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You would have made it all the way to the tower, but you failed.

Solomon lay on his sleeping bag for some time, letting the alarm sound, it's incessant beeping a small comfort to his fear and frustration.

We are all lost here because we lacked the foundation to stand firm against his influence. As do you.

What foundation did he lack? He knew himself well enough. He understood the mechanics of dreamspace. He was familiar with the laws governing dreamwalking. Perhaps not all of them, but enough to have been successful in clearing out hauntings and healing others of debilitating spiritual attachments. True, he did not understand exactly how it all worked, but it worked nonetheless across countless experiences. It was those countless experiences upon which he stood, a testament to the recognition of his own prowess in the dreamspace. To be told he lacked foundation seemed an egregious assumption on the part of the stranger.

Still, it irked him. What else had she said? Your arrogance will lead to your undoing, Solomon. He hadn't liked hearing that at all. His arrogance? What arrogance? He rose to fight a presence of incalculable power, and the stranger had the audacity to accuse him of arrogance? He would succeed where countless others failed, but because of his experience and knowledge, not because of some aggrandized confidence.

Solomon reached over and turned off the alarm. He'd been asleep for twenty minutes and it was enough to provide him with additional knowledge of the dream universe he walked. There was a garden; there was a maze; there were forests and swamps and mountains; and at the pinnacle, there was a tower. He closed his eyes and recreated the entire scene in his mind, complete with the growing tempest as he moved his attention to the tower. With a shiver, he opened his eyes.

It was still afternoon. His wife hadn't left that long ago. He was only a couple of days into his two-week stay and he had been provided the destination: he knew where to go in the dreamspace, even if he didn't know what to do. This was, in itself, odd, but so was every encounter he had while asleep in the house. Thus he considered this progress. Despite the vague statements of the stranger, he was uncovering the way forward. Piece by piece, he would have what he needed; then it was a matter of reaching the tower, unsettling the king, and clearing the house of the presence.

We are all lost here because we lacked the foundation to stand firm against his influence. As do you.

Continued after the break

Solomon stood up, rolling the message around in his mind. He tidied up the sleeping bag and went to the kitchen for a snack. Though lunch with his wife was naught more than an hour or two ago, he was famished. He broke open a box of cereal bars and emptied it on the counter; grabbed one and tore off the wrapper; and devoured it. It tasted of nothing and failed to satiate. He went to the living room to retrieve his water bottle, returned to the kitchen to refill it, and drank deeply to wash down the disappointing treat. The water also tasted of nothing. Water shouldn't taste like anything, he knew, yet it always tasted like something. That he tasted nothing now bothered him. Perhaps he was getting sick. Whatever the case, he wasn't going to dwell on it. He had important matters at hand to contend with.

He went through the motions once again, walking throughout the house, moving through the now-familiar patterns he watched emerge during his first day and night. He rans his fingers along this wall; he laid down in that space; he stepped to this side, and then to that side as he passed through the hallway. He thought about the garden as he moved about the house, imagining himself among the dandelions and under the gazebo, stepping into the hedge maze and leaving through the other side. He imagined he was drawn to the center of the maze, but resisted the pull, determined to reach the tower in his little fantasy. Passing through the hall again, he pictured himself running through the corridor, passing by his place of madness and arriving at the base of the tower, to be intercepted by a Sphinx. The Sphinx presented her challenge, and he answered without hesitation, defeating the monster with his response and gaining the elevator, the sole passage to the top.

It was a fine fantasy, but it was only fantasy. He remembered all too clearly how he felt in the corridor. The stranger was correct in her assessment when she addressed his time there:

You let fear stop you. And it would have consumed you completely and locked you away in this land forever had you not somehow escaped.

He recalled the fear, the terror that gripped him as he wrestled with the dreamspace, willing any one of his dream tricks to work, to no avail. He was forlorn, abandoned. It was true he was trapped, though he resisted the idea he was at fault for being stuck. This dreamspace, wherever he was being taken, abided by different rules. He was sure of it. He needed only to understand those rules, to reconfigure his understanding of the dreamspace, and he would find greater success in his next visits.

And then he would cleanse the house of the presence.

But one piece at a time. He held the layout of the garden firmly in his mind and endeavored to move through it a little at a time until he had mastered the rules and arrived at the tower. He would wait until evening and then create pockets of sleep by way of a series of alarms, to prevent himself from being trapped again. One piece at a time, he assured himself, is how the presence would be removed.

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