THE NIGHTMARE WITHIN: Chapter 1

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Maury regained consciousness covered in blood.  For a moment, he wondered where he was and what had happened, but then an image flashed through his head--Mr. Freakshow's broad forearm flying into him, sending him crashing into a wall.  Maury's head cleared, and he picked himself off the floor.  He checked his body for injuries, but only noticed a few scrapes and bruises, nothing fatal, no broken bones.  He took in his surroundings and realized he was still in Mr. Freakshow's enclosure.  Bloody pools dotted the floor and walls.   He touched his face and felt a patch of dried blood from a shallow gash on his cheekbone.

The floor had shallow grooves dug into it.  They were widely spaced and didn't make sense.  Maury spread his fingers over some of them and suddenly understood that they were from the claws of one of the dreams.  He shuddered as he pulled back his hand and looked at his surroundings in a new light. 

At some point during his unconsciousness, the glass wall had been shattered.  Glass he and Gage thought would never break.  So much for state of the art.  An odor permeated the air.  Soured milk?  Or something far worse?  Most likely something he didn't want to consider.  With the door to Mr. Freakshow's enclosure thrown wide and the glass wall shattered, anything could have happened when he was unconscious.  He approached the shattered glass clinging to the frame of the enclosure.  He didn't want to look outside the room, but he had no other choice.  Careful not to cut himself, he braced himself and slowly leaned his head through the opening.

At the far end of the hall, a squat creature the size of a German Sheppard sat on four spidery legs.  It was tugging at the remains of what once could have been a person.  The lighting was too dim to tell from this distance exactly what the nightmare was toying with. 

Just outside the door, something had pulled up floor tiles and tooled sharp chunks of concrete from underneath, making the hallway look like a potholed street in a sketchy neighborhood.  The overhead fluorescent lights hung lopsided, and their ballasts gave off an occasional dying flicker.  Maury stuck to the shadows near the wall as he left the enclosure.  Judging by the condition of the hallway, he had to get to a phone as soon as possible.  Mr. Freakshow had obviously set the dreams free.  He couldn't imagine all the chaos they would cause once free of Lucidity's walls.

When he was close enough to see the sparse green hair on spider-creature's legs, Maury could also see that it was tearing apart Peter.  Of course, Peter-what's-his-name.  The concessions' manager.  Maury had never really met the guy.  He was just someone who ran a cash register and little more. 

"Peter…" Maury whispered.  He still couldn't remember his last name.  He approached the spider-creature cautiously, the scientist in him curious about the natural mechanisms of this dream.  One of Peter's arms was missing and the other was a stunted stub just above the elbow that continued to stubbornly shake with life like a deflating balloon.  One eye was bruised shut, while the other remained stationary.  His pupil was a distorted cloud shape.  His legs were intact, but the dreams had attacked his groin area, and a good deal of it was gone, making it appear as if his legs were literally as high as his ribs.

Maury didn't know how Peter was still alive.  There was no reason for it.  The remains of his limbs twitched randomly, the last vestiges of life spastically leaving him.  The spider-creature growled at Maury, and it hunkered down on its thin legs, burying its velvet fangs into its prey. 

Peter was beyond help.  Maury needed to get to a phone.  He left the Nightmare Wing, but stopped at the hand-carved railing that encircled the marble stairs.  The foyer was in shambles below.  Smoke swirled from small fires.  The concessions stand was in tatters.  He ran down the steps, and when he picked up the phone, it didn't have a dial tone.  If only he had his cell phone with him.  The wooden front doors were open--one hung at an odd angle on its bent hinge--and sunlight lit the opening like a waiting mouth.  The museum of dreams was destroyed.  Empty.