Hello, Dreamers—new and returning!
This is an exciting time. Releasing my short story, The Dreaming Child, alongside Dreamwalker chapter by chapter is something I did not expect to end up being this fun. Reading through my book and cementing a piece at a time as I publish it is a very unique experience.
For those of you who’ve not yet read chapters 1-3, you’ll be able to find them here. For the rest of you, read on for the next chapter.
After hunkering down in his planned location, Jack entered a dream and emerged into a cavernous classroom, far larger than any real school would contain. He found himself sitting near the back. Pink walls stretched upward to a vaulted ceiling adorned with chandeliers shaped like punctuation marks. Pink punctuation marks. Row upon row of desks filled the space, each occupied by a student with a nervous expression.
This classroom turned out to be somewhat pinker than Jack expected, and he looked around it with raised eyebrows. the dreamer had some odd ideas on aesthetics. Jack felt slightly disappointed that Sammy wasn’t asleep anymore, but it made sense. She was a social butterfly, why would she take another nap during lunch when she could dominate all her friends’ attention? So instead of going about his lunch he’d chosen to still enter the dreamscape, entering the nearest whisper. His English teacher’s.
At the front of the pink classroom stood Miss McClickton, looking exactly as she did in real life, gray hair pulled into a severe bun, wire-rimmed glasses perched on her beak-like nose, and thin lips pressed into a permanent frown. The only difference was her outfit: instead of her usual cardigan and slacks, she wore a pink Victorian-era dress with high collar and puffy sleeves.
“Who can tell me the significance of the albatross in Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’?” Miss McClickton’s voice boomed across the classroom.
A timid student raised her hand.
“Yes, Miss Perkins?” Miss McClickton’s eyes narrowed.
“Is it... a symbol of guilt?”
Miss McClickton cackled, the sound echoing throughout the massive classroom. “A symbol of guilt? How simplistic! How utterly pedestrian! I suppose next you’ll tell me Hamlet was ‘sad’ about his father’s death?”
The class tittered nervously. Jack remained near the back, unnoticed so far, watching with growing discomfort. Miss McClickton was known to be stern or blunt, but she was hardly harsh or mocking like she seemed to be here, in her dream.
Jack knew he should leave before his presence warped the dream, but something held him frozen in place. Miss McClickton’s cruel laughter rang out again as another student cowered under her withering gaze. The pink walls seemed to pulse with each harsh word, growing brighter and more garish. He watched, transfixed.
“Perhaps Mr. Williams would like to demonstrate his superior intellect?” Miss McClickton pointed at the boy snickering loudest in the front row who shrank in his seat.
“I... I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Of course you don’t.” She leaned down, her face inches from his. “Because you’re an imbecile. Just like your father, who couldn’t string two coherent sentences together.”
Jack winced. This was significantly worse than her real-life behavior. Here, freed from consequences, she indulged in blatantly mistreating her students.
“In my day,” Miss McClickton announced, pacing the front of the classroom with obvious pleasure, “teachers were respected. We had methods for dealing with ignorance.”
The pink walls seemed to bleed with her excitement. Jack felt the air grow even thicker with the emotions radiating from her.
“When I began teaching, we still had proper discipline.” She gestured, and a wooden paddle materialized in her hand. “Nothing taught Shakespeare better than a smarting behind.”
The students cowered in their desks. Jack felt sick watching her fantasize about corporal punishment, her dream-self reveling in the power she wished she could wield in real life.
“The good old days,” she sighed wistfully. “When children knew their place and teachers were authorities to be feared and obeyed, not ‘guides’ and certainly not ‘friends’”
A student in the middle row fumbled with something on his desk. A pencil rolled to the floor, impossibly breaking with a snap that was unnaturally loud in the tense classroom.
Miss McClickton froze. The temperature in the room dropped.
“Did you just break school property, Mr. Chen?” Her voice was dangerously soft.
“I’m sorry, it was an accident—”
The paddle in her hand transformed, elongating and thinning until it became a long black willow whip. Jack’s eyes widened in horror.
“Accidents have consequences,” Miss McClickton hissed, her face contorted with rage.
She raised the whip and brought it down with a vicious crack. The student cried out, a red welt appearing across his face.
Jack gasped. This had gone too far. The sadistic pleasure she took in this fantasy disturbed him deeply.
The teacher raised the whip again, her eyes gleaming with satisfaction.
The whip hung suspended in the air as Miss McClickton laughed, a high-pitched racket that sent chills down Jack’s spine. The students within range of her cowered, hands raised defensively, terror etched across their faces.
“Look at you,” she sneered, lowering the whip but keeping it clutched in her bony fingers. “Pathetic. This is why your generation will amount to nothing.”
Jack’s stomach flipped over. This disgusting fantasy revealed something far darker lurking beneath her prim exterior.
This is sick, Jack thought, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. She’s actually enjoying this.
He could change this dream, just as he’d altered other’s. But this time, he wouldn’t simply influence them with his presence. The idea and an opportunity to act intentionally stood before him. Give the old bat a taste of her own medicineand see if action makes it go the way I want.
