Chasing Nightmares – Chapter 1

The dark street warped and shifted as Ashlin raced down it. Dead streetlamps and buildings cast twisted shadows at odd angles that seemed to fall in whatever direction they felt like. They moved as she passed, following her like fingers outstretched to catch her.

Footsteps thundered after her, far enough away that she couldn’t see what caused them, but close enough that she shouldn’t keep pausing to glance back. She didn’t know what pursued her, and she didn’t want to.

Because Ash knew one thing for certain: monsters are real. They live inside our minds, our demons and worst fears hounding us when we close our eyes and try to find peace. You can’t hide from your nightmares, can’t outrun them, because they’re part of you.

Except it wasn’t Ash’s own demons that she ran from down that dark, empty street. They dwelled in someone else’s head, someone else’s nightmare, and she had no power here. Just because the monsters didn’t stalk the waking world didn’t mean they couldn’t hurt her. It didn’t mean they couldn’t kill her.

At least, Ash assumed they could kill her. Maybe when she died in her own dreams, she would startle awake, but she didn’t care to find out what would happen if she died in someone else’s.

She followed that someone down another street, this one even darker than the last. It narrowed with every step she took, until it became nothing more than an alley. The dreamer finally stopped running and fell to his knees on the pavement. A single flickering light erratically illuminated his hunched form, yellowing his brown hair and white skin.

She reached his side and grabbed his arm, trying to tug him back up. “Come on, we have to keep moving!” She didn’t know why she bothered. They could run and run and run, but the nightmares always caught up, no matter how fast you ran. Sometimes it was better to let them catch you. Less exhausting, certainly.

The problem for Ash was that sometimes getting caught woke people up, and she didn’t like what happened when a person woke before she found her way out of their dreams. There was always this delay, and she feared someday her mind might not return to her own body, and she would be stuck in someone else’s head forever.

When the dreamer didn’t move, Ash looped her arm under his and hauled him to his feet. “Keep. Running.”

He followed orders, staggering forward at a slower pace than before. They made it to the other end of the alley and emerged onto a main street that, like the ones before it, was devoid of cars. Behind them, thuds echoed off the brick walls of the alley, a storm of sound unlike anything Ash had ever heard.

She couldn’t resist the urge to turn and face what they ran from. She wished she hadn’t. Twenty paces away, illuminated by the golden light overhead, was a stampede that might haunt Ash’s own dreams.

They moved single file down the alley, arms raised over their heads so their forms could fit between the walls. More accurately, they had their front legs raised, since the creatures shouldn’t have been walking on two. Leathery skin wrinkled around their thick necks. They each had their mouths open in huge grins, showing long, yellowed teeth set into jaws that could snap a person’s arm off. She could even see the gleam of thick whiskers on their cheeks.

The hippos were horrifyingly lifelike, aside from being upright. Well, that and the lacy tutus that fluttered around their waists as they turned in slow circles down the alley. Their steps were unhurried, but the chorus of thuds from six hippos made it sound like something very big was running very fast.

She was fleeing from dancing hippos in tutus.

Ash gaped at them until hands pulled on her arm. “Come on!” the dreamer said. “They’re going to catch us.”

She followed him away from the alley but glanced back when the sound of footsteps changed. As the hippos emerged from the alley one-by-one, they dropped to all fours and charged forward. Their biped steps might have been slow, but they galloped down the street twice as fast as Ash could run, gaping mouths ready to swallow the hapless humans whole.

They caught the two humans easily. Instead of trampling over them, the hippos formed a ring and returned to two legs. They started dancing around Ash and the dreamer, who cowered beside her with tears streaking his face. The hippos moved with remarkable grace for such bulky creatures, smooth pirouettes and elegant jumps. Although they seemed to float through the air, the whole street shook when the three-thousand-pound animals landed.

Each time the dancers circled, the ring grew smaller, the hippos closing in. I need to get us out of here. The thought cut through Ash’s panicked mind. In her own dream, she could have lifted them up, over the heads of the hippos. She could have brought some light back to the world, returned the stars to the black sky.

