Drag it back from where it came

~Chapter 14~

There was a very weird vibe in the air. Airi was awake and her eyes were searching all over the place for the shadow. Her face looked very tired and fatigued, like she hadn’t slept in days.

“What happened?” asked Naito.

Her eyes had just spotted the shadow crawling on the other side of the room, and her expression became instantly extremely unnerved. She took a deep breath, with her eyes still locked on the shadow, and started talking to Naito, who sat closer to her.

“How long was I sleeping?”

“About 7 hours.”

“What??”

“Yes, it’s already 22.12.”

“I felt that I was dreaming for a long time, but I thought I had been sleeping for around 2 or 3 hours. And you. Didn’t you have to go to work?”

“I’ve taken care of it.”

“I’m sorry.”
“Let the apologies aside. Tell me what happened.”

“Ok.. the dream started quite peacefully. I was in a theme park with my friends and everything looked normal. I have created some situations in my dreams, which are active in almost each of them. I started walking around, while my friends were following me, but at first I couldn’t remember what I wanted to do inside the dream. I had forgotten about the shadow, and even if I have been thinking of it, not only today, but for months, the image of it never crossed my mind. I decided to just experience the dream and let it unravel. Maybe at some point I would have better control of my subconscious and remember my initial goal.

There were many different rides and wherever I looked there were long paths extending infinitely; the theme park seemed to be huge. I chose to ride the rolling cups first. My friends split into 3 groups and we got on the cups. Everything was going well and it was getting very fun. When at some point I spotted it. The shadow was hiding behind a tree, and was definitely looking at me. The second I laid eyes on it, my memories of it came back, and I remembered what I had to do. I wanted to observe what it would do and monitor it, but the cup was spinning unstoppably and I was losing sight of it in every spin we took. And every time the cup completed one spin and my eyes met with the shadow again, it would come a little closer. And closer. Until it reached the first cup in the ride. And then the second. And then one that my friends were riding.

It stretched its dark limb, like it was wearing a semi-transparent black cloak, and I clearly saw a set of long horrendous fingers opening slowly like scissors, and getting raised higher. Then the shadow moved his limb in a flash and sliced one of my friends. She was screaming and crying, while blood was coming out of her deep wounds. My other friends didn’t seem to notice that something was happening around them, not even the ones in the same cup as the girl. She looked at me with a horrified and desperate look in her eyes, but I couldn’t move. I was just sitting in my cup, with my friends around me giggling and smiling, and the cup spinning round and round, with me seeing the girl bleeding one moment, and the other moment my friends laughing. Slowly our ride was coming to an end. I was still frozen in my spot, looking at my friend bleeding and screaming, with the shadow hovering behind her.

Then the ride stopped, and I was facing here directly in front of me. After some minutes of not moving at all, the shadow seemed to widen in a way. It’s body started spreading like thick smoke and it was moving slowly towards the agonizing girl. It serenely embraced her body, stooping the motion in her body parts one by one. Her left shoulder, her back, her right shoulder, her neck, her arms, her torso, her legs, her face.. Then the shadow moved forward and covered the girl completely. I was staring at it without even blinking. I don’t know if I couldn’t move or I didn’t want to move. The shadow started moving away from the cup, but underneath it there was nothing but an empty spot. My friend had vanished. And the others didn’t even seem to notice. The people around me were telling me to stand up and get to the next ride. I was in shock.

Airi took a pause and looked at the floor. Naito stood up, walked to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. He walked back to the living room and stretched his arm, touching Airi’s shoulder with the bottom of the cold bottle. Airi raised her head, looked at the bottle and then at Naito. Looking extremely exhausted, she took the bottle, opened it and drank some.

“You said that you have been practicing Lucid Dreaming for a very long time. You even said that you have created specific situations in your dreams. It sounds like you can handle it very efficiently, so why couldn’t you control it this time? Has it happened before?”

“Ugh.. Not at first. When the shadow started appearing in my dreams, I was able to just turn around and go away, or reform the dream and go somewhere else. I don’t even remember when it was the first time I saw it..”

“Don’t you keep a Dream Journal?” asked Naito, frowning.

“No.” replied Airi, like it was an irrelevant question.

“How did you manage to reach this level then?”

“I don’t know. I used to write some things that I wanted to add in my dreams, and when I managed to do it, I just wrote down what I wanted to change in the next dream to make it better.”

“There has to be a logical explanation behind your ability to do everything like this.”

“I don’t know if there is… I just do it. When I started searching on the matter, there were many psychology-related articles about escaping from reality and pushing yourself into that state. I didn’t pay more attention to it.”

“Well, I think it’s self explanatory then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Keep narrating your dream.”

“I know I’ve told you many times, but you’re annoying.”

“Not denying it. Now, keep talking.”

She glared at him and turned her eyes away from him to avoid getting angrier.

