It happened on the night Oliver hung the dreamcatcher. Normally, bedtime meant nightmares. He hoped the dreamcatcher would help with that, but he never expected what happened to happen.
It was in that gray area between falling asleep and being asleep when it started. First, the numbing sensation in all his toes that traveled up his body. Then the sense of dread. Then the paralysis set in and he couldn’t move no matter how hard he tried. His breath came out in hasty puffs of desperation and he stared at the ceiling, feeling the thin breath of the fan as he watched it swirl hypnotically.
Then the black figure over the bed.
It stood there.
It just stood there.
Oliver couldn’t move. Maybe it couldn’t either. Maybe the dreamcatcher was working. Maybe it couldn’t strangle him this time.
It just stood there.
“Apologies,” it said in a female voice. “But it seems I’ve gotten myself stuck.”
It didn’t sound like that last time. That wasn’t its voice. This voice was new, and sounded far more pleasant than the thing’s usual vocalizations.
Oliver couldn’t answer because he couldn’t talk because he couldn’t move. He rasped at her. He was sure she was female.
“I understand,” she said. “I am Akki, Slayer of Nightmares. And I understand I’m not the only one stuck.”
Oliver’s rasp became a moan. His left index finger twitched.
“I would undo this if I could reach you,” said Akki, still a silhouette. “But I’m stuck and I can’t. I saw your finger move. Can you move it more?”
Oliver’s mind raced over what to do. This one, whatever it was, didn’t seem as threatening as his previous experiences of these kind.
“If you could move,” said Akki. “Then I could free you from whatever tormented you enough to procure that contraption.”
“Con…” He could talk! Just barely, but he could talk! “…trac…tion?”
“The weave which catches dreams.”
“Dream…catch…er.”
“Yes, that. Apologies for not knowing the proper terminology. It differs depending on where one is.”
Oliver gasped for breath, gathered his willpower, and moved his left arm out. It slid along under the covers, pins and needles hotly travelling up from his palm to his elbow.
“You can move,” said Akki. “Keep going.”
He was about to, but then the other one showed up. The shadow.
The shadow crept into the weave of the dreamcatcher and stood before Akki. Rather than a spider, it was human shaped. It got stuck too but not as badly. The shadow laughed and struggled against the woven string that bound it. Some of the strings snapped and the dreamcatcher, hanging over the bed, unwove itself and fell. It landed on Oliver’s right side, near his ear. He could hear them talking.
“Leave,” said Akki.
“Leave this morsel?” said the shadow.
“Leave.” Akki grunted, and her silhouette twitched its hands toward her middle. The outline of a sheath showed on the ceiling where the play of both figures developed like puppetry. “Or I shall slay you.”
“You? Slay me?”
“Yes. Now go.”
The shadow’s shoulders shook as if in laughter. Oliver’s arm tensed, straightened, and locked itself back in place at his side. He hadn’t been the one to move his own limb. His mouth clamped shut. He couldn’t even scream.
Then the female figure hunched, pulled out what looked like a blade, and pointed it at the shadow man. Silvery threads fell from her shoulders down her arms and onto the bed where Oliver was fighting the rigidity of his own body with everything he had.
Nothing moved at his will, not an arm, not a pinky, nor even a strand of his hair. The shadow figure mimicked him. Akki tilted her blade at the shadow man’s throat.
“Final warning,” said Akki. “Begone.”
“You cut me, you cut him.”
“I’m no fool. I know which dreams when harmed harm the dreamer. You lie.”
“Then test it.”
“I shall.”
Oliver’s eyes bugged out and he tried to scream but couldn’t.
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Akki took a stance and plunged her sword into the shadow man.
Oliver screamed.
He screamed, and he scrambled backward on the bed, hitting his head on the headboard as he went. Pain spread across the back of his head and he cupped it reflexively, not registering that he could now move. Not registering that he was unharmed by Akki’s motions.
The shadow man stood there bent over, Akki’s sword sticking out of its stomach. Akki still held the hilt.
“See,” she said. “You lie.”
“The dreamcatcher,” said Oliver. “The dreamcatch—”
“Adults,” said the shadow man. “Are talking.”
“Don’t repair it yet,” said Akki. “Lest you catch the wrong dream.”
Oliver’s fingers hovered over the fallen dreamcatcher. He didn’t know how it worked, and he didn’t know how to fix it anyway. He fumbled it into his grasp and held it against his chest. His heart pounded louder, faster, with more apparent depth than before.
The silhouette play on the ceiling spanned more of the room now. It stretched all along the walls in lines, as if each thread of the dreamcatcher had captured its own portion of the figures fighting. And a fight it was.
The shadow man pulled the sword out of his stomach and thrust it at Akki, who dodged and ducked out of the way. Then, out of nowhere, the slap of a flat wing materialized in front of the shadow man’s face and slapped him backward so hard he dropped Akki’s blade. She made quick work of rearming herself and took a martial stance, waiting.
“Leave and you’ll be spared,” said Akki.
“Why spare me?”
“Because you have the potential to be good.”
“Good?”
“Helpful.”
“An injury,” said the shadow man. “And a lecture. I can’t stand your type.”
