The Standing - By Timothy Stewart

Suzanne Bucher walked down the stairs. A simple task, but it seemed to take a long time. When she reached the floor, the ground felt different, gritty. She looked down, and saw there was sand on the floor, not just a little sand either, but a lot of it. In fact, the sand covered the floor from edge to edge. She went to the kitchen, where her mother was barbecuing breakfast.
'Hello dear.'
'Hi mum.'
'Would you like a burger?'
'No, just a bowl of bran-flakes please.'
She watched as her mother poured the bran-flakes onto the barbecue. 'They'll be ready in one minute and thirty seconds dear.'
'OK mum.' Said Suzanne, as she stood up.
She walked out of the door, for some fresh air. It was another sunny day. It usually was.
She walked out onto the beach, and went down to the water. She sat on her haunches, listening to the sound of the waves and feeling the sun on her face. She didn't remember getting dressed, but hey, here was her school uniform, pristine and freshly ironed. There was a noise behind her, and she turned around. A man was walking towards her. He held a dog in his arms, which would growl at her as he got closer.
'Are you going to wake up?' He asked, in an accent she couldn't identify.
'Don't know.' She replied
'OK.' He said, and walked away.
Then she heard her mother cry her name. She set off towards her house, and noticed it wasn't there anymore. She ran forwards to find it, and as she did, she heard a long growl behind her. The dog had struggled out of the man's arms, and was now bearing down on her at speed. She screamed, and ran with all her might. Foam flew from the dog's mouth, and it didn't bark, it just growled, 'GrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrBrrrrrrrrr….'

The growl changed into a buzzing noise. 'Some kind of bee.' She thought. Before waking up and hitting the alarm clock a swift thump.

Suzanne swung her legs out of bed, and snatched a pen and note-pad from the bedside locker, and began to write.
Then she walked down the stairs, which seemed to take longer than usual. She smiled. Her smile was, well, one could say brilliant, but in the same way a nuclear bomb blast is brilliant. Bright, startlingly so. It suited her personality. It wasn't that Suzanne was insane, but she had a sanity that was quite unreasonable. Her open, honest, and sharp mind was merely on a different level to everyone else. If she had been raised differently, then perhaps she could have been a great scholar, or a politician. Someone to watch. She still was someone to watch, but only from a safe distance.
She went into the kitchen, and poured herself a bowl of bran-flakes.

If one was to go into Suzanne's room, and take a look into the notebook she had written in, they would notice a perfect account of the dream she had. Suzanne looked at things differently. She thought about things, (Which is always dangerous in a sixteen-year old.) sometimes she would sit for hours, working things out. She would think about things until they could offer no possible alternative avenues of thought. Sometimes she would stumble onto things others would miss… It had been like this for her ever since her mother died in a car accident.

She got onto the school bus, and spent the journey ducking projectiles that the boys at the back would throw. They were very democratic about violence. They liked to see everyone get some. When the bus stopped, she got off, and walked through the school's double doors.

Her class was in the form room, sitting in groups, talking, joking, and asking each other out. The usual stuff really. As she came in, there was a little hush, as there always was, before the noise resumed. She looked for a seat, as she always did. People did little shuffles, indicating that 'Yes, this is an empty seat beside me, and yes, it is occupied, not at the moment of course, but it will be, but not with you.'
She got an empty seat in the corner, and put her bag under the table.
People didn't sit beside Suzanne unless they had to, not just because she wasn't good company, but because, well, there was something very unsettling about her. She would sit, staring into space, focussing on… something.
Teachers got around this problem by ignoring her as much as they could. She didn't do much work, but no one scolded her about this, anyone who tried found it impossible to keep their eyes on hers. Her gaze penetrated your brain, and knocked down the bridges of self-confidence that would carry your train of thought.

If you went back into her room, and looked through the notebook at pages past, you would see lots of other little accounts of dreams gone by. Some were happy, joyful things, filled with good memories. Others were not happy; others were filled with things you only dream because no sane person could see them while awake. Nightmares so intense they barely made any sort of sense, were, nevertheless, noted down neatly on the page.

