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—TWELVE RESIDENTS DREAMING—
Prologue: The First Life of Anacoy Marlin
1. Heirs of the Abyss
HEIRS OF THE ABYSS
william pauley III
Dreams won’t eat you. At least that’s what I’ve always been told.
“Oh, Rita,” my mother would say, “Calm your head, child. It’s just a dream and dreams won’t eat you.” As a child, I often leapt out of bed in the middle of the night, sprinted across that great unknown darkness [that hung like a shroud] in the space between my room and my mother’s, and in all my cold and clammy panic, I dove into the gray vagueness of her room until I at last was nestled inside the warm pocket of her bed sheets. I was haunted by my dreams in those days. It felt like everything, including my own mind, was out to get me. Thinking of it now, I suppose things haven’t really changed all that much.
“Except in Eighth Block,” she’d add, and she always turned away from me as she said it, as if lamenting some once-buried secret she’d thought would never resurface. “In Eighth Block, dreams…they eat you alive.”
She didn’t talk much about Eighth Block, but every time she did, I was all ears. Like many folk in the neighborhood, especially the children, I was fascinated by the Eighth Block Tower. It stood like a monolith and loomed over our part of the city, like a scream made of concrete, as if the damn thing was demanding our attention. I could tell what time of day it was just by looking out the window and seeing what house the tower’s shadow was covering. My house was 5:30. My friend Barcy’s was 2:45. Old Lady Barker’s was closer to 1. Because of that great sliding shadow, every last one of us living in the surrounding city block thought about that building at least once a day. Who lived there? Were they all as insane as everyone made them out to be? Could the stories actually be true?
I never discovered the connection between my mother and the tower. Never had the guts to ask [or perhaps never had the guts to find out]. I’m not too sure there really ever was a connection to begin with, I just know it came up sometimes and when it did, things got weird. Something stirred inside her in those moments, prodding, hitting her where it hurt. She was always left frozen, for several seconds at least, snagged on some memory.
I thought of her when I first met Tony. Tony was the first resident of Eighth Block I ever met. He borrowed a quarter from me at the Five Star Laundromat, then struck up a conversation that lasted the entire hour those machines were churning. I found him irresistibly charming. Back then, we were new adults, technically still teenagers, but I found him different from the other boys I knew. He was sophisticated, intelligent, and confident—but not in that asshole-ish entitled way that’s often mistaken for true confidence. As fate would have it, Tony liked me too. From that moment on, we were smitten.
Our first few dates, I felt as if we were swimming in clouds. Even our walks in the park felt otherworldly to me. Tony just had a way about him, like he was radiating electricity. I suppose it was in the way he paid attention to the little things, the things most of us took for granted. For example, sometimes he'd pause mid-conversation just to stare into the web of my eyes, and every time he did electricity moved through me in waves. It felt as if my insides were melting, but, you know, in a good way. I'd often think if he could make me feel that way with only a look, how incredible would it be to be touched by him? Well…soon enough, I'd find out.
And that's when the problems began.
No, not those kinds of problems. Sheesh. I shouldn't have to say this, as it has nothing at all to do with the story I'm here to tell you, but now I feel obligated to mention it—as far as our "bedroom life" goes, I've ever had a single complaint. Just to be clear. No, complaints. The problems I speak of had more to do with the venue in which the events of our “bedroom life” took place. You see, at the time, I was still living at my parents’ house, and due to the pandemic, when the two of them began working from home, I never had the place to myself. Tony, on the other hand, did have his own place—an entire apartment actually, right there on the top floor of the Eighth Block Tower. But see now that wasn't good for me either, cause the way I saw it then [and hell, perhaps even more so now], the tower was essentially a brick and mortar manifestation of my every anxiety. Just looking at it from the outside filled me with a sense of dread, like maybe the walls were somehow sentient…or, I don’t know, constructed solely from…harvested brains, but only the parts responsible for excreting the chemicals causing us to feel fear. Okay, I admit, I watch too many movies. I know this sounds insane to anyone fortunate enough to have never encountered the tower, but I’m telling you, the place is…different. It gets inside your head.
