When the sky opened up before her in such a way, inky, endless, glittering like fresh snow and full of promise, Colleen forgot where she was, forgot that she had been here before. She had gotten here by going inward, inevitably that was where this dream took her, and yet she was outside. She was pulled inside out, dreaming on the other side of a mirror.
It must have been a great city once. The was ground rusty sand, an endless field of tight-packed, ground cinnamon. Light came from the horizon all around, a ring of molten gold, welding the dome of night sky to the ground. There were what Colleen supposed were ruins, but they were pristine parts in themselves, parts of a plastic playset disassembled to fit in a box. Whole ivory columns stood like stock alongside chessboard floors, others were laid delicately to the ground. Heavy stone arches were scattered about, bridges without roads. Statueless pedestals, elaborate stone railings, all in stark black and white and all neatly separate. There were no crumbs or topplings, no cracks or scuffs. The ground was powder-soft under her bare feet, but cold. She curled her toes and saw the bottoms were stained.
Cold wind howled through the ruins, stirring none of the dusty ground, but it came with the first inkling of dread Colleen always felt. Once she recognized that dread, recognized this desolate, sterile desert city, the dread magnified a thousandfold. Her eyes began to dart from place to place, alert for changes. What she was meant to see would come soon enough, that was assured by her memory, but for some reason she always felt she could lessen the impact if she could anticipate what was coming. A quick search of her memory revealed that it never worked, nor did trying to wake up by any means.
The one comfort she had was that she was a spectator. She was never involved, even if she tried to be so. Once, two men, giants in her estimation, rolled out from behind a pillar and onto the dusty plain. Their grizzled faces were taut with rage, yellow teeth bared. They both had torn winter jackets and jeans smeared with oil. She could smell their sweat, hear bone and skin smack when fists landed. It was all too real. The bigger man eventually slammed the smaller against one of the pillars, stunning him. Then the bigger man jammed his hand into his pocket and yanked out a switchblade. Colleen, with the knowledge of her dreaming fresh in her head, felt anger rise within her instead of fear, and dashed between the two men. It was as if they had been nothing more than light from a projector. Colleen found the guy’s arm through her body and the knife in the smaller man’s throat. The arm looked as real as anything, she could see the threads that made the jacket, the tiny hairs on the back of the his grimy hand, but she felt nothing. Neither man noticed her.
Whatever it was would come. Sometimes it came gradually, an echo of a sound from beyond that fiery horizon, coming together like focusing vision. Sometimes someone would spontaneously fall into the world, like those two men. It never took long. Colleen walked slowly, digging her toes into the dust, her head swiveling. The stars winked at her.
To her right, an opening in the city, an opening to a completely empty plain.
She could barely see it at first, a silhouette bobbling. Running. It ran without disturbing the surface, not a speck of scarlet dust kicked up. It soon revealed itself to be human. Or was it? It looked like a young man, but his skin was gray, not the ordinary pale gray of someone badly frightened (she had seen enough of that in the bathroom mirror in the morning) but a dusky, slate gray.
An idea came to her. In her mind, these sterile ruins became the haunted house in downtown Quarterhill. The young man was nothing more than a painted ghost, popping out with a creak of old hinges, and she studied him so as his details became more apparent. She wasn’t certain he was a man anymore. He did have broad shoulders, toned arms, a flat chest and thin, colorless lips, but also wide hips and smooth, curvy legs. His face was soft and round, when his mouth was closed. He reached a hand towards her, though she knew he couldn’t see her. The hand had a very flat structure compared to her own, the ends noticeably flared and square. He ran awkwardly, almost tripping over his own feet, as if he weren’t used to such a thing. It might have been funny if he wasn’t screaming.
She couldn’t hear him, but the closer he came, the more she could see it. His eyes were wide open, the whites visible all the way around, his face contorted as his mouth worked, flashing flat, canineless teeth. She averted her eyes from his face. The panic she found there was contagious, no matter how much she tried to detach herself. His bare feet clawed at the ground, bringing him slowly closer.
The shadows on the pillars were turning red. The tint of the stars changed. One was shining brighter than the others, the source of this new, infectious color. The gray man ran away from it, through the red haze that was starting to obscure him line by line. Was the star growing brighter? It was brighter than Mars, almost like the moon, then growing close to the brightness of the horizon, all in thick red.
