Chapter 2

2.

         Baress once had nightmares.
          But he didn’t want to call them that.
          He had no time for dreaming. Too much work to be done during the day and that left no time to waste his nights dreaming when he could have been sleeping. Slumber was supposed to be nothing more than a blank break in his daily routine, a compromise to the demands of his body and spirit. After all, he wasn’t waking up any younger and if he wasn’t going to be resting, he’d rather be out there working the fields, making sure everything was in its place. That’s how his life was. How it should be. A man had nothing to fear from a day of honest labor, if he treated his family right and put some sweat into his work. If he met the world on its own terms and didn’t flinch, the world would relent and give a man what he deserved. He always believed that, his family had prided itself on it for as long as his name existed. It sustained his life, propelled him through the day.
          And then one night a man with the head of an insect screamed words he couldn’t understand at something that consisted of only edges and anger in a room of stone and metal and silence.
          It didn’t happen. It was all in your head.
          Baress woke up unable to even scream, his chest tight and breathless. Next to him, his wife never even stirred. His eyes saw only oblivion all around, nothing but darkness.
          Even after his breathing had calmed, he stared at his ceiling until dawn clawed its way over the horizon.
          Baress had had his first dream. His first nightmare.
          He had pushed the dream out of his mind throughout the day, concentrating on his work. He had no time to worry about such things as dreams. It was probably just a passing phase. He was getting older after all, and maybe it was just a sign of his body adjusting to his age. Getting used to it. That was all. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
          And on the second night a thing that could only be described as a giant eyeball attached to a floating bag wrapped what looked like tentacles around the neck of an insect-man, twisting and straining even as the man beat clawed hands against it in a futile effort, its struggles growing weaker and weaker and-
          All in your head.
          He woke up on the hard floor of his bedroom, dried blood all over his chin and a dull throbbing in his mouth. He had bitten through his lip during the night. He stood up only to find that his legs were shaking. The room was impossibly cold, he kept expecting his breath to form wispy clouds in the air. But that was wrong. It was perfectly warm in here. He was just cold. It was just him. The whole time. Just him.
          He said nothing to anyone in his family. Not his wife, or his son. Later, out in the fields, he heard snatches of babble that sounded eerily like the noises in his dream. Baress had nearly run back into his house for reasons he couldn’t entirely explain when the logical, rational part of his brain pointed out it was only the wind rattling through the trees. He wished his brain would speak to his thudding heart. He wished his brain would just shut off while he was sleeping like it was supposed to.
          It didn’t. On the third night he woke so violently that he cracked his head against the wall behind his bed. Baress didn’t even remember the nightmare, he just curled up on his bed clutching his head and trying to remember the last time he had felt like crying. Still the dream eluded him. Not until later and even then it was vague, a hazy image of a man who looked the same no matter what angle you saw him at, with the sun burning in both eyes and a chill in his voice that clung to Baress throughout the rest of his day.
          These things are not real.
          Focusing on his daily routine became almost impossible. In the beginning of the day he tried to simultaneously accept and forget the dream of the night before. Toward the end of the day he began to look with trepidation on the onrushing night. He found himself staring at the sun for long periods, as if trying to will it to stay still, to avoid dipping below the horizon and signal the end of his day.
          None of it helped. Night came. Inexorably. He lay in bed, nails digging into his palms, praying for sleep to pass him by, for the long hours of night to rush by as quickly as the day seemed to. It made no difference. Sleep descended, swooping in to cover him like a shroud. The nightmares marched by, regardless of his desires. Most of the dreams were of things, events, he didn’t recognize. Two men, one sitting in a chair and apparently unable to get up, even though he didn’t appear to be tied down, the other standing several feet away. The things the standing man did to the sitting man there weren’t words for. The standing man never moved, or even touched the other man. His screams were ragged, shredded things. It went on right to the moment Baress burst awake, sitting up with such force that he nearly fell forward onto his face, trembling as he covered his face with his hands, his head pressed nearly into his knees, his world consisting of nothing but the sound of his own hollow breathing, the stink of his sweat, and the patterned darkness that encroached at the edges of his narrow vision.
