When Julie Dreams

By Succubus

Julie hadn’t lived in the neighborhood for long.  A couple of months is all, but

from what she knew of it, she thought it to be charming.    The perfect little

town, it had seemed to her then, and still did.  The sun rose bright here, shining

across the even little lawns, glistening in the dew on prize winning roses, even

shining off a street that was cleaner by far than any Julie had seen before.  A

little slice of heaven:  that’s what this was.

An early morning walk was just the thing to clean out the cobwebs in her mind.  Yet another night had been filled with nightmares.  Tossing and turning, sweating and crying out, it had been ages since she’d had a decent night’s sleep. 

Dreams of escape and capture, dreams of walls of water swallowing whole all that Julie loved and held dear.  And always, each night, like a horrific guide, there was the man.  Sometimes as she ran, she saw him behind her, standing, smiling, his eyes reflecting light back at her.  Other times he took a more active part in her terror, placing his ice-cold hands upon her body, holding her in a grip that let her know she never would escape.  She’d smell his breath in her face; feel the coarseness of his shaven face against her cheek.

A chill passed through Julie and she picked up the pace, her eyes wide, trying to absorb enough beauty and light to banish forever the cold of his touch, of his steel gray eyes.  Birds sang from the trees she passed, in the distance dogs barked, and even further away, she could hear the happy sounds of children playing at the school.  All of these things were real, belonged to the real world.  Julie embraced them, turning her thoughts away from the darkness of her dreams.

Out of the streets she walked, and into the fields—acres and acres of lush green spread as far as the eye could see.  Emerald, waving in the winds, flowing velvet across the rolling hills:  this was the land of sugar.  The smell of dirt was pungent, cloying, and sweet, rising upwards with each step:  the smell of fertility, the smell of the earth pregnant and rich with its own life.  Life scurried before her feet, mice and lizards and mongooses, darting from beneath the cane, startling Julie, but making her laugh at her own foolishness.  

This was a land so full of life, so rich with its own bursting joy, that it made Julie feel foolish for her fears, ridiculous even.  How could she live in a world of such simple beauty and yet see only evil each time she closed her eyes, know only fear as she slipped into sleep?  Obviously, she thought as she looked around, the problem lies within myself.  Not that it was anything new--she’d been plagued by nightmares most of her life, spent countless nights locked tight in the arms of dread.

But lately…lately there was more to it than just the normal.  There was logic, for one thing.  Logic usually had no place in dreams.  One could start out running across a desert and end up swimming in an ocean.  Foes could become friends and strangers lovers in the world of dreams.  Once she even flew, high above the rooftops she’d gone soaring, looking down upon the world as a bird does. 

But recently, logic held tight in the land of dreams.  When she found herself running through the city streets with the nameless man grinning behind her, she had to run each and every block, she felt the pressure in her chest as her breath grew short, felt the burn in her legs as the tired muscles screamed for her to stop. 

There was no starting in one place and magically finding oneself in another.  If where she began was trapped in a room as water filled it, that was where she stayed, until either she escaped, or awoke to the sound of her own scream, the taste of saltwater in her mouth, burning her throat, stinging her eyes, the imagine of him still fixed firmly in her mind.  There was a realism that denied the brightness of a new day.

And most of all, there were his eyes, always just beyond her eyelids.  No matter where she went throughout her day, no matter how bright the sun, all she had to do was close her eyes once more and there he was, looking into her.  

She picked up her pace, striding now almost with purpose, walking deeper into the cane.  Blue sky could be seen shining above, but that was all: the cane blocked out the rest of the world, swallowed it in its green mouth.  The waving stalks became a maze, a dimension of their own as she wandered through them.  

The wind was picking up, whipping the stalks now, back and forth, almost lashing their razor-sharp edges against her.  Everywhere she looked seemed the same.  A small amount of panic coiled in her gut, but Julie pushed it down.  She turned herself around, and started walking back the way she had come.  And walked and walked.  Problem was, the cane went on and on. 

She was certain she should have come out of it already, certain that it should have ended, spitting her back out into her charming neighborhood.  But in each direction, she saw only the waving green stalks, now taunting her.  Taller it seemed, she thought for a moment, but that was impossible, and so it became yet another thought she brushed aside.  

Julie walked faster, and faster, damn near jogging now.  The panic wasn’t so far at bay anymore, it threatened to reach up and grab her by the throat.  She had to get out of here.   Her walk turned to a jog, which in turn became a full out run.  She started to yell hoping somewhere someone would hear her.  She still felt slightly ridiculous; her neighborhood could be on the other side of this very row, for all she knew.  How foolish to be lost 20 ft from civilization.  But the fear of being found foolish was giving way to the much greater irrational fear of all this green, swallowing her whole. 

