Through the Gate of Dreams: The Catalyst Chapter 1:4

​LAMONT
...can’t see, everything is going all weird again.  My body is reshuffling itself, morphing itself back to normal.  Floating down through darkness.  The wetness of tears wakes me up.  Around my darkened room, wisps of the dream come back to me.  I’m covered in dread and dream
images.  What was that all about?  I’m exhausted.  I’m confused.  And I’m worried.

I can feel a presence creeping along the dark corners of my mind.  It feels wrong.  I hear it chattering in sounds that fill me with dread more so because I fear that I might actually understand and I must fight that off.  I must not allow this to happen…

TEZCATLIPOCA
It has begun.  For too long have we slept the sleep of the dead.  For too long have we been but smoke and mist.  We, the Night and the Wind have been forgotten.  By the Heart and the Blood, this will now come to an end.  Long have we planned.  What was planted has grown and now is ripe.  Lamont Corazon, a child of our bane, the Heart of our bane, will be the instrument of our return.  To possess this Heart is what is required.  Afterwards, we, Tezcatlipoca, will no longer be forgotten.  We will have returned!

Those two others will lead the child to us.  Lana Ramona and Jon Dale will prepare the child for us.  They were at the appointed place at the appointed time.  Their suffering will be the catalyst for the Heart to open the way.  To open the gate for Tezcatlipoca’s return.  A return to the Black and the Red of the Ancients.

Lamont Corazon does not even know his heritage.  The child’s ancestors long ago abandoned their faith and their inheritance.  His ancestors diluted their blood with the faith of the heretics, those who protested against his ancestors’ church.  This act of abandonment will not protect him from the fate we have in store.

We shall weave our thoughts into Corazon’s.  He shall dream what we wish and see what we need him to see.  We will call to him and he shall harken to us.  So sweetly shall we sing our song that soon our desires will be his.  He shall willing open up the way for us and let us in.  And if by some remote possibility our persuasion fails, then we shall use the boy to lead our chosen into the arms of Kaliya. No matter what, for our chosen, there will be no peace at the gate.

LAMONT
I feel wiped out.  I’ve think I’ve managed to gain control of myself again.  It is gone now.  I can’t recall a more horrible nightmare in my entire life and I’m glad that is over with and banished.  But God I’m so tired.  Exhaustion wins out and I sink back into the safe arms of sleep and into something like my usual dreams.  I’m exploring some huge library, in some medieval castle.  I hear someone singing, it’s my mom’s voice, and she’s singing my favorite lullaby.  “One, two, three little sheep bring you to sleepy land.  Four, five, six little fish tell you your future.”  I always loved it when she would sing it to me.  I loved to drift off into my dreams being carried by her voice.  “Seven, eight, nine little swine dance with you hand in hand.  And ten by ten little men kill the big monster.”  It was always so comforting.  At least it used to be.  Now her soft voice sounds less reassuring and more hauntingly melancholy.  “So, close your little eyes, the world is inside your mind.  A foot can be a mile, and color can turn black and white.  Outside the cold wind can blow your dreams away.[1]”

Her voice fades and I continue to peruse the library.  As I wander in my dream, darkness rapidly encroaches.  I gaze out a window and see the sun being pushed down by the advancing night sky.  Soon the last vestige of daylight disappears from view as a coffin black night closes in upon the sun and seals it off.  Then, a full moon rises to challenge the darkness.  Clouds rush to counter attack and defile the moon. 

They corrupt its once comforting countenance, transforming it into a grimacing cruel face.  The face melts away, leaving behind a shrouded gray skull, lying forlornly in a sinister starless sky.  The hairs on my arms tingle from the sensation of the unknown brushing up against me.  I’m excited and afraid.

A gray white mass of boreal fog surrounds me.  My teeth are starting to chatter.  Then, a frigid wind blows by, partially clearing this sunken frost filled cloud, revealing an ominous rain forest, or jungle, dense with as many shadows as there are trees.  This oppressive chill sears into my bones and I can’t wish it away.

I’m claustrophobic from being surrounded by the tightly packed trees that huddle around me.  The fog-laden air is like a giant icy hand that’s pushing me downward toward the frost-covered ground.  It feels like the cold hand of death.
“Bloody Hell!  Stop with all this coldness!”

A hoary wind nibbles at my flesh as a response.  Then it’s as if some infernal insect nestled in my ears and gave off this bizarre buzzing sound. 

The buzzing is changing.  Now it’s some sort of weird whispery sound, which becomes laughter, a malevolent and malicious whispery laughter.  It’s changing again.
So it begins, my Corazon. So it begins.

“Who are you?”

We can help you to fulfill your true destiny. And to this end, I compel you to help that girl. You are destined for greatness, if you can find us. If you dare find us.

“Yes, that’s right; there was a girl and her boyfriend.  Now I remember.  He vanished.  Are you behind that?  Is that what you’re getting at?  Is that boy here?”