Gotta figure out if I even can, he decided, watching as Miss McClickton stalked between the desks like a predator. He needed to see more, understand how she clicked, how the dream responded to his will, in order to ensure she got what she deserved. He started focusing on the desk in front of him, testing if he could change certain details, add things, remove them. He successfully started a small fire on his desk, then turned it into an ice sculpture with the blink of an eye. Smiling, his attention was drawn back to the front of the room. Now to find the perfect time.
“Now then,” Miss McClickton announced, tapping her whip against her palm. “Who can explain the significance of the green light in ‘The Great Gatsby’?”
A brave girl in the third row tentatively raised her hand.
“Yes, Miss Johnson?”
“I.. I think it represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams, like his hope for a future with Daisy.”
Miss McClickton’s face contorted with rage. “Wrong! It’s clearly a symbol of envy! Are you deliberately trying to waste my time with such boring and simplistic ideas?”
The girl shrank back in her seat as Miss McClickton loomed over her.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to write your absurd interpretation one hundred times on the blackboard? In front of the entire class? Naked?“
With a flick of her wrist, the girl’s desk transformed into a tall stool facing an enormous blackboard. The girl found herself perched precariously atop it, a piece of chalk clutched in her trembling hand, clothes vanishing.
“Higher,” Miss McClickton commanded, and the stool grew taller, until the girl’s feet dangled a dozen feet above the floor. “Now write!”
The girl began scribbling frantically, tears streaming down her face as she struggled to maintain her balance while working to keep herself modest.
Jack watched in disgust as Miss McClickton turned back to the class, clearly reveling in the humiliation she’d inflicted on the girl.
“Next question! What is the primary theme of ‘Lord of the Flies’?”
A boy in the back hesitantly suggested, “Um. The loss of innocence?”
“Pitiful!” Miss McClickton spat. “The theme is clearly the inherent evil in mankind! Your answer demonstrates not only your intellectual inadequacy but your moral failings as well!”
She snapped her fingers and a spiked cage appeared and enclosed the boy. It shrank until he was forced to curl into a ball, whimpering. Blood started dripping from the iron barbs.
“Perhaps some time in confinement will help you contemplate your shortcomings,” she said sweetly.
The questions continued, each more ridiculous and obscure than the last. One student was asked to recite, verbatim, the third paragraph on page one-hundred-and-seventeen of “Moby Dick.” Another had to identify the exact number of times the word “forsooth” appeared in “Romeo and Juliet.”
With each wrong answer—and they were all deemed wrong, regardless of their actual merit—the punishments grew more severe. One student was forced to eat a book page by page. Another had her mouth and eyes sealed shut with what appeared to be super glue, then was required to pass out homework down each row. A third and fourth were required to pour lemon juice on each other after also giving each other paper cuts. Although they were are dream manifestations, Jack grew increasingly rushed as he practiced manipulating the dream in more and more ways.
Through it all, Miss McClickton’s satisfaction matched the groans and grumbles as they grew, the pink walls of the classroom pulsing more intensely with her cruel delight.
Jack had finally seen enough and felt ready to intervene. His initial shock had hardened into steely determination. This was a window into the twisted desires of someone who held real power over real students. His friends. His classmates.
Time to turn this nightmare around, he thought, stepping forward from the shadowed desk at the back of the classroom.
“That’s enough!” he shouted, his voice carrying a power that surprised even himself.
Miss McClickton whirled around to face him, her eyes widening in shock. “Who dares speak out of—”
Jack cut her off, stopping her mouth with a slashing motion of his hand. “I said enough! This ends now!”
He concentrated, focusing on the caged boy first. The spikes retracted, the bars melted away. The girl on the stool found herself suddenly clothed and standing safely on the ground. One by one, Jack undid all of Miss McClickton’s cruel punishments, freeing the students from their various torments.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Miss McClickton found her voice, her face turning an ugly shade of purple. “This is my classroom!”
“Not anymore,” Jack replied cooly. With another thought, he transformed the walls of the classroom. The sickly pink faded, replaced by a stark, sterile white. Along the walls appeared an array of implements. All the torture devices Miss McClickton had used on her students.
He turned to the freed students. “Take your pick,” he told them, gesturing to the wall and then to the English teacher. “She deserves a taste of her own medicine.”
The students hesitated only briefly before making a mad dash toward the walls. Each grabbed something—whips, paddles, cages, strange contraptions Jack couldn’t even name.
Miss McClickton backed away, her eyes darting frantically around the room. “You can’t do this. I’m the teacher. I’m in charge here!”
Jack looked at her pitifully, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You’re nothing but a bully with a title. These kids trusted you, and this is how you see them?”
He faced her straight on, watching fear bloom in her eyes. “You think about hurting them. Humiliating them. Making them suffer. And you enjoy it.”
“No, I—”
“Don’t lie,” Jack hissed. “I can feel it. Your excitement. Your pleasure. It’s disgusting.”
The students had formed a semicircle, weapons in hand, eyes fixed on their tormentor.
“Please,” Miss McClickton whimpered, her previous confidence evaporating.
He stepped back, addressing the students. “She’s all yours.”
