four.
" brimont "

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Will Graham was dreaming, but was not aware of it – not fully, not yet.

It was the forest again, the endless green-and-brown deep forest of his continuous nightmares. (Of course it was.) He had found himself here, an indeterminable amount of time ago, following the indistinct tracks of a great beast that was somehow always several steps ahead of him. He was barefoot, although he did have the rest of his clothes – light jeans, tattered jacket; thank god for small blessings. Dead leaves crackled with his every step, but whenever he paused or stopped to get hold of his bearings, the world swayed around him and crackled in and out of clarity like a faulty old television set.

The Hobbs cabin loomed before him like a monolith – the Shrike's nest rising out of the blackness. It wasn't in the right place. The forest was too thick; the road that would usually be running alongside it nowhere in sight. Lights were on in the lower windows, but nobody was moving around inside that he could see.

Will hesitated, a short distance away; wondering if it was even worth it to enter, and then a scream echoed all the way to his ears – a young woman's voice, high pitched and terrified – and at that, Will didn't hesitate. He broke into a run without even consciously thinking about it. The front door of the cabin was already wide open, and when he entered, stopping for the briefest of seconds in the doorway, he saw that the interior of the house was abandoned, as if it had been left here for a great deal many years, and overgrown with weeds and tangled undergrowth.

The scream, again – clearly from upstairs. The attic. Of course it was the attic. Will took the staircase two steps at a time, and as he rounded the corner, he saw that the door leading upstairs was shut, perhaps locked. At the same time, he noticed that the screaming had stopped.

He shouldered open the door, charging up the stairs near-blindly, and stumbled to a stop at the crest of the staircase as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light and he processed, fully, what he was seeing.

There was a girl pinned to the wall, nestled amongst the endless sets of stag horns with uncanny precision, dark, uncombed hair spilling over her face and arms spread-eagled and caught within tangles of bone-white remains. She was barely clothed, and her skin was dirty, encrusted with soil and rotting leaves, like she had been buried for several days and only recently unearthed. Blood trickled down her chest and legs, congealing in a dark, almost black, puddle that was slowly spreading across the floor.

Marissa Schurr, he thought, and then, incredibly, this nightmare is getting old, but then the girl raised her head slowly, and along with the lighting-like stab of realization – she's still alive, somehow – came another revelation, just as earth-shattering.

"Abigail," he said, because her visage was unmistakable, even beneath the layers of dirt enveloping her skin like waves. Her gaze caught him, made him stop in his tracks and freeze up for far too long. It was her that had been screaming, he realized belatedly, but that had died down now to stuttered sobbing, soft and rhythmic, almost mechanical.

"Oh god," she pleaded, tears carving pale tracks down her grimy cheeks, "oh – oh god, Mr Graham. Help me. "

There were two antlers – only stubs, really – protruding from her chest, soaked over with blood, although he couldn't quite remember if they had been there when he had arrived. He stumbled forward to meet her, propelling himself into action, and seized her shoulders, intending to pull her off her gruesome mounting. "Abigail," he said again, and tugged as hard as he could, but she screamed again, a single note of pure agony. When Will looked down, he saw that the antlers were growing from her chest; white bone sprouting and splitting into fresh new shoots that continued to spill eternally outwards.

" Please ," Abigail mouthed at him. Blood trickled down her chin. He let go of her shoulders, and tried to grab the ends of the antlers to curb their growth, somehow, but they stung his hands like burning coals, and when he reeled back, panting, his hands were slick with blood.

He spun to see that the rest of the attic was growing too, now – a writhing mass of dead bone and velvet sprouting and budding into life; a grotesque timelapse of the world's most macabre garden. He saw bone-roses blooming as the dim light from the sole window caught their forms in its pale fingers; saw lilies bobbing up to the surface from the depths of seemingly bottomless pools of blood. Vines crept their way along the rafters, sprouting deadly thorns and tightening pointedly around the house's foundations, making the room around them shake.

