Most people would feel disoriented to wake up in a sprawling forest at dusk with no memory of how they got there and only a backpack and the clothes on their back. Most people would be worried, frantic even, and paranoid for their survival. Maybe they'd try to leave a Hansel-and-Gretel style trail through the woods, or maybe they'd despair and start reciting poetry. Regardless, most people wouldn't feel prepared if they found themselves in the middle of the deepest woods of the Unknown without warning.
Sara was not most people.
She stretched her arms out, popping her elbows, and rummaged around in her backpack. All the usual supplies were there, of course. She wondered if she'd feel peckish and, on cue, she spotted a granola bar tucked in a side pocket.
"Getting dark soon," Sara observed as she unwrapped the granola bar, chewing on it thoughtfully.
She'd been here before, or at least somewhere like it. "The Unknown" is what people here called it. Sara called it "lucid dreaming" and was pleasantly surprised to find herself back in the woods that she knew were full of magical creatures and weird adventures, most of them involving Wirt, a cute boy in her class she'd had a crush on all year.
"I wonder what he's up to tonight," she said to herself. At first she'd felt like a bit of a creep, based on how often this idealized dream-Wirt showed up in the Unknown, but she always ran into him sooner or later. No point in avoiding him, even if it felt just a little like dream-stalking.
She set a mental course for "Wirt," knowing that the Unknown didn't operate on physical principles, so the best way to find Wirt was to act like she knew where she was going and follow her gut from there. Of course, she might run into some talking birds or magically-corrupt orphanages along the way, but that unpredictability was half the fun of lucid dreaming.
The sun had set already, ducking below the horizon, and Sara had to hold a hand in front of her to keep from running into trees. Their dark silhouettes popped up unexpectedly as she walked. Sara groused, "This is ridiculous. Awful travel conditions."
She consciously caught herself before saying "At least it can't get any worse," but as if out of spite, a light drizzle began, beating a gentle rhythm against the leafy treetops. Sara cursed under her breath and wrapped herself up in her green cloak.
A light. She needed a light, and she focused her attention on that idea.
Almost immediately, the tip of her shoe caught against something heavy and metallic. Sara tripped, letting out an "oof" as she collided with the ground.
"Now, what are you?" she said to the mystery object, nearly expecting it to respond. She felt it with numb fingertips. "A lantern?"
Sara pulled off her cloak, holding it above herself as a shield from the rain as she dug around in her backpack for flint and steel. It took a couple tries, but she made enough sparks to get a glimpse of how the lantern was supposed to open.
She pried open the hinge, which creaked mournfully, and struck the flint again to light the wick inside. Sara almost dropped the lantern in surprise when the spark blazed up, a huge ball of fire barely contained in the metal, before it died down to a respectable little flame. "Huh," she said, peering at it. But a raindrop splashed on her nose, reminding her of the hostile elements, and she quickly closed the hinge and stood again to get a feel for her surroundings.
The forest stretched out in every direction, grey and impenetrable even in the lamplight. Sara shrugged her cloak back around her, squinting into the shadows and again wondering when she'd meet up with Wirt.
The rain got worse, beating down against the foliage like the weather had a vendetta against the leaves. It was starting to wear her down. She heaved a sigh. "All right, enough of this." Her dream was turning unpleasant. She tried to force the dream to change.
"Sara," a deep voice said. It startled her out of her thoughts and she stopped walking, lowering the lantern.
"Who's there?" she said, searching the trees. Her eyes struggled to adjust enough to differentiate the figure before her from the woods behind.
"I am no one to you," it responded. "You are the one who has taken my lantern."
Sara regarded the lantern she held. It was clearly old, neglected, and was still spotted with mud and dead leaf bits. The idea that someone had used it recently was laughable, even if it still had enough oil in it to burn dimly. "I didn't steal it," she said with a frown. "I found it. And I sorta need it right now."
The dark stranger before her tilted its head. At least, she thought that's what happened-the movement could have been a branch blowing in the rain. "To find your way out of the forest?"
"Sort of." She quickly weighed the benefits and drawbacks of opening up to the stranger before she decided it couldn't hurt anything. "I was actually hoping to run into my friend, Wirt! Nervous guy, blue cape, big pointy red hat? I don't suppose you've seen him."
When the voice spoke again, it sounded like it was smiling. "We've met. I can bring you to him if you like."
