My head was clouded in a fog that was not unlike the fog that rolled over the frigid night that I had run out into. I couldn’t have been running from anything. After all there had been no one and nothing in our tent to run from, so I must have been running towards something. But what?

  I felt as if I was in a dream. A dream in which I would wake up and immediately I would be running. I was caught within a sickening motion that I couldn’t control or understand.

  The icy early morning air made my skin easily break as vines and the limbs of trees whipped against me in my frantic race through the woods. If I was in the woods now, then I must have been running for at least an hour based on the distance of the nearest forest to the camp. The chill dew gathering on the flora around me and the crisp taste of the air that rushed into my hungry lungs hinted that it was only a manner of one hour or two before dawn broke. It was a time I knew well. A time in which I would normally be making my commute to work. If only I could be there, back in Duskhovel, walking towards my ordinary horror.

  My throat burned as it sucked in the dry air. I was expending every once of energy to push myself forward and at the same time stifling my momentum to move at a lethargic pace. I had to get away from the scene I had awoken to, but I was also loathe to reach my destination.

  I did not want to find what lay at the end of this trail of splotches. Yes, splotches they must be. The same filth that normally clustered in the ether ways. But where was the variety I was used to seeing? The wavering colors and shapes that pulled me into their depths? Why was it so uniform? Why did it not entrance me in its noxious spell, but instead repel me with its stink of iron?

  My throat burned raw to the point that I thought it might bleed against a cold wind that would act as coarse salt against a burn. For I had been screaming. I had been screaming into the night in desperation as I ran, hoping against hope for and answer to my calls.

  In the spell I was under, I could not even lament my foolishness for rushing out alone. I should have alerted the camp. A search party could have been organized, but it was too late now.

  I had leapt into the lion’s den. I was a witless fool running into the jaws of the predator that stalked us. But what else was I to do in my delirium apart from stumbling deeper into the rabbit hole that befuddled me.

  And I did stumble. Over and over again as I ran forward pitifully. I tripped on roots and caught my feet against uneven ground, falling over only to rise and stumble forward again. It was like I was rapidly awaking and then sinking back into a dream over and over again. The sensation stretched time, but dawn never approached. Then certainly I was in the dream? This had to be some strange lucid ether way that mimicked reality.

  Because if it wasn’t. Then the name I called. The one that tore my lungs.

  “BE……..BEN………….

  BEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEE!”

  I screamed his name as our eyes met.

  He was…

  Oh god, he was alive!

  I could see the recognition in his eyes. His eyes that were filled with anguish and slit open at the side. Blood mixed with the tears that lightly stained his cheek. His lips were cut in a similar manner so that they hung in a flap over his chin and rendered him unable to speak a word or even a whimper. More skin hung from ghastly grooves carved in to his leg that showed the white of bone within. Below them his ankles were secured to the tree before me with nails, the same which also pinned his shoulder blades.

  I fell to my knees and crawled forward not to Bennie, but to the heel of the man who held the hammer. It was the hammer that had driven the nails into him. I pulled at the leg of his pants as I cowardly whimpered trying to force words out of my shivering mouth. My sore eyes must have been as red and watery as Bennie’s own if not for the nightmarish damage done to them.

  “ple…please stop.”

  My voice held no demand or condemnation, only entreaty.

  He tilted his head in my direction, and it rolled oddly on his shoulders. It was as if the neck was broken and could no longer give structure to hold the head aloft. And the body…it was covered in sores and scars the same in appearances as those that had erupted over the bodies of the soldiers stricken by the dream disease, only much farther along in its progression. This was the body of a man that should be dead of the disease, but somehow still walked.

  “You would ask me to…stop?”

  When he spoke, his voice had an intellectual ring that was ruined by the guttural rasp of his broken throat. I imagine that he may have meant to arch an eyebrow at me as well, but the clear lack of control he had over his slack face could only summon the twitching of a crossed eye.

  “Stop now? In the sate that he’s in? That is a cruel thing you ask of me lad. However, as it so happens, that was precisely what I had intended to begin with. Unfortunately, for both of us it seems, it is quite clear which way the man’s head shakes. Go on. Take a look for yourself.”

  The gaunt and twisted arm that held the hammer slowly raised to point in Bennie’s direction. I was confused and horrified by his words. Bennie indeed slowly shook his head back and forth, but what did that…

  How had I not seen it? It stood before him even when our eyes had met, only at a slightly different angle. Once I tried to focus on it, I realized that angle wasn’t stable to begin with. It stood still on spindly sticklike legs that almost appeared as a single shadowy post. Its body was a tattered mass of some alien black and grey cloth that gave me a feathery sort of impression. Its looming scarecrow like face never settled into a static impression. Did it grin maliciously or did a squiggling strand of straw crawl haphazardly about its head? Did it even have a mouth or eyes for that matter? Every time I blinked the answer appeared to change, but with the certainty it had been the same all along, like a figure that had only just come into focus after a quick glance.

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  It was…speaking, but I couldn’t understand the words.

  It was a staticky rush of noise that whispered unknown syllables and chittered as a subdued chorus of animals. Yet from the look on Bennie’s eyes, I surmised that he was able to understand the words that were being spoken for him, and that the shaking of his head was his answer. I couldn’t understand the words, but didn’t I know this legend?

  The favor of the demons. The scavengers that made a deal with the dying carcass of a human to extend their life. Extend it in the exact state it was dying in.

  This man was what the dreamless referred to as a sleepwalker.

  “N…no.”

