The Dream Realm.
It is believed by most of the people that this is a place where people's imagination creates stories, but for those who know the reality, it's far more than this. People's feelings create the dreams and nightmares. Few are the ones to possess the capacity to move freely in the dream realm; they are called the Awakened. And if humans can enter the Dream Realm, sometimes, dreams and nightmares manage to enter the Physical Realm, and some need to be stopped. This is where Hunters come in useful. Awakens those who went deep enough in the dream realm to become stronger and to be able to fight nightmares in the Physical Realm.
"If only I could be a hunter too." Park Chung-Ho thought.
It was the same feeling every night for almost 20 years. The smell of smoke, the trouble to catch a breath, the heat. Park Chung-Ho opened his eyes like always and saw the fire everywhere around him. The sound of the flames eating the room was deafening.
He knew perfectly that the fire colors on the wall would start to be challenged by a glowing blue coming from the firefighters. He knew this dream perfectly as he never had any other. The blue glow meant the nightmare was soon over. Park Chung-Ho never saw the firefighters himself; he just learned later that he was rescued from the fire that burnt his house down and made him an orphan.
It wasn't possible that the trauma made this nightmare so vivid and his memory this strong and detailed, but still, he was having this nightmare over and over again.
Every night, and even though dreaming of fire should carry his problems away, it happened that this was the very dream that was the cause of his anxiety.
Park Chung-Ho assumed it was a nightmare based on the memory of this event. Or maybe it was based on what he learned later, when the story was detailed to him. It didn't matter much what this nightmare was based upon; it was there, it was scary, and it was testing. And every time he would have this nightmare, he would wake up still breathing hard and his sheets sweaty, as if he endured the nightmare FOR REAL.
"WAKE UP"
That was his thought, the order he issued every time he wanted to get out of his nightmare.
He opened his eyes. He was back in his faculty, in the middle of the dreamers' classroom. As he sat on his bed, he was breathing heavily, his eyes wide open. Knowing this nightmare perfectly couldn't help the reactions it provoked in him. It was way too vivid, way too real. His breath was cooling slowly as he watched around him to see his comrades still asleep. He saw his professor coming his way. The old man made a sign with his hand to invite him to get out of the room.
"Mr Park." The old man said while shaking his head slowly. "You failed once more to get to the dream you were assigned. I fear that you will never be a hunter."
There was laughter in the dreaming room. Apparently, some students were not dreaming either, and they thought it was better to mock him. With a quick glance, the young man noticed that Jake Haraldson, the strongest hunter of the faculty, was smiling while pointing a finger at him.
"I'm sorry, Professor Svenson. I'm trying but…''
"Maybe you should go to the headmistress's office. We detected that you were awakened to the Dream Realm, but it seems that you can't do a single thing there. Maybe you should consider another path for your life."
It was hard to hear that. The Dream professor seemed to think that he wouldn't ever be a dreamer. Park Chung-Ho kept his head down and began to walk toward the headmistress's office. Someone placed her arm around his shoulders.
"You go to see my mother? Let me come with you, ok?"
Aislinn Nòttdottir. They were classmates for some years now, and had been friends for the same amount of time. She was skilled in every matter, especially in dream exploration. She had been seen as one of the youngest talents in the Dream Realm, and it was expected of her that she would be one of the best in this faculty, too. And it was already the case. She was kind, smart, and she cared about others. And yes, she was beautiful. With her constant smile, long blond hair, and deep green eyes. His heartbeat rose. She had started to have this effect on him for quite some time already.
"Oh…" he said, surprised, "yes. We can go together."
"You seem bothered, or worried, or maybe both."
"Professor Svenson wants me to meet the headmistress because he thinks I won't ever be able to dream."
He had never spoken about his constant nightmare. He thought that this faculty could teach him what he was missing and that he would be able to hide this part of him forever. But in three weeks, he had already been incapable of reaching the dream he was assigned. Nothing he had learned yet was of any help with his issue.