She ran until she could run no more, tears flowing freely from her eyes, her shouts of “Hello” now desperate cries for “Help!”  Finally she collapsed, in the moist rich dirt, at the foot of the cane, burying her head in her hands and crying.  

Once, when she was a child, she’d been lost like this before.  Walking home from school, she’d made a wrong turn and found herself in a strange land, to her eyes.  Everything had become ominous: the people she passed, the tall buildings on each side.   Eventually her mother had found her, only two blocks from home, crying her eyes out, curled up on the sidewalk.  She remembered sobbing, just knowing she would never see her mommy and daddy again, never play with her toys; never sleep in her safe little room.  As Julie sat amid the cane, the same feelings came back to her, the same sense of loss, the same fear that never again would she see her quaint little house, sleep in her soft bed, kiss the man she loved.  She cried her eyes out there in the dirt.

Then after a time, the world came back, her composure came back, and Julie rose, once more determined to find her way out of the maze of sugar cane.    She pushed the little girl inside away, the woman took charge; she would get out of here, it was simply a matter of walking in one direction.  Eventually the fields would end, even if she had to walk half a day to find that end.  She’d get out of here, damn it, and then tonight she could tell Rick the story and they could both laugh at her foolishness.  Sure, she thought, feeling a little embarrassed over her fit of tears and panic, time to act like a grown up. 

The day was warming as Julie set off once more.  The wind, while whipping the stalks of cane around, didn’t quite reach down to her level, and so the heat was becoming worse, an oppressive moist heat.  The smell of the earth became stronger as the sun warmed the land, filling her nose, almost to a point where she could taste it.  On she walked, and on, the first hour going by in a green haze.

It wasn’t until the heat of midday had fully sunk in that Julie first noticed the house.  She’d been following the same row all day, still surprised that she had yet to reach an end.  The light dress she’d worn that morning was soaked with her sweat and ripped in a dozen places by the reaching fingers of the sugar cane as she passed. 

First there appeared the wood slats of the building’s sides, worn from time and weather to a dull gray color.  A few more steps and she could see the whole side of the building.  There was one broken window in it, with complete darkness beyond.  A small shiver ran down her despite the heat as her mind flashed back to one of many nightmares where such windows existed in buildings only meant for her horror.   Slowly Julie approached the house.

A small porch was built off the front, half of it sagging with age and wear.  No door could be seen, nothing but another black hole like the window from the side.  All was dark within the house. 

“Hello?” Julie called out, sure that the place was deserted, but not wanting to walk in and find some homeless people shacked up inside. 

The wind whistled through the cane in response, and that was the only sound she heard.  The porch didn’t look too stable as she mounted the steps, the left side definitely wanted to reach back down to the ground, but she stuck to the right, careful of where she placed her feet, and made it to the doorway.  She called once more to be certain the place was empty, and then she walked in. 

The darkness was complete inside despite the windows and open doorway.  Light simply did not reach this far.  She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, waiting for the shadows to gain some recognizable shape.   The first thing she looked for was a sink—she was dying of thirst, there had to be some sort of water around here.  Something resembling one was to her right, so slowly, carefully, she stepped towards it, mindful that the floor beneath her may not be very solid. 

Arriving safely across the room, she found a moment of hope amid this day of self inflicted screw-ups:  it was a sink.  Holding her breath, she turned the tap, and out came water, cold against her fingers.  She brought a mouthful to her lips and felt the relief of both thirst and worry.  She actually smiled for the first time in hours.  The ice cold water was refreshing; she splashed it across her face and chest, cooling herself down after her hours of hiking in the humid heat. 

Wiping at her eyes she turned to view the rest of the ramshackle structure.  There were things lying about, blankets, it looked like, and an old cot in one corner.  Once again Julie worried that someone was using the place—she’d hate to be caught alone in here—But her curiosity was too great.  She picked up one of the blankets and tossed it out of her way.  What a mess.  She grabbed at yet another pile of clothes or blankets to toss them aside as well, but they wouldn’t budge.  She felt around with her hands, trying to figure out just what it was.  As her hands touched hair, she jumped back, a small noise escaped her lips, and she was running, heading for the daylight.

She got two full strides in before the floor beneath her collapsed.  She felt the board beneath her foot give way, and knew that moment of panic everyone feels as they realize they are falling.  One board followed another and down she went, her ankle twisting painfully, old nails cutting into her as she slipped right through the floor, coming to land in a pile of muck and rocks beneath the old house. 

