Chapter 6

Belle knew she was sleeping because her teeth were wiggling and coming loose in her hands. This happened so often in dreams so scarcely in waking life that she had learned to question reality.

Looking at her surroundings, she found herself in her childhood home, sitting by an old school friend and the cast of Coronation Street.

'This probably wouldn't happen in real life,' she thought, watching the actor to her left stroke a pet racoon.

"You've been a naughty girl," the racoon told her. 

'Definitely a dream,' Belle reasoned with a nod.

She rose from the sofa, looking around at her memory’s perfect replica of her first home. The dust on the ornaments, vacuum resting by the back of the sofa and stray sock poking from under the desk were but a few of the details that made the setting seem so real.

"The mind is an amazing thing," she muttered to herself.

As usual, the only thing she could think to do in her unlimited dreamscape world was fly over the rooftops. Flying while immersed in a lucid dream was breathtaking, until the point she would invariably get sucked back into the narrative of the dream.

When she left the building and walked into the street, barefooted as always, she saw a figure approaching. 

This happened occasionally, but she'd learned it was nothing to worry about. Just a stray fragment of her unconscious mind trying to make itself known.

As he neared, she recognized the boy. He'd asked her out a couple of weeks ago, holding out concert tickets and wearing a hopeful smile.

She'd laughed in his face. 

'I guess this means I feel guilty deep down,' she thought. She made a mental note to apologize if she ever saw him again, though it would likely dissipate on waking. Dreams were funny like that.

"Sorry," she said to the phantom boy.

"Oh, you aren't yet," he replied. "But you will be."

His voice was odd and multi-tonal—like three people talking at once from the same mouth. They often used this effect in horror movies, but it was a first for her dream world.

"Okay," she muttered and shrugged.

As she looked around, she found her surroundings had shifted from an ordinary-looking street to a dark and squalid wasteland. Cold winds blew across the barren landscape, chilling her so completely that she figured her blanket must have slipped away in the real world.

As an experienced lucid dreamer, she knew the best way to combat this was to close her eyes and spin. 

She tried it.

Opening her eyes after the jaunt, she saw his face inches from her.

"Agh," she cried, stumbling backwards.

The world was still dark and desolate, becoming worse by the second as the sky crackled with thunder and turned a dusty shade of red.

'I'll just wake up,' she figured, not liking the creepy look this guy was giving her.

Waking up was easier than altering the dreamscape surroundings. All she had to do was squeeze her eyes shut incredibly tight. Once she opened them, she would be in her bed.

It worked. 

Belle breathed a sigh of relief as she glanced at her alarm clock, seeing she still had hours left to get some decent sleep.

The dream had imprinted a strange feeling on her mind. A hollowness that was hard to define. She remembered the guy who asked her out with self-loathing. There hadn't been any reason to laugh at him, let alone insult his clothing and style. At the time she had been upset over her boyfriend's inability to commit and had taken out her frustrations on the nearest and most vulnerable person.

She tried to push it out of her mind, but it wouldn't budge. As she closed her eyes, trying to drift back off to sleep, it seemed impossible.

She looked about, trying to figure out if the heating had gone off. It was so cold it felt like the front door was open.

As she scanned the room something moved in the corner of her eye. She stared at the corner of the room, totally cloaked in darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

Fear crushed her chest as her mind conjured up images of demons and aliens from horror movies. She'd watched a film called Insidious, where a long-armed, hooved entity had lingered by the little boy's bed. That part had creeped her out far worse than the famous 'red face' jump-scare scene.

As something moved and shifted in the darkness, Belle knew she was still dreaming. False waking dreams—the most terrifying and disorientating of dreams—were rare, but they happened occasionally.

She figured she was going to wake up when this thing rushed at her and held her breath, telling her eyes not to look at its face.

Her terror turned to confusion as the rejected boy stepped from the shadow into the dim light from the moon that filtered through the blind.

'Is this actually a dream?' Belle panicked.

It was entirely possible this lad was a stalker and had followed her home, hiding out in her wardrobe until she fell asleep.

"Please don't hurt me," she uttered as he took another step forward.

His mouth didn't seem to move as he began to speak in the same multi-tonal thrall.

“Shadows lurking in the night, I summon you, come to us tonight.

Give us the revenge we seek, Twist the strong and make them weak.

I call on you to make this spell magick, so mote it be."

As he fell silent again, he looked down, took a sudden step forward and pulled out a silver blade.

"Argh!"

Belle woke in a cold sweat, the cover on her duvet clinging to her clammy flesh.

The thudding in her heart told her was actually awake this time, but she still had to perform a quick scan of the room to be sure.

The clock told her it was close to 6 am, meaning she had to be up in an hour so. She decided it would be impossible to sleep again for fear of returning to the strange and scary dream. As she got up and ready for work, Belle couldn't get the boy out of her mind. 

'I guess I'll just have to apologize to him.'