Beautiful Dreamer

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Everything was gray. All that I could see was a dense, heavy fog that crept stealthily into my vision and hid any figures that might have been lurking in the vicinity. I was rooted to the spot in the midst of all that filmy nothingness, adjusting my blurry vision every few seconds and trying to remind myself that this was not real life. Because no matter how hard I drilled that fact into my mind, there was still a lingering fear of my odd blindness, and a solid conviction that wherever I was, I was not safe.

Though I was completely stationary, everything around me seemed to be in motion, swirling and shifting and distorting my senses until directions became nonexistent. The only thing I was certain of was that there was something solid beneath my feet, but the fog was so thick that I couldn't see my shoes, if I was even wearing any. I had arms, I had legs—I could feel them—but when I reached out, they were concealed in gray mist. And in my head, everything felt not quite there, a little dizzy, as if I'd stomached a few too many loop-d-loops on a theme park roller coaster. Thus, when I began to hear faint whispers in the back of my mind, I told myself that it was simply my spinning subconscious in action.

Until they got louder.

Focus, Parker, urged the whisper. This is your dream—your rules.

I squeezed my eyes shut and brought up my hand to pinch the bridge of my nose. That little guiding voice is generally supposed to know best, so I trusted its murmured words and, behind drooped lids, imagined that the fog was thinning.

Good, Parker, very good.

I peeled my eyes open very slowly, suddenly feeling incredibly exposed. It was that sensation of being watched, that pressure drifting over your shoulders that doesn't exist. I felt it deep in the rush of my bloodstream—the unmistakable feeling of eyes on me. It was an itch I couldn't scratch, and when I looked up to see nothing but gray again, its faint tickle spurred me to turn on my heel and greet the watcher behind me.

I found people and a voice.

The people registered first, because they were evidently visible. Blurry on the edges, sure, but still people nonetheless. It was a great crowd, dozens of bodies thick, just hundreds of humans milling around. Their destination seemed to be nonexistent; they wandered as one being, but with the listless steps of individuals.

The voice came back as I watched these people from some kind of elevated vantage point. It begun as low buzzing in the back of my head, like static on a radio, before almost seeming to tune itself until the electric feedback became words.

Can you hear me, Parker?

I glanced over my shoulder automatically, thinking that I was being addressed from somewhere behind me. But even as I whirled, I knew that I would find nothing—I knew that the voice was inside my head. And I knew, instinctively, whom it belonged to.

“Yeah. Hey, Laury,” I said, though I neither felt my lips move nor heard any audible trace of my voice. In comparison to the situation, my words sounded pedestrian and lame, but the fact that I was communicating with someone someone in the waking world made me slightly less concerned about being profound.

You're on a hill, observed Laury—or rather, her disembodied voice. You need to get off of it. Whatever you're looking for, it's down.

“You can see where I am.” It wasn't a question, and I didn't move from my place. “How?”

I'm inside your head, at the pit of your consciousness. I have, essentially, infiltrated your dreaming mind. Whatever you see, I see.