The students flooded her and the sound of cracks, whips, and wollomps filled the air.
Miss McClickton screamed and extricated herself from the hubbub of students and bolted for the door. Her severe bun now undone as she ran, gray hair flying wildly behind her. Red welts already forming on her skin. The students gave chase, their faces set with grim concentration.
Jack followed at a more measured pace, watching as Miss McClickton fled down a long corridor. Her Victorian dress hampered her movements, making her stumble and lurch, and Jack made the floor pull back like a giant conveyer belt, so she made no progress.
As the students pursued her, Jack remembers they weren’t actualyl students, just representatives of them, and concentrated again. The students began to change, their forms shifting and multiplying. Where there had been a large classroom’s worth of teenagers, there were now hundreds of spiders—some small as kernels of corn, others large as dinner plates.
They skittered after Miss McClickton, overtaking her easily. She screamed again as the first wave reached her, climbing up her legs and torso.
Jack caught up just as she fell to her knees, spiders covering every inch of her. “PLEASE!” she shouted at him. The spiders didn’t bite or harm her—but they crawled over her face, into her hair, under her collar.
“How does it feel?” Jack asked, standing over her. “To be helpless? To be in someone else’s power?”
Miss McClickton could only whimper, her eyes wide with terror as more spiders converged on her. She began tearing at her hair and scratching frantically at her face. The spiders crawled relentlessly into her nose and open mouth while she screamed. Her eyes bulged with panic as she clawed at her skin, leaving angry red marks, coughing and spitting them out.
Jack watched, a sickening feeling replacing his righteous anger. This had gone too far. What had started as justice had ended up in quite a different place. now the students he had “saved” were more clearly just a part of his fantasy. Jack felt disgusted with himself.
The hall’s walls trembled. Lockers sprang open, books tumbling from shelves. The chandeliers swayed violently overhead, pink punctuation marks crashing to the floor. The entire dream shuddered like a house in an earthquake.
Jack whispered, “What’s happening?” His gaze darted frantically around as cracks spiderwebbed across the walls, branching out like lightning.
With horrifying clarity, he realized it wasn’t just the dream shaking—Miss McClickton was waking up. The walls fractured around him as her consciousness tried to pull away from sleep. His stomach dropped. The terror he’d inflicted wasn’t contained to her dream; it was bleeding into reality.
The connection between dreamer and dream suddenly became visceral. Jack could feel Miss McClickton’s consciousness rising toward wakefulness, dragging her terror with it.
“No, no, no,” Jack backed away, his heart hammering. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
He’d wanted to teach her a small lesson, not break. Messing with someone’s dream was one thing. Affecting their waking life was something else entirely. His stomach couldn’t sink any lower. Flashbacks of blood on the walls of his parents room plagued his mind.
The floor beneath him began to disintegrate. Jack was ejected away from the collapsing whisper. He felt the familiar sensation of traveling through the dreamscape, fleeing the catastrophe he’d created.
Jack’s eyes snapped open. He was back in the lunchroom hall in his little nook, heart racing, sweat beading on his forehead. For a disoriented second, he thought perhaps it was all right. Then he heard the screaming.
Miss McClickton’s classroom was just down the hall. Jack lurched to his feet.
He rushed forward just in time to see Miss McClickton burst from her classroom down the hall, hands clawing at her face, screaming about spiders. Her normally immaculate appearance was in shambles. Her hair wild, blouse half-untucked, face scratched and red.
“Get away from me!” she shrieked, slapping at her arms, her neck, her face. “They’re everywhere! They’re inside me!”
Students gaped from tables, food forgotten, teachers emerged with shocked expressions from nearby classrooms. Miss McClickton careened down the hall, dancing around students, still batting at invisible arachnids, her screams growing more hysterical.
Jack pressed himself against the wall, unable to move as she rushed past him. Her eyes met his for just a fraction of a second—wild, unseeing, consumed by terror.
He followed at a distance, horror continuing to mount as he watched her burst into the atrium. Dozens of students looked up from their groups as Miss McClickton flailed wildly.
“Help me!” she wailed, spinning in circles, swatting and scratching at nothing. “They’re in my eyes! They’re eating my eyes!”
Two teachers rushed toward her, trying to restrain her flailing arms. Another pulled out a phone, presumably calling for medical help.
Jack stood frozen in the archway alongside his schoolmates, watching the chaos. Miss McClickton collapsed to her knees, throwing her head around, fighting invisible spiders, her screams devolving into broken sobs.
“How did I do this?” he whispered to himself, stomach churning with guilt. “How could a simple nightmare just break her?”
The power he wielded in dreams suddenly felt less like a gift and more like a weapon. And he’d used it without understanding its consequences. An ordinary dream could have extraordinary impacts. Especially when he was dreamwalking. First his father, now his English teacher.
Miss McClickton was being helped to her feet now, still twitching at phantom spiders. Her face was streaked with tears, blood under her fingernails from where she’d scratched herself raw.
Jack backed away from the scene, bile rising in his throat.
For you arachnophobic folk, I am sorry for this one. 😊 Join us for the next one next Tuesday! Chapter 5: Avoidance
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