edging away from it.

“What do you think you're doing?” It demanded in a high, almost hysterical tone.

“Nothing! I 'm—” she turned and bolted.

“You can’t go out there!” it shouted. “You'll get lost! This isn't your living room!”

She refused to answer or look back, dashing between the stubby ground growths toward the towering stalagmites beyond. The impulse's voice grew shriller. “And what if you did get out? Regaining your senses…as if you'd know what to do with them! What's out there, huh? Answer me! What's out there? You, smashed up on a road, alone and lost, with two murderous bastards on motorcycles after you! What about Calder…why face life without him? Why bother? Come back! I won't hurt you!”

“Sure, sure,” she muttered between her teeth, tears springing up in her eyes, obscuring her vision. She could not remember a nightmare worse than this. It was terrifying and confusing, and she wanted nothing now save utter oblivion, a place where she could curl up and go to sleep. The sky darkened as she stumbled on, away from the maddening voice of the impulse, which got no fainter. Was the thing following her?

As this thought occurred to her, she passed beyond the stalagmites, and came to an abrupt halt on the lip of an abyss.

Before and below her a depthless lavender void opened out, apparently into infinity. Tears trickled down her face as she stared in vertiginous horror into the emptiness. The color became oddly denser out there, though no more intense in the distance, as though the air itself thickened.

And the space wasn’t empty: she now saw distant specks floating out there, too far off to be distinct. Birds? No, she saw no motion of wings.

In her dizzy astonishment she’d forgotten the approaching impulse. “I won't harm you,” it called soothingly, as yet unseen through the undergrowth behind her. It was certainly getting nearer, she knew, and she turned her back on the weird infinity to face the more palpable menace. A hint of sticky blue light stained the air beyond the stalagmites in the direction of the voice. “I merely want to talk to you. I'm very sorry I got so upset, but you must realize that you're as new and strange to me as I suppose I am to you. I can help you, while you're here…you want to do the right thing, don't you? You can trust me. After all, I'm you, Violet, aren't I?”

She looked down at her clenched fists, wanting to run. An impulse! An impulse to run! she thought almost hysterically. Nervously she edged along the precipice, away from the voice, with fear knotting her stomach.

This is all just a nightmare!

But it didn’t feel like one. She slipped—gasping, she threw herself away from the verge, twisting, falling hard. Stunned, she levered herself up slowly, dislodging a small bit of the ground-stuff. Instead of plunging into the un-reverberate pastel blankness, the piece slowly floated away like a chunk of driftwood in a calm inlet.

“Ah, there you are,” said the whim in a cordial tone. She looked up to see the snaky creature slithering toward her out of the undergrowth. “There’s so much we have to talk about!” Before she could move, a stream of sparkling stars shot from its empty eyes, catching Violet full in the face. The sparks did not burn, and she felt herself float up a few inches into the air. The impulse's nimbus glowed more brightly, pulsating, expanding toward her. “You can't resist me,” it said gently, its hands flexing slowly.

“You can't resist yourself. You have made this place, and me…we are one, you and me. It’s best this way…”

Don’t let its aura touch you!

She swam in the air on the brink of nothing, facing the advancing impulse, her mind frozen. The image of the impulse’s nimbus touching her, fired her imagination. Control. The thing, the “impulse” or “whim,” or whatever, had a purpose, and whatever that purpose was, it wasn't anything beneficial to Violet Meldon. Suddenly she knew that she hated the thing with all her body and soul, far more than she feared it. The hatred became a sun in her brain. From freeze to thaw to broiling rage, in seconds: she felt that her blood vessels would burst, exploding out of her face like popcorn.

She brushed against a slender outgrowth of ground-stuff on the edge on the pale purple gulf. Galvanized by the burst of raw emotion, Violet thrust her left leg out at the spar and shoved herself out into naked space. If the pieces of ground float, I will, too. Her action somehow broke the impulse’s hypnotic spell. Giddy and sick with dizziness and relief, she did not fall, but drifted slowly away from the land.

The impulse gasped in rage. “The white hiss in your ears!” it shouted. “Haven't you ever heard that? The deafening electronic whine, comes to you at night in your bed? That's it! It's the no-thing, you’ll discorporate in there! It's the Cognitive Void!” It was nearly dancing with frustration on the edge of the abyss, obviously unwilling to launch itself after her.

Why?

No time to wonder about that, now…Seeing the impulse’s frantic reaction, Violet took a little heart. So I’m flying…I've flown before in my dreams, right?

“You've got to come back!” the impulse panted.

