Chapter 1.

I Don't Think We Are In Lakes Wales Anymore

My god, I am blind! Alecyn sat up with a strangled scream, holding her hands up before her face and seeing nothing. Blackness surrounded her. Slowly, while her heart raced in panic, she became aware of a faint glimmer of light. Her eyes became used to the dark, enough to show the most undefined movements as she passed her hands close to her face. Not blind. Not blind, just very dark. It had been the noise that had awakened her, though she was not sure if she had dreamed that. It had seemed real, but the dream had been peculiar. She fought to try and hold onto it, the faces and voices. People but of such strange forms and faces. And music. Two strains of music, one glorious and anthemic, stirred her soul, the other darker, brooding and foreboding. The dream was fading, becoming fragmented and buried in the recesses of her memory. The last thought to disappear was of the music and the sense that it had been a battle between the two songs.

A more immediate thought penetrated the fog of sleep. Why is it so dark? She looked towards the window. To where the window should have been, but there was nothing to see. Nothing suggested her bedroom window was even there. Only blank, staring darkness. Tentatively, she pushed back the covers and put her feet to the ground, only to pull back with a yelp. The floor was cold stone. She wanted to call out, but the darkness that clung to her face forbade sound. She was sitting in her bed, her back against the headboard. Even the stuffed dog she had owned since childhood sat beside her on the pillow where he always was. But her house did not have stone floors, and she should have been able to see streetlights through the open curtains of her bedroom window. She never closed them at night because her house looked out over the lake, and there was no way to see in.

"Calm down, Alecyn." She whispered to herself. "There has been a power outage, that's all. It is a cloudy night, and you cannot see the moon or stars. And the streetlights are out. You were dreaming before. It is not stone. It is carpet. You are in your room, and there is nothing odd going on. Now, get out of bed and go to the window."

Then she remembered Eevee, her female rag doll cat. “Eevee, Eevee where are you?” She heard her respond with a loud meow. Then, she realized that Eevee was lying on the bed beside her. She reached out to pet her to make sure she was real. "I am glad you are here with me, girl. It makes me feel a little bit better."

Steeling herself, Alecyn lowered her bare feet to the floor. She refused to flinch as they once more touched a cold, rough, and unyielding surface.

“Ok, Ali. You are dreaming. You must be dreaming because this is impossible."

She stood, pressing her feet flat to the floor, trying to absorb as much sensation as possible. She reached down and touched the ground with her hand. It was uneven and stone gravel. She rapped sharply with her knuckle and received a sting of pain.

"Very, very lucid dream."

Alecyn was on the verge of panic. She had dreamed vividly before, even dreams where she became aware that she was dreaming. But those dreams always ended after she became aware of the fact. This dream felt different. It felt like reality. She took a cautious step and almost leaped back onto the bed when her foot touched something that moved. It made a hollow, wooden sound as it rolled under her foot, and she realized what it must be. It was her flute. She picked it up, clutching it to her. The wood felt warm under her fingers and somehow calmed her. Its solid familiarity was reassuring here where nothing was as it had been when she had gone to bed. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to play it but suppressed the thought. The silence around her still seemed to forbid noise. It felt like she was torn between the two momentarily, her simple Irish flute calling for music and light while the darkness urged her to silence. Eevee jumped down from the bed and stood at Alecyn's feet. "Do not get in the way, girl. I do not want to step on you."

She took the first step and then another toward the window. But it was not there. She swung her hands out when she was sure she must be standing right in front of it, and they met nothing but empty space.

"I am not in my room. But my bed is here, and so is my flute, which was on the floor instead of my dressing table, which also is not here! I am going mad!" Alecyn could feel hysteria pulling at her.

"I do not know where I am!" She called out into the darkness, panic unraveling her words at the edges. "Can anyone hear me?! Please!"

There was a moment of utter paralysis. Her stomach knotted, and her throat seemed to close. Unbidden memories loomed of when she was six when she had got herself locked in the basement. The darkness had been a living thing, sliding over her skin to embrace her. With it had come the slithering silence. To Alecyn's childish mind, the darkness was a creature of silence, but the silence was the eviler.

The darkness was subsiding slightly. Or her eyes were adjusting. She could see the whiteness of her bedspread now and a grayish blur which could have been walls on the other side of the bed. Then, the distinctive shape of her dresser, but not where it should have been, seemed to lean at a precarious angle. The urge to play the flute rose in her once more; her fingers shifted on the instrument's body, finding its holes and readying a note. The darkness swelled around her, obscuring her vision and demanding silence.

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Standing half naked, terrified, and cold, Alecyn found a stubborn strength. Someone was playing a cruel joke on her, and she would make them regret it. She lifted the flute to her mouth. Confidence suddenly flooded her, and a bewildered part of her mind told her that the feeling of reassurance was coming from the instrument itself. She played, and the darkness lifted. She played and saw around her a stone hall with a high vaulted ceiling held aloft on massive pillars. The flute felt warm in her hand. She felt the generations of hands that had overseen the instrument over the century since it was made.

Scattered around the floor as though dropped from a height was the debris of her bedroom. Her table lamp, broken into many pieces, lay several feet away and on a different side of the bed from where it usually would be. Her dresser leaned against one of the pillars. Her favorite reading chair stood erect. On the stone floor, which seemed composed of rough slabs, a Van Gogh print peeked from a shattered frame. Clothes, makeup, and toiletries lay scattered everywhere as if a tornado had blown through her room.

"Just call me Dorothy." She whispered as she took in the scene. "And you can be Toto," she called down to Eevee. She uttered a short laugh and played on, the strong urge not to let the music stop just yet. The trilling notes leaped out into the strange place, bouncing off the walls and hurling themselves to the ceiling. The room was now lit as bright as day, though she could not see the source of the light. Finally, she stopped, somehow feeling that she had done enough.

The chamber was circular, the pillars ringing it except in one place where a circular ring of stones formed a doorway. Blackness still ruled within that doorway, lapping at the edges of the light Alecyn had somehow brought forth from the flute.

"This is a dream. I know this is a dream. It cannot be real because my flute lit up the room for me. But I am not waking up, so I may as well get on with dreaming it."

The panic had left her, though an edge of cautious fear remained. A stirring of cold air around her legs and under the Dan Marino jersey she used as a nightshirt reminded her she was practically naked. She discarded the jersey and pulled on underwear, jeans, a tank top, and a sweater from one of the piles of clothes nearest to her. She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length blond hair. She looked around to see if she could find a brush or comb. When she could not find them, she ran her fingers through her hair again and said, "This will have to do."

She suddenly remembered her phone as she slipped on a pair of sneakers from the pile. She swore at her slow wits and practically threw herself onto the bed, hunting for her smartphone. She cried out triumphantly as she found the familiar square metallic shape amongst the duvet. She pulled it out and stared in disbelief. It was showing no bars. Thank goodness the screen had not cracked. There was no visible damage. She tried the phone, but it was dead. There was no Internet. She slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans.

"Is this some unimaginative, ponderous metaphor? Is this my subconscious telling me to live more in the real world and not social media?" Alecyn demanded answers from the empty room. She laughed, feeling brave now that she had decided this was a dream. Flute in one hand, she walked towards the doorway. Curious to explore the depths of her imagination, she decided to witness the extent of its conjuring power before awakening.

She stood facing the darkness in the doorway. It was unnatural. She could not see anything through it. She raised the flute to her lips and played without conscious thought, a trilling succession of improvised notes. The darkness stirred and shifted but showed no signs of dissipating. She stopped, and the darkness seemed to solidify and even reach the room. The light began to dim. Feeling a fluttering of fear, she raised the flute again, only this time she chose the tune.

It was called the Wild Woods. Her grandfather had taught it to her. The last time she played it was during the party over at the Livingston house a couple of weeks ago.

The tune whistled and whirled from the flute but carried sharp pangs from Alecyn. She closed her eyes, focusing on the music and the images they brought, which were so at odds with the wild Irish ditty. When she opened her eyes, the darkness had gone, and the stones of the portal shone as though newly polished. She could see flowing lines and spirals inscribed sharply into the stone. She could not decide if it was simply artwork or an ancient language. She traced one of the inscriptions and almost thought she heard a soft, tinkling tune. It fled from her hearing as soon as she stole herself to listen. Eevee had gotten down from the bed and was standing beside her, seeming to be as bewildered as she was.

Stepping through the door, Alecyn began to walk down a circular corridor of the same shining stone as the gateway. She checked to make sure that Eevee was following her. Curved and hooked lines covered the rocks and hurtled each other up the walls like licking flames. Now and then, she played a blast on the flute; it reassured her, and she began to think that the stone around her liked it. Invariably, the darkness lay before her, around a bend in the passage, in the doorway to another chamber. And always, the tunes of the flute chased it away. She laughed, breaking into a jog as she pursued the shadows down the shining hallway. As dreams went, this was quite pleasant, if bizarre. Then she ran headlong into a wall of sound.

A discordant, crashing boom rolled towards her, and the darkness came with it. Alecyn fell backward, the flute flying from her hand as she hit the stone. The darkness reached for her, screeching and sawing like a thousand banshees screaming from within it. And then it was gone. It melted, brushing her with the feel of old cobwebs. Her heart hammered, and her head throbbed where she had struck it against the stone floor. She raised a tentative hand to the bump, which came away with a smear of blood. She had never felt real pain in a dream. She did not even think feeling real pain in a dream was possible.

"I am dreaming! I know I am dreaming!" she called out defiantly. But her voice wavered, and she did not believe it. "I must be dreaming." Her heart was aching; she knew her system was flooded with adrenaline, and if this had been a true dream, there was no way she could remain asleep. Not without sedatives, anyway. That left the mystery of where she was and, of course, the flute. She picked it up, again wondering at her comfort while holding it. Then, she became aware of what the darkness had concealed. Ahead of her was another circular gap of shining stones, and beyond it—an opening to the outside. Alecyn got to her feet slowly and walked toward the doorway. If I am awake, then this is a trick, and that is not Lake Wales. It is impossible.