Will found himself cornered in, forced closer and closer to Abigail, who let out a soft moan as a tendril of living bone looped its way around her ankles, digging into her flesh. "Please," she repeated, the word bubbling and distorting through a mouthful of blood.

He turned and wrapped his arms around Abigail's torso, intending to tug her out, but the garden grew tighter and tighter around them until the dim sunlight from outside was completely blotted out by the endless mass of living antlers, and then Will was not Will anymore, and they were in the kitchen at home with a knife to Abigail's throat, holding her in the same tight embrace.

"I'm sorry," they said with Will's mouth and when they cast a glance down at the shining reflective surface of the oven, it was Will's body that they were inhabiting and Will's hand that was holding the knife, and when they slashed the knife sharply across Abigail's throat with a movement that was almost a caress, that was Will's hand too. And when Abigail crumpled in their arms, wheezing out her dying breaths through a slashed windpipe, Will became Will again, and wondered if he had ever really been anybody else, even as he moved frantically to save Abigail's life.

"Abigail. Abigail," he muttered; her name a litany on his lips, sinking down to his knees in the blood-splattered kitchen and cradling her in his lap. His hands went to her throat, pressing hard, but he already knew it was too late. She was too far gone. There was nobody else in the room but him; no former surgeon waiting to take over, no murderous father dying gruesomely in the corner; just him and the body of the girl he was failing to save. "I'm sorry," he said, blood spraying his face and neck as he readjusted his hands, "Abigail, I'm so sorry–"

And incredibly, she smiled up at him.

"See," she whispered, and thorny vines slithered up from the depths of her throat, constricting against her vocal chords as it bloomed, a perfect red rose nestling in her parted lips, and she forced out the word again, choking on the petals as she did so, " see, " and then she was gone and the kitchen was gone, and Will was kneeling in the forest; alone again and covered in her blood.

He looked down. Trailing away from where he was standing; hoofprints. They led down the nature-beaten path, to the distance, out of sight completely. He stood up, a puppet jerked into life by an uncertain puppetmaster. Will Graham now knew that he was dreaming. He knew it, was aware of it in dizzying intensity, and also knew, with the same exact certainty, that he couldn't do anything at all about it. He would have to follow this path to the end; stalk his unknown quarry – or wait for it to hunt him down – until the moment he woke up.

He looked down at his bare feet, and took a step forward, resigning himself to the hunt. He probably would have continued following the tracks until his morning alarm rang, but then the hairs on the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably, and he became aware of the sound of movement in the bushes behind him. There was somebody there. His gun more-or-less materialized in his hands as he drew it upwards to confront the unknown threat, flicking off the safety catch without a second thought. He wasn't taking any chances.

Another snap, another rustle, and a voice from the darkness – "hello? Anybody out there?"

The voice was familiar, although Will couldn't exactly pin it down. He tightened his grip on the gun, and when his spoke, his voice was as rusty and uncertain as if he hadn't said a word for decades. "Put your hands up, and come into the light. Where I can see you." There was a short silence, like the person in the shadows was deciding whether or not to comply. Will decided to bolster his argument in the only way he really could: "I have a gun."

There was a sigh. "Oh, well – in that case," said the voice, and a girl emerged into the clearing where Will was standing. She was fairly short, but carried herself in a manner that suggested that she had a disproportionate amount of strength and knew exactly how to use it. Either that, or she was overconfident. She was wearing mostly black – combat boots, a ruffled skirt, tights, and a jacket that was plastered with pins and badges of all styles and sorts. There was a rucksack slung over her shoulders that was clearly packed to bursting – although with what, he couldn't tell. She eyed him with slight trepidation. "Oi, do you really need to point that thing at me?"

"Yes," he said firmly. There was something niggling at the back of his mind... "You're – I know you. Do I?" Will searched the distant corners of his memory, but came up with a total of nothing.