The day moved along uneventfully until lunchtime. Suzanne sat alone in the canteen, eating something she didn't feel the need to identify. A fly flew past her. She was aware of the buzzing by her ear. For a second, the sound started to turn to a growl, but she quickly willed it away. This distracted her from what she was thinking about. She sighed.
Then she heard the voice. At first she thought it was in her head, but quickly realised it came from behind her. It was the voice of a girl from her class, Joan Williams. She didn't turn around, but just listened to the hushed voices behind her.

And she returned home five minutes later, in what could only be described as a black mood. She stalked up the stairs. She tore the bedroom door open and slammed it shut behind her. She sat cross-legged on the bed, and remained completely still. Her arms were by her sides, rigid with sheer anger. Her fists were clenched so tightly, blood dripped down from where her nails had cut into her palms.
On the bed, she was still, barely breathing, but inside, oh, inside, pure rage coiled through her like a belly full of snakes. Her anger blocked out all paths of thought. She just couldn't articulate a single idea in her mind, and this only made her more angry.
She came out of her sitting position like a psychotic greyhound, and launched herself at the far wall, smashing her fist into the plaster again and again until her hand was raw at the knuckles, then kicked out at her desk, breaking in one of the legs off. She snatched this up, and started to beat anything in range, her bed, her lamp, her pictures, herself…

Five minutes later, the screams and the smashes had subsided. Suzanne lay in a pathetic little heap on the floor. Blood pooled on the floor where her nose was bleeding. Her room was a wreck. Nothing that could be broken wasn't. Even her bed was nearly split in half. And Suzanne lay in the middle of the floor, breathing shallowly, teeth chattering. She felt more in control now, she could think clearly again, and although the anger still burned in her, she was glad just to have that back.
She looked up at the only thing she hadn't destroyed. It was a poster for an old, fifties creature feature movie. The poster showed a huge green monster destroying a city, with people running about screaming below. The poster read, 'They couldn't believe their eyes! They couldn't escape the terror! And neither will you!'

She lay like that for the rest of the night, and fell asleep in the crimson puddle of blood. The reason she didn't move was that she had something important to think about. Someone important. Someone who would find out how important they were tomorrow. With Joan Williams carefully engraved in all her thoughts, she fell asleep.

She awoke, and peeled herself off the floor. She picked up the notepad from the drawer of the overturned locker, and, with a shaking hand, wrote down her dreams. She was still angry, still very angry, but what she had seen last night had terrified her into submission. She could take the abuse, as long as she remembered what had happened, what could happen.

She went downstairs, which seemed to take a completely ordinary amount of time. She was tired, and the nightmare-wracked night she had spent offered her no rest at all.
After breakfast, she showered and got ready for school. She didn't feel ready to go back, but if she didn't, there might be another letter home. Her father would kill her if he received another one. The teachers didn't punish Suzanne face to face, but sent letters home to her dad, and assumed he would do something.
Sean Bucher was a fairly harmless man while sober, but with a few drinks in him, he would get deeply depressed and violent. After work every day, you could find him being deeply depressed and violent in the pubs about town. At closing time he would find his way home and fall into bed, and the next day was the same, and the next day, and the next… It had been like that for him ever since his wife died in a car crash.
Suzanne would rarely even see him from day to day, although he would leave a few pounds on the kitchen table for her every morning, which was the only way she could be sure that he knew she still existed.

Suzanne sat at the table with a bowl of cereal. She was very hungry, as she had not eaten since her half finished lunch yesterday. She began to think while she ate, and as she did so, her chewing slowed, stopped, and she bolted to the sink, and threw up everything she had eaten. A memory had just came to her.