Oliver, fear-stricken, found it difficult to swallow. He could feel the pounding of his heart near the lump in his throat. Regaining his wits and fueled by adrenaline, he jumped off the bed and flicked on the lights.
The shadow play on the ceiling and spanning the back wall was still there. He glanced at the dreamcatcher. Maybe if he got rid of it instead of fixing it…
The shadow man lunged at Akki, the ends of his arms forming deeper shadows in the shape of talons. With a parry and a counter, Akki sliced into him. He shrieked unlike a human and backed away from her on the wall, flatly putting a corner between him and her so the line of the room’s corner formed a seam of separation.
Oliver snatched the dreamcatcher off the bed and ran out of the room. The silhouettes of the two got knocked off balance and rolled over each other, speeding after Oliver, caught in the same streams of thread that the dreamcatcher casted in the first place. Both ducked to avoid the threshold whacking them in the head.
“Dreamer!” Akki rolled up to her feet and hopped, jumped, and leapt to keep up with the everchanging movements of the dreamcatcher’s threads. “What are you doing?”
Oliver didn’t answer.
The shadow man, letting the play between light and dark move him unhindered, bounced around in a cartoonish manner.
Oliver reached the kitchen. He slammed open drawers in the dark before he found the one he was looking for: the junk drawer which contained many an oddity but also wooden matches.
“I know what he’s doing,” said the shadow man amusedly.
“Don’t burn it,” said Akki.
“You make a lot of demands for a vitalian,” said the shadow man. “Never thought I’d meet one afraid of fire. Least of all one wielding a dragonsblade.”
“Fire isn’t what I fear. Dreamcatchers are useful. His can be repaired.”
“You told me not to repair it,” said Oliver.
“Yet,” said Akki. “Apologies if I wasn’t clear.”
Oliver struck the match to light it, and the little flame warped the shadows more. He lit one feather at the bottom of the dreamcatcher and let the fire climb. He was going to get rid of this thing one way or another, no matter what it said or pretended to be.
A crackling firewood noise echoed around the kitchen, much louder than it should’ve been. The shadow play on the walls and ceiling tinted orange. Oliver held the dreamcatcher steady, turning it so the fire could consume and grow.
“Please put out the fire.” Akki spun around and backed into the shadow man.
The shadow man chuckled. It was only the dragonsblade that deterred him from making a move on Akki.
“You really are,” said the shadow man. “Afraid of getting burnt.”
Akki didn’t respond. She lifted her sword and sliced at the top of the dreamcatcher’s shadow. But it was a shadow of a different kind than the shadow man, one casted from the waking world, and so it didn’t separate at the slice of her blade. She’d have to wait for the flames.
“This’ll work,” Oliver was saying. “This has got to work.” The dreamcatcher became too hot for him to hold. He dropped it in the sink.
The shadow man growled as Akki stepped on him. Akki’s dragon wing returned as she about-faced, and she ran straight toward the flames under the wing’s cover. Then she was out of the dreamcatcher and into the waking world, untangling singed threads from her clothing. The shadow man remained inside the dreamcatcher. It seemed he was stuck for real.
“Just because you’ve escaped this time,” said the shadow man. “Doesn’t mean I’ll stop visiting.”
Oliver lit another match.
Akki sheathed her blade and caught his arm. “Please. Dreamcatchers are useful in that they catch the rotten ones too. It was my mistake coming here when you already had defenses. Apologies.” She bowed deeply, and Oliver saw now that she was no longer a silhouette. She was blonde with very pale skin, and there was something gruesomely wrong with her neck.
The match burned down and seared Oliver’s fingers.
“Ah!” He dropped the match, which landed in the sink and extinguished.
“Save the dreamcatcher.” Akki released Oliver’s arm. “You’ve imprisoned the nightmare. There’s no longer any reason to be afraid.”
“What if it gets out? You got out.”
“I’m of a different kind than the one in there.”
“Is that why I’m not afraid of you?”
“Perhaps.” Akki smiled softly. Her eyes flashed oddly in the dark. They perfectly reflected the fire in the sink that was burning the dreamcatcher. It was as if they were made of mirrors. Silvery mirrors.
The shadow man had no features. He was all pitch dark.
Oliver turned on the faucet. He pinched the edge of the dreamcatcher and made sure the whole fire was gone before removing it from the sink. When he flicked on the light, there was no trace of the shadow man inside the dreamcatcher, nor anywhere else in the room. Akki stood there formally, as if she were military.
“Is your nightmare slain?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Oliver. “It’s gone.”
“Ah. Then it left. There would be a corpse otherwise.”
“I thought you said it was stuck.”
“But then you burned the net that caught us. He must’ve found a way out of the threads and fire. I did, after all.”
Oliver’s pulse quickened. “Left to go where? Somewhere here?”
“Perhaps, but it can do no harm in the awake world. And you are awake.”
“I don’t feel awake.”
“You are.” Akki bowed. “You are awake, and the nightmare has been staved off for now. I’ll take my leave. Pleasantries.” She turned toward the sink and climbed inside, getting smaller as necessary for her to fit, and exited Oliver’s kitchen the same way she’d entered it, through the dreamcatcher’s remaining weaves.
The shadow man never returned.