X. On Psychic Self-Defense and Dreams

Not all dreams are born of sleep: to question, to wonder, to imagine, these are dreams of the waking world. Since first oozing out of the muck, humanity has sought to dream forever, to swim in lies the way fish do in water. It is a vain compulsion, a struggle for gratification. The real world is a desert, a barren plane ruled by fight or flight, and the common wish to flee it.

This is why all love is tyrannical, and no kingdom awaits the common.

Penelope wakes to a choppy river in a violent storm. Strong winds assail her from all directions. Bright flashes of lightning and roars of thunder split her eardrums, but when she opens her eyes all she sees is darkness. There is no sound, no movement, just the throbbing hum of a distant vacuum beyond measure.

She calls out for Dorian and from the abyss comes an echo.

“Dorian? Dorian? Dorian?”

Rippling curls of smoke waft up around her. Tendrils creeping out like flourescent ivy create a tangled fog under her, an illusion of solid ground. The vines crawl up and illuminate her bed, not the same one she fell asleep in, but a reflection of it.

My sister tries to get up but she can’t move. Her fingers and toes burn as if swarmed by stinging bees. Numbness floods her arms and legs. One final attempt to escape her bed ends with an exasperated sigh of defeat.

“Dorian! Dorian! Dorian!” the abyss calls back, mocking her.

Then she hears my voice. As much as I wish I could speak to her, even here in the liminal space of a dream, I am limited. The best I can manage is to sing to her in the old language, the glyphs of the Fallen, a hymn of power to repel the wicked.

Their words shall work best to defend against one of their own.

From nowhere, a shimmering bubble inflates over her nose, encapsulating a pearl of radiation. The precious thing bounces around inside until the bubble bursts, shooting out like a comet and orbiting around her. Like an unfurled fan, a curtain of glittering magick rains from the comet’s tail, expelling the fog before it engulfs her.

Whispers follow, creeping through the gaps in my shield, parting stardust like strings of beads. The voices grow in number and volume until they become an inaudible congress, some of them arguing, others laughing or crying. A warmth tingles on Penelope’s head and the voices are quieted.

My orb floats above her, dancing to and fro, blissful in the quiet. Then tremors gently shake my sister’s bed. The light begins to waver, flattens into a smooth elongated string before vanishing.

The Fallen have arrived.

“Olivia?”

An inky mass congeals above her – at first it is nothing at all, merely a difference in the darkness, the color one sees with closed eyes. Four tendrils emerge from the shadow and coil around my sister’s limbs as a pair of wings unfurl from the creature’s back, pelting her with gusts of void. Wide hollows the size of saucers pock the facsimile of a torso and head, inside each of the recesses are a million glittering jewels, lens – like a fly’s eye, the color of heat rippling over fire.

Protruding from the crude distortion’s face runs a long, thin hose like a mosquito’s probiscus. It descends, flowing like dirty water poured through a spotty glass, in an arced path toward’s Penelope’s solar plexus. She tries to move her arms and legs but no matter how hard she struggles against it, she can’t escape.

The probiscus twists and spins like a drill head, drawing nearer but, before it makes contact with her body, right below her sternum, a blinding flash of white light manifests a barrier.

Penelope must overcome this attack on her own, but I am not so confined as to stand idly by. Pink and teal electricity crackle out of my shield, planar tesseracts dancing war before my sister. Still the drill head bores down, sending a shiver of pain through Penelope from her toes to her eyes. All walls inevitably crumble and the Fallen penetrates mine, harpooning itself into her body as a rainbow of bubbles spill out into the air.

Freezing, unbearable cold and searing, scalding heat radiate through my sister’s body simultaneously. Spine gripping fear follows next, the fear of prey caught in the predator’s maw. The void flashes white light from lightning as wide cracks split open in the plundered hollow above. They are portals, door, gateways that lead somewhere behind the sky, an empty realm of shining.

Penelope’s heart goes still and she takes in a great gasp of air. Strain as she might, she finds that no air goes in. Next, she smells burning paper, an acrid and dry taste lingering in her mouth. Her heart beats again but eratically, blood churning as clotted sewage.

My sister has always been a skeptic regarding the ‘soul.’ However, soul is the only word that comes to her mind to describe the sensation she feels. Her soul congeals then begins to dissolve where the creature’s probe struck her abdomen. Raw energy syphons up and out of her, into the winged beast pinning her down. Fatigue and fever wash over her as she sinks into the bed, deeper and deeper past where the mattress and the frame should give.