Sara frowned into the shadows. She wasn't an idiot. She knew this stranger seemed pretty sketchy. But she was also confident in her ability to handle the situation if it turned sour, and besides, things in the Unknown weren't normally as they appeared. And it was herlucid dream, after all. She'd wanted a way to find Wirt and it had happened. This guy probably wasn't lying about his offer. "Yeah? I suppose-"
A flash of light illuminated the woods for a split second, outlining the bestial figure in front of her. Thunder sounded almost immediately afterwards. Sara shivered. It wasn't the imposing view of the beast that frightened her; it was the idea of lightning striking close by. "I think I'll take you up on that, yep." She stretched out her hand.
The beast reached to take it.
As soon as their palms connected, Sara felt her breath leave her. She was moving fast, flying almost, branches scraping against her face and dead leaves tangling into her hair. The rain struck hard and painfully against her skin, freezing and harsh, and she thought it was a wonder she hadn't woken up yet.
She tried to talk to the beast, but the wind stole her words before they could make it out of her mouth. It turned to her, eyes flashing in a colorful halo around a burning pupil, but it didn't respond besides pulling her forward.
Sara felt tears pricking at her own eyes, not from sadness, but from the chilling wind stabbing at them. She pinched them shut, turning her face away from the onslaught of shrubbery and rain.
As soon as she remembered that she was in control of the dream, she forced the journey to stop. The beast stopped with a jerk. Sara would have fallen forward, but a thick branch caught her torso, leaving her bent over and gasping for breath into a tangle of twigs and leaves.
"That-oh!-huh-whew-Let's not do that again," she said when she regained her voice. The beast turned to her briefly, only distinguishable by the bright white of his eyes boring into her before moving away. It faced forward again. "What, what's there?" she asked, scrubbing her face with her free hand, clenching the lantern in her fist. The beast was still tightly holding onto the other hand.
"Wirt," the beast answered. "And Gregory."
Sara looked at the beast skeptically, but out of curiosity, she pushed away the branches before her with her forearm. And there it was in the clearing: Wirt's house. Of course, it was just a dream version of his house. The real home that Wirt lived in wasn't surrounded by forest on every side, and Sara was sure that the streetlights would have lit it up. This house was dark, with a single bright light coming from an upstairs bedroom. Sara stared into the window, barely able to make out a child's silhouette. A taller figure approached the child from behind. It must have been Wirt and Greg. Sara smiled unconsciously, wondering if Wirt was in Greg's room to read him a bedtime story or comfort him after a nightmare.
Sara stepped forward, but the branches didn't give way. Neither did the beast's grip on her hand. "Thanks for the ride, but I wanted to talk to Wirt, not just stake out his house, so do you mind...?" she said to the beast.
"I brought you here for a reason, Sara." It didn't let go.
"Okay."
"I was once cheated out of a deal." The beast was still staring into the home. "I won Wirt's soul in exchange for Gregory's." Sara was openly tugging at the beast's grip at those words. It paid her no heed. "I led you here to collect what is mine."
"Their souls belong to them," Sara said, trying to gather her thoughts. The beast's grip was like iron. "To Wirt and Greg, respectively. Just like mine belongs to me, so please let me go."
The beast laughed. "You have a choice to make. Pay me what is mine: the soul of your loved one, Wirt." Sara froze, stammering. Now wasn't a good time to get flustered over the L-word but it still caught her off guard. "Or ." The beast gestured at the home. "I will take what was originally mine. I will again have Gregory to harvest for my purposes."
The phrasing used by the beast caused a deep feeling of wrongness in Sara's gut. "I'm not making a choice like that!" she retorted.
"I know it seems simple on the surface," the beast continued. "What do you care for Gregory? What's a small child's life worth in the face of young love? Surely he seems like the easier cost to pay."
Sara shook her head, trying not to get worked up over this nightmare. Sure, she had a crush on Wirt, but Greg was a sweet kid. Their social circles didn't exactly cross too often, but she'd babysat for him once or twice when Wirt wasn't willing or available, and it was obvious he'd someday grow into a really cool person. Besides, Wirt adored Greg, or at least he seemed to ever since that accident on Halloween.
Echoing her thoughts, the beast continued, "But Wirt was the one who willingly paid his soul for Gregory's safety. When Wirt learns that you've chosen him as a sacrifice, he will not be betrayed. He will be grateful, grateful to fulfill his duty as the eldest child and protect his brother. If you were to choose Wirt's soul over Gregory's, Wirt would survive, but he would mourn every passing day that he failed to save the child. He would fall into despair, blaming himself and blaming you."
