Chapter 3: Oniron

It was an uncanny and familiar feeling – all of Marc's sight and senses seemed to compress into one instant, and he passed by endless infinites of space and color without ever being able to see or notice them – and then his feet were back on the ground.
Marc gasped immediately, and when he gasped he choked. He collapsed to the ground and hugged his chest tight – the air was so much different here than anything he'd ever breathed before.
“Marc!” shouted Icelus. She rushed over to him, her face full of concern. “Are you okay?”
Marc was barely able to nod yes – slowly enough, his lungs seemed to be adjusting to the different atmosphere. He was gasping in short breaths now – it seemed so much fuller.
“Hold on,” he finally managed to wheeze out, “I...”
He lay still for a moment and let the old air filter out of his lungs and the new air cycle through. He felt both his arms and legs fall asleep, and sat up to stretch them out. He had never expected the air itself to feel this different. It wasn't the humidity or the particles in it, but a fundamental difference in how it filled his lungs. It felt odd. He couldn't put his finger on it.
Marc finally got up and looked around. It looked like they were in a clearing in the heart of some forest. Wherever they were, it was the middle of the night, just like when they had left. The leaves were dry and crackling – it was probably winter here too. The air was mildly chilly. Marc could see through the sparse trees, but exactly where they were in the forest was impossible to tell; the night blanketed them completely and it cut off Marc's vision.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“This is where I'm from,” said Icelus. “Or not here, specifically, but this is definitely my world.” She breathed in and sighed deeply. “Oniron.”
“What?”
“That's the name of this realm. Oniron.”
Marc looked around. “Is the whole place a forest, or...?”
“No, this is just where we ended up. I think I know where we are, though, “ she said. “Follow me.”
Icelus took off quickly and Marc almost had to jog to keep pace with her. He was grateful that he had changed clothes before coming along, otherwise he'd have been walking through this forest at night in his pajamas.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“First we need to find a way out of this forest.” she said. “There might be nightmares here who heard us arrive. Better to be out in the open where nobody could sneak up on us.”
“Is someone going to sneak up on us?!”
“Possibly.”
“And what would they do? Attack us?”
“Yes, and that's why we should find a way out.”
Marc stopped in his tracks. “Hold on!”
Icelus halted and turned to him.
“Are you saying,” he said, “we could be attacked here? Are we in danger?”
Icelus looked him fiercely in the eyes. “Marc, I will protect you if we come across any nightmares. I swear.”
Marc was almost cowed by that glare. It was nearly the same expression that Icelus's face had twisted itself into in his dreams. The one that happened right before she attacked him and ate him. But he had to put his foot down here. If he was going to travel with her, he couldn't keep being scared of her.
“W-what if you can't?” he said.
Damn it. He had stuttered. Real freaking brave. But at least Icelus seemed to take it seriously and consider it.
“Marc, I've taken you here to Oniron, and I can tell you didn't want to go with me,” she began. “But I needed help, and you were the best person to help me. Still, you didn't ask for this.” She looked down. “I will let myself be taken or killed before I ever let you be. I swear.”
She seemed like she was about to say something else, but thought better of it. Marc realized he had been balling his hands into fists. He let them drop and felt the deep, red indentations on his skin.
“Thank you,” he finally said. It was all he could think to say for a while. “What... what exactly do you want me to do here?”
Icelus looked up at him once more. “Walk with me, for now. We need to leave this place.”
So she turned around and walked. This time her pace was slower and Marc could keep up with her easily. They walked through the forest, taking a path that Marc could not make out, but Icelus seemed to know.
Occasionally while they walked Icelus would suddenly stop. She would crouch low to the ground and sniff. Looking for something? Sometimes she broke off the trail to prowl the surrounding area, out of Marc's sight. She never left for long, though: as soon as he began to feel a chill and get nervous she would come bounding back onto the trail and continue on, like nothing had happened.
Around the third time she did this, Marc asked her, “What are you looking for?”
She didn't turn to look at him, just kept walking. “Nightmares.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that,” she said. “Nightmares. The things that humans dream of. Except in Oniron, they manifest and become real.”
This was such an unusual thing for Marc to hear that he was momentarily speechless. The only thing he could think to ask was, “Isn't that dangerous for you?”
“It depends on the nightmare,” she said. “The strongest nightmares are the ones that many humans have. We hide from those in our walled cities, and that usually keeps them out. Others, we don't have to worry about. A monster that only one person dreams of is small and weak.”
“Do you think there are nightmares here?”
“In this forest?”
