Sleep Dearie Sleep

The clearing opened wide through the heavy bramble of the thicket. A pale-yellow ocean of late autumn grass stretched out, blanketing the clearing in its soft, comforting embrace. At its center stood a tower of marble, it’s pale white form a beacon beckoning you to come and see, urging you, if you would be so kind as to remember.

Up the steps you climb, your gaze fixated on the towers imposing form before you. Dread coils in your gut like a serpent wound, ready to pounce as you approach the empty arch where a door would have once been. With each step, the dread builds to a roaring crescendo, threatening to overflow onto the very ground before you until… Nothing. All at once, the feelings grow silent, subdued by relief as you enter the empty hall.

Once inside, the imposing nature of the tower fades away, replaced instead by the cold indifference of timeless decay. You observe the emptiness of the chamber, that familiar serpent within returning to you. You do not know why you feel such dread. You focus on it, urging it out from its hiding place; only to find silence as your reply.

At the center of the chamber is a staircase, its spiral steps coated in a thin layer of dust. Your legs move despite yourself, pushing you up the first step like a puppet. As you ascend once again, your mind turns inward, searching for answers. You remember this place, that much is certain to you. These old walls whisper to you in a familiar hush; but when you focus on it, those memories escape you.

You fall to the ground with a dull thud, your legs giving out beneath you as they return themselves, reluctantly, to your control. Your forehead aches with a dull, pulsing pain as you rise to your feet, steadying yourself against the railing. With bearings firmly reestablished, you cast your gaze around the room.

Scattered about the room are a number of ghostly apparitions, each contented in their own activities separate from you. Nestled in the wall closest to you rests a hearth, its bowels emitting a flame of deep crimson. Stood before it is an apparition in the shape of a woman. She turns to you, beckoning you, you believe, to come closer. On approach, you feel the serpent begin to relax, its poison fading further and further from feeling until it is all but an echo, and you are standing beside her.

Reluctantly, she reaches a hand towards you, pulling back in a brief display of uncertainty before committing. Her hand wraps gingerly around your wrist, guiding you closer to the hearth. A gentle smile forms on her face as she gazes into your eyes, bringing you no small sense of peace. You know her, or more aptly, you knew her. Names swirl in your memory, desperate to place a name on to her face; frustrated when nothing right comes.

Perhaps sensing your frustration, she offers her other hand up; cold fingertips pressing against your warm cheek. You remain like this for a moment, content in the long quiet before she pulls back, producing a small pale blue locket from her robes before pointing towards yet another staircase.

Words fail to explain the longing in your heart as you’re yet again compelled forward by an unseen hand. The serpent hisses once more, its maw dripping with white hot venom as you move towards an unknown destination. Faces blur around you as you walk, a pair of children run here, a man dressed in tightly fitted noble wear moves there. All paying you little heed, until you once again stand before another dreadful ascent.

You double over, your legs buckling under your body’s weight just as your foot settles upon that first step. The ache from earlier reasserts itself with an all-consuming terror, stabbing like a thousand bloody daggers into your mind’s eye. You grasp a hand at your face, desperate to numb to pain, only to blanch in fear as it comes away draped in a dark red crimson. A steady drip of blood leeches from your nostrils and paints the canvas of the marble floors with your essence. You feel like death; an absolute certainty in your mind convincing you your final chapter is near. You close your eyes as the sound fades around you, accepting your death.

Only, it does not come. Like an ocean’s tide, the pain recedes, leaving you alone with only your thoughts. When at last your eyes open once more, you find the room changed. Those ghostly apparitions that once stalked through the hall have faded, replaced by the rotting bones of the forgotten. Where a hearth once stood, now only rubble remained. And, perhaps most prominent of all, a gaping hole now stretches over one side of the tower, vines dark as blood reaching into the tower’s interior like plump veins.

As you rise to your feet, you are reminded of the locket gifted to you by the lady with no name. You reach into your pocket, the cold metal of the locket rubbing against your hand as you bring it up; only to flinch as you find it splattered with long dried blood. Wincing with guilt, you set it around your neck, tossing one last wistful look towards the ruined hearth before ascending up.

Oppressive rain bids you a cold greeting as you crest the edge of the final staircase, at long last coming to the final stretch of your journey, the roof. At its center, stands a tree. A wise old oak, stretching far into the sky. Roots break the marble beneath your feet, crisscrossing like veins, spilling over the roof’s edge. Finally, you feel your legs fully become your own as you begin to approach the tree of your own volition.

Creeping closer and closer, the serpent pleads meekly, hissing not out of dread nor in anger, but out of fear as you creep closer and closer. At its center, tangled in the roots is the body of a man. His flesh stripped back, bone fused with the trunk, a pale blue locket strung around his neck.

This is you… It has always been you… And so, ignoring the serpents protests, you climb over the roots and into the trunk. You rest your body into the trunk, relaxing as wood tears into the flesh. This is you… And you are at peace…