Anyway, I wasn't having it. Tony invited me up a few times before I ever mustered the courage to accept. On second thought, I suppose it wasn’t so much courage as it was raging hormones. We’d been seeing each other for something like two months at that point and I just couldn’t fight my feelings any longer. We were madly in love and more than ready to consummate that love, so I pushed out everything I’d heard about the tower over the years, every silly story, every embellished encounter with the residents, and all my anxiety and fear went right along with it. It was time to push our relationship forward.
The first time Tony took me into the Eighth Block Tower, I must admit, I was a little disappointed. It just wasn’t anything like I imagined it would be. As kids, my friends and I would huddle up just outside the steps that led to the front entrance of the tower and we’d stare at that busted glass door, the crumbling blocks of concrete that served as its foundation, and we’d all exchange stories about the things we heard goes on in there. Mostly second-hand tales we’d picked up from other friends at school or our parents.
—The entire building is made of salt, you know. Salt and Slime. —I heard a couple exterminators went in for a job and never came back out. My dad was hired to tow their van away, eventually. They were never seen again. —I heard they’re all going mad from some kind of radiation inside the walls. It’s so bad they’re all slowly deforming, becoming something else, something that isn’t human.
The conversations always ended the same way, with one of us daring another to climb up the stoop and peek inside. Over the years, a few of us came close to answering that dare, but ultimately we were all too chicken shit to follow through.
On those nights, however, after leaving the tower and heading home for the evening, I’d lie awake in bed for hours, trying my damndest to stay awake. I knew the moment I allowed myself to fall asleep, I’d be right there in that tower…at least inside my mind. Of course, it never failed. I'd always fall asleep.
I dreamed about the tower often. In a way, it haunted me. Once my eyes finally closed, I was instantly transported to a place, usually some communal hallway, where the floors and walls blazed with bright green neon. The entire place would be glowing, almost to the point it was blinding. All I could ever really see were the piles of salt in the hallways, some as high as my chest, and an occasional figure floating through the hallways—tower residents—all of them without form. Ghost-like. The only feature that even looked remotely human were their eyes, and even they were oversized and much too close together to be considered normal.
As frightening as they were to me then, nothing ever happened in those dreams. I was simply an observer. And despite how abstract the world inside that tower appeared to me, somehow it still felt real. I felt connected to it. Mentally, I mean. Instinct told me, even back then, that I’d one day cross paths with it. That it would eventually draw me in. That I would one day become a permanent resident of the Eighth Block Tower. It was to be my destiny.
I suppose that was why I was so let down once I’d had my first actual encounter with the building. As frightened as I was of walking into it, facing my destiny head on, a part of me was relieved it was finally happening, that it was no longer hanging over me. The weight of the burden had all at once been lifted from my shoulders, and that part of it felt incredible. However, that small part of me that was actually excited to finally be doing this, the part of me that expected to be diving headfirst into a pool of madness, to become one with the ghosts that had been haunting me all my life—that small part of me was disappointed. The building seemed to be…just a building. A run down, piece of shit building at that. The armpit of the city. But there it was, the Eighth Block Tower. I was there, inside it. I finally gave into it, only to find that my visions…well, that’s all they were, just visions. Dreams. “And dreams won’t eat you, child,” I could hear my mother say. “Except in Eighth Block…”
She was right. In the tower, dreams do eat you, as I'd soon find out. It just takes some time, I guess.
Tony and I kept seeing each other and eventually he invited me to move in. At that point, I would have done anything for that man. I’d never loved anyone the way I loved him. Without hesitation, I accepted his offer.
We lived on the cliff for about two years without much strangeness at all, but I must admit, it was mostly due to my avoiding it completely. You see, Tony warned me about some of the things that went on up there, stuff so unbelievably odd I never could have imagined it on my own. But see, Tony knew a trick, something he said the other residents knew nothing about, something that couldn’t be taught. A sort of unique ability, I guess.
Tony could turn the tower off.
