Even in unconsciousness, Audrey could hear an unceasing guttural chant. What did a girl have to do to get a little peace around here if being out cold didn’t suffice? At least this time, she knew this was a dream. She’d been doing it enough lately that she’d started to become an expert on the subject.
The racket gave her a headache. If she was going to be stuck in the ether with a bunch of chanting idiots, she needed to find them and make them shut the heck up. Unfortunately, she had no real idea of how to do that. She floated in a misty white nothing that cloaked the area like cool fog. It was rather peaceful except for that stupid chanting.
The words writhed in her brain like worms, and even though they were nonsense, they felt heavy and sinister. The deep chanting was in turns sibilant and guttural, bringing up images of hideous monsters with forked tongues. The noise surrounded her, rising and falling in pitch, before it finally settled into a low rumble. If she focused, she could just make out the words. The chanters kept repeating them like a scratched CD.
O! Ha! Ghya! Ncto! Ha shub fhtagn! Ha tsath thog ha! Ath’Tsorath fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!
O! Ha! Ghya! Ncto! Ha shub fhtagn! Ha tsath thog ha! Ath’Tsorath fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!
She twisted her head, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Her stomach lurched as the sudden movement threw her into what her Eustachian tubes told her was a spin, although it was impossible to tell given the fact that she had no outside frame of reference to orient from. She couldn’t even tell which way was up and which was down. Her Eustachian tubes became more confused with every passing moment. She flailed, finally stopping the wild spin. By flapping her arms and doing a kind of mid-air swimming motion, she managed to create the sensation of movement and set out in a direction that might take her toward the chanters. It was as good a direction as any.
The surrounding mist began to darken, which must mean that she’d moved. But she had no idea where she was going or what would happen when she arrived. These dreams hadn’t turned out well in the past. Maybe she should float out here in the relatively pleasant mist until she woke up. It didn’t even smell very bad, just a little damp. Given the choice between a nice mist bath and charging in on a pack of chanting monsters to demand they turn their music down, she’d prefer to stay here. Otherwise, she’d be the world’s stupidest party pooper.
But now that she’d started drifting, she didn’t know how to stop. She tried turning in mid-air and frantically air paddling in the opposite direction, but the mist kept getting darker, and the chanting grew louder, like she was being sucked into a vortex of Things That Are Not Good and Might Decide to Eat You. She tried to reassure herself that if the dream got too bad, she could just wake up. But it was the kind of promise parents make to their kids when they really hold no power over the Bogeyman. When she’d had nightmares as a child, her mom used to promise that the bad dreams would go away, but they never really did.
A flickering light off to her right like flames in the mist caught her attention. She found herself being pulled toward it like a dog on a chain, and she was pretty sure no one was going to feed her Snausages when she got there. Squinting in that direction, she could make out robed humanoid figures dancing in the air around a bright bonfire shape, holding twisty-tentacled hands up as they chanted. No matter how hard she struggled, she kept floating toward them. The music wormed its way into her head and stuck there. Her lips moved of their own volition, trying to join in the chant while her brain was otherwise occupied, and she clamped them shut and squeezed them tight. She didn’t want anything to do with the tentacle-fingered people or their creepy song.
Abruptly, she was close enough to see the rough, dripping fabric of their cloaks. She must have sped up without meaning to. The water smelled like old sausages, which should have been funny but wasn’t. As she drew closer, one of the figures broke out of the circling throng and floated toward her. A deep cowl obscured its face. Its hands curled on the air between them. The fingers had too many joints to be human, and for some reason that frightened her more than anything. She was ready to wake up now. She pinched herself on the arm. Nothing happened. She bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood. Still nothing.
“Oh, come on,” she cried out in desperation. “Just let me wake up, for heaven’s sake.”
The thing floating in front of her raised its hands to its hood and drew the coarse material down onto its shoulders. It was bald and covered in scales, but the features were unmistakable. She saw them in the mirror every morning. The thing wore her face.
“Cthulhu fhtagn,” it leered, forked tongue darting out to taste the air.
A horrified scream ripped from her throat. Once she started, she couldn’t stop, not even when her eyes opened. After all, anyone would scream if they woke up to find themselves standing at the edge of a sinkhole with no idea of how they’d gotten there. She’d gone to sleep in her own bed; she was sure of it.
She quit screaming, because it didn’t seem to be doing any good, and looked around. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t stop shaking. How had she gotten here? It was still nighttime, and shadows cloaked the school and clung to the edges of the pit at her feet.
She must have been sleepwalking.
The explanation calmed her jangled nerves. According to her mother, she’d had a bout of sleepwalking when she was young, but the doctors had chalked it up to stress after her parents’ messy divorce, and she’d grown out of it as predicted. She hadn’t done it since then, so finding herself out here after all this time worried her. These days, she was awfully stressed, so it made sense that she would do it again, but she wished she’d gone to the fridge instead of halfway across town. Her feet stung, the soles scratched and dirty from tromping barefoot across town. She was lucky she hadn’t gotten hit by a car, or fallen into the pit. Even if the impact didn’t kill her, no one would have found her in time.
That thought made her shiver, hugging her arms against her chest. Her thin sleep t-shirt and shorts didn’t provide enough protection against the early fall night, and goosebumps rose on the exposed skin. She needed to get home. If she’d had her cell, she would have called her mom for a ride, but a quick pat down of her pockets proved them empty.
She turned around and came face to face with a man standing quietly behind her. Acting on instinct, she screamed in his face and then socked him right in the jaw.
