My eyes opened, but nothing had changed.
I could still see the dream as clearly as a moment before because, aside from the subtle transition of consciousness, my bedroom still appeared precisely the same as it had. Inky shadows blanketed most of the room, their harsh lines cast in electric blue by the blinking device in the far corner. The small space was cramped but organized as it always was, and yet somehow it had shifted, fundamentally altered by the dream. The closed door on my right side, forever a symbol of the safety of this place, no longer held any meaning in the world the dream had created.
The silence held the only clue to the shift in realities. I could no longer hear the vicious snarling from the window above my head. The enraged barking, the scraping of claws and teeth at the window’s frame; all had ceased as my eyes opened. But still each sound echoed in memory, carrying knowledge that I knew, yet could not know. The two hounds, I somehow knew, were as black as the shadows before me. No beautiful creatures were these - beings not meant to be seen, existing only in the absence of light. The dream was short; the two creatures arrived only moments before I awoke, baying at the scant protection offered me by the curtained glass. Yet the sound carried with it a sense of familiarity; beasts that I somehow knew, sounds that I had heard before in silence. The creatures had been a part of the dream. But in the memory of them, I knew that they existed apart from it. In the darkness, a fearful voice suggested quietly that the sounds that had awoken me continued, had I the ears to hear them.
Confronted by these unrealities, I struggled to reclaim my waking mind. In the endless moment that followed, the scrambling images and thoughts left in the wake of the dream gave way to a single, overwhelming truth. I could not move. I could not breathe. Awake I may have been, but under the weight of the shadows the dream had left upon me, I lay powerless save for my wandering eyes which, free to explore the darkness, beheld the source of my trial.
The pale blue light in the corner cast shadows in all directions, the usual dark shapes of the furnishings of the room contrasting sharply against it. Yet the pattern of familiar shadows was somehow broken, the shape of the room somehow wrong. As the dream faded, my searching eyes found the shadow that was out of place, cast by nothing upon my bedroom wall.
The being was tall - It could fit beneath the ceiling only because it stooped, its head held slightly to one side. The darkness of the shadow was absolute, covering the being like a cloak of black save for its face which, despite lacking eyes, seemed to hold me in a curious gaze. “Face” may be a misnomer - the indistinct, spiraling shadows where the being’s face should have been held the appropriate shape, yet none of the reality of a true visage. The shadow stood watchfully over me, as motionless as my own body, as though it had been interrupted in its work, and waited to observe what would follow.
Unable to act, I watched the shadow. It lingered only briefly, though each moment seemed to stretch beyond reason. Still unmoving, the shadow simply faded away, leaving the wall unmarred with its presence. As the last traces vanished, so too did the weight that held me, and I was at last able to take a breath. The dream had now left me, and the room resumed its usual form, proof against danger. But even once the darkness had retreated before the lamp that I quickly switched on, I was unable to answer the question that gnawed at me.
When had the dream ended?