“How?” she asked, pointedly. “Forget it…I'm better off out here, away from you, until I wake up.” The shore—or the land, whichever—receded more quickly. Apparently, she’d been snagged by a current in the aether. Now she saw that the mass below the actual ground had no real shape to it, despite the regularity of the margin itself. The body of the cliff, or island in space, didn't look solid at all…squinting, she saw it as something like an enormous compilation of snowflakes, an insubstantial glisten like the glow of a rotting log. This bizarre fractal surface marched off into the violet distance, a headland of geometric peculiarity standing, monolithic, above misty nothingness. Away and to all sides, below and above, stretched the color of eternity. Immense half-seen shadows writhed in the gloaming at vast distances; but perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her, as when one sees shapes in clouds or faces in flames.

The impulse shouted imprecations and entreaties and threats, but its voice became fainter in the distance. After a while it gave up and turned, vanishing into the growths surrounding the cliff's edge. She was now completely alone.

At first, she amused herself by trying various swimming strokes in the air, but this pastime palled quickly. In any event nothing she did affected her progress or direction; she just kept drifting away from the land at a steady rate. Her body configuration became, upon relaxation, spread-eagled. Presently she grew bored and began feeling sorry for herself. Her loneliness in the unfamiliar surroundings depressed her. After a while she saw that she was approaching some of the specks she had noticed earlier. There were some dozens of them, like nothing she had ever seen. Soon she found herself gliding willy-nilly into their midst. Most were spherical, variously colored and ranging in diameter from a foot or so to several yards, but there were a few cubes and the occasional more complicated geometrical solid: dodecahedrons, other things she had no names for.

Violet frowned, amazed, as she saw that most of the nearby forms had faces: large saucer eyes, and wide lipless mouths. They looked similar in some ways to the impulse. Several of the spheres smiled broadly upon catching sight of her, but none said a word.

Her velocity lessened and, again using swimming motions, she tried to orient herself facing the spheres. This time she had more success and she coasted to a stop near the middle of the flock or school or convocation. She examined the closest sphere. It was about three feet in diameter and seemed to be made of a highly polished seamless substance, banded with alternating red and turquoise stripes. Just beyond this ball, almost nudging it in fact, was another of similar size, brilliant crimson in color, patterned with small white stars.

Violet, intensely curious, sensed no menace radiating from the balls. While trying to decide what to say, she found her orientation changing, and made water-treading motions. Accidentally, she touched the sphere. It was as warm as flesh.

“Ah ah ah!” it said, in a high buzzing voice. “Do you want to reverse my polarity? No touching!”

“Sorry!” exclaimed Violet, flustered. “Pardon me! I wasn't sure you could talk.”

“I would object to being manhandled even if I could not.”

“Ah, yeah…look uh, excuse me, but—”

“Don't make excuses for yourself.” It looked her up and down. “You must be a complex being. Only complex beings make excuses for themselves, because their very complexity tends to trip them up at inopportune moments.”

“Uh, okay, whatever. Who are you?” Violet demanded, beginning to feel very confused.

“The very idea.”

“I beg your pardon; I didn't mean to offend you.”

“No, no, no! I am the very idea. You are in the region of Ideas, and we—” It rolled its eyes, indicating the floating shapes in the vicinity, “—are the Association of Ideas.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, automatically. To herself, but aloud, she added, “I don't understand any of this!”

“No need to sound so plaintive!” chided the Idea. “Obviously you are the Conscious Mind, that net of neural nonsense suspended between the ego and the id.”

“I am? I mean, I am.” Everyone is very Freudian in here, she thought. I must’ve had more of an affinity for ol’ Sigmund than I thought.

“Very well, then, you can't have gotten this far, Conscious, without realizing that you aren't in your usual frame of reference.”

“I—well, I was assuming that this is a dream.”

“Dream?” It seemed puzzled. “Dream? That's another region entirely. The Wood of Dreams is beyond the Introspection Station, way at the other end of the Void.”

Violet bit her lip. “Look, maybe you can help me. I met this thing, an impulse or something? back where I came into this place, and it called me ‘conscious,’ too. So, if I am, then what am I doing inside my own, what, mind-space? It’s like being trapped inside Myst! Do you have any idea how I can get out of here, or find someone who can help me?”

“Do I have any ideas?” demanded the sphere. “What do you think (no pun intended) we have here, sundry daisies?”

Several nearby Ideas added their agreement, but Violet noted that none sounded angry. “So these are all ideas,” she stated, trying to grasp the concept. It was very slippery. She looked around at the other Ideas, floating like jellyfish in the Cognitive Void. A small star called “Hi!” but she ignored it. Desperation conquered her reticence. “Ideas or daisies, I just want to wake up, to get out of here!” The purplish infinity beyond the Ideas seemed to darken as she spoke, but she took little note of this. “I've got to get back to reality!”

