A Nightmare at Dream World

Chapter Twelve - Torture Land

As soon as Alora and Bull emerged from out Halloween Land's exit were they met with the main road of The Dark Park which circled all the way around Nightmare Castle. And upon that road was there a river of evil Spirits, all traversing the busy street in every direction. Large Fiends and small Fiends, Fiends that looked like mangy animals and even more that looked like unrecognizable and surreal monsters filled the roadway. And tethered to these Fiends were there numerous frightened and terrified children being forced against their will to follow the evil Spirits.

At first Alora and Bull just stood there watching the Fiends rush past. Then they saw the enormous castle looming at the center of The Dark Park just behind the rushing river. That's where they needed to get to. But how? As they looked at the giant castle they could tell they were at its rear. They needed to get to its entrance on the other side of the park. They were going to have to navigate their way in and around the rushing river to get to it.

A loud roar erupted from behind them. It was then that they realized that just because they had left Halloween Land behind did not mean that they were free of its dangers, Samhain was still after them. Slowly the children turned their heads to look back into the park. Samhain was running at them with all of his might, his shoeless pale feet slamming the ground with each stomp shaking the ground like an earthquake.

Quickly the children pulled their hoods over their heads and rushed into the crowd of Fiends and broken children and hid amongst them, moving with the flowing masses like salmon swimming upstream with the rest of the fish. It worked. Samhain lost them in the crowd and all he could do was stand there at the entrance of the Halloween Land theme park looking around for them with much anger and confusion.

After losing Samhain the children found that they were having trouble keeping up with the rushing crowd. Not only that but hiding amongst a horde of Fiends did not seem like that great of an idea. Lucid had told them to avoid large crowds, and it didn't get much larger than this one. Most of the evil Spirits ignored them but a few seemed to sense something was amiss and were smelling the air as if they were trying to find it. Alora and Bull didn't know if they were being paranoid or not but they were starting to feel weak again. These Fiends could easily be feeding on their essence. They had to get off of the main street before one of the numerous evil Spirits realized that they were hiding amongst their ranks and fast.

The children began looking about their surroundings trying to find a place to escape. There had to be somewhere. Then, Alora remembered what Lucid had said. Stick to the alleyways and corridors she advised. So, Alora started looking around the park and found one. It was a dark alley that appeared to be empty situated between two shops. She then pointed the alleyway out to Bull who nodded in agreement. In and around the moving crowd did the children make their way until they finally reached the alleyway and quickly rushed into its shadows.

"That was insane," Bull said as he was hunched over onto his knees trying to catch his breath.

"I can't believe we survived," Alora added as she did the same. She then started to laugh.

Hearing this Bull started to laugh as well though he did not know why. "Why are you laughing?" he asked.

"Because," Alora began as she straightened up. "I see why you like horror movies and roller coasters now."

"You do?" Bull said, now even more confused. "Why's that?"

"We survived," Alora answered. "We were just chased by crazy villagers. Chased by zombies and monsters. Then the freaking Spirit of Halloween tried to feed on us. And we're still alive."