284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6M0oeHEoqX
“Sweet Lord, this has got to stop,” Louisa Harrington said, her voice carrying the sort of still condemnation a soul knows ain’t got no appeal. She looked at her husband like he was already before the magistrate. “This has got to stop, Richard!”
“It is a bad business, Louisa,” Richard Harrington allowed.
“It’s more than bad, it’s utterly wretched!” Louisa near-hollered.
“You’re right,” Richard replied, dry as kindling and without a blink. “This could leave a mark on our Arthur the rest of his natural life.”
“He could die, he could be so shook up he just up and dies!” Louisa pressed on. “And if our boy dies, I don’t feel like I’ll have a thing left to draw breath for!”
“How do we put a stop to it, once and for all?” Louisa let her gaze slide to the door of Arthur’s room, as if the very pine wood bore witness.
A low, sickly moan seeped into the hall. They didn’t need to speak on what they both knew. His dreams had already come to pass: first the wreck, then the brutal killing of his girl, then the neighbor’s house fire, and finally the storm that had swallowed half of Millencester, Virginia. Fifteen years old and already a vessel for something they dared not give a name to. Arthur’s nightmares weren’t no nighttime shadow play; they were true, every last one of his nightmares was as true as the hog blood on a butcher’s knife.
“I’ve heard talk of true dreams,” Richard said, his voice low and scraped, “but truth told, I never heard tell of a true nightmare.”
“True dreams are a strange sort of kin,” Louisa answered. “Fearsome, but still… uncommon. I had a girl in my class once who carried such nightmares. I’m shamed even to say it out loud, but they were so vile I barely dare call them to mind.”
Richard leaned in, as if every word bore the weight of a coming judgment. “Were they as terrible as our son’s?”
“Worse,” she said without pause. “So utterly awful that the girl sank into a catatonic blackness just days after those dreams finally caught her.”
“Lord have mercy,” Richard mumbled, dragging a hand across his face. “With the whole of my heart, I hope our boy is spared that sentence.”
“Something’s got to be done, and soon,” Louisa said with a sharpness that cut the air. “I fear for him every time he closes his eyes.”
Richard rose slowly, like a man walking toward a cross. “I’m going out for a smoke. Gotta think.”
“Don’t you linger,” she said, following him with her gaze. “He could take another fit of terror any second.”
“Five minutes,” he answered, bending to give her a quick, dry kiss.
It was half past four in the morning, and the autumn blackness lay like a shroud over the small town of Millencester, VA. It was cold, so cold Richard figured he’d better pull on his black down coat before stepping out. Not a soul was to be seen as far as the eye traveled; fact was, there were no signs of life at all outdoors. It was as if the whole of Virginia had fallen under the same sleeping curse as Sleeping Beauty. Richard pulled out a pack of Camels and walked over to his usual spot under the apple tree, the one whose branches hung over the sidewalk.
Richard lit a cigarette and drew on it. He was so plagued by worry for his boy he could barely focus on the smoke. What if Arthur dreamed of an apocalypse that would take out all mankind? This might be the end for every living soul in all of America, who could say?
“Oh, how I wish my boy had never started having those awful true nightmares!” Richard said aloud to himself under the apple tree. “I wish things were back to normal before he started dreaming them.”
“True nightmares are grim, that’s certain, but if a body learns to harness them, a true nightmare can be bent into a positive true dream,” said someone suddenly standing right beside Richard.
Richard jolted so hard the ember of his cigarette fell like a red cinder into the frost-bitten grass. There, just an arm’s length away under the apple tree’s gnarled branches, stood a woman he swore hadn’t been there a second before.
She wore a long, colorless coat that looked like it had been dragged through both a flood and an ash pit, and in her hands, she held a large, square parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with a crooked, faded string. The paper was darkly stained, as if something wet had seeped right through.
No breath showed in the cold air. She stood perfectly still, her gaze lowered to the package, as if she was weighing every ounce of its soul before reaching it out.
Richard felt the back of his neck tighten, like when thunder is creeping over the landscape.
“Who the hell are you?!” he managed, but his voice carried more like a whispered echo than a question.
The woman slowly raised her eyes. They were deep as dark earth after rain, and when she smiled, Richard saw it didn’t reach that far in.
“I can be any number of folks, I can be the woman who runs Millencester’s Motel 6, I can be a spirit from the past, I can be a spirit from the future, I can be…”
“Spare me that hocus-pocus foolishness and tell me who you are!” Richard said impatiently.
“Well, my name is Kathryn, and I am a Dream-Priestess,” the woman replied. “We Dream-Priestesses have the sacred duty of helping folks who suffer from unpleasant dreams.”