          He couldn’t tell his wife, not wishing to give her reason to disturb her own so far peaceful rest. Some irrational part of him feared that it was contagious, that speaking it aloud might somehow give it a kind of life and it would spread to the rest of his family. The only escape seemed to be avoiding sleep. It seemed the only recourse available.
          So, at a loss, Baress tried it. What did he need sleep for anyway? He spent a desperate night pacing around his silent home, going outside to fiddle with his tools, trying to find anything to occupy his time, feeling more and more as the night wore on that he was trying to push his way forward through a wall of syrup. But he kept moving, kept standing, did everything he could to ward off sleep, even as it poked and prodded him, trying to coax him away.
          And as the sun began to creep back into view, Baress celebrated inwardly, hopeful that perhaps he had broken the cycle, certain that even if he had not dispatched the dreams completely, he had showed them that he was going to fight on his own terms and not back down.
          Weary, but triumphant, he fell asleep in the middle of a field.
          Baress dreamed of darkness.
          No, a dark room. He was in a room. He wasn’t sure how he knew. There was nothing to see. Nearby somebody was moaning, over and over again, like a tree fighting against a strong wind. It took him a moment to realize that in the background somebody else was screaming, a long, high-pitched sound, air escaping from a kettle.
          With a rustling like dried scales, a black on black shape shifted, moved.
          A beast shaped like a man emitted a sound no animal ever made. There was a sound not unlike a handful of sticks breaking. Then a scratching like the tearing of cloth. But it wasn’t cloth. He knew that. Where was he?
          A splatter of thick raindrops struck a wall.
          The screaming leapt in intensity before dissolving into a strangled choke, almost liquid. There was guttural laughter. He didn’t know where it was coming from. The darkness refused to resolve into anything.
          Another snap. Then several more, in rapid succession.
          The moaning became louder, more insistent. Asking him a question. Asking him to make it stop. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t here. He couldn’t be. Baress thought he felt something wet strike his face. Somewhere distant someone was pounding clay into shape. The laughter didn’t stop. There was a taste of dirt and copper in his mouth. It soaked the dense air. Laughter filled the remaining spaces. He was suffocating. Drowning. Darkness swirled around him like turgid water. His eyes crafted shapes out of the blackness that did nothing to deaden the horror. He couldn’t see anything. It was too much.
          Footsteps settled around him like dried leaves, crackling, slithering. Insect legs on stone. The smothering whisper of cloth engulfing the room, the air, his face, everything. He couldn’t breathe. Nothing for his lungs to work with. He was going down. But he had to escape. Down was death. But there was nowhere to go. Another crack, like ancient timber, followed by a slimy sucking sound.
          Moist air brushed against his neck.
          He had to go.
          Soft laughter bent the interior curve of his ear.
          Go.
          A needle-fine point pressed delicately against his skin, pausing just before the final push.
          G-
          When Baress woke he found he had nearly punched his son in the face due to his thrashing about. His concerned face was the first sight that greeted him, set against the backdrop of a distant, impossibly sunny sky, blurring his son’s well-defined features into something melted and blurred. He had heard the screaming all the way from the house and had come running out to find his father sprawled in the middle of the field. Baress had let his son help him up, his legs trembling and threatening to stop supporting his weight, not daring to look the boy in the eye. There was no center for his shame, but it existed nonetheless. Neither of them mentioned it during the long walk back to the house.
          But later that night, when his wife had gone to bed, his son came to him and said in a quiet voice, Yours must be worse than mine.
          Baress didn’t know what to say.
          In the lingering silence that followed his son told him of a man back at the village who specialized in dreams, who knew what they meant, and maybe could even cure his rest of them.
          Baress wanted to say no, wanted to tell his son that none of this was his business and that he would deal with it. But he couldn’t stop touching the spot on his neck where something had tried to break the skin, or stop seeing the images that unfolded every time he closed his eyes, or hear the sounds seemingly built from a different strain of logic than he could ever fathom.
