The Nightmare Thief

Tenebris shouldered his heavy pack of Nightmares as he slid open the child's window. He did so slowly, so as not to wake the young boy. He always felt guilty waking children; waking them meant he would concoct a pleasant Dream and send them back into a deep sleep, but it also meant disturbing their slumber. Every child deserves a peaceful sleep.

This child did not wake, but merely turned onto his side and pulled the blue comforter closer around him. Tenebris set his ancient bag down by the window. His sigh was almost as heavy as the bag. He immediately felt lighter both in body and spirit with the loss of the bag; carrying a bag of Nightmares stolen from Dreamers around the world was a profession for neither the weak of body nor the weak of soul.

The Nightmare Thief smiled at the boy and picked up the teddy bear from the floor beside his bed. It must have fallen during the night. Tenebris examined it for a moment. It was an old bear, long past its expiration date. The left ear had clearly been reattached on multiple occasions, but someone had done so with careful and meticulous white-threaded stitches. The right eye had fallen off completely, and the brown fur was worn thin.

Tenebris placed the toy beside the boy; he ensured it was within arm's reach, for the sake of the boy when he awoke the next morning, or for when he reached out in the night for someone, something to comfort him. Tenebris didn't want the boy to grasp and find nothing. Loneliness was a curse he wished on no one.

The child couldn't have been more than six years old. Why was it always the young who seemed to have the most Nightmares, enough to bring Tenebris to their home? Did they have the most Dreams, too? It seemed to Tenebris that that would be only fair.

The boy's thick eyelashes were like tree vines, so long that they brushed his pale cheek as his eyes fluttered in his sleep. The Star Wars pillowcase the young head rested on was covered in long curly criss-crossing rows of dark hair. The boy looked like a precious sleeping cherub.

How could such a young angel have so many Nightmares?

Tenebris spotted the Dreamcatcher dangling off the boy's headboard, secured only by a small piece of tape. The Dreamcatcher itself was fairly standard; a circular frame, the diameter of which was the size of a glass, was interwoven with spirals of beads, all howlite, black, and coral colored. Soft grey feathers were tied to the frame with worn leather strips.

But Tenebris hardly saw the material of the thing; it was what was between the twisting strings that he was here for. He was here, of course, for the Nightmares. He saw dozens of them, dark shadows thrashing against the beaded binding of the Dreamcatcher, growling and screeching, hissing at the Nightmare Thief. They clawed at each other and at the strings that had entrapped them like drowning panthers in a pit, desperate to escape and plague the sleep of this little boy with any and every manifestation of his fears imaginable. The sheer number of them nearly filled the frame of the Dreamcatcher; there was hardly any room for the occasional Dream to slip through. If the Dreams couldn't get through the catcher, they would never reach the boy. They'd be chocked by the very thing meant to protect the child. Tenebris could see, too, the hazy magic cast on the Dreamcatcher. It had done its job and stopped the Nightmares from reaching the boy. But the magic was wearing thin. There were too many Nightmares, and the strings sagged under their weight. Any more, and the binding would snap, breaking the spell and sending at least a year's worth of Nightmares upon the boy all in one night. The boy would be scarred for life. Tenebris had arrived to prevent such a disaster, as was his purpose.

He began his work. He first cast a mild protective charm over the boy, in the event that a mistake was made. The Nightmare Thief bore his weighty title with pride, and had made no mistakes as of yet in his centuries of service, but he wasn't one to take any chances. He then took a small leather pouch out of his pocket, and placed it directly under the Dreamcatcher. He lowered his dark hood and cracked his fingers. It was what came next that he dreaded the most.