Richard scoffed.
“There ain’t no such thing as a Dream-Priestess,” he said with conviction.
“If there weren’t, I wouldn’t be standing here, now would I?” Kathryn returned.
“Well… You’ve got a point there, truth be told,” Richard answered, feeling foolish. “Tell me, Kathryn, what sort of parcel are you carrying?”
Kathryn smiled.
“In this parcel are bottles holding positive fantasies, not positive dreams, but positive fantasies,” Kathryn explained. “If you give one of these fantasies to your son, his true nightmares will be twisted into positive true dreams, and he will also receive positive fantasies that will be a blessing upon his life.”
“That sounds like a miracle, by God!” Richard exclaimed. “And how exactly will positive fantasies bless his life?”
“If he gets positive fantasies, he might start writing his own books and short stories or his own plays, who knows? One day he might be the next Ray Bradbury?” Kathryn replied.
Richard grew even more cheerful. This was a better answer than he’d dared pray for.
“How much for your parcel? I want to buy it right this second!” Richard said.
“Two dollars,” Kathryn replied, smiling again.
Richard plunged his hand quickly into his pocket and fished out two dollars, which he shoved into Kathryn’s palm.
“It has been a true pleasure doing business with you!” Richard said. “How do I get these positive fantasies into my son’s head?”
“Oh, that’s simple! All you need to do is pour the contents into your sleeping son’s ear, and the contents will take care of the rest!” Kathryn answered, handing the package to Richard.
“Thank you, thank you kindly!” Richard said, and then he dashed into the house with the parcel.
Richard crept into the house like a thief in his own home. Louisa had fallen asleep in the armchair with her arms crossed, but he didn’t dare wake her. The package felt strangely warm in his hands as he walked through the hall toward Arthur’s room.
The door stood ajar. In the glow of the small nightlight, Arthur seemed to be floating in his dream, his forehead slick with sweat, his eyelids fluttering as if he was wrestling something he couldn’t conquer.
Richard opened the parcel. Inside lay small glass bottles, each one filled with a soft, shimmering liquid that seemed to move of its own accord. He carefully unscrewed the cork of the first one. A sweet, almost floral scent spread out, and he felt an unexpected calm.
He bent down and whispered, mostly to himself: “Forgive me, son, but this is for your own good.”
With a trembling hand, he tilted the bottle’s mouth against Arthur’s ear. The liquid was light as morning mist; it didn’t so much pour as glide, as if drawn in by an invisible force. When the last drop vanished inside, Arthur sighed deeply, and his whole body sank into a stillness Richard hadn’t seen in weeks.
Richard replaced the cork, held his breath, and waited. No screams, no spasms, only a steady breathing that filled the room. For the first time in a long spell, he felt hope, though he couldn't say if it was for his son's sake or his own.
Richard smiled, watching his sleeping boy.
“I truly hope this works,” Richard thought, and he tip-toed out of Arthur’s room.
The next day, as Richard and Louisa were eating breakfast waffles with maple syrup, Arthur came bursting into the kitchen. His dark-brown hair stuck out every which way, and his eyes shone with joy and eagerness.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Louisa wondered. “You come storming into the kitchen like the house is on fire.”
“Mama, Papa! You won’t guess what I dreamed last night!” Arthur shouted, flapping his arms like a moon-mad duck.
“Control yourself, sit down, and tell us in a quiet voice what you dreamed,” Louisa said.
Arthur sat down at the breakfast table.
“Last night, I dreamed I would find five thousand dollars in my pants pocket, and you won’t guess what I found today when I got dressed!”
Without waiting for an answer, Arthur held up a wad of five-thousand dollars right under his mother and father’s noses.
“Oh my God, I’m rich, I’m rich!” Arthur cried, jumping up and down with delight. “This is the best damn thing that’s happened in years!”
Richard was happy, too, partly because his son had struck it rich, but also because the magic bottles Kathryn had sold him had worked out perfectly fine.
Two nights later, Arthur again came running into the kitchen, this time at the crack of dawn. His eyes burned as if he carried a secret that couldn’t wait.
“You’ve got to hear this!” he cried, throwing out his arms. “I dreamed the town square in Millencester would be filled with blue butterflies that glimmered like stars, thousands of them all at once. And this morning, you can go see for yourselves, the whole square is covered in them. They’re sitting on the church steeple, on the streetlights, everywhere!”
Louisa clapped a hand over her mouth. Richard stared at his son, the memory of the bottle’s shimmering liquid burning in the back of his head.