The man’s head whipped back with the force of the blow, and for a heart stopping moment, Audrey waited for him to lunge at her. After all, he wouldn’t have snuck up on her like that if he didn’t intend mischief. Or had he been trying to wake her this whole time, worried she’d plummet to her death? Maybe he knew what sleepwalking looked like, and he didn’t want to startle her and risk her falling down into the sinkhole.
Confusion flickered over her face as she waited for him to make a move. To her immense relief, he didn’t try to grab her or hit her back. Instead, he tilted his head and rubbed his jaw. She’d never hit anyone before, and she thought she’d done a pretty good job of it. Her hand throbbed.
“Interesting,” he said. “So that’s what it feels like to be struck.”
“I… beg your pardon?” she asked.
“You may have it,” he replied gravely.
She looked up at him, which was a process in and of itself. The man loomed over her, the top of her head barely reaching his armpits, and she wasn’t short. He was frighteningly thin, with the kind of build that makes people offer food and inquire about one’s health. His strange hodgepodge of yellow clothing assailed her eyes, even in the dim illumination from the distant streetlights. He wore a pale yellow suit jacket layered over a mustard-colored collarless tunic, a tie striped in two contrasting tones of yellow, a pair of sunshiny knickerbockers, golden knee socks pulled up tight, a yellow belt, loafers in a dark brassy tone, and a hat with a jaunty yellow feather. At the very least, the guy was thorough. When he found a color scheme, he went all out with it.
“You are very interesting,” he said, looking down at her.
His hazel eyes with their unsurprising yellowish tint blazed against the pale oval of his face. His skin had a sick cast that reminded Audrey of days spent on the couch with a bucket beside her just in case her chicken noodle soup decided to make a reappearance.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to edge around him without making contact. He swiveled to follow her progress like a dogged admirer desperate for an autograph. “I need to go now.”
“You are leaving?” He raised his eyebrows. “You do not want to jump?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, overcome with relief as his motivations became clear. “No, I would never do such a thing! I’m safe. I sleepwalk sometimes, that’s all,” she explained.
“And you intend to leave now? Return to your home?”
“I promise. But thank you for checking on me, sir. It’s very kind of you.”
She meant it, too. He might have the weirdest sense of style she’d ever seen, and his overall appearance might be off-putting, but he’d come to her rescue. People didn’t always do that based on what she’d seen of the world. Sometimes they just pulled out their cell phones to record a tragedy in progress without even lifting a finger to prevent it. She owed him an apology.
“I’m so sorry I hit you, sir,” she said. “I’d just woken up, you see, and you scared me. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“Not at all. In fact, I have something for you.”
He dug in the pocket of his jacket.
“No, thank you. You don’t need to give me anything,” she protested.
“But I insist. You are in need of protection. I wouldn’t want you to sleepwalk into the sinkhole, after all.”
He winked at her, still rooting around in his pocket despite the fact that it couldn’t have been that big and appeared to be mostly empty. In fact, he began panting with effort, which made no sense whatsoever. She gave herself a surreptitious pinch on the arm to see if maybe she still slept and could wake herself up. It didn’t work.
“Ah, there it is,” he said.
He produced a long copper-colored chain with a pendant dangling from the end. The pendant appeared to be made out of cheap yellow plastic, just like the jewelry that Audrey had collected from the quarter vending machines at the grocery store when she was little. The Yellow Man offered it to her, the pendant spinning at the end of the chain. It was circular, with what looked like a slightly melted star with an eyeball in the middle. Not exactly something she’d wear, but it couldn’t have been expensive, and Audrey was willing to accept the ugly thing if it meant she could go home and climb back into bed. She’d be a zombie in the morning if she didn’t get some sleep.
She held out her hand. He dropped the pendant into her palm. Electricity ran all the way down into her toes; her hair stood on end.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed. But the shock wore off as quickly as it had come. She stared at the pendant, ready to drop it if it shocked her again. It didn’t.
“Thanks,” she said, ready to be done with all this weirdness. “I’m going home now.”
“Put it on,” he insisted. “Wear it all the time. It’ll help with the nightmares.”
She narrowed her eyes, shocked back into alertness.
“Wait. How do you know about my dreams?” she demanded.
Instead of answering, he smiled. The kind expression discomfited her. She got the impression that he knew something she didn’t, and that made her nervous. But she didn’t know what questions to ask, or how to make the uncomfortable sensation go away.
“Good night,” he said.
In two swift, long-legged steps, he was at the edge of the sinkhole. Then, with spiderlike agility, he began to climb down into it. Audrey watched, overcome with shock and disgust at the unnatural movement of his body. His head disappeared out of sight, leaving her standing there with her mouth open. She pinched herself again, but it still didn’t work.
“I am definitely dreaming,” she declared, but that didn’t do any good either.
Her sleep shorts didn’t have any pockets, so she draped the ugly chain around her neck. Since she dreamed, she could have dropped it on the ground, but Audrey had always been a rule-follower. She walked all the way back to her house without seeing anyone else. Finally, she collapsed into her bed.
For the first time in weeks, she didn’t dream at all.
When she woke up, the pendant still hung around her neck, and her dirty feet ached from the long barefoot walk across town. She spent a long time staring at them, trying to make sense of the situation. The Yellow Man couldn’t have been real, but the evidence suggested that he had to be. She tried to tell herself that she’d been half awake, and a man in a yellow jogging suit had given her the pendant, and her half-awake mind had filled in the rest. She wanted to believe it, but deep down inside, she worried she was losing her mind.
The possibility frightened her, but she still couldn’t bring herself to take the pendant off.