Not only could he turn it off, but he could also manipulate it to do pretty much anything he desired. Because of that, his apartment, now our apartment, was totally self-sufficient. There was no need to clean anything, cause the apartment would do that for us. Same with cooking. Even the pantry and refrigerator would restock itself with whatever food and beverage Tony wished. No dirty laundry, no remaking the beds, no dusting of the window blinds. All he had to do was think it and it would happen, like magic. The trick worked for more than just chores, too. If he thought of a new TV, it would appear exactly where he imagined it to be. If he wanted to go to a basketball game, the walls would transform into bleachers and suddenly he’d be right there, watching it live, and from the best seats in the house, too.
When he first told me this, of course I thought he was joking. It was insanity! It couldn’t be real, right? But then he actually showed me. He had the walls of his apartment transform into the Five Star Laundromat, the place where we first met. He said on that very day he had asked the walls to show him the love of his life and the walls took him there to that dusty old laundromat down the street. He said he was confused at first, but then he saw me and knew instantly the walls had done just as he’d asked. As sweet as the story was, I kindly asked him to take us back to his apartment and never do that trick with the walls ever again.
I was freaked out, to say the least. I hated knowing that the love of my life was so strongly connected to that awful thing, the tower. No good could ever come from it, I knew that right away. Still, I’m embarrassed to admit, it didn’t stop me from enjoying some of the minor conveniences it often provided. I mean, I never liked doing the dishes anyway, or the smell of the trash chute down the hall, and I suppose I didn’t mind when Tony would peel back the ceiling and allow the sun to warm our little apartment every morning. Once, I even asked him if it was possible to turn our place into the gulf coast, white sands and clear water, even though I already knew the answer. He just smiled, then we were there.
I suppose he could sense I was warming up to the idea of allowing the tower to be a bigger part of our lives, to take us places, to provide us with life experiences, and in many ways, I was. Still, I had my reservations, and he knew better than to use those tower walls to surprise me. I was never one for surprises, anyhow. I liked being prepared, and knowing just what the hell I was getting myself into.
That’s why I got so upset the night I first heard the drumming.
At first, I thought I was dreaming, and I didn’t mind it so much because in a way the sounds were soothing, but at some point I shook myself awake and the drumming didn’t stop. It was a steady, rhythmic pulse—two quick beats and a pause—muffled slightly, I assumed, because it was happening somewhere outside our bedroom walls. I sat silent in my bed for a full minute, just staring into the darkness hanging above me, hearing the pulse beating inside my head, while trying to come up with a rational explanation for where it was coming from. That’s when I heard another sound flowing through the beat, a sort of whooshing, like the sound of water rushing over floorboards, gallons of it.
I sprang to my feet, carefully patting the air with my hands, in an effort to find the lamp, somewhere there beside me, enveloped in darkness. It wasn’t there. I pushed farther into the night, thinking somehow I’d just underestimated the distance to the bedside table, but still nothing. I could sense the layout of the room and knew my exact place within it, still curiously, not a thing inside it was where it was supposed to be. Upon waking, I suspected the darkness was mostly due to my eyes adjusting, but that was just sleepy thinking. My eyes should’ve already been adjusted to the dark, seeing as how they’d been pinched behind the protective sheaths of my eyelids for the last couple of hours—but they hadn’t. I was totally blind.
I kept pushing forward until I was outside the limits of the room, beyond walls, as if I was walking straight through them. The incessant drumming thumped at my temples and the sounds of water floated in the air around me, and despite chasing after it, I felt I wasn't any closer to its source, or farther for that matter. Sounds vibrated all around me. I felt fully immersed inside a black ocean, and half expected to see the light of some ancient angler fish as it passed me by, but again, there was nothing but that goddamn drumming.
That’s when I started running, thinking eventually I'd come into contact with something, anything at all, but the space inside the room just continued to expand, and faster than my legs could move. I had no idea where I was anymore. I was trapped inside a vast expanse of blindness, somewhere between the world's many oceans and the vacuum of outer space.