"Are you stressed about the dream you're assigned?"
"No… I'm not… It's just that… No one will understand, it's better I forget about it."
They were near the headmistress's office.
"Park… We're friends. You can talk to me, and you can trust me."
But the door opened, and Diane Nòttdottir watched the two youngsters in front of her.
"Professor Svenson told me you would be coming to my office, Park Chung-Ho." She looked at her daughter. "What are you doing here?"
"I've been walking with him, Mom…"
"Aislinn… when we're in this place…"
"Yes, Headmistress. Sorry, but you need to help him, please."
"Come in, please." The headmistress said to the young man.
"Yes, Madam. But can she… come with us too?"
Aislinn Nòttdir looked at her Friend with surprise.
"It's better if you hear my story from me. Right?"
They followed the headmistress to her office. The young man started to speak.
"Professor Svenson sent me to your office because he thinks I'll never be able to be a hunter. But, like everyone else, he ignores something about me. Every night. I mean, every single night. I have the same nightmare haunting me. I never dreamed of anything else. I never shared this before because I didn't know who to speak to about it. But I want to be a hunter!"
Diane Nòttdottir watched the young man with interest; her daughter was waiting for her reaction, but it was clear that she seemed to understand something that the young man didn't.
"I can help you with this, but I will need someone's help. This person can be Aislinn, as she is already aware of the situation."
"I'd rather not talk about this nightmare to no more people, so… yes, it's ok."
"Ok. Let's close the door. No one enters this place now. We will begin." Diane Nottdottir said, and her daughter locked the room.
"Wait, you said you can help, but what are you gonna do?" He asked.
"Hypnosis."
"Hypnosis?" he repeated.
"Yes. I have never heard of something like what you described, but with hypnosis, we might be able to check the dream you're experiencing and find the reason why you're trapped in it. My daughter is one of the most skilled dreamers around; she'll go into hypnosis with you."
The young man smirked.
"Do you think we can do this soon? I would love to get rid of this nightmare."
"Aislinn, close the door, please. I'll close the blinds."
Park Chung-Ho sat on one of the chairs in front of the headmistress's desk, and Aislinn sat at his side. Her mother was facing them. She started to speak, snapped her fingers, and Park Chung-Ho started to feel sleepy. He closed his eyes and felt it again. The heat, the smoke, the fire. He was still hearing Diane Nottdottir's voice behind the roar of the flames.
"You are back in this room, with the fire around you. Can you tell me what you're seeing?"
He watched carefully around him. Everything was like in his dream. He was back in this room. But there was something that wasn't like in his everyday nightmare. The flames weren't blocking the corridor on his right.
"Something is different." His voice was coming from his mouth without him thinking about talking. "There is someone in the corridor. I can't see a face, but there is someone."
"What is this person doing?"
"He's coming my way. He's dressed in black with a hood." His breath was going faster, his heart rate was going crazy, and his voice was shaking with fear.
Aislinn watched her mother.
"I'm going in," she said while placing her hand on Park Chung-Ho's. She closed her eyes and entered his dream. She was in the corridor, seeing the dark figure he had talked about as it entered the room. She spoke with that light voice he had already heard before. "This is just a memory, I'm at your side, this isn't happening for real this time."
The dark figure disappeared instantly, and the flames appeared in front of the corridor.
"Aislinn? Is that you?"
"I'm here. Let you drift again in your memory, we need to know what happened to help you, ok?"
The voice of the headmistress echoed again, calming, another snap, and the dark man was back above him. For the first time, he noticed something above his cradle. Feathers and glass beads were forming a circle, hanging above him. This circle seemed to be pulling the dark man to it.
"There is a dreamcatcher above me." He saw the man dressed in black drawing a knife and stabbing. A scream echoed from his mouth as the blade entered his flesh in his left shoulder.
"HE'S TRYING TO KILL ME!"
