Lucid - Sample Chapters by Katherine Angela Yeboah (tohfa e dulha read online TXT) 📖

tee. Sloane rolled lazily onto her back, with her lips slightly parted and her fingers crisscrossed above a gently heaving ribcage.
In the distance, a faint and familiar lullaby, stuttered by the last dregs of traffic on freeway 101. In the air, the rich odor of jasmine. Almost too rich. Almost sickly. From a flower bed somewhere below.
And as the moon sent the shadows of unknown things slinking across her window blinds, Sloane’s head began to loll. Her breathing to slow. Her eyelids to gradually droop.
A movie theater.
Cold. Dim. Old-fashioned. With timeworn chairs upholstered in velvet.
With pot-bellied cherubs tooting on their bugles as they pranced across a mural on the ceiling.
The only sound the whir of a projector, crackling harsh and unsteady in the background. The only illumination from a blizzard-like fuzz, which swarmed the featureless screen.
Sloane sat amongst the shadows, in the rearmost row, blinking madly over out-of-focus eyes. Eyes that struggled to see, to adjust to the feeble light, as they flitted around the tiers of empty seats.
No…wait.
There was another moviegoer here. A couple of rows in front.
Tall. Male. Motionless.
His stare, unblinking, was fixed intently on Sloane. His teeth were clamped into an unnatural sneer.
She managed a polite half-smile, then turned to face the screen…hoping this stranger would do the same. But he continued to gaze at her, with a grin so unwavering that it reminded her of a gargoyle. Ugly. Unsettling. Chiseled in stone.
Minutes passed. Tiny particles of backlit dust dancing along the narrow projector beam overhead. Sloane squirming awkwardly in her seat and hearing its prickly fabric rustle against her skin.
She could almost feel the eyes upon her. Glistening with wetness and mischief. Swollen eyes. Praying mantis eyes. Protruding so strenuously from their sockets, that Sloane wondered if they would pop right out of the strange man’s skull.
What is this guy’s problem?
There was a touch of panic in the question, even though it was spoken only in her mind.
And when is this damned movie ever going to start?
The frigid air hung heavy all around. Making her shudder. Making her flesh creep as if a goose had waddled over her grave.
Sloane folded her arms. Partly because of the cold and partly because of indignation. The odd man’s insolence had started to annoy her. To grate on her very last nerve.
It was then that the burgundy curtains began to ripple, as though an unfelt wind were slithering along the walls. And indignant feelings turned into feelings of foreboding. Foreboding into out-and-out fear.
She glanced at the man. Timidly. From the furthest corners of her eyes. Then about the room, in search of the comforting glow of a neon exit sign.
She found nothing. No lighted words. No beacon to guide her from this unpleasant place. In fact…Sloane could not see anything that even resembled a way out.
Where to?
She scrambled to her feet, desperate to be anywhere but here. To escape from that smothering gaze. But the man was rising also, ever so slowly, up from his rickety seat. Each joint in his body creaking noisily as he straightened his spindly limbs.
Until he loomed, tall and gawkish, before her, in a well-pressed suit of midnight black. With fingers writhing and fidgeting at his sides as if he didn’t quite know how to still them.
And finally came Sloane’s horrified realization that the man’s trunk appeared to be pointing forward. That it was his head alone which had swiveled one-eighty on his neck to face her.
Only then did the notion crawl into her mind, as a tiny shriek escaped from somewhere deep inside her throat. Could this theater, this man, this awful knot in her belly, all be part of some hideous dream?
The words Silas had spoken echoed within her, and she began raising clammy palms toward her face. Craning forward to search for them through steadily widening eyes.
She saw forearms. Saw wrists. Vaguely beneath the fitful smattering of light.
But beyond that…nothing except indistinguishable blur.
Now, without warning, the room became alive with sound. Some sort of movie had started to play, accompanied by its discordant soundtrack. All trumpets and melodrama and clang.
Sloane shot a look back at the man, who was fumbling around between the velvet rows. Feet pointed one way. Smile facing the other. Lurching clumsily, grotesquely, toward her.
She swallowed hard. Exhaled sharply. Visible breath that swirled, mist-like, just in front of her mouth. Then lifted her elbows higher. Higher still. Eyeballs bulging into the gloom.
Until suddenly…hands. Distinct. Crystal. For a single lucid moment they appeared in perfect focus.
And then, like a helpless puppet being dragged from a toy chest, Sloane was yanked out of the dream realm and deposited back beneath her bed covers.
She struggled upright, blinking herself awake. Peered at her spread open fingers, which were lit by the early morning sunlight that filtered through the plastic blinds.
A shake of the head. A deep breath, held for a second before she expelled it. Sloane allowed her shoulders to flop back against the pillow once more.
And laughed aloud.

CHAPTER 2
Sloane dumped her heavy book-bag just inside the front door and hung her keys on the coat peg beside it. She kicked off her sneakers before heading for the fridge to fetch herself something to drink.
Then on to the computer desk, which basked in the noonday sun as it shone through the living room window. The sky was cloudless, brilliant, though a light breath of wind kept the day from becoming too hot. It was the kind of afternoon that begged to be spent out of doors.
