The old premise resides there, when it is among the related details dwelling in the patterns that dwell when the mind is active while the body rests. Beneath the echo, it would gather among the darkness seen from the vast skies – that come when the years had died. In the years that dwell within one winter is born and another dies. When the glow of the monitor gives off a bluish white, it would be there which the dream is written stands before the eyes of the writer. It would become among the circle of the dreams while they remain, while the writer puts to the page the details that are within the dream. That from them, which in the mind it paints a gallery that one describes as such – a museum where one gathers between darkness and light. In them which finds a way to tell their stories, or a way from the eyes of the writer to illustrate them. Telling of them which echo a once strong faith in God – and in the paintings seen in the dream would echo the shadows that fall within the inferno.. “This sanity is painted from your nightmares,” explains the curator – as he stands behind my shoulder while typing out the details of the dream, “I can tell a lot from your words and things that are written here express much of your horrors, and fears that live within your mind and your health problems following you for many years to come.” He had a long face – one that had a few scars to them like he was on the receiving end of a few knife cuts, very little or no emotion to his words but yet had an ice-like quality to them – cold. “Many had seen this gallery as they are painted word for word,” the curator narrates, “though they are not able to be described in a single word –– yet they are written in form of many pages. Where everything here was written by you – everything that are seen from your perspective – the nightmares seen out of the etchings of darkness. That which was seen from your eyes. Where you are seen a sleep and dreaming, these pages become what they are described as the Shadow of Darkness. I was here watching you writing these nightmares into the pages that you were not sure that everyone else read but you knew from your personal torments of mental health and physical health struggles – knew. You knew that they had to be written. Beneath the eyes when you were asleep the dreams as they were written – one of them being the vampires within the train station’s sleeper lounge – I was the one who had that painted here in the gallery. That some of these which are written were from your faith in a God that is seen from the skies – where salvation was sought out but never received.” In a silence it would be of the pages as they glowed on the screen, that it would be from them in a shadow of darkness. Where they stir without a sound – whispering in places where they cannot be heard, that it was in those places that I describe – an old church which was home for an Evangelical congregation that it would be among the whispers in the dark where I describe the dream as it played itself out. From the duration of years as they are described, and they of the written pages become before the eyes – that in years from them which the writer speculates from the echo of them. In years which fade from the falling echoes which whisper – depths from them stirring in the places that one had yet to describe. As from the gallery within a cycle of dreams become the echoing sound of the electric crown. As where the dream echoed reality in some form as being the church in the dream resembled that of the one in South Barrington, Illinois, the one that is known as Willowcreek Community Church. Where it would become the details in the dream as they would resemble an old play that I saw at one time – showing who would go to heaven and hell. It would be to the words of the curator of the museum rang themselves true within the bell tolls. Those eyes –– those eyes as they proceed to look at me, a horror beyond any that are put into a relative belief; that it would stand among them in nightmares that words cannot begin to express what to put into what was etched in the mind. From them in the mind which whisper prayers without signs of meaning – from them in the echo which become the telling of the nightmares. “What do you mean you are the one who was watching my fingers as they typed?” I asked, with a nervous tone to the voice, “Curator, you mean you were the one who was in my mind when the dreams played out?” The figure had this sunken face to him – had a resemblance to myself if I was aged 20 years, the dreams came from the description behind the hard lines and sunken cheeks. In the dream I saw him standing within the halls of Willowcreek Church––where he looked on holding one of the paintings which resembled something that I wrote, the dream describing the room of vampires. Those eyes he looked at me with –– they seemed to be almost those of my own, when the paintings tell the illustrations within the shadow of darkness. Deeper which I fall further into the void which the dream shall go –– which it would be taken from them in pages as they are written before me, glowing on a screen of neon blue. From that glow within the screen becomes the description as fevered which is written before me, that it would stand in the circles where it would be written from the dust. From the point when the body falls into the sleep that the mind is still awake – haunting as what sounds coming from the glow of the screen, the crawling cycle as seen from these eyes. Where it would be from those years past that the dreams would have their way of writing themselves into the pages as they are seen –– the places as they are told within the mind as they are penned out from a glow of a computer screen. From the computer screen and these eyes are where I begin writing this, and observations that become from them as they were seen from a shadow of darkness. In the places where I find myself looking – it would be among the halls of the chapel.
II.