The knife went up and back again, cutting the dreamcatcher on its way. For the second time, he felt the cold of the blade, his vision blurred, and he only heard a cracking sound before all went dark.
When he opened his eyes, Park Chung-Ho felt 2 hands pressing his shoulder, and he saw the headmistress of his faculty staring at him.
He turned to his left and saw Aislinn there. She was the one touching his shoulder.
"What happened?" he asked. "I remember what I saw, but nothing else. It seemed that I couldn't remember anything more than what I said. Maybe I felt unconscious when this happened to me as a baby."
"I think you have seen enough," Aislinn said. "At least, I have a theory."
Diane Nottdottir looked at her daughter.
"What are you thinking about?"
"There was a Dreamcatcher. A black one. The second knife strike broke it, especially a glass bead. I think there are shards of this bead that entered the cut and are stuck in his shoulder. Emprisoning the memory of that day. It could easily be seen as a nightmare, right?"
"This WAS a nightmare." The young woman looked at her mother with surprise.
"What do you mean, Mom?"
The headmistress had a sorrowful look as she watched the young man facing her.
"The night your parents disappeared was the night that's haunting you. It's a nightmare that caused all this. The dreamcatcher you saw was a very powerful protection. But it imprisoned the nightmare in it, and the parts that are inside your shoulder still contain this whole night. That's what's been blocking you in your dreams since that day. We need to extract it, but it will be difficult. I will search for someone who can operate as soon as possible."
*****************************************************************************
The fire, the heat, the smoke.
"Here we go again." He said it out loud.
It felt like minutes, but it had been hours, considering what his cellphone indicated. He saw he had several messages from Aislinn.
"9.00 : let's meet at the library, ok?"
"9.30 : Are you up?"
"9.35 : Why aren't you answering ?"
"9.40 : Mom just called, we have to go to the hospital for you."
"9.43 : Coming to your dorm."
"9.46 : I called your phone; it seems to be in silence mode."
"9.47 : I know you're not reading, but I'll keep writing."
"9.50 : Come on… wake up!"
"9.55 : …"
He heard knocking at his door.
"Park Chung-Ho! Get out! We gotta go!"
The good point of having fallen asleep on his desk was that he didn't need to dress up.
"Sorry!" he said while opening the door.
Aislinn grabbed him out of his room.
"We've got to go now!"
*****************************************************************************
The scanner was displaying multiple fragments of a glass bead that was located in Park Chung-Ho's shoulder area.
"This will take a few hours, Diane, but we can do it." The doctor said.
"This operation will need an active dream from him, and it could be dangerous, this means that we should be here if possible."
"Of course. We have a special room for surgeries under a dream status."
The young man was only spectating the discussion, even if this was about him. Everything was going so fast that his head was spinning.
Aislinn was looking at him with a sad smile.
"Are you feeling ok?" she asked.
"Everything is going so fast. I'm lost. And I'll have to undergo surgery now. But afterall… this shoulder has always been kind of a burden…" He looked at her. "I just hope that everything is going to be ok."
"It will. We will watch over you. And after this, you'll be able to explore dreams like you wanted."
Park Chung-Ho stood silent as he watched Diane Nòttdottir talking with the doctor.
"When do you think this can be done?" She asked the surgeon.
"Is this an urgent matter?"
The young man stood up.
"It is. The more I wait, the more I'm trapped in my own memories."
"Get ready in two days, then. I'll organise everything for this operation."
Two days. It meant two nights.
Two more nights where he'll be in this burning room.
"Is it possible to do it earlier, like… today?"
Aislinn and her mother looked at the young man with disbelief.
"I can make it happen. But I need you to be fasting for twelve hours first."
"I haven't eaten anything since last night."
"Chung-Ho…" Aislinn started in a muted voice. "Are you sure?"
"Thanks to you and your mother, I've been able to project myself outside of the same nightmare over and over again. I have to break out of this cycle and start exploring dreams."