“That's what this is,” insisted the Idea, vigorously. “What did you think, all that external crap is reality? Houses and missiles and nebulae and electrons and things? God, you incorporate types will do anything to distract yourselves from what’s really important. Well, now you’ve got yourself turned inward to the Cognitive Void. This is the base of your perceptions. True reality!” It sounded smug. “The left brain, you would say. The place you get to when you meditate…which you never do anymore. Which is why you don’t know where you are. Imagination, Intuition…The righties like Logic and Planning never come down here unless they're slumming…they don't go in for feelings, up there.” It tsked. “A shame. Not a very good attitude. You’re not even too good at that stuff, either. You’ve managed to get to your age without really using anything much of your brain. You stuffed it full of facts all through school, then when you got out and the real world looked too confusing and weird, you tried taking drugs to dull your panic. That didn’t work, so you got into religion, just for a fucking eschatological framework.” It looked around, and Violet noticed that the void was getting very dark indeed. “So, when that didn’t work—”

“What?” asked Violet, who was getting very confused. The Idea was part of her, inside her own head, but it was railing at her as if she were some irresponsible kid. “What do you mean, it didn’t work? I found Truth.”

“Oh, please. What you found was dogma. The stuff they build polemics out of. Didactics, and all that. Hah! Next thing, you’ll try to say that Truth and Facts are the same!”

“But they are.”

The Idea snorted. “That’s like saying that Curley is the same as Shemp.” It glanced around at the deepening gloom. “Look here,” it said, in an urgent tone, “I think that you should be at some pains to remove yourself.”

“Why?” She was alarmed. “What's happening? Why is it getting so dark?”

“You need to get to the Introspection Station. I have a feeling that they’re goofing off there, otherwise you wouldn't be in here.”

“What are you talking about?” A twilit gloom now pervaded the space around her. Small spots of light began to appear, twinkling weakly. Out beyond these starlettes a vast shadowy shape curdled the gloaming. “There's something…something out there,” she said, twisting her head around to judge the size and shape of the coalescing darkness.

“It’s really nothing!” said the sphere, rotating its eyes in clear alarm.

Violet swung around to face it, arms outstretched. “I'll reverse your polarity if you don't tell me the truth!” She wriggled her fingers menacingly at it.

“Don’t touch me! Sometimes ideas vanish if you examine them too closely!” The orb cringed away, although Violet could not tell whether her threat or the strange nightfall truly bothered it, or whether it was in fact shamming. The Impulse had proven false; why not the Idea?

“What is that thing out there!” Violet gestured at the nebular form taking shape beyond the starlettes.

“The main thing is, don't be afraid!”

“You’re the one who’s afraid; I'm angry!” she replied. “I can't get a straight answer out of you, or that Impulse-thing…how am I supposed to figure out what’s going on if you guys keep bullshitting me?”

“All right. All right, you want to know what this darkness is? It's Guilt. It knows you're here…It's the strongest of us all. It's huge, sort of teardrop shaped, with red glowing eyes and big blunt claws on the ends of its paws!”

“Eyes and claws on its paws? What?”

Sound became indistinct, as if the air around them were turning to cotton candy. Violet felt a prickling on her exposed skin. She sensed something immense, vast, and coldly alive, coming closer from a place less of physical distance than of emotional intensity.

Guilt!

“It’s just a shadow!”

The idea laughed nervously. “Yes, you never see it clearly. Hints, an idea of veins or eyes somewhere in the shadows. It knows you're in here, it knows you’re afraid. It's attracted by fear more than anything.”

“Is that the wind rising? There's no wind here…what's that? Afraid? This is just a dream, and dreams can't hurt you.” She stared at the idea, seeing her floating figure mirrored, through a glaze of eye colors, a convex reflection in its oculars. Not till now!

“Don't ask me what it'll do to you,” the idea babbled, not listening to her. It glanced wildly around, looking at the distance, its neighbors, and, occasionally, Violet. “It's never really come this close before, I don't understand. But it's you, yes, it must know just where you are…not just that you're in here, but that you're right here with me…” It stared for a long, frozen moment at her.

The darkness intensified. The twinkling starlettes' light slowly grew redder, as if an obscuring crimson gas was pouring among them. Violet felt a heavy chill, and saw the idea shudder, its body wobbling like water balloon. The chill—the chill was part of a buzzing sound, a cold noise, a melting hiss in her ears. It made her jaws ache.

“My god, what's it doing?” she shouted, but her voice was muffled, thickened by the gas and the hiss and it seemed to take minutes to get the words out. The freezing rumble shook a pristine horror out or her mind and loosed it into her bones. Something snapped in her head. Sudden relief slid a sob from her throat. This was the only fear there had ever been, present in all other fears, and somehow this knowledge made a difference. Having recognized the singular nature of the dread, however, she could not break her conviction that she was helpless and in extreme danger. She shouted again, a long syllable of desperation. The wail was sucked into the frigid, deafening hiss.

She squeezed her eyes closed, falling back into the familiar inner night behind her eyelids, seeing the sparkle of gray light: It was going to touch her, it was going to rend her—

It seized her—