A Looming Tower

2

I'll add the concept art for this book next chapter!

Project Dream is different, the Haunter's voice whispers into my ear, for it is a dream. Yours and the others' dreams, fears, and nightmares. But they are as real as they seem, for the Tower makes them palpable.

I slowly lift my drooping eyelids. I'm slouching on the seat of a rusty old bike, sitting perfectly still on a newly paved road. A hill rises up to a woods on the right, and a driveway veers to the left. The bicycle's on a road itself, and as the grey skies above whistle and begin to move, my bike does with it. Forward.

I am but a dream as well, Anna, the Haunter concludes. I am but a memory. I can help you, but only with what you know yourself.

I frown, pedaling faster and faster. The trees, grass, and sky whisper by, blurring as I move faster and faster. "What do you mean?" I whisper, and there's a pause from his speech.

Watch, he says, and with unknown intent, I turn my head around.

My stepfather, the one from the Haunting who I thought was my true father, lumbers behind me at impossible speeds. His movements are clumsy and labored, but he covers ground like you wouldn't believe. Though this man who you call Stepfather seems real, and if he attacks you the wounds shall feel the same, he is but a figment of your thoughts. If you focus, you can change him.

"Change him?" I whisper, turning back my head to face the turn ahead, and I can feel the Haunter nod. Yes. All you have to do is think. What do you think is around that turn?

I shrug, slowing my pedaling. "Probably a hill, some more road?"

Then that is what you will find, he booms, but if you alter your beliefs, you can alter this too.

I frown. "So... If I think there's an ocean there..."

Try.

I do. I can feel the road's bumps below me, but when I close my eyes, I can imagine them a rocky outcrop, a cliff's end without dirt or plant. It's... perfect. And below it is an amazing body of water, shimmering in the light of the sun and reflecting the perfectly turquoise sky, an ocean of plenty, so far below, but it's very far below. Suddenly, it's thousands of feet below and I know that if I ride off the cliff I will fall, shooting towards the perfect blue and crashing into it, and then my broken body will shoot into the pristine sand below it.

I won't live.

I flash open my eyes with a gasp but when I halt the bike the scene is the same, the turn up ahead the same, the man running behind me the same. "But..." I start, but the Haunter interrupts.

You imagined it, you believed it. That is true. And it worked... But you haven't turned the corner. And now it won't work, because once again you believe that it will be another road, the same grey sky, the same dying grass. The dying grass, Anna.

I blink. To my right, the grass is suddenly brown. "Before it was alive," I say, furrowing my brow, "It was perfectly fine!"

But I convinced you, didn't I?

I start to speak, but he interrupts.

The man comes close. You must make your way out.

I gulp, and close my eyes again. For a moment, I try to remember the cliff, the beach, but then I remember the reality. The drab sky, the deadened day.

But then my mind takes off.

When I open my eyes it's a torrential downpour, the dirt and grass a frothy mess of mud and the trees crackling in the wind. The turn is ahead of me, but the gears in the bike clog up and I go flying. I slam into the road ahead, scraping my palms and crying out, and as I rub them together to dislodge the dirt the rain soaks me fully. I bask in it, closing my eyes, suddenly in a warmer place, a shower maybe, yes, a shower would be nice...

When I open my eyes in the shower I am, but Stepfather's knocking on the bathroom door.

You've done it, the Haunter booms, but then the door slams open and splinters of wood careen through the room.

And a wolf stumbles in.

Hope you like the chapter! Btw, unlike in my other books, the chapters in this will be ~730 words long. Faster, easier, seems better for some reason too!

Thanks for reading!

--DraconisSolutus