92 - The Dreams in the Warlock's House

Anya took up one of the few remaining candles. She passed her palm through the flame a few times, and then held up her left hand, to reveal the pentagram tattooed on the back.

"It's getting late," she said. "Midnight isn't far away. All the good little boys and girls are asleep in their bed. I knew a dreamer once. And she told me about

THE DREAMS IN THE WARLOCK'S HOUSE

Most of the older houses in town have been turned into student housing. Even an attic loft, if finished, might be turned into an apartment for a grad student on a budget. Which is how Isabella Vasquez came to let a room on the Eastside, not far from campus, in one of the oldest houses in town. It had been a boarding house back in the 20s and 30s, and though the locks had been changed and a fresh coat of paint covered the walls, the room still bore the marks of long habitation.

That first day, after she accepted the keys, Isabella traced the curious lines and stars that had been carved into the roof beams. Her small bed lay against the slanting wall that was the roof itself. In her explorations, she found there were spaces here and there, unseen. It was a gable roof, which left a dead space between the wall and the eaves. Her mind filled that space with innumerable treasures. Hobo nickels and masonic pennies, Tijuana bibles and quarts of bathtub gin, perhaps a mummified cat. In truth, she knew, it probably held nothing more than cockroaches and black mold.

Yet a young woman can dream.

She had come to the United States from her country following a dream of a better life. Had studied hard to earn the grades that got her the scholarship that brought her here. Only eighteen, and yet there were parts of her life that had been a nightmare. By comparison, that attic room with its rattling pipes and the odd creaks was a part of a deeper strata of dreaming. A dream of a future.

As she faded into sleep, however, Isabella did not dream of the future. She dreamed of the past.

A young man, reading aloud from a small leather-bound book. A nipple on the cover poked out through his fingers. Isabella could not hear his words, but she could feel his anger. He was kneeling in this very room, utterly naked. His flaccid cock lay there between the soles of his feet. A knife flashed. A red line opened along the length of his cock, and he swiftly painted his feet with the blood, before he bound the wound.

As he turned to leave, leaving the book behind, Isabella turned to follow. Naked he walked, leaving bloody footprints that the wooden boards quickly absorbed. He passed an old woman in the living room, who did not see him, though she started when he opened the door. Down the dark street, to another house. She saw him open a window, and climb into a bedroom. A young woman lay there. With a wicked grin, he clapped his hand about her mouth, tore at her clothes. His wounded cock throbbed, hard now. Yet just as he was about to enter her, he looked back over his shoulder.

Right into Isabella's eyes.

She awoke to the alarm on her smartphone, brown body dappled with sweat. There were classes to attend, and her part-time job at the Hollow Herald. The dream lingered in her mind, but she thought little of it until that night, when she lay down again.

To find the young man there. The cut on his prick had healed, and the second cut was drawn parallel too it. Once again, the blood flowed, he painted his feet. He headed somewhere else tonight. A bar, all bright light and noise despite the hour. He saw a woman stagger drunkenly into an alley. As she collapsed, he lifted her skirt. She was too weak to resist. This time, he pushed his cock into her ass...and he looked over his shoulder at Isabella as he did it.

So the nights went. Each night seemed to drag her deeper into his world. Days or weeks would pass for him; she saw the scars accumulate on his prick, which was now ridged with tissue and perpetually swollen. Every time, he showed her more of what he did to his victims. An invisible man, preying on the weakest women, yet somehow enjoying the unwilling voyeur that followed his exploits.

She began to feel complicit in those crimes of long ago. Unable to stop them. Unable to stop watching them. She had tried to remain in the attic, or to go somewhere else, but some **** compelled her to follow him as he slid cold into the night to defile the women of Dagon's Hollow.

A week after the dreams began, Isabella began searching in the newspaper archives for something relevant to her dreams. She found it. In the winter of 1893. A series of mysterious assaults that occurred during the dark of the moon. Isabella's mouth went dry as she read of the women "dishonored before their deaths, pieces of their body removed by the grisly fiend."

Almost all year long the assaults had gone on. Twelve victims in total. Yet it had ended in October. At least, no body was found.

Isabella dug further. Sought references for her room in particular, and found it. Thomas Mallory. A student, though he had listed his university as "Scholomance, Austro-Hungarian Empire." Nominally here in the hopes the fresh air would heal his tuberculosis.

There were other things to learn, and not much time to do it. Yet Isabella had the advantage of something that Mallory did not: the internet. Searches that might have taken weeks pulled up results in seconds. So it was, only two days later, she called me. I showed her the whore's grimoire.

On a moonless night in October, Isabella stripped naked. Her borrowed knife, freshly sharpened, cut two parallel lines, one one either side of her labia, as she read the incantation. She smeared the blood on her hands, and fell into bed.

Sleep took her quickly.

Mallory, naked and with knife in hand, seemed to sense something was wrong the moment before Isabella's hands found his neck. He slashed wildly, but cut nothing but the air. As his eyes bulged, diseased lungs gasping for breath, his cock stood tall, blood oozing from the cuts. She sank down on him. The scarred ridges on his cock sent a thrill through her body as his head slammed into the floor.

I have heard of people who felt hag-ridden in their sleep, a weight pressed down upon them, the very breath stolen from their lungs. Isabella is the only one I know who has done the riding, and leaned down and sucked the air from his cold lips as his face grew purple. If Mallory expired before he exploded within her or after, I do not know.

What I do know is she did not wake from the dream.

Isabella Vasquez vanished from her small attic apartment in 2023. During renovations, the space above the eaves was opened, and in there was found a man's body, mummified by the dry air, a dessicated, brown, naked thing.

In 1893 a young, bloody-handed woman picked up a leather-bound book from a dead man's hand. She dressed herself in his clothes, availed herself of his money, and left. For a little while, she had a room at the house by the railroad track. The book went into a hidden space, for others to find. Then she went out into the world again, to explore this vast country full of dreams.

Anya took the book out of her pocket again. She held the candle close to the back cover, where a name could faintly be seen in faded ink.

ISABELLA VASQUEZ, 1893

Then she blew out the candle, and there was not enough light to read by.