"Ace," said the girl, eyeing him. "You're Will Graham, right? You work with the FBI. I saw you yesterday afternoon."

"Yes, I – that's my name." He dropped the gun, secure in the knowledge that he probably didn't need it, and that it would reappear when he needed it, and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "How, how are you here? I'm dreaming. This is my dream."

"Yep," Ace said simply, popping the p. "I know you're dreaming. So am I. Guess I'm stuck here until either you or I wake up. Or both, maybe." She folded her arms, gazing around the forest, and then her scrutiny fell back upon him, as if she was finally seeing him for the first time. "Mate, you're covered in blood."

"Yes, thank you," he said, grimacing. "I'm aware. You caught me in the middle of a nightmare, I think. It's not my blood," he added, as if that clarification made much of a difference.

"Well, that's something, I guess." Ace looked around again, and chewed on her bottom lip. "The Professor says the psychic circuits in the TARDIS are kind of – malfunctioning at the moment, He hasn't got around to fixing them yet. That's probably how I'm here. No idea how or why you're here. In my head. Or maybe I'm in your head?"

"Sure," said Will, although he wasn't really sure at all what she was talking about. "I hope you know just how strange this is."

"Eh," said Ace, and shrugged. "I've had weirder nights."

There was another snap from the dark forest beyond them, and this time both Ace and Will jumped, startled. As before, Will tugged his familiar gun from nowhere, clicking it into position as he aimed it at the source of the sound. Ace, similarly, tugged what looked like a standard-league baseball bat from her side, whipping it around and into position to rest on her shoulder – her weapon of choice.

"Show yourself," Ace called, eyes narrowed, and there was a moment of silence broken only by the distant wind rustling the trees around them.

Bright eyes flashed in the darkness, and Will drew in a short breath at the sight of them, suddenly unreasonably terrified. He raised his gun and was all but prepared to fire, but Ace exclaimed, "wait!"

He watched – lowering the barrel minutely, still all-too-ready to fire if need be – as she edged forward cautiously, holding her bat at the ready. She toed at the tall undergrowth, pushing it aside, and then – to his surprise, laughed.

"Don't worry," she said, sinking to her knees and dropping her bat, which melted away into the shadows. "It's just the Professor."

Will hesitantly lowered his gun all the way, although he kept a firm grip on it with one hand. "Who?" he asked.

She turned her head and grinned at him. "Exactly," she said. Her eyes flashed bright as she turned back, and there was an uncanny resemblance between their bright, almost unearthly shine, and the eyes that they had seen only moments ago. She held out an arm, extending it into the darkness. Almost instantly, a cat emerged from the undergrowth, quickly and efficiently scaling her arm and crossing over her shoulders. It briefly perched on her right shoulder as she rose up from the ground and looked back to Will – brown, sleek fur, tail quirked slightly to one side, and intensely intelligent eyes, the color of which was utterly impossible to describe.

Ace leaned down to pick up her baseball bat, except it wasn't a bat any more – it had somehow become an umbrella, black and well-used with a shiny red question-mark handle. She looked at it, and then looked at the cat on her shoulder, and sighed, rolling her eyes, before rejoining Will in the clearing. "He says hi, and also to put down the gun, because," she affected an absolutely awful accent that he couldn't recognize in the least, "'it won't do you any matter of good, not here or anywhere else'."

Will blinked at her, and then stared at the cat, who stared back, unreadable. "...he does?"

She laughed, and swung the umbrella back and forth absently. "Nah. He's a cat right now. Cats can't talk, stupid. But he'd probably say it if he could."

The cat meowed softly, as if in agreement – a low, rumbling sound that, incredibly, sounded remarkably Scottish.

"See?" she said, and then grimaced, looking over at the cat. "Professor, you're kind of heavy. Could you –"

Obligingly, it swivelled; rearranging its weight so it ended up sitting more on top of her rucksack than her before neatly curling its tail around itself.

