A Midnight Mind

Chapter 7: The Fadeblade

The dream man stood in front of Ethan's still-closed bedroom door, ragged and broken. He looked like he was pawing at himself, touching countless bruises and cuts as though trying to hold his body together.

I... I'm dreaming? Ethan thought in his stunned stupor. But I--

"Please," said the dream man, hobbling forward on a fractured knee. His dark lips peeled back to show a grimace of yellow teeth, and sweat shone on his fishbelly white skin. Both of his beady, bloodshot eyes were fixed on Ethan.

Horrorstruck, Ethan jolted back as though forcefully pushing the world away from him. How did he get in? I would have heard him come in....

He bumped blindly into his desk chair and screamed in surprise. The dream man ignored the cry and kept moving toward him, limping and wheezing. 

As Ethan frantically steadied himself, his hand wrapped around the table lamp on his desk and he instinctively hurled it at the dream man. 

It stopped dead mid-air as its cord snapped taut and the lamp dropped harmlessly to the ground. Ethan swore.

"How are you here?" he shouted. "Who are you?" Then, at the top of his lungs, "Uncle Vic! Uncle Vic!"

The dream man laughed hoarsely, or maybe it was a sob. "No one else can help," he said, choking out the words. 

A cut on his forehead was oozing blood, soaking into his thick black eyebrow. He thrust his palm out to Ethan, fingers curled. Ethan put up his arms, hoping to protect his throat, shouting, cursing, wondering what the hell he should do, what was going on, what was--

"You're the only one," the dream man said through his laughing sobs, "you're the only one who can--"

"Get down!"

Ethan didn't hear the command so much as felt it, and he threw himself to the ground as though the order came from his own mind. 

"Who are you?" asked the voice that danced directionless around Ethan's brain.

The dream man turned, limping, away from Ethan. Ethan could see through the man's legs that someone new was standing in front of his bedroom door. And the door was still closed.

No--it was open? 

He couldn't be sure. Most of the time it looked closed, but sometimes, somehow, he could see through the door. The view of the hallway faded in and out inconsistently as though the door couldn't decide if it were open or not. But the door never swung open or shut--it was either completely closed or completely open.

I'm dreaming. I fell asleep at my desk, and now I'm dreaming.

"Help me!" the dream man pleaded, now shambling away from Ethan. The man's voice was higher, more frantic than before.

Ethan sprang to his feet and made for the other corner of his room in order to put some distance between him and the dream man. He tripped over the computer chair again as he passed it, even though he thought he moved it when he hit it the first time. After stumbling and crashing shoulder-first into the wall under the bright light of the window, he finally saw the third person in the room.

"Back off," snarled Neil Edwards to the dream man. 

And then he lifted a... sword?

No, not a sword. The blade didn't appear to be made of metal. In fact, it didn't look to be made of anything. It was like a black hole, an empty slit erased from reality.

Just staring into it made Ethan's head hurt. When he looked away, a dark streak stayed in his vision as though he'd been looking at the sun. 

The dream man sobbed and pouted, holding out a trembling hand before him, not daring to move any closer to Neil or the blade he wielded.