LeJeune Media

 

 

Chapter 6

“CHARLES, I KNOW you didn’t expect to ever see me again.”

Charles said nothing.

“You shouldn’t have left me with him, Charles. He was not very nice. I didn’t learn much in the way of virtue from him.”

Charles said nothing.

“An ant pile of lies behind you, Charles. You killed my family. You stole me from my home. And all because you wanted your youth back.”

Charles turned away. He felt he was dreaming. He’d woken up from that dream, that terrible nightmare, but it had all come true. Had it been true in his dream?

“I am what you wanted to be, Charles. You should love me.”

“No, I shouldn’t.”

“You created me.”

“I know that, but there is another alive as well. And he is good. He isn’t evil like you. And I believe in him now more than I believe in you.”

“Evil is such a sting! Why don’t you just call me Commissioner?”

Charles could say nothing. Everything Cain was saying was true. But despite his raging guilt, a small voice inside him kept telling him to keep it together.

“Just remember, Charles, your family’s life depends on your keeping this secret. This dark, shadowy secret.”

“I know,” Charles said, a finality in his voice.

“I know you hate me, Charles. I know you curse the day you did what you did. But what is done is done. And you hating me only puts hate in yourself. You should enjoy the ride more, Charles. It is a carefree life over here on the dark side. It is what you wanted, no?”

 

Chapter 7

 

TIME PASSED in Chase’s world. While the music in the distance was becoming more and more tolerable.

The axe still whistled. The logs still thumped to the ground. But the passing of time had numbed him, and he grew tired. His soul began to scream for companionship. He simply yearned to smile and laugh and eat with others again. Having endured a thankless life, he now saw God, if he saw him at all, as a distant void. God had walked out the door a long time ago, right out the door with his caretaker. It wasn’t God he was wanting.

Despite his desire to be amongst them, however, his slim attachment to Budduh’s teaching kept him alone at the cabin. Perhaps that bubbling in the valley was really a poison waiting for him, he’d think, even though he wanted to hate and disregard everything his friend had taught him. Even the mountain hovering over them was menacing, a chilly frown that made Chase uneasy.

Still though, the music was becoming more and more inviting by the day.

Though Chase assumed he lived in secret, he did not go unwatched. All isolated individuals draw a certain attraction from others. His interest in them was reciprocated in that they too watched him from afar and monitored his daily endeavors. They observed the figure chopping wood on the distant bluff, a cozy clearing that was partially obscured by wild grasses and fallen trees. At night the natives hailed the smoke rising from his cabin’s chimney as if it were a pagan god, the loudest ones singing a drunken hymn. The organized chanting Chase could never distinguish was often their collective plea for him to join them.

On one night in particular, after Chase had feasted on four fish from the stream, he rested comfortably against a big rock. The satisfaction of a full belly and a full axe assault on the wood earlier made him sleepy. He knew he would not watch them long. The partying had just begun, but it was loud enough already. From behind heavy eyes, Chase noticed the torches and moving figures coalescing into a strange train formation, like a row of ants weaving between the houses and onto the city’s fringes, where they commenced a unified circle dance. Chase shook his head and laughed.

“Always up to something new, those folks,” he said interrupting the coming dream. He walked back into the cabin for the night. The night passed, and Chase slept well.

***

The birds, in all their song, ushered in the next morning, and Chase grudgingly opened his eyes. He had already found that no matter how intent he was on sleeping late, that raking sound of the birds wouldn’t allow it. Thus this new day was no different from what it had been on most days—crawl blindly from his bed, stumble to the water jug, and wash away the caking of crust that had sealed his eyes in the night. He walked over to the rocking chair by the window to loosen the cobwebs and to ponder the collage of dreams he’d experienced in the night.

The haze in his head was particularly thick today. Chase couldn’t shake the queer feeling inside. Those images he had seen in his sleep, so horribly clear in the world of dreams, eluded him now. Yet the feeling was there. Even as the details escaped him, he was convinced that something terrible had happened in his sleep. His grasp of it was sure and then it would escape him again. As certain as the sunrise, as misty as the morning fog, it continued to elude him, making him dizzy trying to fix it straight.

He simply put it out of mind though, when a flock of dark birds landed on and around a log of wood he had left for today’s chopping. The birds mucked about for a moment as usual, pecking around for loose grubs, and then, finding nothing in the sterile dirt, flew away. Chase wondered why they bothered coming back every morning, always with fresh ambition as if some new revelation would be found in his footprints.

“I wish I could be that optimistic,” he said to no one, resting his head back on the rocker. He dozed….