Colleen imagined the world coming apart. She was dreaming, why couldn’t she change it? It was all in her head! She imagined the breeze scraping off every last bit of the rusty surface, breaking what was underneath like thin ice. The columns would be sucked into the light beyond, the pedestals and floor would fall like cards, the stars would burst like fireworks. Nothing she imagined, no matter how strongly, affected the integrity of the world. Every muscle clenched, quivered, unsure of where to take her, and her mind clung feebly to the detachment she tried to assume before. She felt like the gray man could see her, was crying for her, even though she knew it wasn’t true.
As she came to the brink of decision, the bright star flickered. Then, a monstrous shadow unfurled there, blotting out all the star’s light. Vivid red released upon the world, saturated everything from the horizon down to gray man’s dull skin. The shadow stretched, a hawk-like figure, its clawed wings jutting out to either side. Colleen’s heart skipped a few beats. It was more than a bird, despite taking up the moon’s portion of the sky, it clouded the whole thing with its cold, jarring presence, its wingspan looming over the surface like a baleful storm. The red haze that came with it seeped into her mind, tied strings to it, bringing her as far into the dream as she could be brought. She clung desperately to that memory, that she was safe at Breckenridge in her bed. The nastiest sneers the girls could shoot at her were comforting compared to this thing.
The bird soared, then stooped. It came down on the gray man.
He jerked, his mouth slack open with shock, then his face crumpled in pain. His legs buckled, his hands went to his chest. A thin, silver blade jutted through his shirt, dripping. He fell, revealing the shadow behind him.
The shadow was not a bird. It was a man, more human than the gray man. Colleen swallowed as she attempted to detach herself once again. Her heart was racing and her breath was coming up short, but she forced herself to take the bird man in.
He was alien too. She didn’t know how she knew. His proportions were correct for a man, but in the harsh red light something seemed off. His wings had been the ends of his coat, a long, plain black garment that reached to his ankles. His left eye was blocked by his straight, pale hair. This man coldly considered the heap of an alien lying at his feet, then his one visible eye met hers.
All semblance of control snapped away from her. Everything became clearer, impossibly clear, all colors vivid and burning, red deeper than the brightest dawn, his eye a colder blue than the deepest ice. Trickles of boiling blood rain down the steely blade, she could hear the metal scrape the ground. She felt the wind lift her hair and spread goosebumps over her arms and legs. The bird man’s coat flapped, his boots shuffled. The alien at his feet gurgled and stopped his hoarse, agonized breathing. Colleen’s knees felt weak. He can’t see me, she repeated frantically. I’m not here!
He stared. A voice broke through the mist, a shredding sound that not only emanated from the bird man, but from every part of the cold red world, shuddering the stone pillars, rattling Colleen’s brain. Her trembling hands cupped over her open mouth, her stomach sank. In her darkest nightmares, she had never seen, felt or heard anything so horribly wrong. The sound waves had been twisted, forced into something so utterly unnatural that it caused her pain from the inside out, every inch of her body screamed from the vibration the bird man’s voice caused. Fear broke loose in a shriek, silenced by the haze. He could see her, and from the hard look in his eye, he hated her for it.
He lunged at her. Colleen felt herself grow faint. The mist filled her vision with red, then black. She couldn’t see, but she heard his footsteps closer and closer. She was not escaping fast enough. This was the end.
A shove, and she found herself staring bleary-eyed at the ceiling of her Breckenridge room.
Shaking violently, she pushed herself up from the carpet. She had fallen out of the bed again, her blanket was half on, half off, her head still throbbed from the impact. Daylight silhouetted the origami animals that hung in front of the window. The door was open, and Misty was nowhere in sight. She heard the other girls milling about in the hall, chatting away and demanding the next turn in the washroom.
The bird man’s voice drowned them all out. It ran through her head with every throb, though the words made no sense. She had only been able to pick out one.
Skaeya.
What would a killer want with kid’s jewelry? Colleen wondered, her hand closing around her dolphin pendant.
The more she thought about the dream, the more confusion she felt over fear. It had the exact same aesthetics as her other prophetic dreams, but aliens? Was that a costume the gray man wore? How did another man come out of a star? How did he speak in such an awful way? Skaeya, the voice hissed, and terror surged afresh. She felt the strong urge to wrap the blanket around her.
It cleared quickly. She noticed the boxes in her closet had been overturned and the contents sorted through, the pockets of her coat turned inside out. Colleen sighed and began to gather the scattered photographs and trinkets. Now she had to worry about the girls coming into her room while she was asleep. One last echo of the voice in her head convinced her, for now, she didn’t have things so bad.