If only…
Nestling in her scruffy swivel chair, Sloane switched on the modem, sipping soda as she waited for it to start up. She sighed loudly, as she braced herself for the tedium of writing essays and deciphering scribbled lecture notes.
Hours passed, while Sloane hunched over the keyboard with a ring binder in her lap. Till eventually she slouched back against the seat and massaged the nape of her neck.
Time for a break. She stood, stretching her arms out straight, with her fingers intertwined. Then, on an impulse, she sat back down and re-opened the web browser. And in the toolbar at the top, she typed the words that had been skulking into her mind all day.
Lucid dreaming.
The search results numbered in the thousands, and were a good deal more interesting than her dull study about population growth.
Apparently, quite a lot of research had been done on the subject, by everyone from psychiatrists to paranormal investigators.
There were reports by UFO buffs who theorized about a link between vivid dreams and alien abductions. Painting their grotesque pictures of otherworldly beings who would creep in during the night, to prey on unsuspecting wretches while they were sleeping blissfully in their beds.
Even ancient Tibetan monks had, centuries ago, explored the realms of conscious dreaming.
Sloane was riveted by now. Leaning attentively toward the screen, she read webpage after webpage about dreams that appeared somehow…amplified. That seared themselves into the memory.
At first, she ignored the sound, annoying though it was, as it echoed along the corridor outside. But it only grew stronger, shredding her concentration with a cruel and incessant malevolence.
A rapping sound. Rhythmical. Like a cursed little hammer, striking at her eardrums and resounding throughout her skull.
Until finally, she rose and marched over to the front door to fling it open wide. She craned around its wooden frame and peered down to the end of the hallway.
A solitary pigeon, somewhat disheveled. Feathers gray as grime. It teetered on the hallway window ledge, head cocked, pecking savagely at the outer surface of the pane.
Sloane scrunched her brow. Wondered why he was doing so. Wondered how he was doing it so loud.
Dentist drill loud.
She took a step, from the brown, hardwood floor of her living room to the blue, wire-haired carpet of the corridor beyond, shielding her eyes against the rampant sun that flooded in from outside.
Then she stood, perplexed, in her bare feet, before treading a few paces further along the hallway.
Hesitant steps. Half-hearted. Steps that soon came to a sudden halt.
Another bird, more mangy than the first, had come to join this strange percussion. This spectacle of flapping wings and glaring amber eyes.
Sloane’s curiosity was beginning to desert her. Was being replaced by a horrid sense of unease. As a third pigeon…a fourth…a fifth…descended on the sill.
And, before she knew it, a whole army of these unkempt creatures had gathered there. Working themselves into an ear-splitting frenzy of talons and beaks against glass.
Timpani loud.
Loud enough that Sloane did not hear the door sneak to behind her. Eerie enough to make her retreat, groping backward for the door handle.
The cacophony, unrelenting. The door…locked.
She spun, desperate, toward it, rattling the knob to no avail. Eyes scudding wildly from door to window ledge and then back to door again.
When the hush fell, it fell so suddenly that it was almost as alarming as the din.
The circus had vanished, without trace, leaving the window ledge as peaceful as they had found it.
Sloane sighed. Giggled. Feeling a little silly now, for allowing the harmless flock to spook her. Wondering what could have frightened them into fleeing so abruptly…
All those birds.
And yet, not a single shed feather left behind. No marks, no mess, no proof that they had ever congregated on the sill.
She was frowning, pondering, eyeballing the empty ledge when the questions finally welled in her.
Real or imagined? Awake or sleeping…
Am I dreaming this?
Sloane stared down at her hand, still clasped tight around the doorknob. She began unfurling her fingers, one by one. Then she lifted her upturned palm, peering intently at every crease and crevice upon it.
Until suddenly, a lasting, guttural gasp resonated throughout her entire body. And, all at once, she understood what lucid dreaming was.
She found herself swimming in this…other-world. This hyper-reality of her own creation. She became instantly aware, so very aware, of every particle of her being.
She could almost hear the silence. Could almost taste her own tongue. The soles of her feet tingling with the knowledge of every fiber of the carpet below. The hairs on her forearms rising to welcome the caress of the corridor’s stuffy air.
And all the while, she kept her eyes trained doggedly on the trembling hand. Clinging to the evanescent dreamscape which hung, fragile, like a cobweb before her.
Don’t break the spell.
Sloane placed her pulsing fingertips gently against the wall and skimmed them lightly across the uneven plaster. Tracing each lump and groove and imperfection in the paint, which had abruptly become a more radiant shade of blue.
And then, with baby steps, one foot in front of the other, she began toddling gingerly down the corridor. Feeling her way, so as not to lose sight of that all-important hand.
Don’t let it slip away.
Reaching the end of the passageway, she crossed the sun-patched carpet in a single, tentative stride. Then she started back along the opposite wall, her palm pressed flat against it, her face barely six inches from her knuckles.
Don’t let me wake.
By the time she drew level with her front door again, Sloane’s hand appeared to have taken on an aura of its own. Translucent white. Phantom-like.
Mesmerized, she gawked at it, watching the veins throb underneath her skin. Hearing the swish of flesh against plaster as her hand grazed the slick gloss paint.
A new game now…her forefinger had strayed aimlessly