  But why? Throughout history, sleepwalkers have always been known to slink off into empty corners of the world, far from civilization, to live out the endless remainder of their unseemly life. For better or worse they wanted for nothing. They would never grow hungrier, or less for that matter whether they ate or not. They could feel nothing they didn’t feel at the moment they made their deal, so they had no desires. I have heard of some exceptions, odd merchants that did business while heavily obscured by cloaks out in fringe villages. Presumably they wanted to keep some purpose, even if they had no need for the money.

  But for a sleepwalker to be purposefully making more of its own kind? The very idea of the demons increasing their contractors by force and not happenstance transformed them from an unsettling moral tale to an existential horror.

  “Ah, I suppose you’ve heard the tales before. Well think of this as me killing two birds with one stone. I could use a bit of numbers on my end you understand, and you may be surprised to find not all scrubbers had their ears completely closed to my purpose, though I will admit it did take a fair amount of coercion. I mean no matter your ideology no sane man would purposely become a demon possessed…or would you prefer I go with sleepwalker? Not that it matters at the end of the day, words are just signposts, as long as we understand the directions, it matters not what is used. Sorry for the tangent, where was I. Yes, I did need to coerce them. After all, if you’re going to make the change, it’s better to make the change before you end up in the state of this young man. It can be a bit complicated actually. I found out from my first attempt that once the demon asks its question, they won’t let me interfere. You see, from their perspective what I do is uninvolved with them, so it really isn’t a matter of being forced to accept the favor. Alas, as always, I found that I was surrounded by sane men. Out of all the scrubbers I murdered, I recruited only six. Just six! Can you believe that? Each one had the option to keep living, but so many instead jumped into the pits when given the option. You would think scrubbers of all people would be keen to help me fight the disease.”

  What was he saying? What the hell was he saying? Then…it was him. He was the one who had murdered all the scrubbers. But I already knew that didn’t I? The scene from before, the one I ran from, comes into focus, made mundane by the horror before me.

  Blood splattered over the bed beside me, dripped in a trail towards the entrance. The headless body of lieutenant Davis Togl that was seated outside the tent, even now ever dutifully standing sentinel. He had died before us…just as he promised.

  What else could it have been to crawl into the camp under the cover of night and away with a scrubber apart from the beast that hunted us? By why then, did its jaws carry only one?

  His raving began to increase in tempo, and I only just then noticed that the tattered clothes he wore were of a sort I recognized. A pressed brown suit worn by the scholars of Tembralvain, our nation’s most prestigious institute of learning located in the capital, Monderlow. On its lapel I spotted the tattered almost unrecognizable insignia of the waking hour, given to those who have “awoken from ignorance” as the highest honor from Tembralvain. It depicted a scholar rising from the very plot in which the tome is buried in our nation’s flag while holding the same tome in their arms. I recognized it because it was an honor shared by Rayngo Hob.

  “They just won’t listen! They just won’t understand! It’s right there in the name. Dream disease! Though some might prefer to call it weckenrot, but we’ve already discussed the necessity for names, so I won’t derail us further. You must understand it’s a disease! We already know of using immunization as a means of prevented fog breath, but for how long will the enigmatic nature of the ether ways keep us from applying the same logic to weckenrot! I’ll concede that the scrubber system isn’t nearly as harmful as the maiden system, it does after all allow for a short period of buildup, but how are we ever meant to adapt in this sterile environment? Your scrubbing is only increasing our susceptibility. After all something born of the human subconscious should have never been so detrimental to it. It’s only by adverting our eyes and bleaching its presence from our lives that it developed into a poison. What do you have to say to that my fine young pupil?”

  I was shivering on the ground beneath him. His words were complete nonsense to me. They were abstract ideas that held no weight before the mutilated visage of my dying friend. I remembered Togl’s words from the other night, and I spoke them not with courage, but with a croaking whine that sputtered from my lips. Yet I spoke them all the same.

  “We can have these conversations…when those with drawn swords lay slain.”

  A soft spark of inspiration seemed to alight in his limp eyes. One I did not care to see.

  “So, you have a bit of wit about you after all. I would love to debate the matter alas…”

  He looked up and I followed his gaze. From between the thick tangle of branches, the lights of approaching lanterns could be seen flickering. Our disappearance had been discovered and the army was on their way to our rescue, but it was all too late.

  “Worry not lad. I need to keep at least some of you alive. This last bit…it was just a small aside. I thought it might do to slow down the healing prosses a bit. Weckenrot doesn’t actually vanish the minute you stop seeing symptoms.”

  He lifted a nail and once again faced Bennie’s bloody tear stricken face.

  “And neither will I leave your friend to suffer a moment more. I lay you to rest…with wisdom”

  I cried out as he drove the nail through Bennie’s forehead even knowing that it was better that he passed, that his wounds could never be healed and he had finally come to an end of his suffering.

  I collapsed into the ground as my hand that had tugged at the hem of his leggings instead grasped the dirt, and my watery eyes that were flush with the ground could barely discern the way he moved oddly into the night with a second demon almost superimposed at his side. Never walking yet moving all the same.

  My vision grew blurry and I dreamt. I dreamt although my eyes never closed and the world never changed. I dreamt of being lifted and carried away. I dreamt of being propped into a seat and secured as my body wished to slide limply to the floor. I dreamt of having liquids forced done my throat by Dr. Aerk as I laid still for hours or days. And after that unmeasurable time had passed, I dreamt of being embraced.

  I was repulsed and felt no comfort in her arms, but neither did I have the will to push them away. My torment only doubled in the hands of the smiling woman, because in my mind’s eye her smile overlapped with the slack knowing smile of the sleepwalker. The smile was a precursor for all that was wrong and filthy in the world, and I hated myself for believing that the same smile I always saw was even now plastered on the face I couldn’t see as our necks crossed and the warm tears falling on my shoulder spoke of my lying assumptions. I melted into the discomfort of her embrace, self loathing, and oblivion.