More boards gave way and she could hear the creaking groaning sound of the house as it seemed like half of it collapsed around her, a few boards hitting her on the head as she curled into a ball.  She heard silence then, and tried to look around.  A little light filtered through the boards, and Julie could make out what was left of the floor above her.  Through the hole that she had made, she could see even further off the roof of the old house.    

Julie cursed, now certain this day was just simply doomed to be her day in hell.  Pushing boards aside, she tried to stand, but fell again as soon as she tried to put any weight on her injured ankle.  Tears filled her eyes once more.   She looked around her, trying to see if there was some way to crawl out of here, and that was when he first noticed that she was not alone.

The place was full of rats, their little eyes staring at her greedily, their whiskers twitching with her scent.  The panic she had fought down all day successfully now rose full-fledged to the surface and Julie screamed—a real scream, that half strangled cry that comes out in bursts, not the one that Jamie Lee Curtis made so famous. 

She struggled harder, reaching for the boards above her, desperate to escape, but each board she grabbed merely collapsed along side its brothers, frustrating her every attempt.  And the rats were coming closer, curious now, wanting to smell her better, wanting to get a better look at their guest.  Julie sobbed in frustration, falling once more as the board she held herself up against also collapsed. 

She turned back to the rats, watching them as they were watching her.  They squirmed and crawled, making tiny squeaks, wrinkling their noses at her, their eyes flashing with red as the light caught in them.  There were dozens of them, all around her, and as she watched, she realized something else.  Not all of them were intent upon her; some were busily chewing away on other things.

Then she realized what it was they were chewing on.  Littered beneath the house were bodies.  Some looked whole, or mostly whole, with clothing on and faces still intact, while others were indistinguishable, just a mass of rotten flesh, a few bones sticking out here and there, and still others were nothing but cleaned bones, chewed to a shiny whiteness.  All this was only what she could see very near her.  The blackness stretched around her indefinitely, but her imagination was more than happy to supply a likely image of what the rest of the crawl space looked like. 

Julie covered her mouth with her hand, slapping back either a scream or her vomit—she wasn’t sure which.  Frantically she reached for the floor again, but she couldn’t reach anymore of it, all that she could had already broken away in her attempts, leaving her effectively trapped beneath the house, her only company that of rats and corpses. 

She screamed out again, calling for help, praying that someone would hear her, hoping even for the vagrants she once dreaded running into.  And then another thought entered her mind.  How did all these bodies get here?  The answer was obvious: someone had put them here.  And if someone put bodies here, then they would be back.  And they would find her. 

New life energized Julie with this thought.  She began to crawl, untangling herself from the boards and rotten wood, trying to avoid looking at the corpse nearest to her, its half-eaten face seeming to leer at her with its one remaining eye.   There had to be a way out of here, and her life depended upon her finding it.    She didn’t get very far though, for as she quickly learned, this space was enclosed, the walls to it much more recent and sturdy than those of the rest of the house.  Tears and mud coated Julies face, but still she beat against the boards with her fists, trying to escape. 

Slowly up crawled one of the rats, too curious to remain away any longer.  Sniffing and wiggling its little whiskers, it reached out for a taste. 

The sharp pain in her calf surprised yet another yell from Julie.  She lashed out with her hurt foot and kicked at the nasty creature, but it only stepped back a little, its greedy eyes letting her know that it was only a matter of time before she was but another snack for him and his pals. 

Julie’s cries were more like the constant mewling of a kitten now; she jerked her head left and right, watching all the rats around her, guarding herself from their sharp teeth.  Another snuck up on her left, but she managed to hit him with a small board before he could have a taste.  Even Julie knew it was all only a matter of time.  Closer they came, and closer still, more of them arriving, smelling the freshness of her blood, savoring the smell of fear all over her.  Julie squirmed herself back against the little wall as far as she could, a board in each hand, readying herself to do battle for as long as she could.

And that is when she heard it.  Far off in the distance, she heard a whistling sound, growing ever closer.  Something about it though, gave her another chill; something about it was eerily familiar.  She knew the tune, but couldn’t place it.  Julie swatted another rat away almost absently as she listened, trying to figure out what it was about the tune….

A moment came back to her mind, not a memory of truth, but one of dream.  She remembered being in a room, in her dreams, she remembered this tune, being whistled as it was now, and she remembered….

A step against the boards, and then another, as Julie pushed herself as far back into the shadows as she could.  The whistling stopped.  A long moment of pause had Julie holding her breath, and then, slowly, she saw him look into the hole in the floor, leaning over it.  His eyes met hers and as they did, she saw again that shade of gray; she saw the light mirror back at her from their depths.

His smile was genuine as he said to her:  “Welcome Julie, I’ve been waiting a long time for you.”