Forsaken Dreamscape (Nevermor #2)

Chapter One

Forsaken Dreamscape

Chapter One

LONDON, 1877

1

It was the sound of screaming that drew Wren back from the outer nothingness.

Peering through the dark of her room, she could hear nurses bustling down the hallway, muted as nuns in their soft-soled shoes.  Shadows of hulking orderlies played along the bricks as they fought with the shrieking inmate in the cell across the hall.  A screeching door gave way to tears, and the patient’s shadow flailed about, her limbs slinging violently in all directions.

Wren lay still in her own cell, and after a few moments, the screaming faded in the distant corridors.  The manic patient had been silenced, unconscious now; off to dreamland and the bloodletting chambers.  The ward was quiet once again.  Wren kept herself quiet as well.  She did not want to be next.  Instead, she rolled over and pulled the thin blanket up to her chin.

I must try to sleep, she told herself, but she never did sleep – not anymore.

Perhaps it was impossible that she did not sleep at all, even though she was convinced she did not, but she was even more certain that she did not dream.  She could not remember the last dream she’d had – not a sensation of wonder, impossible fantasy, or whisper of a kiss – especially now that she was here in this place.  This discouraged her, and at that thought, she felt trouble brewing in her stomach until she could no longer lay still.

Wren sat up on the thin mattress, through which every spring of the iron frame twisted into her back.  She reached beneath the bed to retrieve the journal she’d been allowed to keep, along with a blunt pencil.  It was her only possession within the stark room that could offer her solace.  The pages would be her confession.

Turning to a fresh page, she began a new entry of her thoughts, though she did not know the date.

Once again it has been a night without dreams, she wrote, and therefore no nightmares, but I awaken with the same fear.  I fear that…

Her hand hesitated on the page.  She thought of what she would write next – thought of Witherspoon reading it – and she could not bring herself to go further.  She closed the journal, put it away with the dust, and rested back against the bed in resignation.

But her fear did not leave her.

Wren’s inability to dream kept her constantly troubled, for if she could not dream, then she could not hope to get back to the place where she belonged.

I may not find Nevermor again, she thought sadly.  It was not the first time.

Wren had never forgotten it, that secret land beyond the sea of dreams.  She longed for it daily, but could not get back, no matter how hard she wished or how often she tried.  It could only be found through dreams, after all, but since Rifter had brought her back from that place as a last favor, it had been impossible for her to create her own dreams, let alone see that sandy beach where she had first washed ashore.

Was it her own fault that she could not find that world?  If she'd ever sought escape, she needed it now more than ever.  Never in all her life – despite what other fears she’d had – had she ever imagined that she would be locked away in an asylum, accused of a debilitating madness.  Then again, she’d not predicted most of the details of her life beyond her father’s house.

She remembered the first days here, crammed in a cell with many other girls – some as timid and frightened as she was, others explosive – and yet they were all the same in the eyes of their captors.  They were faceless and less than human.  They were a collection of pretty dolls with long hair and glass eyes, meant to be observed and occasionally toyed with.