A fly struggling in a spider’s web. A mantis consumes its mate alive. Her own body, laid out in the dirt, rapidly decaying into dust with moss and pests wriggling out. Fire swallows the skies, water floods the world, and vast stone civilizations are swept away in minutes by a cosmic blast.

Penelope’s extremities burn as if hundreds of little candle flames are less than an inch from her flesh. That’s when it dawns upon her: the candles. Perhaps it’s as simple as focusing on a single point in space. And if this psychic attack is occurring during her dream, or whatever nebulous space between waking and unwaking that she is in, she can still act. She can assert control.

After all, this is all inside of her mind.

Those inclined to the mystical are not often inclined to the power of deduction. It is that, my sister’s analytical brilliance, that allowed her to take this first step with no instruction. It is why Penelope will destroy all who dared to defy Me.

She stares the monster down, eye-to-eyes, her own determined grimace reflecting back hundreds of times over. A vice grips her innards. Penelope feels her life force palpate out of her again and reels back. She can not breathe, can not move, and the burning coma of asphyxiation slips in.

Another deduction: if this is a dream, then whether or not she can breathe doesn’t matter. The burning in her blood vanishes with that realization and her blurry vision resets. Not only is this a dream, it is a lucid one. And if this is her dream, then she is the one who controls it.

This time, she will be the one who summons the Light.

Penelope chooses one of the vampire’s eyes to focus upon. Just one, one of countless beads of smokeless fire. The fire snuffs out, a puff of darkness as if the monster blinks.

Then the vampire winces, hunches its facsimile of a back, and retches. Dangling limbs curl into its gut in knots, its head reels back and an iridescent ball of light bursts forth from its eye with a chorus of etherial chimes.

The ball swoops around the vampire’s wings, trailing a rope of rainbow. With a swirling flourish, the light flies away and its ropes snap like binds, coiling around the beast and immobilizing it.

Shrieking furious agony from a mouth which does not exist, the vampire reels its head and sputters out an ooze of shadow. Its wings that do not fly struggle against their glittering binds and the ropes tighten in response. Bones which are not there snap.

The beast pins her down with its weightlessness. Something hidden in the darkness makes swiping motions. A glint of nothing then an obsidian nail, coiled and dripping like a scorpion’s barb, sails directly for her eyes.

Almost reflexively, my sister envisions a barrier between it and her. The curved needle stops inches above her nose, hooked into an etherial wall of fluorescent bricks no thicker than an inch. Back and again the vampire’s tail strikes, spraying out opalescent flakes of mortar. A crevice between two ghostly bricks is where the poisoned dagger finds its purchase. It lodges into the wall then shudders, rumbling up a caustic brew of green ichor.

Sizzling, dissolving, eating away at what could be, the poison gnaws through my sister’s barrier. A probiscus spins up from void and prods at the celestial bricks. Scraping, grinding, chipping away.

The stinger’s bile leeches through, yellow-orange lines of ember widening out into circles that dribble acid onto my sister’s bed. Woven of the abyss though it may be, the burning linens smell real. A cloying, choking stink that mixes with smoldering acid. Penelope heaves and her wall begins to crack. The shimmering Not from beyond the sky raining down, engulfing her.

#

Penelope bolts upright and the nothing vanishes. Her sight adjusts to morning light stabbing in from between the boards over her bedside window. Dorian leans over her, concerned.

“You were having a nightmare,” he says.

Icy dampness on the back of her neck informs her that she sweat throughout the night. Her hair is a wet mass and her clothes stick to her like a cold slime. She tries to get up but can hardly lift her arms. Fatigue weighs her down, as though she didn’t sleep at all.

“What… time is it?” Each word is excrutiating, as if rolling them over her tongue were akin to lugging fifty-pound weights on her back. The way she sinks into the mattress again, she feels like those weights are on her back right now.

“It’s almost nine,” Dorian says, checking his watch. “C’mon, I need you to look at the doctor. He doesn’t look so good.”

“Hrm?” Penelope winces from feels a sharp twinge in her chest, like a bruise or broken rib. She recalls the barbed tail, the acrid stink of acid, from her dream. Casual observation of her bed linens reveals scattered marks of char, holes burnt into the fabric. Perhaps from a stray flame or crackled ember set loose by a candle and lamp… although they are all securely placed far from her bed.

Perhaps the world of dreams is but another side to our own.

“You will open door this instant,” Mami Hrobar snarls from the hallway, pounding on their door. “We must investigate doctor and pervert for conversion. Then, depending on what we find, is quarantine or breakfast.”

Penelope’s legs are splayed in the wrong direction as she wobbles to one side then the other. Her arms hang limp from her shoulders and swing back and forth with each step. “Coming,” she whimpers.

