That night she dreamt of a dark street with swirling fog. It was the kind she would never and could never see in the US. It was a dream of home and England, but the kind of England one only sees in a Victorian horror. Orange lit streets from burning lamps that only dimly pierce the thick fog that rolls onto the pavements like water flowing downstream. She is walking slowly down this imagined street with not another living soul in sight. Catherine is vaguely aware that she can see her own breath and that her breathing is shallow and rapid- as though she had just stopped running. The fog is so thick in places that she can barely see the cobbled pavement that she walks on, and aside from her own frantic panting there is not another sound on this impossible road. Onwards she pushes through the milky fog. She sees her breath billowing out in front of her in long slow exhales of curling white smoke. A thought occurs, but her head is just as foggy as this Victorian street and she dismisses it. Her panted breath as her only companion she forges onwards through the dream. She is afraid now. The thought occurs again, she pushes it away, two more steps it comes again, now the fear coils in her stomach like a spring, she dismisses it once more, three more steps into the darkness and it occurs again and now she listens to her panted breath and stares in wonder at her long slow exhales of breath and realises a terrible truth… it is not her who is panting.
Two eyes glow in the darkness ahead. Catherine wants to run but cannot move, she wants to scream but her voice is frozen. A beast emerges from the darkness and stares at her. It is a monstrous dog, shaggy, matted and huge. Its lips are curled back over horrific white teeth, sharp, evil and horrifying as the beast's long lolling tongue juts in and out of its open mouth as the creature pants in deep, hollow breaths.
The two stand and stare at each other. Catherine feels her stomach twist with fear, feels her heart beat at her chest like a fist. She is immobile, she cannot move, she is fixed to the spot. A new thought occurs and she forces it to her lips:
"All in my head."
Suddenly the beast is growling, it is moving, stalking her. She knows with complete certainty that it is furious. Now it wants to bite her, to sink those ice cold teeth into her warm flesh and not let go. Her refusal to accept that the creature is real has provoked it into a manic rage, and now it pads towards her with its head lowered staring violently with those glowing eyes. Still she is frozen, heart pounding, sweat prickling, throat dry. She watches as the beast lunges in painful slow motion and now her terror is so great that just before the creature lands on her chest and snaps those terrible teeth around her neck she wakes forcefully in her own bed, sheets plastered to her sweaty body, heart racing and breath hurried.
There is a smell in her room, a smell of wet, damp fur, and for a moment she is so convinced that the creature has followed her here to the real world that she lets out a terrified scream and instinctively protects her head with her arms. When she is greeting with nothing but silence she begins to relax. It takes her a good 2 minutes to feel brave enough to reach out her arm and snap on the bedside lamp. The light makes her feel safer and she scans the room with her eyes. Nothing. She is alone. She looks around her flat and sees that she left the bathroom door open. The damp smell that had so terrified her a couple of minutes ago was nothing more than the lingering smell of damp from the bathroom, caused by the condensation from the shower she had taken before bed. Catherine exhaled deeply.
"Idiot." She said to no one.
She was still scared- so much so that she found she could not turn off the light again. Instead she lay back in the comforting orange glow of the lamp and closed her eyes. She turned off all thoughts of the dream- she'd never be able to sleep if she kept coming back to that vision- turned onto her side and curled up like a child. She lay there like this for many hours, but sleep did not come again that night.