The flying black dots were swallowed by the white sky only for a moment before they began to fly back toward the cabin. Hmmm…they never come back. The birds landed on the log again, this time with their tails up. Their undersides were reddish, and Chase thought they were pleasant to look at. They hopped around for some time, quiet and unassuming.

Then from nowhere it seemed, a larger bird swooped in and landed among them. At once the colony of birds chirped irritably. The large bird just glared at them. The other birds quieted, curiously moving toward each other and into a line, encircling the log.

It was, for the world, just like what he had seen the night before with the townspeople.

Chase was mystified by the cultic movement of the birds. Around and around they went like a tribe around a campfire, dotting the dust with their feet. When they started a strange, low chirping, the large bird broke the line and flapped up onto the log. The bird was sleek and black, but with the light revealing beautiful hues of purple, blue, and green. The little birds continued to dance in a circle as the black creature teetered on the log above them.

Suddenly the black bird jerked its head, right at Chase, its yellow eyes searing a hole through the window. Its head hammered down on the wood, spewing chips onto the ground. One of the smaller birds fell with the strike, as if the beak in fact had connected with the bird instead. At its fall, two other birds attacked it, tore it apart, and commenced again to the dance. Chase looked back at the dark creature standing like a king, his glowing yellow eyes staring coldly at Chase. This can’t be one of them. The bird’s glower was cryptic, death-like in its grip of Chase’s whole body.

Then the bird struck the log again. And again, a bird fell.

And again, it was ripped apart by the others.

The stabbing beak raged then, like a hot and heavy axe in the hands of an angry man. Chase could see himself at the grind, but it was the bird’s rage that continued to fall bird after bird, life after life. The bird looked at Chase only for a moment, only to commit to the slaughter again. Again. And again. The bird’s dagger-beak grew more vengeful with every descent, its eyes brimming with yellow malice. Up and down, down and up went its shiny head, the beak tearing the wood to bark and sap that spewed into the air, forming an ominous cloud of dust and down, engulfing the mad creature and its wooden victim.

Then the bird turned into an axe.

…The arm of the rocking chair had been frail already, but the weight of Chase’s body broke it off clean. He had been dozing. A dream. A midmorning dream exactly like the one he’d had last night.

It was the nightmare he couldn’t retrieve when he’d woken up.

“Twice,” he said. “The same dream. The same bird. The same axe.”

He was disoriented. He maneuvered his cramped body to the window and looked outside. There was nothing. Nothing but the log and the pilings that supported it. Chase dropped himself back into the chair and sighed.

“Get up, before you go to sleep and have the same dream again.”

Shaking the dreams was difficult though…

Sometimes they come back…

…Even as he drank some water to clear the fog…

…it came back…

…he was certain of something menacing he couldn’t quite pinpoint…

…he came back…

…he came back…

…he’s back…

And he’s out to tear you apart.

Maybe Chase was already out the door before the cup clanked on the wooden floor. Stumbling over the steps in his haste toppled him hard to the ground. With dirt on his face, he surveyed the ground, flicking away debris, searching for the eye he had seen in two separate dreams.

It was just a dream.

He stood. He knew where the eye would be.

If it was a dream, then Chase had to answer the truth of what he now set his eyes on. The log was beaten up, apparently by the beak of a bird in the night. Beneath the markings, there it was.

The eye drawn in the dirt. Just as it had been in his dreams.

“Like a fossil in stone,” he said, still not believing.

The young man felt his entire world sink again. Not only was life and all of its reality against him, but the monsters in his dreams were coming for him, realer and more vengeful than any in a wakeful state, and they were drawing pictures for him in the dirt to mock him.

He breathed. It was difficult. A fond thought came to mind, a strange time for it, of him and his twin brother swaddled in blankets on the couch. Mama had always stayed near, nursing them with bodily nourishment, but more importantly, that which is spiritual and good and true. Chase knew what love was because of his mother. He knew compassion and humility because of her. Even now, years after that day when he was sick, just five but aware beyond his years, he could remember her singing them to sleep. She sounded like an angel, and she’d sing about one of their brothers who was no longer with them. She’d cry, but she’d smile too, because, she told the twins, “Your brother is in a better place, watching out for us.”

“No one’s looking out for me, Mama,” he said, walking to his axe. “Not you. And certainly not any brother I’ve never even seen.”

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***Dream Chase is the wholly reimagined version of The Final Chase (out of print, but used ones still circulating) and the author’s preferred version of the story. It is better, and frankly, more readable. Please consider this as you make your purchasing decision.