Doctor Arthwitte is still asleep, but he has fallen forward and now lays prone on his belly with his face against the floor. His snoring becomes somewhat louder and choked, skin as pale as bleached bone. Penelope touches his hand to find that it is cold and clammy.

Mami Hrobar pounds on the door again. “You will open door or I will have husband tear door down!”

Bapo Hrobar says something that can’t be understood through the door.

“Very well,” Mami Hrobar adds, annoyed. “One of you children will open door at once or husband will carefully remove door from hinges and frame with tools. But there will be no breakfast if that is case!”

“Is fine, I remember I have key,” Bapo Hrobar says, muffled by the door.

As soon as he unlatches it, Mami Hrobar storms into the room with the flutter of her many scarves, shawls, and costume hoop jewelry, armed with a fat bulb of garlic the size of a baby’s head in her crooked hand.

“Is he awake?” Mami Hrobar demands.

“Harunh?” Doctor Arthwitte asks with a choked snort. He slams his beefy palms down and hoists himself up. His eyes are bloodshot yellow orbs sunken within wrinkled purple eye bags. “Water, children, I need water.” He shambles over to his overturned knapsack and rummages for his flask. His hands find a clear bottle with a glass stopper filled with a clear liquid that, perhaps, is water and he downs it in one swig.

“Ahh, right as rain. Now, madame I do believe were were– GLOOMPH!”

Mami Hrobar rams the garlic bulb into his mouth with cat-like reflexes and snaps her fingers. With one quick stride the Moravian giant gets Doctor Arthwitte from below and tosses the old man over his shoulder. Captive subdued, he tromps out into the hallway.

The old gypsy latches her talons into the doctor’s mattress and backs away towards the hall, following her husband. “You do not worry,” she says with considerable effort. “We have special quarters for doctor.”

Bapo Hrobar opens a closet door and prepares to throw the doctor inside before his wife stops him.

“Ne, husband. We are not monster.” She hunches down on the balls of her feet and begins tearing out the clutter on the closet floor. Once she has cleared enough bottles, buckets, old mops and brooms out of the little nook, she kicks the mattress inside, wedging it in for good measure. “Okay, yes, now is fine.”

Bapo Hrobar heaves Doctor Arthwitte inside onto the mattress then closes the door.

“Neither of you will open door,” Mami Hrobar says. “He will be sedated by dark and tiny closet. Quarantine is safest way; he is doctor, will understand.”

“You can’t do this,” Dorian protests.

“Ne?” Bapo Hrobar asks. “But it is already done, yes?”

“But–”

“Ne,” Mami Hrobar says. “You two must find out devil boy’s whereabouts. That is only way to save your doctor. May be only way to save you, too, pervert boy.”

“He seems fine,” Bapo Hrobar says, coldy. “Is sister who seems frazzled.” He takes out a hammer and wood chisel, notching fine lines and glyphs into the door frame. Mami Hrobar polishes the areas he finishes with oil while mumbling whispered prayers. “Must be bad sleep from happenings last night.”

“What happened last?”

The Hrobars freeze in place then share a worried look. Bapo Hrobar shrugs. Mami Hrobar scowls at her husband and he recoils as if splashed by a bucket of ice water. After a beat of silence, they say nothing, nod to one another, and then return to their work.

Penelope shakes her head and brushes past them. She pounds her fists on the door, “Doctor Arthwitte!” The knob refuses to budge. She turns on Bapo Hrobar. “You have the key, let him out.”

The old man fishes in his pockets but a stern glare from his wife sets him back to chiseling.

“Doctor Arthwitte,” Penelope shouts. “I’ll get you out of there.”

A sharp kick from within rattles the door but the only other sound is doctor Arthwitte’s snoring, muffled by the bulb of garlic. “Honk! Shoo. Honk! Shoo. Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi.”

Dorian leads her by the arm back to their room. “Let me go,” she demands, slapping at his hand to release her. He relents after two weak smacks.

“It won’t do any good now,” Dorian says. “If we need to break him out, we can kick the door down later. Let them think we’ve been beaten, for now.”

“Right.” Penelope leans against the wall. “I don’t think I’m in any state to tear anything down.” She takes a whiff of the air. “Is that… baked strawberries?”

“It’s the kitchen,” Dorian mutters. “Whatever breakfast means in Moravia.”

Penelope’s stomach growls. Even a cold stone soup would be appealing – and a bath, even one with tepid water in a metal tub. Exhaustion and hunger breed a crude rationality.

“Do you think he’s really changing?” Dorian asks, scratching his chest.