The chapel had this darkness to the place that glowed a neon green, where they stood before the sermons as they were given. I stood there looking without a place to understand, but it was among them which it became a described echo of silence. That it would be from my journal as they were written, the dream as it would be standing within the blank pages – the glow from the screen as I wrote them to the computer. From the glow of the computer my fingers run across the board as they have a life of their own, and the dream as they are written. In them which become as the mind when the body rests, and in the dreams which become a hall of a museum which paint the pictures of a horror that cannot be seen with the waking eyes. Where they walk among the stir of whispers, it would be among the silence spoken from their sermons. It would be from there which the curator would walk from one place to the other, lumbering as a statue from an old building – looming as a vulture over a corpse. From a neon glow the shadow of darkness walked among them in the places that gather from the dreams telling from the electric crown. Where they are seen from the horrors in the echo of the wandering eyes and the glow of the computer which tells the dreams –– while the nightmares live within the places that cannot be written without a rational thought. Becoming from them as which dwells in the stages when the body is asleep, as when I fell asleep and started to dream. Of them which stir in the places when I found myself standing in the church that resembled the one in South Barrington, Illinois. In the years which dwelled among the pages, that in those pages are written from the writer’s word processor. Beneath the echo of years which fade in one form or another, which it would become from them in the pages when they are written. From the many as they were written – of the one patterned cycle that brought back to the one page, where they descend into the next phase of the dream. That it would be among the pages and the stages which the body sleeps, it would be among them descending into a spiral where the dreams begin. From them as what become from the darkest days –– when the echo of the seasons begin to gray. In them from I as they are written, in them which become the beginning. That is told from the glow of the screen, when they wait for the things to be said after the body sleeps. While the body sleeps one would hear this prayer spoken from one place in the clay and the ashes that wait for the dreams to begin:
time as they wait from the grey when they see of the nothing-more, as what is said, nothing to say when the ashes of black, turn to a pale shade of grey,
Where it becomes from them in the seasons, the dreams which come without the reasons as I put them to the pages as they are written here. In one form or another as they become from the faded glow of a screen. Though from the dreams it would be one way to paint the pale echoes from the whisper in silence. That it would become from them in the neon glow of a green which was not earthly – when the horrors of tomorrow become the years of the yesteryears. The dreams which are – as the reminder of the shadows which are the darkness as they fade. “This cannot be,” I say to myself, still writing – “what stands in the mind when I write this, all that is seen within the dream is myself 20 years from now. Of ashes that fade to black, or another pale shade of grey – from them which it is, a horror seen from tomorrow becoming – as it would stand in the shadow of death. From the years of when I was diagnosed with Bronchitis, these dreams were the thing that haunted me in one form or another. It would be from them which I heard this whisper:
of reasons, we seek for the reasons of our blame, which we follow in damnation, repetition is the flame,”
It becomes from them in the places which become them in the places where I kept hearing the whisper. That whisper become the fading darkness as my body slept. From them which it is written of them, the dream as it has a way of surfacing in one form or another. In them –– the known echo which was from the dream as the church described similar to the Willowcreek, and in them which fade from the darkness from places that I cannot begin to even fathom – though it would be among them where I see something, those that resembled either angels in black or demons. They were clothed in a pale black sackcloth, the smell was that of burning sulfur – where it would be among them I stand in a valley of shadow. Horror beyond horror within nightmares that I cannot begin to describe – that some would die just watching. From my eyes – the writer, who is putting these dreams to a written page, the whispers from a darkness that I cannot begin to even describe become the horrors as they were etched in a form resembling clay made from human flesh. Horrors of the years which become from the dreams as I rested in the walls of the hospital found their way to be written. “Do you hear them weeping,” the curator said to me – he had this rasp to the voice like his throat was cut. It was a graphic display when he spoke blood came out., “They weep from the clay where they had died – their voices are heard in form of low whispers. This is the sound of damnation if it had a voice – the horrors that are there are the shadows of what they were when they were alive, the sound of victims as they were killed in car accidents, murders and even some from the echoes of war. God has the abortions because they are automatically his, but the rest belong to the fires below. That I know you can hear them in your dreams, while you are asleep – during the times in the hospital is where they are heard the loudest, that is where they either join me in Purgatory or up in the gates of heaven. Where they are cast down – in the places of weeping, crying and the gnashing of teeth.” It would be from the sound of gnawing flesh that becomes in the horror that dwells in the cycle of the dream as the body sleeps. That it would echo the dream which I was in the room full of vampires that become the thing that created a landscape of what a weak body would create when it had ill health. From them which become the death in the echo of war, and illness which becomes the reflection of pestilence and famine. Where it would be seen in the dream of the four horsemen. From the shadow of them will etch in the clay of the shadow of darkness, which it follows from the nightmares as they are written on a glow of a word processor’s screen – where I could barely speak of these in words on the mouth. Drawn in them becomes the horror of Revelation, and within them in the poetic whispers pain the echo of a torment that I cannot begin to put into words. Yet from them in whispers become the thing heard within the dream:
when all that is seen from the dreams, and all seen in shadow, falling from the echoes of the screams, as death lays on the snow,,,
Of them which become the questions falling from one etching of time and another, it would be from them which I see of the shadow – and them in the darkness which become the fading notions. That it would be from the curators words that ring the strongest in the pages as they are written here. In his words described of the damnation screams, and in them where it is written in the glow of a computer screen. In the walls within the church that is Willowcreek, the dream continues to play itself out and from them – the new faith becomes the etchings in a dark horrors as they rise from the clay. In them become the ashes of the nightmares which become from the sleeping stillborn.
