The Little Dreamer

The little dreamer rested with one arm tucked around his Teddy and the other tightly gripping his Blanky, his gentle brow as soothing as a soft kiss upon the cheek. The sun shown brightly in his untroubled dreams, the grass beneath his running feet soft and green, his little dog leaping happily beside him.

But that night something wicked stirred beneath the gates where deep darkness hides. Something wretched and hungry for human hearts, a contagion born in the very witching hour of the night.

His little window flying suddenly open, shadows slipped wraithlike into the inner sanctum of the room, the full moon shining weakly upon the walls and floor as mold began to fester and crawl across them in its pale light.

Where did the poor child's guardian angels hide as something evil awakened beneath his bed? A pestilent vapor followed the shades, flying softly into the unprotected room as something moved slowly, ever so slowly from under the child's bed, its plated hide scraping and sawing across the floor.

The little one whimpered quietly in his sleep as if unconsciously aware of the evil gathering all around him. Two figures hidden by shadow watched as the Leviathan began to swell in size, its legs pressing its grotesque bulk up from the floor.

The first whispered to the second - Shouldn't we do something? But in reply the second simply raised his hand for silence.

Thrice the first figure tried to come to the child's aid as the Leviathan climbed atop the bed, its springs groaning under its terrible weight, and thrice the second held him back. The child's whimpers turned to soft and incoherent cries as the monster held the little dreamer close, much as the boy still gripped his precious Teddy.

As the boy's dreams slowly filled with cruel darkness, the creature began to shrink, his malevolence seeping like poison into the child's bloodstream and creeping cancer-like into the marrow of his bones. After an hour of tightly clinging to the boy the now tiny Leviathan finally disappeared into the night.

Only then did the second break his long silence. It is finished.

What is finished? the first asked in horror.

His innocence. He knows both good and evil now. Every waking moment, every waking hour he will face choices. When he chooses well he will experience indescribable peace. When he chooses poorly the darkness hidden behind the gates will cloud his thoughts and torment his dreams. Eventually he will sicken and pain will begin to make every waking moment a torture and sleeping an exercise in terror and futility.

But how will he know how to choose?

You will whisper to him so quietly that only he will ever hear you. But the Leviathan will speak to him as well. It will burn in his belly and his loins. It will thunder from the heavens above and shriek from hell below. It will awaken desires that until this moment he has never known.

Will he listen?

Perhaps one day. But he may simply drown your voice out with noise and busyness. If he fails to listen, eventually his heart will harden to stone. Like others before him, he will learn to live with the pain and suffering that comes when darkness batters with everlasting fury upon his heavy and unyielding walls.

And if he listens?

Then his walls will begin to crumble and the evil that once infected his heart will begin to seep out in harmless vapor.

In that day, when the high winds blow and the storms gather, when fires scorch the land and the ground shakes he will not be moved.

He will know in that day within the deepest recesses of his being the peace that he formerly had experienced in the innocence of childhood.

He will learn what only the wise ever know. Only in the stillness will the heart speak.