In his mind, a dark figure with a knife was drawing. "I'm gonna find him," he thought.
************************************
The smoke, the heat, the fire.
He was back in this place. For the last time, hopefully. He waited patiently. This was just a matter of time. Slowly, he felt the heat growing up, the smoke becoming thicker. The fire seemed to roar
"What the fuck is going on?" There was a twist in the Nightmare. This wasn't what he had lived so many times before.
"Wake up," he thought, but nothing happened. "Wake up!" Still nothing. What was going on?
This never happened before, and the heat was going higher; the air was becoming thicker and thicker. He knew that this situation was making him a bit anxious and that this wouldn't help the breathing. But he also knew that this was just a dream. He tried to relax and thought.
"It's just a dream, you know it perfectly; nothing will happen, just calm down and wait for it to disappear like every time." He pictured the dream. He knew how everything would go. But something wasn't like every time. First of all, he was unable to wake up like he usually did. Light and bright, Aislinn's voice echoed.
"You're under anaesthesia. You can't awaken from this dream like this. But don't worry, the surgery is almost done. That's what makes me able to manifest here."
He looked to his right at the wall of flames and saw the green eyes just behind it.
Suddenly, something fell from the roof. It happened two more times.
"I think those are the last shards of the bead that are extracted. This nightmare is gonna be destroyed." The young woman said.
The wall was cracking, the ground was shaking. The whole nightmare was collapsing.
"Follow me; you must get out as soon as possible!"
He got up and stared at the wall of flames.
"Hurry up and come through this fire. We need to get you out of this NOW !"
He knew this was possible, as he had already done it before. He closed his eyes, crouched to take a good breath with the least smoke possible, and then he jumped as far as possible. When he touched the ground, his right foot slipped, and he fell, banging his shoulder against the wall. He let a small sound come out of his mouth from the pain, and looked around him. This was the same dark corridor he had already seen before. He could still feel the heat behind him, but there was no fire in front of him, just a little less smoke. He could almost breathe normally again. Aislinn placed her hand on his wrist.
"Follow me," she said.
He listened to her, and they started to run in this dark corridor. Far away, there seemed to be some light.
"We must get there, but believe me, you need to never look behind; something is coming."
They rushed the fastest they could. But he could hear something chasing them. The sound of their footsteps was echoing in the corridor, but what was following them seemed like it was floating. It was as if the wind was blowing. He felt this thing was getting closer and closer.
They were almost at the end of this path; he could see that this light came from a garden. That was at that moment that he felt it. 2 hands on his shoulders, slowing him, and the voice echoing again
"TURN TO ME!"
His steps were harder and harder to make.
There was a sound behind him, the breath of someone or something.
It felt like going slower and slower, like he was trying to run in a kind of mud that was getting thicker and thicker.
He was exhausted, he couldn't go further, and the garden was just one meter away.
"Keep going forward!" As she entered the garden.
But he was pulled in his back, and he was exhausted; he couldn't endure it anymore. He closed his eyes as he felt himself being dragged in the dark mist. He fell backwards and thought he needed to face what was blocking him. He opened his eyes as Aislinn was screaming.
"Noooooooooooo !"
Her voice seemed to be getting further and further. He looked into the darkness and so 2 yellow eyes staring back at him. And the voice echoed in his head, and it was scarier than ever as he felt 2 hands pulling him to the darkness.
"I GOT YOU!"
Park Chung-Ho was falling into the Darkness with the Yellow Eyes staring at him. The garden's light was fading away.
"WAKE UP !" He yelled in his head.
Nothing happened.
Anxiety was growing in his brain. His breath was going quicker and quicker. He wasn't prepared for this. For years, he had been able to wake up when he wanted to, but since this dark voice appeared in his sleep, this wasn't the same. Something was off.
"YOU WANT TO GET OUT, DON'T YOU ?" The dark voice echoed again. "YOU'RE MINE NOW."