Laughter is the only reply I get and soon even that fades and with it, everything else disappears into darkness.
*
Huh?  What just happened?  I’m back, from where?  The picture has returned to normal.  I dozed off (?), I guess.  Feel disoriented.  Not sure of what just happened but I feel strangely compelled to do something.  But what?  Not sure.  All good questions Lamont, just no answers.  All I do remember was feeling afraid.  Well, the hell with that!  I angrily stomp off in search of a way through this jungle.  I stumble awhile in the cold and dark.

A shaft of silver light pierces the clouds as the skull moon lifts up the fabric of its dark shroud.  The moon light is oddly warm.  The tight grip of cold foreboding that clutches at my throat loosens.  The moonbeams playfully bounce off the moisture in the air, giving the appearance of being in the midst of tiny glittering fairy folk.  The jungle appears less gloomy.  I catch a familiar scent of honey and vanilla.  This is the second time this night.  It’s being carried on a warming breeze, dispersing the cloying cold fog, and revealing a path through the jungle.

I follow this.  And, after a bit, I come to a dried up river.  Beyond it is an immense abandoned city of stone with a huge obsidian stepped pyramid in its center.  It’s all covered over with the jungle’s growth hundreds of years thick.  The pyramid crouches like a Black Widow spider drowsing in its web. 

Waiting.  It feels ancient and ominous.  There’s a smell of death in the air.

I step into the river and suddenly out of nowhere, sluggish water appears and comes up to my knees.  I wade through this, climb onto the river’s bank, and continue toward the pyramid.  All the while, I smell that familiar scent of honey and vanilla orchids.  There must be hundreds of them nearby.  The threshold of the pyramid threatens the uninitiated with its serpent’s mouth shape.  I venture in following the warm orchid-laden air coming from the bowels of this place.  The hairs on the back of my neck
tingle.  Now, the smell of stale death mixes with the sweetness of orchids.  The voice of common sense says don’t go in.  So, obviously I do.

The whole thing must have been laid out by some architect seized by madness.  The patterns of this maze-like passageway twist and turn back in and on themselves.  I could probably wander these halls forever.  If it wasn’t for the scent of those orchids that I follow, I fear I would die here, lost in this mad, torturous tangle of perplexing passageways.

This was a temple of some sort, long abandoned.  There’s an imprint of all those who walked these halls before me.  Their ghost-like emotions linger palpably in the air.  The lichen, on the walls and ceiling, excrete a phosphorescent glow for which I am thankful, for this is my only means of light.  The sounds of my footsteps on the stone floor echo ahead
of me.  A solitary sound that emphasize the loneliness of this now empty, but once proud, temple.  The picture graphs and drawings of skeletal figures that are cloaked and crowned with feathers, dance along every wall in this eerie light.

I keep on the track of the smell of orchids and the warm sensation, the only comforting element I’ve encountered this night.  It guides me along the serpentine corridors.  The farther along I travel, the warmer I feel I’m getting.  It’s like that game my mom used to play with me.  She would hide something and I would have to find it.  The clues she would give were by telling me that I was getting colder when I searched in the wrong area, and warmer as I approached my goal.

I exit one part of the Temple and come to a courtyard.  There lies a second smaller stepped pyramid with a stone staircase lined in serpent carvings.  I climb up towards an enclosed structure on the pyramid’s top.  The way is lit by a flickering red light coming from far above.  At the top of the stairs, I’m amazed by what confronts me:  A blazing fire engulfs an ancient wooden door.  The fire miraculously dies, leaving an unmarred surface.  Carved into the door are mysterious markings that glow blood red.  The familiar pictographic language with images of skulls and bones woven in a geometric pattern seem to dance on the door’s surface.  It must be the waves of heat still coming from the carvings that’s causing this unusual effect.

I decide to ignore the purpose behind the markings, and simply try the obvious.  I check the door latch.  The door is locked.  Next, I try something equally subtle.  Brute force.  Stepping back a few feet, I ram into the door. 

All I get for my effort is a sore shoulder.

“Door heed me!  I command you to open!”

It ignores me.  I keep trying to force it, or command it, to open.  I am unable to do either.  Just as I decide to try to study the writing, the fire shoots up, forcing me back and obscuring the markings.

“O’ Great and ancient portal, I beseech you, will you please let me pass?”

Light, shy, feminine laughter floats out from behind the cedar wood.  Someone is teasing me.

Normally I can manipulate these lucid dreams by merely focusing my attention on whatever aspect of the dreamscape I wish to change.  But in this dream, all my repeated attempts to control things have been in vain. 

I just have this odd feeling like I’m supposed to get beyond this damn door.  I keep concentrating.  But I only end up with a dull pain in the center of my forehead.  The throbbing spreads outward in waves of distortion.  Soon, everything is only a blurry image.


[1] The song “Little Eyes” was composed, performed and sung by Peter D’Elia on his debut CD Radio Noise, self-produced in July 2000.  The CD is available by contacting Peter D’Elia via his email address: peterdelia@hotmail.com