Hammer 1: Nightmare
Corvan pressed his back against the cold stone of the tunnel and peered into the gloom. There was no point in trying to wake himself up. He was trapped inside the nightmare until he either escaped from the monster - or died trying.
The dream felt more real every time it came back, the pounding of his heart, the taste of musky fear, and the foul stench of the creature in his nostrils. The beast was always waiting for him in the darkness, waiting for him to move and betray his location. As soon as he did, the terrifying chase would begin once again.
There was only one way to escape from the maze of tunnels; he had to find the green rope, then climb it to a doorway filled with blue light. From many past failures, he had learned to stay in place, not moving until the rock wall beside him melted away and a new passage opened up. Ducking inside, he crept quietly along to where a familiar jagged fracture broke the cavern floor. At least the dream was consistent; a translucent green line dangled over the void, just out of reach.
The click of claws on rock set his heart racing. A glance over his shoulder revealed a massive bear-like creature sweeping toward him, its bulk filling the passage, its red eyes piercing the dark.
Corvan whirled about, leapt off the edge, latched onto the rope, then climbed furiously. A deafening roar assaulted his ears as the creature’s fetid breath rolled past him, propelling him even faster towards the rock shelf that stuck out overhead, and the glimmer of blue beyond. His breath came in ragged gasps as his sweaty hands lost their grip on the rope. He heaved himself higher, but the rope only stretched and grew thinner. When he squeezed it tighter, it squished out like jelly between his fingers, then broke apart.
He plummeted toward the open jaws, a strangled scream trapped in his lungs.
Corvan sat bolt upright in his bed and wiped the sweat from his brow. Once again, he had failed to escape the nightmare tunnels, but he wouldn’t be going downstairs to tell his parents about it. He would turn fifteen this month. He couldn’t be running to their room in the night like a frightened child — but he was afraid.
Pulling his knees in close, he wrapped his arms around them, then gazed across the room and out the window. He could clearly recall sitting in this exact spot next to his grandfather, watching the stars, and listening to stories of monsters and caves. He wasn’t even sure how he could remember those events so clearly; his grandfather had disappeared just days before his fourth birthday. That could be why the dream was back. In the last few weeks, he had overheard his grandfather’s name in the hushed discussions and arguments his parents were having as his special fifteenth birthday drew closer.
Corvan sighed. Tomorrow was only Thursday. He would rather go back to bed and face the nightmare than another day of school. At least with the monster, he would eventually wake up and the fear would fade. In real life, at least for the past year, his problems at school and at home clung to him like burrs on his woolen socks.
Throwing off the covers, Corvan crossed to the window, sat up on the wide sill, and leaned back against the jamb. A cool breeze, fresh with the scent of approaching rain, raised goose bumps on his skin. The harvest moon highlighted the silver-green tips of the aspen trees bordering his back yard and beyond them, a gentle wind was stirring his family’s crop of golden wheat into waves that swept in to run ashore against a massive mound of granite—his favorite place in the entire world.
The rounded sides of the rock climbed thirty feet above the sea of grain in an unbroken curve until it reached Castle Rock, Corvan’s name for the ring of symmetrical boulders crowning the summit. From his second story window, the protective circle of stones looked like the beginnings of another Stonehenge or the ruins of an ancient island citadel. Low on the horizon, the moon looked like a flying saucer about to land inside the crenelations of Castle Rock.
Above the tops of the rocks, he could make out the canvas roof of his fort, his personal refuge from the realities of an increasingly complicated life. Unlike his comic book hero, his fortress of solitude was within earshot of his mother’s call from the back porch or the ring of her dinner bell.
A passing breeze rippled the sheets hanging on the clothesline that ran alongside the path to the outhouse, the small toilet building hidden in the shelterbelt. “Rats!” he muttered. The outhouse door was hanging open and his mother would not be happy. She hated it when the gophers got inside and chewed up the old magazines, but as far as he could recall, this time the open door wasn’t his fault. He had been reading in his fort the previous evening and had skipped using the outhouse before coming in for the night. That was likely the reason he definitely needed to use it now.
Crossing the room to grab his t-shirt off the floor, he caught his reflection in the cracked mirror hanging on the pony wall supporting the vaulted ceiling. He was the only person short enough to stand up where the sloped ceiling met the wall and actually look at himself. Not that he liked to see his body in the mirror. At school, Billy Fry continually joked that Corvan was the model for the skinny ninety-eight-pound weakling in the Charles Atlas comic book ads.
Pulling the shirt on over his thin frame, he moved quietly down the stairs and out along the path. He stopped abruptly at the outhouse door, for there, clearly outlined in the dirt by the bright moonlight, was a set of large three-toed footprints. The same ones he had noticed the past week at the base of Castle Rock, only this time he could see the indents from the claws. Whatever they were from, the tracks were overlaid on the human prints from the previous day. The tracks were too large to be a bird, so it had to be some sort of lizard, but how large was it and where had it come from? Corvan looked along the tree line and then behind the outhouse around the woodpile, but the night was completely still. Even the owl wasn’t hooting.
Coming back around to the outhouse door, he swung it wide and discovered the book he had been reading in his fort that evening, sitting on top of the old magazines they used for toilet paper.
