Dream Walker

Chapter 3 | The Maze

The hedges stretched high above her head in every direction. Their texture was unlike the soft, decorative bushes planted around houses. Instead, these hedges were prickly with thorns and branches that poked out of areas naked of leaves. The leaves themselves were an ugly color that more closely resembled brown than green. Though a dark sky void of stars was visible above, the tops of the hedges appeared to lean toward each other, as if trying to enclose the space further.

Beneath her bare feet the short grass was dry and yellowed. As Callie surveyed the somewhat familiar landscape, she saw four routes that she could take from her current location. The routes before and behind appeared to stretch into eternity, while the routes to the left and right were interrupted by more walls of leaves and clearly turned in other directions. There were no unique sounds emerging from any of these pathways; each offered only the slight rustle of leaves and low distant sounds that were impossible to distinguish.

Though Callie had a strong sense of inevitability when trapped inside this dream, which was certainly a mere figment of her overactive imagination, she also maintained a modicum of control over her actions that grew with each repetition of the dream. While dreaming, she could not remember the exact number of times she had been in this place or the chronological order of her previous choices, but she could remember most of what she had previously experienced.

She knew she had made the mistake of touching the prickly hedge walls only once. The prick of pain and quick welling of blood from the injured fingers had dissuaded her from that behavior. The rest of her choices were related to the paths she took through the seemingly unending maze. Not that any of her attempts to escape the maze had been informative enough to warrant remembering the exact turns she'd previously taken.

A snapping twig to her left caused her head to turn abruptly in that direction. She had never seen any other living beings in this maze, but she frequently had the sensation of being watched. At that moment, the skin on the back of her neck prickled with the feeling of a hidden gaze. She saw nothing to her left. In a burst of fearlessness—after all, it was only a dream—she marched toward the area where the sound had originated.

Though the hedges in her peripheral vision appeared to be rapidly closing in to trap her, Callie did not hesitate. She had seen this in all her previous dreams and had assumed her subconscious fear-driven mind was envisioning and thus creating an enclosed space. With practice, she had learned to ignore some of the more frightful parts of her dreams. She figured if her subconscious mind could imagine, her conscious mind could overcome. Callie looked for any sign of disturbance in the grass or the hedges but saw no obvious remnants of a moving creature.

There was another snap farther into the passage, after it split into two more directions. Callie's eyes quickly scanned the area, seeing nothing. Frustrated with the dream and the mysterious sounds, she began running. She took lefts and rights at random when she heard nothing and purposefully when she heard more breaking twigs and rustling grass.

Whatever she pursued must have been running faster, yet she always stayed close enough to hear its movements. She thought she heard the sound of breathing too, and not just her own. She kept running, faster and faster, but the sounds eventually came from every direction. Sometimes the breathing sounded like it was behind her, sometimes on the other side of the hedges surrounding her. Even when she spun, looking in every direction, no forms were evident, just those repeating noises.

Callie stopped, took a deep breath, and screamed out in frustration. The scream echoed all around, reflecting back along the hedges and through the passages, mutating until it sounded like the maze itself was screaming back at her. She wanted to tear at the hedges, the grass, anything, if only it would put a stop to this endless wandering. When she collapsed to the ground, grunting with the force of her fall, she felt momentarily peaceful. The sky above was beautiful in a haunting way. Its smooth, unbroken shade of indigo reminded Callie of a calm ocean at night.