By Hannah Robinson
The place stank of dreams. Shattered dreams, stale dreams, rancid dreams. And nightmares. I tasted them all the moment I arrived. It was a stagnant sort of taste, like cold porridge served with moldy bread, as though nothing fresh had been dreamed there in ages. Not that I’ve eaten porridge. But I have an imagination, too. And I don’t expect you to understand what I mean at all unless I use human ideas.
The air around the house was so thick with the residue of shadows that I knew I could enter without creating a disturbance. Maybe that’s why I chose the place. I had to pick somewhere, of course, but plenty of places reek of nightmares. It didn’t have to be a quiet, cream-colored house in the countryside.
Even if I chose the house for its shadows, nothing can explain why I stayed. Three hundred years of wandering, of lurking in closets and hiding under beds, of hovering in the outskirts and imaginations of the human world, and I’ve never stayed—not more than two or three nights, anyway. It couldn’t possibly have been an emotional attachment, as I am fortunate enough to be the sort of creature who doesn’t experience such things.
The house was ordinary on the inside—tidy, simple, unremarkable. It gently thrummed with all the usual human gadgets, the ones you somehow don’t notice until nighttime—a fan, I suppose, or maybe a refrigerator. The lights were all off, but streetlight trickled in through a gap in the blinds, and a clockface glowed knowingly with green digital numbers: 1:32 A.M.
I gagged on the air as I drifted up the staircase. Even then I asked myself why I was in this house, of all houses. I knew of a thousand better places, a thousand sweeter dreams. And yet, I stayed.
Upstairs there was a scream.
It was not a child’s scream, not the startled gasp of an adult uncovering a spider, not a cry of pain. It was raw, halfway to a sob, as though it was torn from an unwilling throat, ripped out so fast there was no stopping it.
And I shivered.
I do not usually shiver.
The darkness thickened, unsettled by the scream. I slipped down the hallway, toward the tremulous silence. Through the crack under a door, into a bedroom.
There in his bed, a man slept alone—if one could call his restless torment sleeping. Fear danced and roared across his features, flamelike and consuming. It was the fear of a man reliving his worst nightmare, the sort of fear that surpasses night terrors because it is real. His dream clogged the air everywhere I turned. It was etched in his mirror, crowded on his nightstand, twisted among his sheets—a thousand repetitions of this one dream, collected from a thousand nights.
This dream wasn’t stale. It was layer upon layer of rotting food, acidic with pain, fetid with anguish. Choking, I fled the room.
Over three hundred years, I’d eaten innumerable bland dreams about workplaces and daily routines. I’d consumed more spicy dreams about impossible love than I cared to remember. I’d left countless humans asking themselves why they could never remember their dreams. But this?
This was a dream I could not swallow.
Why was I even here? I knew where I could find sweeter dreams. Of course I had to eat, but it didn’t have to be this rot. Feeding on human dreams didn’t have to be sickening. I crept back down the hallway, back toward the staircase. The house was silent again, apart from the steady thrumming, as though no sound had ever ripped the air and torn a soul.
Except, it wasn’t silent. Not entirely. There was a new sound.
Right at the top of a staircase, a door stood partway open. The sound inside was faint, barely a whisper, but it made me tremble. Again.
This room held a bed, too. On this bed was a child, wide awake and sniffling. The air was crowded here, too—packed to the brim with sprightly dreams, frantic imaginings springing from floor to walls to ceiling, confused heaps of mingled hopes and fears. These dreams were too dense to be dispelled by her wakefulness. And even here, I could smell the nightmares.
So could she, I believe.
Her eyes were large enough to hold the sound of her father’s scream and still have a little room to spare for innocence. Her face was young enough to mirror his fear without understanding it. Her fingers, clutching her tattered teddy bear, looked strong enough to keep hold of memories forever, no matter how dark and how poisonous. And her tears were countless enough to drench her dreams.
It was warm and homey under the bed. I found myself there before I knew what I was doing. Found myself plugging my nose against the smell of the nightmares, preparing to swallow what I could. What had they seen, this man, this child? What had they lived through, to make their house reek of pain? What kind of horror could pack a home with this kind of darkness?
The nightmares were soggy with tears, but they still managed to scrape my throat raw. It was like swallowing sticks and stones and broken bones. Like swallowing shrapnel and fire. But I did swallow.
And I stayed.
I can’t eat all the dreams. With each passing day I eat less—I scarcely have an appetite anymore. At this rate, three hundred years of wandering is all I’m going to have.
But it is warm and homey under this bed, and each morning they ask themselves why they can never remember their dreams.
I could go somewhere else. I should go somewhere else. And yet, I know I won’t. It feels like my duty now, protecting this house from its shadows. My house. My humans. I suppose that’s why I stay.
It couldn’t possibly be an emotional attachment. Monsters don’t experience such things.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
amazing story! i’d give 4 stars if possible!
This was beautifully crafted that felt, like a dream, both vivid and ethereal at once.
*And now I want to care for the monsters under the bed.*
Oh that was precious!
Good story! Neat description of the tastes of dreams and nightmares.
Love your voice in this story!