"– yeah. Thanks." She looked over at Will, and then pointed into the endless forest sprawled out before them –the opposite direction to the tracks leading away from him. "Look, I don't know about you, but I'm getting the feeling that we should go that way. You coming with – or d'you have another preference?"

Will glanced the opposite way and although there really wasn't any way to definitively tell, he could have sworn he saw the visage of the great feathered stag, watching him from the shadows.

"No," he said, looking back at Ace and the cat balanced on her back. "No preference. Lead the way," he added, and she did.

Although Ace seemed to be following pure instinct more than anything else – she would frequently stop, and turn in a new, random direction before setting off again – there was no mistaking that the deeper they went into the woods, the darker it became around them. Not just in terms of lack of light, either; the air was becoming heavier and thicker and Will felt his mind becoming dull and sluggish.

Continuously, out of the corner of his eye, Will caught glimpses of something large and feathered keeping pace with them a short distance away. He looked away every time, though, refusing to acknowledge its existence any more than he had to. But every time he saw it again, it had ventured just a little bit closer to them, although it continually shied away from the especially dark areas of the forest. That in particular struck Will as a little odd, although he wasn't sure why, exactly.

"Friend of yours?" Ace asked, when the stag drew especially close, only a few steps behind them – so close that Will could feel its hot breath on the back of his neck. Neither of them turned to face it, but its presence was undeniable even so.

Will opened his mouth to say 'no', but the word inexplicably caught in his throat, and he ended up shrugging instead, unsure. The stag continued to follow them, silent as the grave and just as ominous. The darkness was spreading its hands in front of them, as if in invitation – shadows becoming longer, reaching out to encircle them with bony, indistinct fingers.

"Something's coming," Ace said after a while of them walking in silence like this. For a moment, Will was convinced that she meant the stag, but then he realized that she was looking ahead of them, into the complete, all-encompassing darkness that was spread out before them. He squinted in the direction that she was gazing at, but couldn't see anything.

He was about to ask a question, but was interrupted by a low rumbling sound that grew in intensity and volume, like the earth was waking up, and he had to fight to keep his footing as the ground began to shake beneath his feet. He heard Ace suck in a sharp breath of air through her front teeth, and mutter, "oh, that isn't good," and heard the feathered stag behind him snort and toss its head in a decidedly nervous manner, and then the forest before and around them flattened and melted away, very suddenly, leaving them standing at the mercy of the being that emerged before them.

A seemingly infinite body clawed its way out of the earth, a heaving mass of a thousand or more limbs and ragged fur and razor-tipped claws that threatened to blot out the little light that remained from the false moon shining above them. Its elongated, distorted skull – falling somewhere between serpentine and canine in appearance – dripped with a dark, pungent liquid, and strands of what almost appeared to be seaweed. Fire burned within its empty eyesockets, a radioactive impossibility of green and white.

Will's gun sprung into his hands, even though he knew that it would be no use. He felt, rather then saw, the great black stag that had stalked him (or he had stalked it) for what felt like forever take a step back, and then another, and then – and here Will did look over to it, and stared in open disbelief as the raven-feathered stag simply turned tail and fled.

The creature before them roared, and it was terrifying to behold. It swivelled and thrashed as it struggled to right itself, its neck folding about in impossible ways before coming to rest, staring directly at Ace.

Something in its gaze, although an expression on such a beast was all but impossible to discern, seemed to change. And then it moved faster than he would ever have thought anything could – sending several of its endless multitude of limbs hurtling at Ace.

Ace stumbled backwards a step, but the cat that had been up until now perching on some combination of her rucksack and her shoulder launched itself from her and towards the swiftly-approaching claws. Her eyes widened, and she yelled out an indistinct, completely futile warning in the cat's direction, even as the creature's limbs changed direction mid-attack and swarmed towards it instead.

