Discomforting Dreams
What began as a pleasant memory of reading Dostoevsky under the tree at the quad had stretched into something quite uncanny. The autumn leaves fell, slowly burying Winstead, even as she never quite seemed to reach the end of the book. First her vision started to blur, and when she began to suffocate under the leaves, she woke up again on the mattress in the empty warehouse she had made into a temporary home. While I get my life together, she’d told herself.#
But the dreams seemed to infect waking life as well. The surreality of Satyrine (or was it Indigo? Or the Actuality?) bled into her dreams. Figures out of paintings asked why she didn’t return home or petitioned her to find friends and loved ones. Mangy animals on the side streets of her neighborhood whispered about “being the seed.” Shadow had been much more reliable. When her tossed coin was answered by a terrifying scream from the well itself, Winstead’s frayed nerves had had enough.
She awoke again in what appeared to be another part of the warehouse. Leaving the empty, carpeted room, Winstead entered a taupe-colored hall. Distrustful of the unfamiliar hallway, she tried the second door on the right only to have her efforts frustrated with a stiff hinge and chained latch. The previous door proved more accommodating, smoothly swinging open to reveal a lightless room filled with the roar of cascading water. She felt through the darkness and navigated the edge of a drop-off, until she found another door, through which she entered her own bedroom and saw herself there, sleeping on her own mattress.
Steeling herself and heading back, she checked her pockets for a light. At her snap of frustration, her fingers burst with illumination. Startled and satisfied, she looked around and watched the waterfall cascade down into a pool in the offices below. Retreating quickly, she found the hallway in a new configuration. She put a hand to her chest to comfort herself and began to hear the dream-voices from the paintings again.#
This won’t do at all. She began checking doors on the left now. The second opened into a pantry of pickled flora and bulk grains. Something past the shelves caught her light, and she found a well-ordered wine cellar surrounding a large trapdoor with a pull-latch. Gathering her strength, she prized it open and descended the ladder into a clean and well-lit tunnel system below.
The stone-and-brickwork tunnel looked well-maintained, unused, and uninhabited. Winstead turned right at the T-intersection, only to hit a dead end and feel a sinking in her stomach as the clang of the trapdoor rang through the tunnels. She tried to turn back, but the short trip had seemingly expanded to miles.
Fine. We’ll go elsewhere in this madhouse.
She wasn’t sure how long she had been walking, but was relieved at the sight of the large wooden double doors. Grasping one of the ring pulls, Winstead walked one door back and open, spilling bright light out into the tunnel.
A fantastical medieval-style court assailed her senses. The banners and coats of arms were unfamiliar, as were the shapes of the strange servants rushing to and fro on orders Winstead didn’t understand in the least. Her eyes were drawn to the raised center of the room and then slid off again.
“Welcome to my home.” The voice was alien, and the greeting was issued with a casual authority.
“What is this?’ she asked, her eyes repeatedly failing to land where her ears indicated the speaker sat. “And thank you,” she added politely, before asking, “Who are you? What are you?”
“I am Nyx,” the being said, as though that were all the explanation needed.
“I see,” said Winstead, who did not see. “Why am I here?”
The voice gently boomed, “You are here because I summoned you.”
This did not explain things any better. “Why have you summoned me?”
“I have a gift for you to bring back.”
Tension Winstead hadn’t realized she was carrying relaxed, and she replied, “Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
The clinking sounds behind her finally registered consciously, and she turned around to see a sumptuous feast laid out before her as the being said, “Come now, do me the honor of joining me in some food and drink.”
A little wary, Winstead politely declined.
“You disappoint me,” the being said with a hint of sternness. “Are you sure you won’t at least show respect with a toast?”
Winstead relented out of decorum. “Sure, I’ll have a drink.”
Almost before she knew what had happened, one of the strange servant forms had rushed up with a cup of crystal and held it out to her. Its contents—the starry night sky made liquid—rippled as Winstead took it in hand. Seen from the corner of her eye, her host, a red figure, was also given a cup, and tossed it back in one motion. Winstead did the same, and the cool, bright taste of the drink made her smile.
The being laughed, gesturing for the cups to be refilled. “A toast to the seed,” it called, and Winstead raised her glass and drank again. She felt much better about the whole proceeding now. However, the third cup the being poured out in libation, saying, “Let us also give the ground its due.” Winstead followed suit, letting the dark drink stain the stone floor.
She made herself ready to go again, but before farewells she asked, “What is this gift?”
“You already bear it,” the voice replied. “Be on your way now with my best wishes.”
Responding briefly in kind, Winstead walked out. As the door closed behind her, it seemed the tunnels’ trickery had finally worked in her favor. She followed a corridor to a ladder, and she was soon in the wine cellar, then the pantry, and then walking through the door to the hallway.
Now she was back in her room, and her bed was reassuringly empty. She lay down to go to sleep, and as she drifted off, she looked back to the door she’d come through.
The flat wall refused to show any evidence that there ever had been a door there at all.
⨂ Winstead: Acumen, Despair.
⨂ Winstead: Anguish