But this wasn’t her dream, and when Ash tried to focus on changing it, nothing happened. This dream may as well have been the real world. It refused to bend to Ash’s will.

The first press of surprisingly hot skin had Ash shrinking away. Strangely, her panic faded into one grim realization: she was going to die smothered by tutu hippos in a dream world. She longed to go soaring upward, or for the street to drop out from under them. Anything to escape the hippos.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wish I could save you.” She didn’t know why she apologized, when she was the one who would actually die. The dreamer didn’t even look at her, still weeping on his knees while massive gray bodies pressed him against Ash. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for a miracle.

Ash’s stomach jolted as the two of them fell straight through the pavement, leaving the hippos behind. When she opened her eyes, they stood in the middle of an abandoned theme park. Did I do that? she wondered.

The dreamer had stopped crying, but when he lifted his head and saw the theme park, he looked even more frightened. Ash turned in a slow circle, her eyes roaming their new surroundings. The light remained the same, pale white illumination that didn’t come from a moon or stars, as well as yellow streetlamps that flickered in and out of life.

The scenery may have changed, but the dream hadn’t, not really. They were still in the nightmare. Skeletal roller coasters rose around them, their metal tracks pocked by time and the wooden slats covered in moss. An empty Ferris wheel turned haltingly, too stubborn to quit when all the other rides had, producing a rhythmic squeak with every lurch.

She also heard the patter of rain against pavement, but she couldn’t identify the source. It drifted closer, until Ash could smell the water as well, except it wasn’t the scent of fresh rain. It smelled like a lake, slightly fishy and mixed with wet pebbles, tufts of grass, and a summer breeze. She didn’t know why those things had a specific and identifiable scent, but in the dream, they were as distinct as fresh-cut lemons.

When the source of the splashing water stepped out from behind a weathered pillar supporting the nearest roller coaster, Ash realized the hippos had been nothing more than a weak attempt at covering up what really haunted him.

The girl’s clothes clung to her skinny frame, her wet hair tangled and splayed out over her shoulders. Water dripped from her pallid face. It ran down her arms and splattered the pavement, an endless stream that came from nowhere. Her head lolled to one side, like she couldn’t quite hold it up straight, but her eyes… her eyes were bright, focused, and angry.

“You didn’t save me,” she said, her voice tight and raw, the voice of someone who had been choking on water. She took a step forward, unsteady and slow, but persistent. She shambled along with the steady determination of water slowly wearing away at rock.

The dreamer shook his head, then turned and ran under the dip of a coaster track while the dripping girl inched forward. She didn’t look at Ash, even when she drew close enough that some of her water splattered Ash’s shoes.

Ash backed away from the girl slowly, worried that sudden movement might draw her attention, but the girl took another step, her eyes still focused on her one and only target: the dreamer.

The smart thing would have been to turn and run in the other direction. The dangers here plagued the dreamer, so it logically followed that the safest place would be far away from him. She could climb a maintenance ladder and hide on top of a roller coaster while she tried to get out of the dream before he woke up.

Instead, she ran after him. If she could talkto him, maybe she could calm him down enough to dispel the nightmare before it consumed him. It was always easier to get out of a good dream than a bad one, swimming up through calm waters rather than dragged under by a storm.

So focused on finding the dreamer, Ash nearly crashed into someone when they stepped into her path. She veered aside to avoid collision, only to run into a food cart instead. She tripped over the locked wheel of the cart and pitched forward. Rough pavement scraped her palms when she threw out her hands to break her fall.

She rolled over to face the person who was not the dreamer. He had bronze skin and a round, youthful face. She had no idea how old he was, but his face and small stature made it hard for Ash to imagine he was any older than sixteen. He wore a blindingly red t-shirt, a bright spot of color in the otherwise dreary setting. It had a multi-colored brain on the front, along with the words “I get psyched for psychology.”

When his brown eyes fell on Ash, they widened.