Marc looked around. “Yeah. You were saying...”
“I imagine there probably are – some people have strong nightmares about monsters or wild animals in the forests. I hope they're not here.”
“Where else would they be?”
“In other forests. Oniron is a huge place.”
Marc fell silent for a bit. They continued to trudge on for a few minutes. Sometimes Marc would jump at a shadow that he thought had moved, or the sound of a twig breaking in the distance. He expected a bear or a tiger or something hideous to be there. But every time he would look back at Icelus, who was marching forward as if nothing had happened, and he had to take that as a sign that it was okay.
So when she actually did stop and her ears perked up, Marc began to worry.
“What is it?” he asked.
Icelus turned her head one way and then the other, then back again. Her ears dropped. “Nothing, I guess.” She walked straight forward again.
Marc was right behind her. “Icelus.”
“What?”
“These walled cities... are they safe?”
“I told you, yes,” she said impatiently.
“What about the people?”
“What do you mean?”
“What are they like? Are you all dogs?”
She looked back at him. “No, most of us look just like humans.”
“Will they know I'm not from here?”
“No, they won't,” she said. “You could pass for one of us for a bit, but anyone who talks to you will know you're not from here. You don't know anything yet.”
“Oh,” he said. “Have people... have humans been over here before?”
“Yes,” said Icelus. “Usually when they're very, very high.”
“High?!”
“Shut up,” she hissed. “You're being too loud. And yeah. High.”
“On what?”
“I don't know what you humans smoke, or swallow, or whatever” she protested. “But it has to be a lot. You usually show up here, and you're so far gone that you forget about it all when you come back. Or you die immediately afterwards.”
Marc looked around the forest. He narrowed his eyes, and waved his hands around. He looked up closely at his fingers.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Am I high right now?” he turned to her.
“What?”
“Am I just tripping really hard? Is that all this is?”
“Marc.”
Just then they both heard a loud rustling to their left. It couldn't have been more than ten yards away. They both froze in place.
“Marc,” Icelus whispered. “We need to get out of here quickly.”
He nodded.
They started to jog – whatever was in those bushes, they didn't want to get its attention, but they still needed to get away. Fast.
It didn't work. The rustling came again. Did it follow them? It must have. Marc and Icelus were almost running now.
Now it was on the other side! Had it crossed the trail behind them? Maybe there was more than one. Oh, god.
“There!” said Icelus.
Marc looked. He could see the edge of the forest now – it cleared out not too far ahead.
They ran for it. If they could reach the edge, maybe the rustling nightmares would stop following them. Just maybe...
Shaking again. Dead leaves being crushed under foot. It was so close to him now, he almost felt breathing on the back of his neck -
Marc's foot caught on a gnarled root. He tumbled forward, smacked his head on the ground. Looked up. No trees. Didn't matter. He was out of the forest, but whatever had been chasing him, it had him now.
“Marc!” he heard Icelus's voice from behind him. Had she gotten away? Were any of them after her?
Quick as he could, Marc turned around. He was nearly flat on his back, but he saw the nightmares.
They were dogs. Huge, nasty, vicious dogs.
Why dogs? thought Marc. Why always dogs?
The dogs had stopped their pursuit. Now they were waiting. There were... three or four of them. They simply prowled, observing him on the ground, defenseless. One of them slowly walked up to him. Its fangs were bared in a hideous, awful snarl. The smell was rancid, worse than anything Marc had ever smelled. It almost knocked him out just by itself.
The nightmare dog reared its head back to bite.
This was how it was always going to end.
Marc closed his eyes.
THWACK.
He heard the dog whimper and fall off him. Marc opened his eyes.
There was an arrow shaft sticking out of the dog's head, buried in between its eyes. The other dogs were as shocked as Marc was, and they didn't move. Someone else was here.
Marc suddenly remembered he had legs and scrambled to his feet, but now the remaining nightmare dogs had their attention on him now. He had just made a bigger target of himself.
“Hold on!” he heard a voice shout from behind.
A huge blur of silver came wheeling around the edge of Marc's vision, up to one of the stunned dogs. All Marc comprehended was a slashing noise and another dead dog. Marc would have normally felt bad about the dead dog, but he was in a state of shock right now. It didn't even register to him. In this situation, he probably wouldn't have minded it too much anyway.
Then two more blurs of silver. They came whirling around, circling the dogs, confusing them. One of them veered close to Marc – too close for comfort – and he could finally see what these silver blurs were.