III.
In where they stand, the pages which I pen – a narrative which the curator lives inside the mind with paintings that foreshadow nightmares as they were written from the pages. The glow from the computer is what greets me as I pen these forsaken passages. That they would become from them in the dreams as they are written, and the walls of the place known as Willowcreek Church become the etchings as told from the nightmares in the clay. As from the old premise remains, the echoes of the nightmare fade from the places that are yet to become from a narrative. In a whisper, telling of the mind that becomes from the sleep – that from a self medicated state where it is written. From I – who looks on from the places which are described as the eternal darkness. Of the dreams which they are seen – from these eyes as I write them. From these eyes – they see horrors that others would die just watching, and when they are there, all that fallen – everything that had gone, in the echo of those which become the memories in a place known as hell. That it would become from the places known to be among the first and the last, in where death had held the strongest of dominions as told among the letters from earth. When it would come in the waiting eyes, as they would fall closed – tired, it would be from the tired body that would stand among a clinical subsiding that it would wait among the places in ashes and the dream which it would be the whisper. That it would gather among the places of refuge in darkness which it has the strongest of dominion, the dream as the body begins to sleep and the glow of the computer screen shall be the thing that greets the writer who writes this. Of them when the dreams become the backdrop for something much sinister in the description, beneath a backdrop that was written from scripture and ashes – telling when the ashes of those who seen the nightmares had died just watching. Told of them which are seen in the eyes of those who are sleep and dreaming, knowing of them in darkness that falls – from the glow of a winter moon where they become. Known of them in these pages as they are seen from the glow of a computer screen. It would be from them that await the sleep from the beginning of time and the end of the meanings – from them become the death of meaning; from them in horrors that glow on the screen as they are etched on a computer screen. Where they sat there in a pattern of years – when I was in the hospital the dreams would be there, the dreams that were there when hospitalized in October would be the premise for the dream as I write of this now. Of what stands among the pages in the dream, it would be where another would die just watching because of the curator bleeds as he talked. From horrors that dwell in the places when they are written – in penned dreams which dwell of horrors that were never meant to be described. Time when it ticks as a loud, silence-breaking whisper that it would be when one walked among the places which death had held its strongest dominion, time would have no real way of telling itself of when it passed. Yet from the glow of the screen it would all become fragments within the mind, as they are written out – from the pale glow of a monitor. In them which become from the dreams as they would be from them in narrative, given from this – the description of the curator is what burned in the back of the mind the strongest. In them which it is written – from my eyes, and from these eyes one sees the testimony of a horror that remains within the walls of Willowcreek Church. In them which they become in the echo of flames, that are which resides in the shadow of darkness that rises in the horror within the clay.
I don't believe in hell as such, and I have my doubts about heaven, but I know the abominable to be fact, so I think I'll avoid Willowcreek Church!
Chuckles.
Reviewed by ***** *********
2/26/2004
Interesting write, I like the way in which you maintain the "archaic" voice throughout, a touch of Algernon Blackwood here, a lot of H.P. Lovecraft there... it gives the story a sense of impending dread with an aristocratic air of agelessness. A very cinematic story for you, Nickolaus, not the usual job of over-cerebralization of horror that you are prone to, and this plays out well! Good work!
Man, this had a 'Night Gallery' vibe about it. As usual, your descriptions are amazing. Talk about a nightmarish landscape...this one could cause some serious night sweats.
In the end they'll all be dancin'--all them ones that didn't die.... Dance with me in the shadows amidst the lightning and the thunder, and all that nu-cu-lar debris. See the big bang from the other side, and then open that cellar door. Go down into
Happy Halloween. A volume of Horrible Haunts & Twisted Tales taken from the horror books La Belle Rouge has written every October for a decade and a half. If you have read her works in the horror genre, you know the invitation is for you to enjoy thr
