The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 27: Feast or Famine

Wesley Jager had never been fully confident in himself at the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of times.

He lay on his back in the dark, atop a fleshy, cold mound that had softened his landing. Not breaking his legs was appreciated, and anything was better than being smashed between two walls, but the putrid smell of whatever he had landed on had him gagging violently, sure that if he moved, he would vomit. He tried covering his nose and mouth, but his glove was covered in foul slime. He felt the handle of his hammer at the tips of his fingers, but when he grabbed it, something gave way beneath him. The whole mound shifted. He spilled downward, sliding on a wave of fingers grabbing at him, elbows thrown at his sides, hair falling into his face and his mouth.

Finally he landed on hard stone, where he pushed himself to his knees and threw up. Around him came the soft thuds of the pile coming to rest. He decided he had never been more miserable in his life.

"Ridley?" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—then immediately spit out slime—and scanned his surroundings, trying to see anything. The darkness was complete. "Ridley, can you hear me?" His voice bounced off nearby walls. The only other sound was the dribbling of water down a drain and his own breathing, so after a moment of listening, he dreamformed a light up where he thought he had landed.

The light was a small sun, and dreamforming it inside the Dream was done by willing a piece of the Dream to become something else. A simple concept, but in practice Wes felt Klaus's overpowered subconscious buck against his hold. The light wasn't as large as he'd wanted, but it was bright enough to see by.

He kneeled in a dungeon room, no more than four stone walls, an iron door, and a small drain in the floor through which a swirl of brown liquid drained, including Wes's own vomit. He grimaced and looked away. The ceiling was solid stone, nothing to mark the long and dark tunnel through which he'd fallen. And his soft but vile landing had come compliments of a high pile of rotting human body parts.

Putrefied flesh covered Wes from head to toe. In his hair, on his hands, all up and down his back. It had fallen over him as he fell down the pile and it was smeared on him now, blood and tissue days or even weeks old. He was shaking, from his shoulders to his hands to his knees, holding his arms out from his torso and unable to think of anything but escaping his own body.

Where had they all come from? Why were they here? Villagers, or...or were some of these Marcia? Or Temper? Other people Klaus knew? Why was Klaus's subconscious like this?

Wes squeezed his eyes shut and planted his fists on the floor. Tried to breathe through the terrible smell.

Ridley.

Through the panicked thoughts, he heard his mother's voice in his head. The last coherent thing she had ever said to him.

You must take care of Ridley.

It was after she knew she would be taken to dream death but before they actually took her, before she began to scream. Her tears had fallen on his hands.

You must take care of her. No one else will. You are all each other has.

Wes grabbed his hammer and tore his eyes from the mound of sloughing flesh, exposed bone, severed hands and ropes of intestine, the single eye that stared out of a decaying head. The iron door wasn't locked, but he had to throw his weight against it to shove it open one squealing inch at a time. He squeezed through as soon as there was enough space, bringing his ball of sunlight with him, then pushed the door shut from the other side.

The next room was, mercifully, free of body parts. Hallways branched off in three directions from where he stood, each lined with doors set with small barred windows. He hadn't seen any of this the last time they'd come to Klaus's nightmare, but nightmares could change and grow, as much for dreamhunters as for anyone else. Again, there was no sound except the dripping of liquid—hopefully water—through a grate, and now a slight echoing down the hallways, as if a breeze blew somewhere farther along.