They looked like motorcycles, sort of – they were thin, two-wheeled vehicles. But instead of regular wheels they had large rounded orbs on either side. They freely spun around in all directions and were only held to the body of the machine by thin spindles on the top. Marc caught a glimpse: in one rapid, smooth motion, the rider – a tall, thirtysomething man with a wild grin on his face – skidded close to him and leaned the vehicle sideways. He was parallel to the ground now. The rider released a grip on one of the handlebars, and the spindles withdrew up into the machine, leaving the “wheels” freely spinning and unattached, before squeezing a grip on the other handlebar, and another set of spindles – these ones vertical instead of horizontal – pierced the small indentations, allowing the motorcycle to lie almost flat on the ground and still travel. The mysterious rider kicked the ground hard, then released and reapplied his handlebar grips. His vehicle was now properly standing up – whoever this was, he had clearly mastered the vehicle.
“Okay, then?” asked the rider.
Marc realized his mouth was hanging agape. He closed it, perhaps a bit too hard. “Uh, yeah,” he said.
“Good!” said the rider. “I wasted my time showing off, though. Looks like Lya and Osette finished 'em up.”
Who?
Marc turned around. Two more riders on the same vehicles were waiting on the far side of the clearing. One of them had a nasty-looking metal instrument that was covered with blood, and the other had a bow and arrow. At their feet lay the remains of the shadowy dogs that had chased Marc and Icelus out of the forest.
Icelus. Where was she?
Marc looked around, but he couldn't see her. Had she run away and abandoned him?
“Hey, man,” said the rider. Marc turned back to him. “Are you lost?”
“Yeah,” said Marc. “I really am.”
The stranger looked at him. Marc felt like he was being sized up, but a big smile broke out on the stranger's face. “Well, then, we'll help you out!”

Marc had accepted a ride back on the man's weird sphere-cycle – whoever these people were, they had set up a camp not two minutes from where Marc and Icelus had burst out, and had headed over to the forest to investigate the noises they had heard from there. Their fire had almost died out, so one of the other two riders – a tall and intense-looking young woman who wielded the bow – set to rekindling it. The last one – a shorter woman – watched her intently.
“My name's Remont, by the way,” the stranger said, leading Marc into the camp area.
“I'm Marc.”
“Good to meet you, Marc. What brings you to...” Remont trailed off, then turned to the short woman. “Osette!” he yelled. “What's the name of that forest?”
“Irida Woods,” said Osette. She had a squeaky, distant voice. Her eyes never turned away from the tall woman and her kindling.
“Irida Woods,” said Remont. “What were you doing there? Where are you from, for that matter?”
“Uh...” Marc scratched the back of his neck. “Pelleville.”
“Pelleville?” Remont said. He had clearly never heard of such a place. He turned to Osette and yelled again, “Osette! Ever heard of Pelleville?”
Osette finally looked up. “No,” she said. She sounded interested now.
“It's in Viriginia,” said Marc, but he knew he sounded stupid. These people were from Oniron. It was a whole different world. Of course they didn't know where Virginia was.
Osette's interest was piqued, though. She broke away from the other girl and ran over to Marc and Remont. “Where did you say you were from?” she asked.
“Not here,” said Marc. “Not from - “
“But where are you from?” insisted Osette.
“It's complicated -”
“Where are you from, though?”
“Osette,” said Remont. “Let him finish. Sorry,” he said to Marc. “Osette's my sister. She's big into cartography and geography and knowing places. I can't believe she doesn't know this place you're talking about.”
“That's okay,” Marc said. “It's... weird.” He hesitated for a second. How much did he want to tell these people? He thought he could trust them, but... would they believe he was from another world?
Marc looked off into the distance, hoping he would see Icelus there. Nothing.
Okay, he thought. She's abandoned me. Might as well.
“I'm from another world,” he said.
Remont's eyes widened. “Waaaait,” he said. “Are you a tripper?”
Marc almost jumped in surprise at Remont's immediate response. “Maybe? Uh... what does that mean?” he asked.
“It means – like, I always heard that people from the other world could reach into Oniron if they did a lot of drugs. Kind of, spectrally project, you know? But I've never met one before!”
“So,” Marc said, “Everyone knows about my world over here?”
“Of course,” said Remont. “Your dreams show up here and make crazy things happen, you know. I hear that you all don't know anything about Oniron, though, is that true?”
“Yeah,” said Marc. “This is... totally new to me.”
“Are you kidding?!” Remont near-shouted, incredulous. “But we show up in your dreams every night! How could you not know about us?”
“They're just dreams,” said Marc.
“What do you mean?”
“We didn't think they were real!”