She remembered lying on the floor, face stinging from the slap. Her father was drunk as hell, and had just received a letter home about Suzanne's attendance, and she had said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
She went to bed furious, and, the next day, her father had not gone to work. She remembered waking to find him standing over her, tears in his eyes, with a bunch of lilies in his hands. As she woke, he fell down crying, saying he would never touch another drink as long as he lived. Suzanne didn't know how it happened, but she knew what had happened. Somehow, the nightmare of his escaped from her, while she slept, and forced its way into his life. What he saw was his dreams, while he was awake. He must have put it down to the drink, but Suzanne had worked her way into his mind and stole his fears. She could bring a dream, or a nightmare, into anyone's life, and control it. But if the dream was too strong, it escaped the other way, from her while she was sleeping, and would run out of control until its conclusion.
She knew her father had been dreaming about standing by her mother's grave.

And now, her anger was so bright against Joan, and the dream was so very strong. She wondered if anything had happened to Joan while she was sleeping. She hoped not.
She would go to school and find out.

(Time passes)

She fought her anger every inch of the way home. The day hadn't been as bad as yesterday, but she had heard more things being said about her. Whispers, just on the edge of hearing, came to her attention. 'she's weird…' 'never talks to anyone…' 'world of her own…' All this hadn't been helped by the state of her clothes and face. A couple of bruises shone on her cheeks, her eyes were dark, and her clothes still had flakes of dried blood stuck to them.
The only thing that controlled her anger was the fact that Joan looked almost as bad as her. She looked as though sleep had not been a major factor in her night.
It had started, and it would get worse. There was only one thing to do, only one way to stop any more from happening. She would stay awake until her anger subsided completely. She would stay away from school, drink coffee till it came out of her ears, watch TV, listen to happy, feel-good music, and in a day or two, whatever it was that made her dreams escape would be gone.

It wasn't going to be easy. She was already very tired, and as she settled down in the remains of her room, which had been tidied up, fitted with the TV from the kitchen, a new radio, (Replacing the one she smashed.) and a kettle and for making coffee. A small pile of Mars bars and bottles of Lucozade was also present. She opened a book and started to read. 'At least I have time to read all the books I've been meaning to.' She thought.
At dawn, she watched the sun rise. It was very calming. She had spent the night reading, mostly. It was nothing to her to keep her attention on one thing for hours, but even she was starting to feel a little strained by the four o'clock region. She turned on the TV, but found that television at four o'clock was not a rewarding experience. This had all made her feel worse, not better, but now, with the sun coming up over the hills, it all didn't seem so bad somehow.
At breakfast time she saw her father, a rare occurrence. He was running late for work, and he was not happy. Crippling hangovers didn't leave him as a morning person.
'What are you doing up?' He grunted.
She shrugged, she couldn't really think of a plausible excuse, but the shrug seemed to satisfy him.
She didn't feel too bad yet, which was surprising. Actually, she felt quite energetic. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
Now her mind filled with ways to pass her time.
The first thing to occur was that the house was in a mess, she could give it a spring clean, although it would probably need a summer, autumn and winter clean too.

The next night was harder. By the evening, Suzanne felt very tired, all she wanted to do was shut her eyes and fall asleep, but she dare not do that until her mood was clear.
She was so tired that she hadn't considered the fact that as she got more and more tired, her mind was increasingly clouded with anger. The night-time was much worse, she found she couldn't focus well enough on her book to read it, TV was just as dire as it had been before, but she probably couldn't concentrate on it either, so she counted this as no great loss. She sat instead, and listened to CD's on her portable Sony that had escaped her violent room-wrecking. That was the last thing she really remembered for days. The next few days passed somehow, and the only reason she didn't fall asleep was that the one clear thought she had throughout was that she shouldn't.
The thing she felt most was confusion, her mind didn't seem to want to work at all, and, since her mind was such a prized possession to her, that's what made her anger grow.

It ended on the sixth day.
Suzanne could take it no longer. Every action seemed to take a monumental amount of effort. Her skin was pale and sallow, her eyes puffy and bloodshot. She was feeling very sick as well, her body was falling apart from the inside, and one of the first things to go was her immune system. On the sixth day she simply didn't get out of bed, and, that morning, at nine forty seven, she gave up without even feeling it, and fell asleep.
As she left the land of consciousness, something entered, and sped away.
It started on the sixth day.

It was, as most thought it would be, just another day at school. That's how it started. Some might, in hindsight, have claimed that they felt something begin that day, and they were right. