I didn’t know, but I watched as Nightmare lowered his horse head towards her, simultaneously reaching out with impossibly long fingers with jagged, filthy, blackened nails. Now inches from her forehead, his twisted fingers waved in the air as if he were playing a ghostly piano.
But no. Not quite. He was doing something else entirely. Sweet Jesus, what was coming out of her? It looked like red tendrils. Glowing red tendrils. Ethereal, wispy fibers. He looked like a demonic spinster spinning wool into yarn.
When he had gathered enough of the glowing material, he opened his ghastly maw and shoved it inside. I had a brief, flashing childhood memory of the Cookie Monster.
Unbelievable. He was eating her pleasant dreams! I was terrified for her.
He seemed about to reach for her again, but paused. From my position behind him, I could just catch a glimpse of his elongated face. He cocked his head slightly as if listening for something.
I would have held my breath if I had breath to hold.
Nightmare seemed satisfied and lowered his long face down towards hers again, and as he did so, Susan’s hand lashed out and grabbed the bastard by the throat.
* * *
Susan Smith lay alone and utterly terrified.
She knew with all her heart that the book was right, and that the thing coming for her was evil. If only she could just run...
But she had before, hadn’t she? And it didn’t work. The nightmares had followed wherever she went. The nightmares and everything that went with it: the lack of sleep, the lack of energy. All of which cut into her personal and professional life.
The book had been a godsend. She had searched everywhere for relief from the nightmares, from hypnotherapy to aromatherapy to prescription drugs to changing her diet to one that was devoid of spices.
Nothing had worked.
And then just today, after Googling the subject and perusing page after page of quackery, she came upon a Los Angeles County Library book about nightmares and how to beat them. The book sounded promising, and she had dashed off to the main branch. With library card in hand, she had located the book, read through it with growing excitement, as the hair on her arms and neck stood on end, and promptly checked it out.
Admittedly, the book had been disappointingly slender, just a few ounces in her lovely, feminine hand. But she quickly got over her dismay; indeed, the author had summarized his own experiences—experiences that had precisely mirrored her own. Sweet Jesus, he had gone through exactly what she was going through!
And, most important, he had beat it.
Yes, it. For the author, one James Randall, now apparently deceased, claimed that this wasn’t an emotional enemy. No, sleepers were facing an actual enemy. A demonic enemy. Something alive. Something that fed on humanity like a damned vampire. A vampire of pleasant dreams who stole them away and left in their place, nightmares of unspeakable terror that would torment the sleeper every time they hit the REM stage of sleep.
It’s not my imagination, she had kept telling herself as she read. It’s real. I knew it was real.
The nightmares that had plagued her for most of her adult life had, in fact, seemed like a personal assault. Except that she could never get anyone to believe her. Yes, she had thought she was going insane. That is, until today. Until this book.
Mercifully, blessedly, the author not only described how to beat the creature...but to destroy it once and for all.
She thought about that now as she sat back in bed and closed her eyes. As she did so, the familiar dread overcame her. Dread to close her eyes. Dread to let her mind go. Dread to let sleep overtake her.
Because that’s when the nightmares came.
That’s when the demon came.
A real demon – the vampire of normal, pleasant dreams. Normal dreams were the sanity clause of humans, when the anxiety of the day would dissipate and truly, tomorrow would be a better day. If not for a visit from Nightmare, who was relentless and gave no relief from the stress of daily life but added his own terror to torment and enslave his victims during their most vulnerable state. REM-stage sleep. Night after night.
Susan shuddered.
There’s hope, she thought desperately. There’s hope.
And that’s all she could ask for.
The fucking thing had taken so much from her. It had destroyed any hope for a relationship. Any hope for normalcy. Often, she wondered what it would be like to dream peacefully. To actually awaken refreshed and full of life and hope for the new day.
She had no idea. Or, rather, she couldn’t remember.
Why had it chosen her? She had no idea. The author claimed the entity was a psychic vampire. A living creature that preyed on its host.