Remont scoffed. “Let me get this straight... you see our world every time you go to sleep... whenever you close your eyes... and you thought we weren't real?”
“Well...” Marc looked downward.
Remont sucked air in through his teeth. He felt bad about it, obviously. “Hey, man,” he said. “Don't worry too much about it. You'll learn. Hey,” he pointed over to the campsite. “Lya's got the fire started, it looks like!”
“I'm Lya, by the way,” said the tall woman when Remont and Marc made their way over to the campsite. “Osette's girlfriend.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Marc. “All of you.”
“So,” said Lya, smirking, “What kind of drugs did you try to end up all the way over here?”
“I didn't...” Marc began, but thought better of it. Something Icelus had told him earlier had just sprung to mind. I have been exiled from that place, she had said.
Was it a good idea to start telling everyone that he had hitched a ride with an exile?
“LSD,” he said, thinking of the first loopy drug he could think of.
Lya looked at him. Sizing him up? Had she seen through him? Could she tell he was lying?
No – she laughed and patted him on the back. “That's usually it,” she said. “At least from what I've heard. Sounds crazy.”
Lya walked over and sat down in front of the fire with Osette. Marc breathed a small sigh of relief.
“You might be here a while,” said Remont as he took his own place by the fire. “Trippers are usually over here for a day or two.”
“Really?” Marc asked.
“Yep – days over here, a couple hours over there. You know?”
“Yeah,” said Marc. He sat down, only vaguely aware of Remont launching into a spiel about something, but he was turning over this information. People who got high passed over here – was that what he had done? Was he going to disappear and just reappear in his house?
What would happen if he didn't? How would he explain that to this group?
“So you wanna tag along while we go there?” Remont finished.
Marc shook his head. “Huh?”
Remont chuckled. “We're tracking those shadow dogs. You wanna tag along?”
“Oh. Uh...”
“Good way to spend a day or two!” Remont said.
What were his other options? Leave them and try to find Icelus? No telling where she was. He had no clue how to get around or find anything. These people clearly did.
“Okay,” said Marc. “Sounds fun.”
“Great!” Remont leapt up. “We'll head out in the morning!”

They spent the rest of the night talking – mostly with Remont. Marc could tell he was the leader and the face of the group. Not the brains, though – any time Remont forgot something, which was frequently, he would ask Lya. If the thing had to do with places or times, he would ask Osette, who would immediately recite the information while she absentmindedly played with Lya's hands.
The three had brought stuffed mats that they used as sleeping bags, and Lya gave up hers so Marc could have one. She shared with Osette.
In the morning, Marc clambered on the back of Remont's sphere-cycle and held on while they traveled from place to place, looking for the trail of the shadowy dogs.
“What kind of things are we looking for, anyway?” asked Marc on one of their stops. Lya was intently crouching over a nondescript patch of grass.
“I'm not sure you would understand it,” said Remont. “Not to sound pretentious or anything. But nightmares have a certain... aura? Odor? About them. Lya's good at finding the source. She's good with most things, actually, but that's one of the things she's good at.”
“What will we find at the source?”
“Depends on the person who first dreamed them up.” Remont shrugged. “It's always interesting, though.”
“Interesting?” asked Marc.
“Yeah! That's what I'm in it for, really. Works out well. I get to see cool things, Osette gets to learn about the world, and Lya...” he cast a glance over at Lya. “Lya gets to keep an eye on Osette.”
Right now Osette was running over to Lya with a large white flower in her hand. She crouched down next to and immediately started talking – pointing out the features of the flower, imploring Lya to observe all its features, the petals, the stem. Lya seemed a bit annoyed to have her concentration broken, but patiently listened to Osette's speech and gently took the flower from her. She smiled and said a word of thanks.
“They seem like they're really close,” said Marc.
“Lya's a treasure,” Remont replied. “I used to be the one that kept Osette company all the time, but then our mother died and I had to be the one to take over my family's estate. She nearly went crazy – withdrew into a shell. Then Lya came and helped her out so much.” Remont smiled. “It's good to see. And now we have all these trips to explore Oniron. We're lucky.”
“Yeah,” said Marc. He hadn't thought about how the people of Oniron lived before – how they made their way in life. A world where dreams and nightmares were true had sounded so mythic and huge, but listening to Remont, he felt like he liked this small-scale business a lot more.
“Guys!” shouted Lya. “I know where to head next! Follow me!”
Remont nodded in response and took Marc back to the sphere-cycle. They were off.