“So after my friend had completely vanished, the shadow moved slowly backwards and stood in the middle of the pathway like a scarecrow. My friends were dragging me along with them to go to the next ride, and being in the shock state that I was, I couldn’t really react to anything, and just followed them around like a soulless puppet.

Next ride was the Haunted House. We had to go inside in pairs, and with quite a distance between each other. 4 of my friends went inside before me, and when it was my turn to enter the Haunted House, they were still inside. We walked through the first corridors, which were pitch-black, with only some fake candles lighting the way. On our right side there was a long pond filled with colored water and bones floating on the surface. After the first jump-scare - a ghost who popped out behind the lake and spilled water on us - my friend had hung herself on me, making it very difficult to walk.

5 minutes in, and the decorations started becoming more ominous and creepy. Cut hands were hanging from the ceiling, and some of them were dropping in front of us like lumps of meat. Suddenly the room got filled with white smoke, making my vision very blurry, and the only senses I could use was hearing and touching. Spine-chilling voices were coming from all directions. I noticed that there was something around me that didn’t belong to the scenery. My eyes were completely blinded from the white smoke, but I could feel something around me that made me uncomfortable. I knew what it was, but I didn’t want to believe it. Until I saw it. Between the narrow path, there was a matter that tainted the thin white smoke. The shadow had followed me inside the Haunted House.

I tried walking more carefully, and put my hands on the walk to keep my balance and find my way through the smoke. Then my right leg bumped onto something. I instinctively looked down, but couldn’t discern anything - the smoke was covering everything up to my torso. I hesitantly kneeled down and tried to see what I hit. Then I realized that it wasn’t something.. But someone.

I recognized the body of one of my friends, who had a big tattoo on her back. I had hit her headless body. My heart was beating very fast, and I started running towards the exit, leaving my other friend who was clinging on me behind, without a second thought. On my way out another thing fell from the ceiling and hit my head slightly. Guess who it was. Another one of my friends. Until the end of the ride, only 4 of the 7 people who entered the Haunted House remained.

I did my best to change the dream and just make them appear from another direction, but the dream flow wouldn’t change. The friends that remained had no recollection of the others.

That’s something I cannot explain. I can control anyone’s thoughts and actions inside my dreams, so why the hell couldn’t I change what was happening in front of me?”

“I am pretty sure it was because of your own mental weakness at that moment. It is not so uncommon to lose control inside a dream, even if you have learned to manipulate it almost completely.”

“It wasn’t like that. I’m telling you, there were times when I was tired and wasn’t able to control my dreams completely, but I could feel that it was because of that. Like when you are very lazy to go turn off the boiling kettle, and you see it bubbling, but you know you are just bored and don’t get up to turn it off. I was feeling like It wasn’t mine to turn off, like there was a glass separating us. I am talking about this kind of incapability.”

“This happens when you start Lucid Dreaming. I keep telling you it’s not that uncommon.”
“Agh, you don’t even try to understand. I think that the shadow is doing something.”

Naito looked at her with eyes full of doubt.

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy.”
“Oh, I don’t look at you like you’re crazy. I look at you like you want to create a fantasy story.”

“Now you even make fun of me?”

“It’s not what I’m saying, don’t get angry so easily. We should not take it so seriously. I think that everything can be explained somehow, and I already have explanations for things that seem impossible or supernatural. I don’t want to just start believing things that misunderstand, because we deal with them while in a state of shock. This is when we make wrong deductions. Trying to think something in an emotional state leads to wrong conclusions.”

“You behave like you know everything, but you shouldn’t try to lecture someone if you haven’t been in their shoes.”

“Even if I haven’t, my advice can prove helpful if they’re followed. I’m not saying that I’m a master at handling situations by following my own advice, or even that I’ve been through situations like this.”

“At least you acknowledge that you’re a social noob.”

“I don’t remember ever denying that. Don’t stray away from our main topic.”

“Annoying. The last thing I remember from my dream is riding the roller coaster. It was very fast and loud, so I cannot recollect any images or my surrounding environment. Only the moment that made me wake up. We were climbing up the rail to reach the top of the ride, and then we would fall down, like it happens in most roller coaster rides. When our wagon started tilting on the front, I saw the shadow a few meters ahead of us, waiting on the rails. There was no escape from that. I couldn’t get off, I couldn’t make it disappear, I couldn’t stop the ride or change the scenery. We fell and started developing a very high speed. The shadow was coming closer and closer. I wanted to close my eyes and never see what would happen, but I just couldn’t. My eyes remained wide open during the whole thing. I collided with it. For a moment I felt suddenly suffocated. Like I fell inside a barrel with mud. I couldn’t feel the speed of the roller coaster any more. Actually I couldn’t feel any kind of movement at all. My vision was blurry and my senses disoriented. I was lost inside my dream.”