The cat landed on the ground, tail whipping furiously from side to side, and bowed its head just as the monster's deadly grasp converged around it, enveloping the tiny feline form and obscuring it from view.

Ace yelled out again, and Will had to grab her shoulder to prevent her from dashing into the fray, but almost immediately, there was an almighty flash of purest gold, and the creature's tendrils sprung away, retracting and retreating as if burnt. Ace tore herself away from Will and dashed towards the cat, who was straightening up, appearing none the worse for wear.

"You idiot, " she hissed, scooping up the cat into her arms – who looked slightly disgruntled at the rough treatment but endured it, even as she squeezed it in a brief, grateful hug as she hurried back to Will.

"What was that?" Will asked her incredulously, wondering at the same time if it would be worth it to at least try shooting the being in front of them.

"Faith forcefield," she said distractedly, not really answering anything. "I think. Which means..." She looked over at the beast, which appeared to be regathering its strength for another attack, and then down at the cat. "Is this what I think it is?"

The cat bobbed its head in a grim nod.

"Shit," said Ace succinctly, and looked up just in time to see almost half of the being's multitude of limbs bearing down on them with all the force of a nuclear airstrike.

The cat in Ace's arms straightened up again, tail curling around her arm almost protectively, and directed its intense gaze at the being rising from the earth. The golden light flashed again, curving around the two of them and enveloping them in its warm, bright glow.

As it did, Will's gun melted to dust and air in his hand as he, with no shield of any sort to protect him, stared certain death in its glowing, inhuman eyes. And within less than a second, he accepted it – accepted that it was going to happen that that there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

And at nearly that precise moment, a thick mass of dark feathers drew level with Will, and when he glanced over he met the dark, oddly empty gaze of the stag that had haunted him for so many long nights. There was a connection there, somehow; a deep understanding that passed between them, and Will became aware of the fact that whatever happened, the stag would not let him die – not here, not like this. Will raised a hand, pressed it to the stag's side and dug his fingers into the softness of its flank, closing his eyes briefly.

"Please," he said, inviting its salvation, and as he opened his eyes again, the stag's feathers came alive; an endless dark mass of silver-beaked ravens that emerged from its flesh and spiralled around them, creating a sphere of darkness and feathers that somehow managed to shield the both of them from the horror looming, monstrous, over the dreamscape.

After a second and an eternity, the ravens cleared, flowing back into the stag's feathered mane, and to his left, he saw the golden glow retreat. Ace was still standing, but the cat in her arms looked exhausted and barely conscious, like the effort of maintaining the glow for a second time had been too much for it. Will realized that, as far as Ace and the cat were concerned, there was no hope left. He knew, somehow, that the stag's protection would not extend to them as well under any circumstances – it was for him and him alone.

Ace seemed to realize this too, because she turned to look at Will as the creature reared itself up for a final attack. "None of us will remember this when we wake," she said, the words strangely hollow, as if somebody else was speaking through her and using her mouth, and then she smiled at him, her eyes shining brightly through the dark, and both she and the cat were engulfed by the creature, and he saw that it was coming for him next. He was frozen in place, unable to think of anything to do.

The stag roughly butted his side, spurring him into action, and he knew without really knowing how that the midnight-black creature beside him wanted him to climb onto it. Will scrambled to comply with this unspoken request, pulling himself up and onto the stag's vast feathered back. The stag tossed its head, made an unearthly noise that Will didn't understand in the least, and, with a creature beyond the realms of human comprehension pursuing them relentlessly, began to run into nothing.

The wind stung Will's eyes so he closed them, and he wove his fingers deeper into the soft feathers, and buried his head into the stag's neck as the manic rhythm of their frantic dash shook his very bones, vibrating at his soul. And they ran and ran and dashed into eternity and Will closed his eyes even tighter and woke up to the blare of his alarm clock and the most intense feeling that he had forgotten something very important indeed.