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Without a view to the outside, he had no concept of time. He knew not how long he had spent in the corridor. It could have been hours. It could have been days. He tried three more times to find the end of the corridor, a door, a stair, a branching hallway, anything that might break up the monotony of the space he was in and provide some semblance of hope for release. He tried his usual dreamwalking tricks: willing doors to appear, reaching into his pocket to pull out something useful, pinching himself; no doors appeared, his pockets remained empty, and pinching himself just left a mark on his arm. In his last attempt, he went barreling down the corridor, running as fast and as far as his legs and heart would carry him, until he collapsed on the ground, spent. But there was nothing but the long stone corridor, its arches, and its torches. Nothing at all.

He remained curled up on the ground where he collapsed for some time, replaying his conversation with the stranger over and over and over again. One point of the conversation held his attention more than any other:

Dreams are ever anything but simple. This much was true. Dreams were strange. Dreams were messy. They could be uplifting or terrifying, sultry or painful, bright and playful or dark and somber; bright and somber or dark and playful. But they were also anything but random. There were rules. He had learned this early on in his explorations. He didn't know all of the rules, but he knew enough to recognize the trouble he was in.

For the first time since he began dreamwalking, Solomon felt real, visceral fear. He moved from the fetal position on the ground to sitting up against the stone wall once again. He then spent hours--or what he thought was hours--moving through a breathing practice to keep himself from being consumed by panic. His entire body vibrated with terror and this was all he could do to keep himself from losing his mind.

"How like you to believe everything could be so simple to understand ..." Was it like him to think so? He meditated on this statement, rolling it around in his mind, contemplating the extent of its truth. His dreamwalking practice was anything but simple in the beginning. It had taken him months to step lucid into the dream world by intention. It had taken many more months to do so consistently. This, however, was not indication of complexity, but rather of practice.

A loud noise broke the stillness of the corridor. An alarm swept over the stone and blew out the torches, plunging Solomon into total darkness. The volume steadily increased until it overwhelmed him, forcing him to cover his ears, and still it continued to rise. At the point where Solomon believed his ear drums would burst everything fell away.

Continued after the break

Solomon awoke to find his phone ringing. He opened his eyes and gratitude washed over him as he took in the familiar ceiling of the empty house. The phone fell silent as he lay there, basking in the early afternoon sunlight spilling into the living from the large windows on either side of the door.

Early afternoon sunlight. That wasn't right. He rolled onto his side and reached for his phone, which began ringing again as soon as his fingers came into contact with it. He picked up it, saw it was his wife, and answered.

"Hey babe," he said, sitting up and wiping his eyes with his free hand.

"Hey babe, he says, as if we didn't have plans for lunch." She sounded annoyed.

Solomon looked at the time. It was fifteen after one in the afternoon. This unsettled him. His wife continued speaking, but he could only think about how much time was lost. A realization was dawning upon him: he was very much in deep trouble where the presence was concerned. The hours he had spent in dreamspace, in the corridor, translated to hours lost in realspace. This had never happened before. Dreams did not last for hours.

"Sol, are you okay?" Her tone was different. The edge of annoyance was gone; there was only concern. "Say something."

"I don't know what happened. I fell asleep after ..."

He trailed off. He didn't know what happened, that much was true. Or, more to the point, he didn't how it happened.

"Never mind. I'm sorry. I didn't get to my phone in time."

"Something else happened." It was not a question. His wife knew him too well.

"I think food is a good idea."

"Well I'm outside and the door is locked."

He turned to look. His wife stood in front of one of the windows, peering in, staring at him, a bag of takeout in hand. She had watched him wake up. He got up off the ground as he hung up the phone and walked to the door to let her. His mind raced to think of how he was going to explain what happened. This thing, this presence, whatever it was, held some power in the dreamspace, and this terrified him. This should have been enough to convince him to leave, to walk away, to forget the house and the presence within it. But one thing he had to contend with, something that had proven stronger than his fear time and time again, was his curiosity.

He had to learn the how. He had to figure out what was happening to him in the dreamspace. And he had to do it without raising suspicion with his wife, and before his time was up with the real estate company.

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