The Horror In The Mind

racy was a dreamer. Years ago she had found the Elevator of Rapid Eye Movement, in a horrific dream involving the grotesque Coventry Polytechnic. She was fleeing for her life from a score of becardiganed, quavering half human beasts. Whithered eyes stared out from behind gold rimmed spectacles. Ectoplasmic slime dripped from their ovoid skulls. As they chased her through a Technicolor polyscape, mucus oozed between their hellish mandibles and their talons clicked as they sliced the air behind her. Hot breath pregnant with the mortifying smell of dead flesh flashed over her undefended neck. She ran blindly, not caring where she ran, until she ran into the abominable 'B' block, lair of the satanic legal department. The creatures outside howled at the fungoid moon, which cast poisonous shadows over Tracy. Partly digested vomit was hurled at the melted glass in the windows, and as it sent pseudopods dripping to the ground they barked out their humour. Any fate Tracy found in the nightmarish B block was many times worse than that which they could inflict.

Tracy turned round and surveyed he stupefying scene. Necromantic posters adorned the diseased walls, putrid smells wafted down the glutinous stairs. Then the slithering started, coming down the stairs, slowly as if it knew there was no where to run, no where to hide. But wait, there, a light, a wholesome light. She ran to it and the doors of the Elevator clanged shut in front of whatever loathsome being hunted her.

She panted and regarded the control panel; their were three murmuring buttons. Ground floor, Room of Divine Morpheus. She hardly glanced at the last unnamed button, as she punched the middle in glee. For she had heard of this room, long ago from a hippie who said it led to a rainbowed paradise, the land of dreams itself.

The Elevator descended slowly, as if it had a long way to go through the strata of subconsciousness. It jerked to a halt and the doors parted, Tracy whipped her hands in front of her face as a blinding, pulsating light flooded into her small sanctum. Gingerly she lowered her protective hands and gazed into the temple, two miscarried puddings gestured to her and inside her head she heard words of welcome and congratulations. She stepped out of the Elevator onto a coldly flagged floor, economic standards festooned the walls and on the table in front of her lay a dagger, a pouch of food, a flask of water and a book of elementary economics. She passed the test of the priests of the dream lands and they beckoned her forward to take up her gifts and to descend the Escalator of the Somnambulists to a world of fantastic adventure. She went down into the dark.

All this occurred before I knew her of course. When she was brought before me at the Gosford Green Asylum, she was a walking nightmare. Her eyes stared unblinking at me as she feared closing them, and she begged me to give her drugs to keep her awake. For she said that if she slept she would die horribly. The police had taken her screaming from a chemists shop, where they had refused to serve her. I had my orderlies take her to a quiet room where I could examine her at my leisure.

After a few moments with her I became fascinated with and convinced that she was telling me the truth, even though she was certifiably insane. She told me the tale of finding the Elevator, then she paused before going on, as if summoning up the courage to take the plunge.

Tracy started to visit the dreamlands as often as possible, exploring its fantastic cities and peculiar forests. She became addicted to the land and she started to take drugs and read economic books to increase the time she could spend dreaming. She lost her job, her friends shunned her and she developed into a slobbering wreck, hardly eating, just trying to sleep.

She wandered from bilious Birmingham to the more conducive, doom laden Coventry. Here her dreams became so much clearer and she was mesmerised by their beauty and the compulsion.

She slept most of the day in an abandoned cinema whose decayed railway carriage like auditoriums encouraged even more delirious dreams.

Then came a corrupt night, the malignant stars shone through a hole in the roof, she slept, she dreamt. She dreamt she was in the cinema on the stage by a ragged screen. Malformed things were watching her from the maggoty seats. Slowly the house lights rose and she saw the nightmare beasts of the Economican. Light glittered from their gold rimmed glasses and drool encrusted fangs. They chittered in their glee and started slowly to approach the stage, cloven hooves raising zephyrs of dust, claws wrenching stuffing from the decayed chairs. This time they would feast on her luscious flesh.

She fled and found her beloved Elevator, but in her panic to flee the abominations she pressed the nameless third button blindly.

The doors opened and she was back in the cinema, a cinema which had changed. Mucus clung in long strands to the pillars and chairs, detritus covered the floor, a blasphemous beating came from the walls. Then she saw the torn and dissolved cadavers of those who wanted to rend her flesh. She sighed in relief, but then thought something had killed them! The slithering started, from the dark recessed corner. A disgusting amorphous creature like some diabolical amoeba emerged and spat out a drained body.

Greasy tentacles reached out to suck and tear. She ran back to the Elevator but in its place a mildewed wreck remained. Father Barrister always got his prey. Behind him, his slaves, the solicitors licked their double row of razor sharp teeth scratched their dorsal fins with mutated flippers and hopped from leg to leg in joy.

Tracy screamed and searched for the light of consciousness and struggled up to wake, panting on sweat drenched rags. From then on she wouldn't sleep, for she knew that the monsters would kill her dream self and in her weakened state it would kill her physical self as well. No help was coming from the dreamlands, it was barred from her, so she searched for drugs to keep her awake, gradually getting mind numbingly tired. Barely able to stagger, in her hallucinatory state she started to see the shark like solicitors out of the corner of her eyes, lurking in shadows, waiting for her to sleep.

I left her then to get some drugs for her to stay awake. When I returned she was dead, her body debauched ad cracked open. She must have slept!

The doctor left, her eyes closed involuntarily and despite a tremendous force of will she slept. She dreamed. She dreamed she woke or perhaps she woke from a longer dream, a hellish dream where there had been hope for her. She was lying in a leprous pool of sweat and slime on the stage of the cinema, she jerked herself into a sitting position, moaning in terror, breast heaving in fear, sweat dripping from every pore. Father Barrister reached a parasitic pseudopod for her and his followers, the moment had come for which they had all rehearsed, grinned through shark's mouths and in unison, shouted out

"She's had a Phantasm!"