Chapter 7- The Path of Dreams
When Jake was a child, he had horrible vision. He wore glasses until he was thirteen and was able to get contacts. Once, on a run while in the National Guard, his glasses fell off his face and broke. There was nothing he could do but pick up the pieces and continue to run. The confused exhilaration of hurdling himself along, seeing only a blur of soft shapes as he ran, had made him feel disconnected from the world.
That feeling suddenly rushed back to him now. He could feel the others close, their texture and the shade of their mass, one in front and one behind. He felt like the middle passenger on a rollercoaster, experiencing the ride, but vaguely aware of the other passengers.
He felt enclosed, soft walls very close, extending upwards to an unseen, if even existent, ceiling. Everything was in a haze of purples and violets. White light, perfectly blended as if with pastels, lay ahead. Yet, no matter how swiftly he seemed to move, he got no closer to the light. Slowly becoming aware of himself, Jake looked down at his body. A hand, his left. Nothing else was in focus. He reached out and touched the wall. It was cool and greasy, almost moist. It stretched under his touch and the purple color faded as he stretched it outward. He let go, and it returned to normal.
Suddenly, a sense of urgency came over him. It was as if there were mellow classical music drifting down the slow pulsating hall that had suddenly picked up to a frenetic pace while changing keys. He felt as if his heart (did he have a heart with him?) wanted to leap from his chest. He had to move. He could not idle here forever. He strained himself to move, but with no real body, only his mind could move him. But, wasn’t it his mind that did all the moving anyway? The body responds to the mind…
It was like ringing the last drops from a damp sponge. He pushed until nothing was left, and beyond. Finally the light came rushing forward. The walls were gone and a tan-brown color began to blossom beneath him, like watercolor saturating paper.
He was standing in a boat. Chris stood in the rowboat, alone, looking at his feet.
He was there, freed from the narrow passageway, and found himself whole. Chris stood in a small tan rowboat made of flawless wood, with blue trim and white sides. Assaulted by the color and sensory overload of his new surroundings, he looked around dumbfounded. There seemed to be no need to speak, no need to move, and he didn’t know if he could, even if he tried.
The water surrounding the boat was not blue; the first color he noticed was a chunk of brown, and then dark green. There was white and yellow, and even a bit of red. The water was painted with oil paints, as was everything he could see. Taking a mental step back, he was standing in the most beautiful scene any human could imagine, surely painted by a master impressionist. There were lilies floating on the calm river that contained his floating craft. He was drifting a ways from the bank and a house that came right up to the edge of the painted water. A large white house, one you would expect to see on a plantation in the south, sat directly on the bank with the porch sitting right on the waters edge. Sweeping weeping willows framed the white giant, their long arms dipping all the way to its own reflection.
A soft wind blew, and the painted representations obliged. The scene drifted back and forth, and so did Chris. Up and out of the boat, and back again. It was three steps forward and two steps back, a pendulum that slowly crept him ever closer to the house on the bank. The door was red; he had not noticed that before as he floated across the painted river. The windows were dark but inviting. He would go through the door, and so his feet finally came to rest on the solid wood. The door’s handle was swooping and painted like liquid brass. Chris felt compelled to move at last. He gripped the handle with his right hand and placed his thumb on the opening lever.
Should I knock? He thought. Do I need my key?
But like lightning, the answer came to him, This is your house.
A whisper. The voice of his sister? It seemed to have no gender, but her voice was there. He tried to recall the sound of it, but there was nothing. All that was left was the memory of the words. Chris opened the door and stepped into the darkness.
The red door closed behind Donny as the cold air settled on his skin. He took a tentative step forward, expecting something to guide him. The others had gotten a clear direction, so where was his? He stood in the darkness and listened.
Hissing steam, pops, and clicks echoed around him. A faint gust of warm air touched him, giving him a break from the general cold. He put his hands out and stepped again. A metallic click at his feet struck the grating beneath. Fear began to grip Donny’s mind as childhood movies of monsters in space ran across his thoughts. And then a comforting thought: his lighter.
He always carried a lighter, a nice slim Zippo that Chris and Jake had gotten him as a gift. A nice gift for their smoker friend. He reached down into his pocket, finding it funny that he had just assumed he would be wearing his favorite jeans, and felt the comforting grip of the metal lighter. The second it was out and the signature Ching! of the top opening made a smile spread across his face. It ignited on the first go, as always.
Donny hit the floor, his back connecting with the grated walkway; he was able to comprehend the impact to his chest as the flickering light came to life. There was little pain, just the sudden feeling of vertigo as his mind reacted to the sudden change in orientation. He brought his head up to his chest and was petrified by what he saw.
Small beady eyes, shining bright like lights; one blue, the other green. No bigger than a grapefruit, the demon sitting on Donny’s chest made his heart skip two beats. In those two beats was a lifetime of pure fear watching the wavering light from his lighter fight against the shadows, exposing the creature hunched over his face, with claws like the Rancor from Jabba’s Palace. Instead of a rounded head like the sci-fi beast, a snout like a river caiman and full of shark teeth snapped at his face.
The paralysis broke and Donny smacked the thing away. He leaped to his feet, grabbing his lighter. He fled along the catwalk, stealing glances back to see if the thing was chasing him, but there was nothing. Coming to a halt, he held up his lighter and looked around. He was in some sort of industrial complex. Pipes running everywhere, overpressure vents, gauges, fly wheels, and thin metal handrails circled the complex. To his left, and always to his left was open space. He could barely see around the complex, discerning that the complex encircled the open space. He leaned over the handrail to look down and saw only the same structures extending up and downward, as if he was in a silo.
The creaking of a grate from behind him broke Donny’s observation and he turned. Behind him, just out of the reach of the light of his flame, the eyes reappeared. There was no body in view, just the blue and green staring right at him. Donny took a step back, coming in contact with the cold railing. Another set of eyes emerged from the darkness, and then another. Donny’s jaw went slack in horror and the railing behind him broke. He fell backward into the void, turning to face the blackness below him.
The Zippo was still in hand and lit the walks he was falling past, faster and faster, gaining momentum. I should not be falling this fast, this is too quick, Donny thought. The darkness before him remained as his sphere of light fell and fell.
In the blackness below, three lights appeared. They were the eyes of the demon again, but this time the green eye had a smaller blue light off to one corner, like a teardrop face tattoo. The eyes remained at a fixed location, much larger than the miniature demons he had just seen. The Zippo winked out and he was alone, weightless in the dark. Like how one can faintly make out the missing part of a crescent moon, Donny could see the face of the large demon below. He fell into its blue eye, and the light engulfed him.