"Stop, stop it!" Sara said, screwing her eyes shut again. She commanded herself to wake up. This dream was over.
But she didn't wake, and she didn't escape.
"You're waiting for a third option," the beast said disdainfully. "But there is no other option. Wirt's soul or Gregory's; only one will be spared. You will not leave this place until you choose."
Sara wasn't a stranger to dreams becoming nightmares, but the whole point of lucid dreaming was that she could escape when things got bad. She could twist dark scenarios into happy ones. She could wake up whenever she wanted.
"Choose ."
This kind of thing had never happened to her before. No matter how long she waited, no matter how she wracked her brain or stretched her imagination, she stayed in the same spot: cold, exhausted, frozen in the beast's unrelenting grip, watching the shadows change around Wirt's house.
"Choose."
When she reached the end of her rope, Sara tried bargaining with the beast. In one sickening instance of verbal back-and-forth, she offered her own soul to the monster. She was rejected.
"Choose."
Time in dreams passed differently than in reality. Sara wanted to tell herself that she'd been standing in this spot for days in-dream, and she even told the beast that she was prepared to stay there with it forever instead of offering up Greg or Wirt's souls as payment for some ill-defined debt.
The beast only responded, "Choose."
In all honesty, she'd probably only been there for an hour, shivering and cramping from the uncomfortably tight hold on her hand as the rain drizzled on her head and splashed against the side of the lantern in her opposite hand.
This felt like a riddle, a really big one. She wanted to solve it, to figure out the trick and vanish from the nightmare in a flash of light. But the eureka moment never came, no matter how long she waited.
"Choose."
Sara wasn't superhuman. She wasn't a hero. And this was only a dream. She reassured herself, justifying and rationalizing that whatever happened, this was only a dream her subconscious had created, probably to work out mixed feelings about her crush on Wirt or something just as flippant. In the waking world, she was snoozing in bed peacefully, or maybe she was experiencing sleep paralysis or something like that. Even if she gave into the beast and made the choice, sacrificing Greg or Wirt, it wouldn't make any difference.
"Choose."
So, finally, Sara chose.
As soon as the name she'd chosen left her lips, Sara was staring at her bedroom ceiling, wide awake.
"Woah," she said, running a hand through her hair. It was an odd feeling to suddenly be dry, warm, and comfy after being soaked to the bone in an icy rainstorm. She looked at her hand, stretching out her fingers before doing the same with her other hand. No beast clawing at her. No creaky old lantern in her grip. She let out a rush of air from her lungs, relieved, and wiped at her face. She was startled to find wetness, but realized it wasn't rain. She had just been crying in her sleep.
But it had only been a dream, and she could already feel the memory of its details leaving her. Sara rolled over to her bedside table, grabbing her dream journal and jotting down a few notes. Normally she kept a detailed record of all of her adventures, ensuring that she didn't forget any of the stories she'd made up in the night, but this dream was one she'd rather forget. She scrawled a few lines about a "beast" and an "awful choice" but spend most of the journal entry focused on the conundrum of being unable to wake up from the nightmare.
Then she stowed the journal, staring at her bedside clock. She'd overslept, but it was a Sunday, so it didn't matter. Sara rolled out of bed, scoffing at her harried appearance as she passed a mirror on her way downstairs.
There was a nagging feeling she couldn't get rid of as she munched on breakfast cereal and flipped through the channels on TV. Paranoia, she decided. The same way you could wake up mad at someone for what they did in a dream, she was worried about Wirt and Greg in the aftermath of her nightmare. She ignored it for an hour or so, but finally decided to put her fears to rest and just call Wirt's house. She could invite Wirt to hang out, maybe go to the arcade. She smiled at the idea.
Sara had Wirt's number memorized, not that she'd ever tell him that, and punched the buttons into the phone. She leaned against the wall, listening to it ring. And ring. And ring.
Just when she was starting to really worry, Wirt's stepdad answered the phone. "Hi! This is Sara, I'm in Wirt's class? Can I talk to him please?" She twirled the phone cord around her finger.
But it froze. She paled at the answer from the other line. And once it really hit her, she dropped the phone, leaving it dangling from the cord and scraping the linoleum of her floor.
She didn't remember the full scope of her dream last night, so she wouldn't have been able to articulate why. But from that moment as she sprinted out of her home to Wirt's house, barefoot but uncaring in her panic, until the end of the funeral, she kept repeating to herself, "This is my fault. This is my fault. This was my choice."