          Talk to him, his son said, rationally, impossibly, rightly.
          He felt it was either that or go mad. And madness wasn’t a choice.
          So he went and talked to the man. At first he had thought the man was an apothecary, possessing potions that put a man into a dreamless sleep. Baress didn’t want any potions. The man gave him none. It was never even suggested, though Baress suspected he had some.
          Instead they just talked. About his dreams. About their meanings. The man reassured him that it was nothing to worry about, merely a byproduct of the strain in his life. It was all perfectly understandable, really, when appreciated in the proper context. And that’s all you needed. Context. Of course.
          Of course. That made sense. It did. And shortly thereafter, the dreams went away, and hadn’t made a return since. Everything back to normal. Everything returned to being just fine.
          His son still visited the man, however, presumably to discuss his own dreams. Baress wondered what the boy saw in his dreams.
          One afternoon, while Baress was finishing up his lunch at the kitchen table, his son strolled in. He hadn’t seen him all and assumed that he had been with the man. What was his name again? Valreck. That’s right. How had he forgotten? He had such a good memory normally. Age again.
          “I’m going to need your help later, Jaymes,” he told his son when he entered the kitchen. “There’s some rocks that need moving in the far field, and I can’t do it alone.”
          The boy stopped, as if seeing his father for the first time. “Yes,” he said, blinking, “but, ah, I have to go to the village for a bit and talk to Valreck.”
          Baress’ eyes narrowed. “Weren’t you just there this morning?”
          “No,” Jaymes replied, sounding confused. “I’ve been here all day.”
          “You told your mother that’s where you were going. She saw you leave.” Is he lying? Why? That didn’t make any sense. “You definitely weren’t here. One of us would have seen you.”
          “I was,” the boy insisted, with some heat to his voice. “Here, I mean. I didn’t leave. Why would I go back if I had been there already?” His tone quivered on the edge of shouting, which took Baress aback. Maybe he was wrong, but no . . . he couldn’t be. He hadn’t seen the boy around all day.
          “But your mother saw-“
          Jaymes’ hands stopped just short of slamming into the table. Instead he balled them into fists and kept them tightly clenched around stomach level. “I. Was. Here!” he said through near gritted teeth. “I told you that. Why would I make that up? What possible reason would I have?” He spun away, breathing heavily.
          “I don’t know, son,” Baress replied quietly. “Why would you?” Something he didn’t dare call fear kept him in his seat. But that wasn’t right. Fathers didn’t fear their sons.
          Jaymes didn’t seem to hear him. “I was here,” he repeated again, as if willing the mantra to become more concrete. “And . . . and even if I wasn’t,” he added, his voice lashing out heavily, “. . . are you spying on me now? You and Mother? Maybe I did leave. I don’t know. Perhaps I did. Am I allowed a little bit of privacy at least? Huh? Aren’t I?”
          “Son, I was just asking, why are you getting so-“
          ”Because . . . because I’m a man now, or at least resting on . . . on the cusp of manhood . . .” the words were spit out like barbs.
          Once he would have walloped his son for speaking to him like that, for even raising his voice in that fashion. Wouldn’t have hesitated for even a second. Stood up and put an end to this nonsense before it even had a chance to start. Children had to learn respect, for everyone and first and foremost their elders. It was how it had to be. Else nothing got done.
          Baress just stared up at his son, unable to stop himself from feeling strangely timid. “Jaymes, I didn’t mean to suggest, if you need to, of course you can go . . .”
          His son was already swooping out, his departure leaving a small breeze in its wake. “I’ll be at the village if you’re looking for me!” came his near bellow, an ultimatum crossed with an order.
          “. . . to the village,” Baress finished softly, hearing a door rattle and slam somewhere distant, in another life. For a moment he stared at nothing, then blinked violently, as if trying to rouse himself. He thought his hands were shaking, but couldn’t be sure. Part of him felt asleep. But he didn’t have the dreams anymore. They were infecting his life. That wasn’t true. The nightmares were gone. He had nothing to worry about now. Everything was normal.
          Fine.
          Everything was just fine.