Mrs. Barron, the owner of the town’s corner store, had given it to him after a traveler had left it behind on her counter. “Consider it an early birthday present,” she had said. “Your mother tells me fifteen is an important birthday for you, and I know things are a bit tight right now with the mine closed down and all.”
Corvan stepped up inside the outhouse. He must have brought the book here and tried using the outhouse while he read. When he was engrossed in a story he would completely forget everything around him. At least now he had something to read while he waited. He left the door open a few inches to bring in a bit of fresh air. Nothing smelled worse than an outhouse after a summer of heat. The smell would go away once winter arrived, but at forty below, the seat would be cold enough to freeze your butt cheeks off. Dropping his shorts, he sat over the well-worn hole in the planks and picked up his book.
The story’s title was A Star Man’s Son, and each time he read it, Corvan identified more strongly with its mutant hero, Fors of the Puma Clan. Fors was also a loner, ostracized because he did not fit in with his clan but at least Fors took matters into his own hands and fled the situation with his loyal animal companion. Corvan could only dream of embarking on an adventure like that, he was far too afraid of being on his own to leave the security of his home. Fors didn’t have any family to stick around for. Corvan’s mother, however, had no intentions of every letting her only child get too far from her watchful presence.
The moonlight streaming through the partially open door was bright enough to read by and he was fully invested in the account of Fors escaping from the Beast Things when a rustle of sound from outside the outhouse door set his heart pounding.
Looking out, he watched the sheets flutter on the clothesline, but there was another noise behind them, the sound of something approaching. He tensed as a shadow appeared in the center of the sheet, growing larger until it filled the moonlit cotton. It was an animal standing up on two legs. The shadow turned to one side and sniffed the air. It was a lizard and its silhouette looked exactly like the logo for Reptile World in the city. His parents had never paid to go inside, but maybe this same lizard had escaped from there.
In the blink of an eye, the shadow flicked away, then Corvan heard a long hiss of breath alongside the outhouse. A twig snapped, and a shadow crossed the knothole on the back wall of the outhouse. Pulling up his shorts, Corvan kneeled on the bench and pressed his eye to the hole.
At the very top of the woodpile, the head and shoulders of a large lizard faced into the moonlight, staring up at the Castle Rock. Blue markings ran down the sides of its neck. Corvan shifted to get a better look and the half-used Sears catalogue slipped off the pile, landing on the floor with a dull thud. The lizard’s lean faced snapped about to face the outhouse, then it vanished down into the pile of logs.
Corvan let out his breath and turned back to the door. At least now he knew where it was hiding. He would come back tomorrow night and wait for it to show up again so he could get a better look at it.
Retrieving his book, he latched the outhouse door, rubbed out the lizard’s tracks to avoid frightening his mother, and made his way back to his room. He leaned against the window screen for a long time, searching the backyard for any sign of the creature. Eventually, he gave up. Even the chickens in the coop were resting peacefully.
After pulling off his shirt, he tossed it on the floor and climbed back into bed with his book. There was no use worrying about the lizard, the nightmare, or his upcoming birthday. Turning onto his side, he looked over at his bookshelf, where he saw a ragtag collection of adventure stories and comic books piled haphazardly. The shelves themselves held a variety of bird nests, plant samples, petrified bones, a well-used set of encyclopedias and an extensive rock collection.
Nothing caught his eye, so he picked up his book and imagined himself on the cover where Fors was navigating a raft down a river with Lura, his mutant cat. Corvan had rafted down the river with his father a few times and loved it. Watching the banks slip past with no noise or effort, all the while moving towards new lands, was a memory he often used for his own made-up science fiction adventures.
He dozed off amid his imaginations and when he opened his eyes, pink sunrise clouds were caressing the sky. The new day would slip past and bring him closer to his fifteenth birthday, the day when his father said he would come of age and become an adult member of the family.
Leaving his bed, he went to the window and pressed his forehead into a well-worn bulge in the metal window screen. Corvan searched the outlines of the Castle Rock and the backyard for any sign of the lizard, but the only thing moving was their rooster strutting about and getting ready to welcome the new day. From its appearance on the woodpile the night before, the lizard wasn’t anywhere near the size of the monster in his nightmares, but the timing of its appearance, along with the secrecy surrounding his upcoming birthday . . .
“Corvan!”
Jumping back from the window he found find his mother standing in his doorway, her blonde hair pressed up against the door frame.
“I should have known you’d be looking at that rock again. Didn’t you hear me call you down to breakfast?”
“I must have been daydreaming,” Corvan said, retreating behind his bed to pull on his patched jeans.
“No doubt you were,” she said with a frown. “I met Miss Thompson at the store yesterday.”
Corvan’s heart dropped at the mention of his teacher.
“She says you’ve been coming in after classes have begun this past week. I told her you must be dawdling on the way. You certainly leave home in plenty of time.”
Corvan tugged his threadbare T-shirt over his head. The truth was, he wanted to be late for school—for the rest of the year, if possible. His head poked out just as the horn of their truck honked twice in the driveway.
“We’ll talk about this later. Your father has been called to a meeting at the mine, and I’m going along to sell my apple cider at the farmer’s market.” She shot a warning look his way. “Be on time today.”
He nodded, and she retreated down the stairs.