“If he is or he isn’t, the last person I would trust here is the old gypsy woman.” She hopes that Dorian can believe her, but she doesn’t expect to convince him. How could she, when she doesn’t even know what to believe for herself?

They return to their bedroom and hatch a new plan. Dorian sits at the edge of the bed. “We should split up for now, while the sun’s up. I’ll investigate the manor and you… you can clean yourself up – did someone spill acid on your sheets?”

“We can’t trust anyone,” Penelope whispers. “Who knows what’s really going on here?”

“What happened to you last night?” Dorian asks.

My sister always paces, especially when she’s planning, but whatever grim determination she can muster falters and she inevitably falls back onto the bed. They have no time for silly matters like baths. She wants to shout, but she knows that she must smell as awful as she feels, and she feels like an overflowing dumpster that caught fire and burned throughout the night.

“What if she’s right?” Dorian asks. “Mami Hrobar.”

“I don’t know,” Penelope says. “I don’t know about him, or you, or any of us. But Olivia knew. And she wrote a book about it. If there’s a cure, it’s in there.”

“And you’re sure it isn’t a trap?”

“He’s saved us more times than either of us can remember over the past two years. Why would he be tricking us?”

“Penelope,” Dorian asks, concerned. “Did something happen last night?”

“I don’t… no, I don’t think so.” She gathers up her clothing, most of it balled up in a wrinkled wad. “It was a… bad dream. Just a dream.”

#

Her imagination thrives in darkness and imposes life upon every shadow in the empty hallway. Perhaps it is the haze of confusion that still lingers over my sister’s mind, or perhaps the lines between each plank of wood actually are moving. Angelica Mathers spoke of a childhood filled with premonitions that something was alive in her grandfather’s mansion. Could it be that she treads within the bowels of a much larger vampiric being?

Penelope slowly tiptoes down the hall. Where the Hrobars locked Doctor Arthwitte away there is now a makeshift altar built into the wall. Melted beeswax candles lodged into roughly notched holes in the doorframe dribble wax that obscures the runic emblems. A wreath of sage, wheat, onions, and garlic hangs from the door knob.

Dull humming throbs in her ears as she stares at the candles. Whispers, unintelligible nothings that waver behind her, back and forth. Someone comes running towards her from the foyer but, when she turns, no one is there. The sound of footsteps continue on beside her, then past her. A blast of air pelts her face and she screams, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the shout. Whatever ran past crashes into the wall and Penelope trips into the bathroom.

The room is an eight-foot square tiled in ceramic from the drain at the center of the floor all the way up to the ceiling. With each blow to the door, the tiles rise up and billow like cresting waves of white and sea green. The room pulses, breathes, the tiles rolling up and down, the waves shaking the room apart.

Penelope fears that she is still dreaming; she is half correct. As the stone waves billow up and down, the walls heaving in and out, the door ready to fall in on itself at any moment, she slaps herself. Just one, hard smack across her face, to wake herself up.

The room goes still again. The pounding stops. All that remains is my sister’s deep, rhythmic gasps for air.

Psychic attacks are like an imprint, they linger long after the survivor wakes. Assuming, of course, that one survived. It can hide in the body, waiting for a moment of weakness. A seemingly healthy person today could be chronically bedridden, catatonic, or dead the next, all from a psychic attack never witnessed.

This is how the things that live behind your eyes hunt.

Rays of light fan in between the nailed-up boards over the one window, casting sheets of light through a mist of dust motes. Steady drips from a hand pump spigot land in a dented wash tub next to a grated drain. Penelope sets her clean clothes onto the stool and pumps the tub full of water.

Stray droplets land on her cheek and something invigorating, beyond the surprise of the cold water, rushes through her. Renewed, she disrobes – taking care to remove my amethyst hairpin and nestle it safely atop the pile.

Penelope’s reflection ripples in the crystal-clear water. As she bends over to peer into it, she imagines that she could fall in, slip through the bottom of the bucket into a watery abyss. She rests her feet in the basin and lets the pump swing to a halt. Both her arms drop to her sides.

Normally, the thought of bathing in a tub with cold water would send a shiver down her back. Perhaps it is her exhaustion, or perhaps it is the after effects of her psychic attack washing away, but my sister feels as refreshed as though she were in a heated sauna. She lies back in the tub and lets her toes extend to the edge of the basin.

When her cheeks breach the surface of the water, she notices a large bruise on her chest, right at the top of her belly and the base of her rib cage. About half an inch in diameter, with a halo of inflamed, puffy skin surrounding it. She can trace her finger around the edge of the puncture wound, feels the rough black scab which has formed over it.