An hour later, maybe two, they had gotten away from the hilly fields that they were in before, and came to a more arid climate that had only scattered patches of grass. The sky grew overcast as they reached their final destination.
“This is it,” said Lya after they had dismounted. “I'm sure of it.”
“Ouch,” said Remont. “Major depression here.”
It was a decrepit, decaying house – the green paint peeled off the shutterboards, the windows were all cracked or broken in, and the yard was choked and full of weeds. There was no front door.
“Why would we go in here?” asked Marc.
Remont shrugged in response. “You never know. Like I said, it's always interesting.” And with that, he cautiously walked in. Lya followed him, and Osette was close behind her. Marc trailed them, the last of all.
It was nearly the perfect picture of a haunted house, right down to the fluttering and moth-eaten drapes and creaking floorboards. “Are you sure we're not going to be attacked by bats or ghosts or something?” asked Marc while he looked around the living room. There was no furniture, just a carpet.
“No, that only happens in horror-movie dreams,” replied Remont. “This is textbook depression. Probably over their finances, I'd say. Just look,” he gestured to the kitchen table, stacked high with mail. “Bills.”
Marc nodded. That kind of made sense.
“Hey,” said Remont, “I'll keep looking down here. Why don't you see what's upstairs? If I'm right about it being a depression dream, the bed will be brand-new. That's where all the safe and positive thoughts are.”
Marc gulped. The stairs didn't look inviting at all.
“Don't worry about it,” said Remont. He gave Marc a little nudge.
So Marc went up – and although the staircase boards creaked like hell, nothing happened on his way. At the top of the stairs, just to the right, was a door firmly shut. Marc turned and opened it. It squeaked, of course, because nothing in this old house worked right.
Remont was right. The rest of the room was exactly as filthy and neglected as Marc had expected, but even though the bed was unmade and the covers were strewn about, it was fresh and new. Unexpectedly so – it didn't look like it belonged here.
There was something on it, too. A book.
Marc crossed the room to the bed and picked it up. The book was also new, untattered. He looked at the title – Scary Monster in the Night.
Two things interested Marc about it. The cover was indeed scary – it was a picture of one of the shadow dogs, mid-leap. It was making eye contact with the presumed viewer.
It looked, for all the world, like the nightmares he had had of Icelus. The same pose. The same killer look in the eyes.
But this almost didn't faze Marc, because he recognized who wrote it.
“Reid Marshall,” Marc whispered to himself, running his fingers over the name.
He hadn't heard the name in years – the Marshalls were old friends of his family. His mother had met Mrs. Marshall at a daycare, and Marc would sometimes go over to play with the Marshall's two children, Cassie and Richard. Eventually they had stopped coming to daycare, and Marc had started seeing them less and less. The fact that Mrs. Marshall's husband, Reid, had died of a heart attack was one of the last things Marc had heard about them.
And this book was written by him?
Marc turned and nearly ran down the stairs. “Remont!” he shouted.
Remont was in the living room now. “You find something?” he asked.
“Do dreams disappear when the person who dreamed them dies?”
Remont chuckled. “You must have found something, then.”
Marc showed him the book. “The author. Reid Marshall. I know him. In my world, at least. He died.”
Remont examined the book closely. “There's the shadow dog, too. They're definitely his dreams.”
“But is that normal? The dream of a dead person?” Marc asked.
“I mean...” Remont crossed his arms. “I don't know who dies and who doesn't in your world Marc. I can only see this side of thi – WAIT!”
Remont stepped forward, suddenly alert, and drew out his silver rod. He was intently focused on the window.
“What – is there something out there?!” Marc said.
“I saw a shadow dog,” said Remont.
“Shit,” Marc said under his breath. “They followed us here?”
“They didn't have to,” hissed Remont. “We're in their home base.”
A yelp from the kitchen. It was Osette's voice.
“Remont!” she said. “I saw a dog!”
“We know!” he shouted back. “There might be more than one! Is Lya there with you?”
“I am!” Lya's voice came through. “I'm staying with Osette!”
“Good!” shouted Remont. “I'll make sure Marc is safe. Don't worry,” he said to Marc. “We got them before, we'll get them ag -”
The window shattered.
Marc could barely process what happened in that instant of time, but a dog came through the window. Broken glass flew everywhere. Remont bravely stepped forward and gave a mighty swing at the dog, but it ducked without missing a beat.
It was heading straight for Marc.
For a fraction of an instant, it paused enough to let Marc get a good look at it. Recognition flashed in his eyes.
It wasn't a shadow dog. It was Icelus. She was back.
She leapt at Marc.


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