Most beings conjured by the dream, like the girl that Ash could still hear pattering through the park, paid no attention to Ash. Even if they noticed her, their focus was always on the person who belonged in the dream. This boy saw her, though. Really saw her, with the surprise of someone who didn’t expect to find her, and the clarity to realize she shouldn’t be there.

“You’re really here, aren’t you?” he said.

A girl dropped to the ground beside him, startling Ash. She must have jumped from the roller coaster track at least a hundred feet above them, a height that should have resulted in a broken leg. The girl straightened from her crouch, perfectly fine. She blended into the night, with black clothing, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and skin the color of black coffee. She looked older than the boy beside her, early twenties like Ash. She wore a bitter expression, but there was something odd about her face, the details uncertain. The shape of her nose, the line of her jaw. The edges blurred and reformed, unable to make up their minds.

“What are you doing? We need to reshape it now.” She followed his gaze to Ash and seemed to notice her for the first time. The new girl looked her over with scrutinizing eyes, which made Ash feel like some science experiment gone wrong.

They were interrupted by footsteps, followed by the rush of a dozen wings. The dreamer ran between them, pursued by a flock of birds. They were the size of ravens, but instead of black feathers, their bodies and wings were made of fluid water. They left a trail of luminous mist as they swooped by, briefly obscuring Ash’s view of the other two intruders in the dream.

The fleeing dreamer tripped a few steps away and went sprawling on the dead grass. The birds circled above him, cawing triumphantly like a crashing waterfall.

“I don’t have time for this,” the girl muttered. She held out an arm and a length of wood appeared in her closed fist, starting in the middle and rippling outward. One side ended in a wide paddle. Surprise flickered over her face as she regarded the oar she held, but then she spun the thing in her hands like a fighting staff and struck at one of the water birds.

The oar’s handle cut the creature clean in half. Its form hung in the air, liquid rippling, then burst into a cloud that dissipated on the wind. She swung the oar like a baseball bat as one of the birds dived at the dreamer, who had curled into the fetal position on the ground. The bird exploded into mist when it collided with the broad paddle.

The rest of the flock raised their voices in a thunderous chorus as they flapped their wings to bring them out of reach of the deadly oar. They hovered in the air, pale light filtering through their translucent bodies while they judged whether they could get to the dreamer faster than the oar-wielding girl could get to them.

“TJ, now!” she shouted.

“Right, sorry!” the boy called back. His forehead scrunched as he concentrated. One by one, the remaining birds burst like water balloons. The droplets hung in the air, rather than falling like rain or turning to vapor to be carried off by the wind like the others had. The boy lifted his hands, palms up, and the water rose with them. When he threw them apart, a fine spray arced through the air. A bright spot appeared in the sky, a sun sparking to life to push back the darkness. Light rippled outward, turning the sky a brilliant blue. The misted remnants of the birds became a rainbow when the sunlight hit them.

All around them, the dream changed. Light washed over rusted roller coasters, turning them shiny and new. Moss and rot receded, leaving wood planks as pristine as the day they had been cut. The squeak of the Ferris wheel vanished as the ride began to turn at a smooth, leisurely pace.

Ash rose slowly, in awe of the previously abandoned theme park that now thrummed with life. Cars full of delighted, screaming passengers rumbled along roller coaster tracks. Lights flashed on other rides. Voices and laughter filled every corner of the park. The patter of the girl’s endless dripping was either gone or covered up by the new, joyous sounds.

Ash jumped when someone grabbed her arm. She turned toward the boy, who stood by her shoulder, a few inches shorter than Ash.

“Meet us at the Studio. Wednesday,” he said. He joined his companion, who now waited in front of a free-standing door of dark-stained oak. “Remember, the Studio!” he called before the two of them joined hands and stepped through the door together.

“Hey, wait!” Ash shouted. She ran toward the door, but it vanished the moment her fingers curled around the knob. She stood in front of empty air, thriving grass beneath her feet, the dreamer nowhere to be found. People still surrounded her, but they were products of the dream.

Ash was completely alone.