Arthur went on without taking a breath: “And the night after… I dreamed the old church bell would strike thirteen times at midnight and then stop forever. I went there this morning. It’s stuck at twelve. It doesn’t move anymore.”
He gave a sharp laugh, a sound part joy and part awe. “It was as if Time itself was holding its breath.”
On the third morning, he came in again, his face alight with excitement. “Last night, I saw silver rain falling by the abandoned train station,” he said. “It sounded like the ground was singing.”
Later that day, Richard heard that an old railway chest, full of glittering dollars and cents, had been found exactly where Arthur described it.
Richard and Louisa sat silent after each tale. Their joy was now mixed with an unsettling fear that they, perhaps all of Millencester, stood before something no mortal ought to be in control of.
A week later, Richard dreamed that gold nuggets began to rain down over all of Millencester, and that true dream also proved real the day after.
Richard and Louisa were overjoyed that their son’s life had become stable again, and they celebrated by visiting Orlando, Florida, and going to Universal Studios. They had a hell of a good time at the theme park, so much fun they went back three more times.
All their troubles, the Harrington family felt, were now blown away.
But as the Good Book says, all gladness does not last forever.
The weeks that followed were different. The magical true dreams continued to come true, but something inside Arthur began to change. The parents noticed it first in small things: he didn’t eat with them, no longer answered when they spoke, and his gaze was often absent, as if he were already in the next dream.
Louisa tried to reach him: “Arthur, come help with the dishes!” But he only shrugged and went back to his room, the door slamming shut behind him.
Richard tried to talk to him one evening: “We just… want to spend time with you. You’ve become so far away.”
Arthur barely replied, a curt: “I have to sleep. That’s all that matters now.”
Day after day, the pattern stayed the same. He isolated himself more and more, locking himself in his room and letting the world outside fade. Schoolwork became secondary, his friends started to disappear from his life, and all he cared about was returning to sleep, to the dreams that now felt less like a pleasure and more like a necessary vice.
His magical true dreams grew bigger and stranger, but with every fulfilled dream, he seemed to lose a bit more of his humanity. When the family entered his room, they could nearly smell the dream, like a heavy, sickeningly sweet cloud that enveloped him and held him captive.
When Louisa gently knocked on his door to remind him about homework, he threw the door open with a howl that echoed through the hall:
“FUCK OFF, I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE!”
Richard tried to go in and speak to him calmly, but Arthur lunged toward him, his eyes glowing as if the power of the dreams burned inside him.
“FUCK OFF, I SAID! DON’T SPOIL MY SLEEP!” he shrieked, and the hand that should have accepted his father’s arm drew back in fury.
His aggression was no longer aimed at the world outside his room, but at those who loved him most. Louisa started standing by the door, watching him through the crack, afraid that even a reaching hand would rouse his wrath. Richard felt helpless, unable to reach the son who had once been so full of life and warmth.
Richard and Louisa often sat silent outside his door, a growing dread in their chests. They slowly realized that what had once seemed a gift was fast becoming a curse.
“We have to find a way to get him back,” Louisa said to Richard one evening, as they watched him sleep with a smile neither of them recognized. “Otherwise, I don’t know who our son is anymore.”
“He’s become utterly monstrous!” Richard agreed. “Last night when I asked him to clean his room, he threw a lamp right at my head.”
Richard showed her a lump he had on his forehead.
Louisa gasped.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
“Did our son do that?!” she burst out, shocked.
Richard nodded slowly.
“I’m afraid so,” Richard answered. “And as if that weren’t bad enough, he told me to go fuck a cow!”
“Our son would never use such vulgar talk!” Louisa exclaimed.
“But he did, he did it yesterday, at least,” Richard answered with a somber face.
“This can’t go on. Our son is turning into a monster, an Antichrist, a demon, a Devil in man’s clothing,” Louisa said.
Richard nodded, but in his eyes was a shadow of despair. With every night Arthur slept, the distance between them grew. And nobody could say if they would ever be able to count on the boy they once knew.
Richard sat at the kitchen table late that night, alone with his worry, when he finally made up his mind. He couldn't stand powerless any longer. He had to find Kathryn and demand she restore their son to the boy he once was.
After hours of searching, with the memory of the apple tree and Millencester’s empty streets as his only clue, Richard found her on the same frost-bitten sidewalk where their fates first crossed. She stood there in the same colorless coat and with the brown parcel in her hands, but this time, the air around her was thick, almost pulsating with something threatening.
“Kathryn!” Richard shouted. “You must help me! My son… he’s not himself anymore! He screams, he strikes, he hates everything and everyone. Please, tell me you have an antidote that can restore him!”
Kathryn smiled at Richard. But now her smile was not warm and sweet; now the smile was twisted and cold as ice.