“You may have experienced a type of sleep paralysis, because of your intense emotional state. You were inside a long nightmare and negative feelings accumulated little by little. Furthermore, the dream ended with a very fierce experience, which could be very dangerous, especially for people with health problems - even lead to a heart attack. Getting sleep paralysis once in a while is no big deal. I think you should start following the basics for Lucid Dreaming again, to get a hold of yourself. You can’t deny that there is a high possibility your capabilities deteriorated. You yourself admitted that you didn’t follow the rules for Lucid Dreaming, but just acted instinctively. Maybe your instincts are not strong enough to help you get through this now.”

“I hate agreeing with you, but I prefer this scenario from all the unsettling ones I have in mind.”
“Out of curiosity, what exactly do you think it’s happening?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“What why? You will laugh at me again and say all those smartass theories to discard my opinion.”
“I hope you don’t imply that I am doing that on purpose, right? How can I accept something that I don’t consider valid? From my point of view, it is like trying to explain that the reason behind our personalities is based on astrological signs.”

“How can you deny an opinion that is not proven wrong or right?”

“Wait a minute. You say you believe in Zodiac Signs?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe in, answer my question.”
“Ok, I’ll give you an absolute reply then. Until it is proven right, I cannot rely on that.”

“You have zero romance in your heart. Your mind is dismissive and your views soulless.”

“I prefer the terms practical and realistic.”

Airi gave Naito a hostile look, full of antipathy. She couldn’t understand why his views on life were making her so angry. She wanted to prove him wrong, but he had no means of doing so.

Naito moved completely composed to the floor, sat next to the table, took his pen in his left hand and drew his notebook in front of him.

“I want you to start keeping a Dream Journal, too. I know that it’s something that you don’t do, but in order for this to work out, we need as much information as possible. It’s not only to help me get a grasp of your dream world, but also for you, to start regaining control over your subconscious. This cannot keep up like this. You may actually end up being in danger if your heart is put under so much stress every time.”

“Ok, I will do that. You may be cold and stubborn, but I trust what you say.”

“Second: The shadow did exactly what we wanted it to do. It actually came to your house around the time you fell asleep. I don’t know if it was already outside, but the important thing is that it was here when it should.

Third: It came out right before you woke up. It either realized how getting in and out of the dream works, or it was random. We still have to keep the factor of coincidence in mind. But to be safe, let’s take the worst case scenario. Let’s suppose that the shadow can hear anything that we say. I am almost sure that since it knows my name and it has connected it with a specific image, it is completely aware of me. I don’t believe that it can gain awareness only with a name. You said that it collects information from your dreams when it’s inside - so when it is in the world of the subconscious, it takes info from the subconscious - and correspondingly from your voice when it is in the real world. If you see Rookie in your dream and you call him by his name, and the shadow is inside when this is happening, then it will gain awareness of him too. In order to protect him, you must make sure that you will be able to call him Rookie if you see him in your dream. This is where the basic rules of Lucid Dreaming will help you. It will be like a reality check - a habit that you develop while awake, that you transfer in your dream.”

“I haven’t thought of it.. You are right, I suppose. I don’t want to drag him into this more than I already did.”

“It’s not exactly something that you did. What’s done is done. If we are careful, and deal with the shadow before it’s too late, he will be in no danger.”

“There is only one thing I am wondering though. You say that the thing can hear everything we say. I talk in front of it about how to send it back or even destroy it. Why doesn’t it do something about it?”

“There are two explanations that I came up with: First - and the one I want to stick with - it knew from the very beginning that it wouldn’t be welcome here, and the host (you) would want to send it back. But even if it gains information from hearing us, there is nothing it can do. It doesn’t belong to this world after all.

Second scenario, which I hope is not true, is that it just remains calm and does nothing, because it knows that we...cannot harm it.”

“You mean that it may be .. immortal?”
“In this world, yes.” Then Naito stood up, took his notebook with him, approached her and gave her a page folded two times that he removed from the notebook. Airi took the paper from his hand with a curious look on her face and opened it. She tried to say something but Naito suddenly covered her mouth with his hand. Unexpectedly, Airi felt more surprised than furious with him, like she would have expected. His hand was touching her lips.

His palm was warm and his skin soft. He removed it right afterwards and put his finger in front of his mouth, making her a sign to be quiet. Airi was looking at him stunned. Then he pointed at the paper with his finger and made another sign, trying to tell her to read it without saying anything.

I think that the shadow cannot gain information from reading. It wasn’t able to learn anything when you were exchanging emails with that occult guy, right? But to be sure, let’s keep this note away from its vision. That’s why I am standing in front of you. It cannot even see you right now from that angle. But you cannot do that when you’re dreaming. In your dreams, it “hears” your subconscious. It can “hear” your writing, because you don’t actually think right, but think. Thinking in your dream is like talking when you’re awake. Don’t forget that.