This was no ordinary nightmare. This voice was giving shivers down his spine. This truly was frightening. This fear was in HIM. It entered every piece of his body.
Park Chung-Ho was trembling as much as he was falling. He needed to do something, but what? He thought about his room at the dormitory, where he would lie on his bed and where he would wake up. He tried to build this picture in his head.
"Concentrate on it, build it in your mind and go there," he thought.
All of a sudden, the fall stopped as most of the darkness disappeared, but a kind of dark blurring remained everywhere. He was on his bed, the light was on, and a tall man was standing there watching him from the side of his bed.
He had long, greasy and dark hair falling without any order on the side of his head. He had angular features and was smiling with sharp teeth. The menacing and yellow eyes from the darkness were his.
"So this is where you live." his voice was calmer than in the darkness, but it was still menacing.
Park Chung-Ho tried to move, but his body wouldn't respond. Could he talk?
"Who are you ?" His lips moved, and he heard the sound of his voice.
The dark silhouette was looking at the wall and turned back to him with an evil grin on his face.
"Who am I? I am your fear, your sorrow, your doom... Whatever suits you best... Or worst! Hahahahaha!"
He drew a knife out of his pocket, and Park Chung-Ho felt the blade cutting his left shoulder, and a scream of pain came out of his mouth.
"I am a Nightmare..." he paused for a bit, maybe for a dramatic effect. "But not a regular one. You see this cut I made to your shoulder? It's very real. You would feel it if you could wake up. You could think this is your brain mixing things and giving you a reminder of THAT night. But this isn't your brain, this is real."
He began to walk back and forth in the small room, playing with his knife.
"You see, that's the fun part. You can suffer in a nightmare. And I think I'll have fun with this."
It seemed like a game for him. A torturing and twisted game.
Park Chung-Ho was in pain, but he had to win some time. He had to think, to find a way out of this nightmare. It didn't feel like he could move, but his brain was working hard to find a solution. Maybe this incapacity to move was due to the anaesthesia. Maybe the cut on his shoulder matched the surgery. This may have been due to the extraction of the shards. Maybe all this was a construction of his brain regarding his situation.
"Move your leg. Move your arm. Move a finger. MOVE !" But nothing happened. "Wake up! Wake up, Wake up WAKE UP !"
But nothing happened.
"It seems that you're trying to do something. I see your eyes moving as you concentrate. I see them filling up with despair as you can't do a single thing." The tall and dark figure was still smiling as he was pursuing his monologue. It seemed he had waited for this moment for quite some time. "You want to get out of this nightmare, but you can't move, right? You wanna wake up, but you're still here. HA HA HA HA HA HA! I told you. You're MINE now."
Park Chung-Ho felt like a bug on a Dark spider web. Powerless, unable to move. He was the prey, and the hunter was there, playing with him. His body refused to obey his orders, but his orders were coming from his mind. He could still think, and that seemed to be the way he ended up in his dormitory. He pictured it clearly. Maybe there was something he could do. It was dangerous, but it was still possible.
The Cradle.
The Wallpaper.
The Heat.
The Flames.
This was all drawing clearly in his mind. He had to go there again. He didn't have many places he could think of. Especially not while he was sleeping. There it came, the walls changed and began to burn. The flames were slowly taking control of the room. The corridor started to appear. The dark figure looked around and seemed impressed.
"Oh... you've got imagination and resources, I see! So you don't like your dormitory? You prefer this place?"
This wasn't enough to scare this menacing man. Park Chung-Ho needed MORE flames. He pictured more and more flames in his mind. This was HIS nightmare, and it was high time that he took control of it.
The fire grew bigger, and the sound was deafening. The heat became unbearable, but this was certainly the only way to get rid of this nightmare. But all of a sudden, the dark man pointed his hand at the wall, and closed it on the flames, and the fire vanished as if this small move had captured all the oxygen instantly.