“You want him back,” Kathryn said softly, but every word felt like a dagger in Richard’s heart. “I can do it. I can take away what poisons him, restore him to the boy you once knew… but nothing in this world comes for free.”
Richard took a step forward, his fists clenched. “What do you require? Name anything! I will do anything for my son!”
Kathryn laid the package on the sidewalk, and the shadows around her seemed to writhe, pulsating like living darkness.
“A contract,” Kathryn said, her voice now dark and nearly hypnotic. “You, Richard Harrington, will surrender not just your son’s positive dreams… but all positive dreams that reside within you, your wife, and your kin.”
Richard felt the blood in his veins freeze.
“All…?”
“Yes, all of them. In exchange for me giving you an antidote for Arthur, one that restores him to normalcy. He will no longer isolate himself, no longer fight, no longer let the dreams control him.”
Kathryn bent forward and handed Richard a sheet of paper. But it was no ordinary paper. The surface was black as coal, yet it shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow when the light struck it. Lines and symbols seemed to move, writhing slowly across the page like living snakes. The ink that flowed from her hand was not black or blue, but a deep red that pulsed faintly, almost like a heartbeat.
“Look closely at this,” Kathryn said, her voice low and hypnotic. “This is not just a contract. When you write your name, the paper will know your will, your fears, your love for your son… and bind all you love to me.”
Richard felt the air around him grow heavier, almost as if the very night was drawing nearer. When he took the pen, he saw that the ink didn't just flow—it crawled up the pen’s tip as if it were alive, ready to suck his soul into every letter he wrote.
“It… it feels… wrong,” he whispered, but his hand moved toward the paper regardless. The words on the page began to write themselves almost as he thought of them:
“I, Richard Harrington, hereby surrender all positive dreams residing within me, my wife Louisa, and our kin, to Kathryn, in order to restore our son Arthur to normalcy.”
Every letter burned lightly against his fingertips, but at the same time, it felt as though the words were penetrating directly into his heart. The paper pulsed, and small glimmers of memories—Arthur’s laughter, Louisa’s smiles, Richard’s own dreams of the future—danced in the ink, as if trying to flee. But when he looked up, he met Kathryn’s icy smile.
“It is complete when you write your name,” she said. “And when you do… all of this will belong to me. Your son will be freed, but all that is light within you and those you love… becomes mine.”
Richard took a deep breath, sweat beading on his forehead. The pen felt like lead in his hand, but somehow, the decision was already settled in his heart. His name would soon be burned onto this magical contract, with ink that lived and a power he could never before have imagined.
Richard took a shuddering breath and wrote his name at the bottom of the pulsating contract. The instant the pen left the paper, he felt a wave of relief and terror all at once. The paper pulsed one last time, the ink shimmering wildly as if alive, and then it fell still.
Kathryn smiled triumphantly. “Your sacrifice is made. Your son is saved.”
Richard ran home with the contract tucked under his jacket, Louisa at his side, and when they came into Arthur’s room, they saw the change right away. Arthur lay there on the bed, his face relaxed, his eyes peaceful. He sat up, smiled at his parents, and it was as if a heavy fog of anger and frustration had been lifted from his soul.
“Papa, Mama… I… I feel… normal again,” he said softly. “It’s like something that was pressing down on me is finally gone.”
Richard felt a wave of relief wash over him and pulled him into a hard, grateful embrace. Louisa leaned against him, tears running silently down her cheeks. Finally… their son was back.
But already that very night, Richard and Louisa began to notice an uncanny change in their own slumber. Richard lay awake that night, unable to sleep. When he finally fell into sleep, he dreamed of Millencester transformed into a cold, twisted town. The houses melted, the streets crawled with red and black butterflies, and from every shadow, Arthur’s shriek could be heard, even though he lay in his room in reality.
Louisa woke up drenched in cold sweat, her heart hammering. She had dreamed she was trying to save children from a burning school, but it ended with her being swallowed by the fire herself.
When morning came, Richard and Louisa met in the kitchen with heavy steps.
“Richard… I dreamed… I dreamed that I…” Louisa stammered, but the words caught in her throat.
“Me too,” Richard said. “And they weren’t ordinary dreams… they were… nightmares. True nightmares. Like Arthur’s used to be.”
They looked at each other, the understanding striking like a bolt of ice. Through his contract, Richard had freed Arthur from the power of the dreams—but the price was that their own minds were now trapped in Kathryn’s reality. She hadn’t just fed on their positive dreams; she had planted the seed of their nightmares, and every night, their minds would be tormented until the contract was fulfilled284Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyz07OCbive
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