Nightmare Man by Alan Ryker Read Free Book Online Page B

brain is intent on making my life more miserable? Why would I do that?
    Regardless, though I’ve always thought of the nightmare man as having more substance than your average dream, I never imagined him as being so real as to interact with others.
    I try to imagine how I would feel if I discovered that I were simply a dream. How would I feel toward the dreamer? If I hated my existence, and found out someone was responsible for every miserable aspect of it, would I thank him for creating me, or hate him for creating me as I am?
    If I were the nightmare man, I think I would hate me. How do Christians not end up hating God?
    I’m not conscious of drifting off, but then I get the little jolt that warns me of trouble. I try to convince myself I just heard some noise from elsewhere in the house, that it startled me and I can go back to sleep, but I can’t stop myself from listening harder. I can’t stop my traitorous mind from trying to put the pieces together, from trying to create a cohesive story of existence out of the twisted phenomena it’s receiving.
    He rises. He hurls himself from the shadows, and I shriek and throw myself from my bed. I collide with Shannon’s nightstand as I search for the wall with my back, stumbling but keeping my feet.
    I feel the cold blast of the nightmare man’s gaze, but then he turns away and runs for the door.
    For a moment I’m relieved. Then I try to figure out his scheme. I know what he’s doing, but I can’t seem to remember. He can’t flank me. He might be trying to lure me into the open.
    Logan.
    Shannon’s side of the bed is opposite the door, and I’m clambering over the mattress as the trailing edge of the nightmare man’s cloak disappears into the thin bar of light.
    I fight through blankets that suddenly seem like razor wire on a WWI battlefield, tangling me up, dragging me into slow motion while terrible things happen around me in rapid fire. I get one foot to the floor and lunge for the door handle, but my other foot is caught up and I fall. I land on my hands, but on the fist of my left hand instead of the palm, and it rolls until the back of my hand is pressed into the floor and a spike of pain in my wrist blasts my dark vision white.
    Left hand clutched to my chest, I keep going, but the door doesn’t open. I yank, then again, again, again, again. I bellow. Is he holding the door shut? Does the fact that I can’t open the door mean Logan is safe, because the nightmare man is standing on the other side? No, he’s somehow jammed the door shut. He’s probably in Logan’s room already.
    I wrap my left hand over my right for a better grip and pull again, and the pain hits me so hard I gasp like a fish flopping in the bottom of a boat.
    Cradling my left hand in my right, I back up, then slam forward, putting my right shoulder into the door. The room resounds like a bass drum, the wall vibrating like a skin. I slam again, again, again.
    The door falls forward, and for a moment I’m blind, motionless, silent.
    Logan shrieks at such a high pitch it sounds inhuman. It sounds like the pure auditory transmission of terror, and it galvanizes me into motion.
    The door didn’t land flat on the floor, but propped against the opposite wall. I scramble over, trying not to use my left hand but finding it unavoidable as I slip and scrabble over the slick lacquered plywood that’s lying at an awkward angle and shifting beneath my weight.
    I make it across, fall, rise and run. As I press Logan’s door open, I see movement at the end of the hall. Shannon hits the wall, unable to change her momentum.
    “No!” she shouts. She presses off, redirecting.
    I turn back to Logan’s room. There, at the end of the bed, glowing in black light stands the nightmare man. His cold beam illuminates Logan’s face, which is twisted into a mask of such horror that he’s almost unrecognizable. And his eyes, God, his eyes reflect the dark light blackly. His eyes glow solid black, showing me the