"Is this your best? Is this all you're capable of? HA HA HA! Nice try, boy, but useless. I told you I wasn't any ordinary Nightmare. You think you can hurt me? You think that this is you controlling things here? You think that this is YOUR dream? You're totally helpless here, boy."
Park Chung-Ho pictured the top of a mountain, where only he could stand; everything else would be void. Everything went cold, the wind was blowing heavily, and his breath was really hard. There was too little oxygen here. The Dark Nightmare was floating in the air. His yellow eyes were like flames. Instead of falling, like he was supposed to, he tilted his head to the side with a smile and pointed a finger at the young man on the mountain top.
"I give you this, you try!"
Park Chung-Ho pictured himself as a cosmonaut, lost in space with his astronaut suit.
"Is this thing unkillable?" He asked himself.
He was fighting with his mind. The only thing that was still functioning. But he was exhausted, and even the void didn't seem to affect the Dark Man. Was his brain that powerless? He was trying to concentrate harder and harder, to materialise things better.
"Interesting," the nightmare said. "You think that this is how this works, right? That picturing places in your mind will change your dream... How funny. Those are mere projections from your mind; it's not going to affect me much. It can affect your brain, though. You are persuaded that this is real, and your body suffers from what you should suffer if it were real. But you didn't really move, you know. You're still in the same place."
The nightmare snapped his fingers, and everything changed again, and Park Chung-Ho was back in his baby room, without the flames. The black mist was still there, and the "Nightmare Man", this is what he was calling him in his head, was still there, his knife in hand. Park Chung-Ho let out 2 screams of pain when he felt the blade cutting him on the arm and shoulder. He was losing. The battle of mind, the battle of wit. It seemed like everything was lost.
"You see? This," the nightmare showed his blade, "you felt it, right? You're in pain. Your heartbeat is getting faster. Your brain is telling your body to feel the pain it sees in this dream. You see? And your body would show the marks of this pain if you were to wake up. This is how things work here."
Was there really no way out of this dream? Maybe when the anaesthesia wore off, he would see the light of the hospital and wake up. Was it coming soon, though? Or was all this just his mind trying to ease the fact that the operation didn't go the right way? Was he dying?
Out of the dark mist that was surrounding the room, he saw a glimmer. Something was changing. What would this mean? Was it the tunnel of light some people described in a near-death experience, or was it him waking up?
The door was opening. That was the origin of this glimmer. There she came, Aislinn Nòttdottir, it seemed that the light was coming from her.
"Let him go." She talked calmly, but this wasn't a request; it sounded like an order.
"Ooooooh..." The nightmare seemed really interested, seeing the young woman appear. "How did you find us, my dear? Mom let you come to me finally?"
Aislinn wasn't moving, nor was she talking. It seemed that she had already said it all, and there was no point in discussing it anymore. Her stare was sharp, straight in the Dark Figure's eyes; her arms were crossed. Those eyes, which seemed always smooth to Park Chung-Ho, were like weapons at this very moment. He never saw such a stare.
"So you want me to let him go... I haven't spied on you for nothing, my dear. I travelled back to this place for a thing. And I don't feel like giving up on it this easily. It's been almost twenty years since that day… He should have died too, you know. So I'm only here to finish the job."
While the nightmare was talking, Aislinn placed her hand on Park Chung-Ho's shoulder, but he felt no pain. It was quite the opposite; she was warm and reassuring. Then, she whispered to his ear.
"I'm sorry for all this."
The nightmare drew his knife again and was ready to strike when Aislinn kissed Chung-Ho on the lips, and he felt like something was going down his throat. Like a kind wind, warm and full of hope.
It felt like he was able to move again, but she was already up and turning her back to him, pushing the dark figure with both her hands. She looked over her shoulder and muttered
"See you."
When she looked at him, her eyes were not as light as usual, nor were they the same as the ones he had seen a few seconds ago. No. At this very moment, they were sad and full of tears.
She grabbed the nightmare, absorbing all the darkness in the room. The Nightmare disappeared with her.