«And they lived happily ever after». There are countless stories about how people manage to fulfill their dreams, but this book won’t talk about that, precisely. It will talk about nightmares, never mentioned or valued, but always present. Repudiated by everyone, someone must have thought that nightmares could not be allowed to roam free among the poor and fearful humans. They would have to be physically isolated from people so that they would never reach them. That is why nightmares were confined to this place.
Dreams could be left to their fate in the world of people. Haven›t you ever heard the expression daydreaming? That wonderful feeling only happens when a dream touches you. But since everything isn’t perfect, dreams don›t need to touch humans to make them dream at night.
NEITHER DO NIGHTMARES.
Sorry, my intention was not to scare you. Sometimes I get a bit dramatic. Do you like drawings? I have some more I drew some time ago that will help me to illustrate what I want to tell you.
Nightmares, born from human fears and dreads, were not locked up in just any prison: they were confined to books. Each person has a book, page or bookshelf. Where will yours be?
This confinement is only effective during the day, since in these books they wait for nightfall, so they can reach their prey and feed on their fears to become stronger or, simply, to subsist. There are only two ways to escape from one of these tomes. Sometimes, when people have very little courage or are more afraid of something than usual, their fear will gain strength in this dark world and some nightmares will be able to get out of the books. Others will manage to escape simply because they have been locked up for so long. Too long. But, don’t worry, they can’t escape from this cursed place. At least for the moment.
The creatures that manage to get out are able to live on their own, as they do not have to feed on the dread of their prey to survive: they are very strong. They will start searching for the human with whom they share a bond, in order to destroy him or her, either morally or physically. Any action will be justified by the evil itself.
But hearts are not only full of fears. When a nightmare is overcome, it becomes a fortress, thus freeing its owner from the shackles of fear. But in this place only nightmares are imprisoned, so the fortresses disappear just as quickly as they have appeared, leaving no trace of the book to which they belonged.
Don’t worry, they don’t die. In fact, they are allowed to return to the humans, as they no longer wish them any harm. Some would say that nowadays it is harder to scare a child. “Not like it used to be,” the elders would say. I am not of that opinion; with all the advances in media, monsters come into the minds of children more easily than before, in a greater variety and quantity.
All of the above is simply conducive to the growth of this kingless kingdom, a ghostly place, without order or law.
Remember I told you that nightmares can escape? To reassure you, I will tell you that it is very unlikely that a nightmare manages to get out of its prison, but it is even rarer that, once outside, it is overcome, because if it has managed to emerge it means that it causes in its owner a blind and irrational dread, or that it has been alive in someone’s heart for years.
How many people do you know who have overcome their deepest fear? This is the case of the protagonist of the story I am about to tell you, a Machiavellian skeleton that surely tormented for years, perhaps, a child in his dreams. Maybe it caused him so much fear as to make him faint.
The fact is that this skeleton had been gone for a long time. His book was gone, but not him. Not in his tome at the time he was overcome, he was not redeemed from his doom, and that meant he had become a particularly tenacious nightmare, one of the worst. Personally I think that’s not fair; I’m of the opinion that everyone deserves a second chance. My point is: a change took place inside him. He no longer wanted to destroy humans. Now, as a fortress, he only sought to protect them. His name is, let me see if I remember ... Ah, yes!
Yex the Tomb Wanderer, invented by a mother so that her son would not play in the cemetery.
He is a bit of a peculiar skeleton. He roams this wicked world with a good intention: to help people. The sword inside his cane, ending in a light bulb, is the best witness of his evil times. He also owns a bottomless top hat and a removable villain’s mustache, which he believes gives him infinite powers.
From the day he changed his condition, he put all his power and determination into destroying nightmares. Not only did his instinct tell him to do so, but he also liked it and enjoyed it. He began by razing the shelves he found in his path, hoping to drastically reduce the number of aggressions against humans at night.
He faced thousands, no, hundreds of thousands, of monsters and horrors. He had energy to spare and no fear. He fit the role perfectly. Yes, you read that right: “fit”. Today this is no longer the case, things have changed. But don’t get impatient. Let me get there in due course.
His objective, though growing in strength and experience, was not moving forward, for the world in which he found himself was infinite. There were infinite bookshelves and dozens of books on each shelf. That added up to… a lot of books! It should be made clear that our friend does not like mathematics, and although in that world there were millions of volumes on
the subject, he did not want to stop to think about his meager progress in destroying books. Therefore, he continued tirelessly with his task.
It was then that one day, while he was resting after having smashed the shelves of the place, some of them reappeared out of nowhere with new books and dreads. That was something Yex had never seen happen. He believed that, once destroyed, they disappeared forever. And that indeed used to be the case, but now every second new fears arose. The birth of some baby, for sure, or new fears instilled in a person, he thought. For the first time, he stopped his task and retraced the path he had been following for a few days to corroborate his thoughts. He walked and walked, longer and longer. His feet guided him as far as he could remember where he had passed. His suspicions were confirmed: what should have been a plain, full of destroyed bookshelves, was once again a library. He saw that everything he had done so far, though fun, had been for nothing. How would you stay? I wouldn’t like it at all.
ISBN 978-84-19904-00-3
IT IS NOT THOSE WHO HAVE NO FEARS WHO ARE BRAVER, BUT THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO SILENCE THEM OR LISTEN TO THEM AT THE RIGHT MOMENT.