I panicked, fell to my knees, then lost total control of my emotions. Like a newborn babe, I allowed them to pour out of me, unfiltered. I caterwauled into the impossible night.
That feeling of unbridled fear and the way it projected from my lungs was totally foreign to me. I'd never been so scared in all my life, and it moved through me quickly, before I could even process why it was even happening to begin with.
Thankfully, a voice called out to me and pulled me straight out of my madness. It was Tony. He was close. I shouted his name and opened my eyes, and as if a switch had been flipped, light leaked into the room and my eyesight returned. Even the drumming had stopped.
Except, no switch had been flipped. I simply transitioned from a state of panic to a place of peace, as if having been awakened from some strange dream.
But I wasn’t dreaming. That was not a fucking dream.
That’s when I laid into Tony. I really let him have it. I won’t lie, the entire thing had me so spooked I told him straight up that I was leaving, that I wouldn’t stay another night in that creepy, shapeshifting apartment. He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. He said the room never changed, and that he hadn’t heard any of the sounds I’d heard that night either. He simply woke up to me screaming, lying on the floor. He thought I’d fallen out of bed.
Tony’s a good man, though. He knew exactly what to say to calm me down. He said he believed me, that the walls must’ve been reflecting some dream of his, totally unbeknownst to him. He even apologized for it. It was a kind gesture, but we both knew the walls didn’t work in that way. Changing the walls took effort. Tony made it look easy, but it took him a long time to master it. There was no way he could’ve exerted that amount of mental energy while he was asleep. The way I saw it, there were really only two explanations for what had happened that night: either I was going mad or the apartment itself was a sentient being. Just thinking of the absurdity of the second explanation had me leaning more towards the first.
The next month or so was kind of rough. I just couldn’t shake that awful feeling inside me. I wasn’t even sure what it was. It seemed to be some sort of shapeshifter itself, because at times I would feel hopeless and afraid, then it’d morph into something closer to anger and disappointment, then to paranoia, sadness, and all in the course of a week or so before it’d cycle through once again. Not only that, but every now and then I’d get hit with bouts of fatigue and nausea. Sometimes the latter would become so intense I’d actually vomit, and even then, it didn’t do much to relieve the fog. I just felt…sick. All the time.
Tony truly was a saint. He knew that night really rocked me, so in the time since, he didn’t dare to use the walls, for even the minor conveniences we’d both once enjoyed. Instead, we shared chore responsibilities and even went out for our own groceries. Never once did he complain. In a way, it was nice to do those things because there was a sense of normalcy to it all. Doing chores, no matter how tedious, was honestly the only time I felt even close to normal.
A few weeks later, I found out exactly why I’d been feeling so off. As it turned out, I was pregnant, about four months along. I felt stupid for not having considered it before, but I was young and inexperienced. It just never crossed my mind. Perhaps it was just ‘pregnancy brain,’ that’s what they call it, right? It explained everything, really.
“You’re pregnant.”
The moment the doctor uttered those words to me, I felt an immediate sense of relief. The weird dreams, the cycling emotions, the nausea, it all came back to the pregnancy. Just knowing exactly what it was that was causing that depression rift in my life was enough to get us back on track. I suddenly felt like myself again, excited to step into motherhood.
That night, I asked Tony to take us somewhere special via the walls, someplace romantic, a place with a great view and a warm fire. At first he was confused by my willingness to use the walls again, but he didn’t dare question it. I knew he missed it. He took us to a restaurant in some small village in Italy. We sat outside, on the patio, which overlooked the Tyrrhenian Sea, and he poured us two glasses of wine. I didn’t drink mine, but still I raised my glass to a toast. “To love,” I said, “and all the fruit it bears.” His eyes lit up. Pure electricity. He kissed me something like forty times, on both my face and belly. A moment of pure bliss. The details of that perfect night, our first as a family, belong to the three of us, but I’m sure you can imagine just how beautiful a moment it was.
It was all too perfect. A dream.
Well, that is, until the very next day, when I had my second episode.
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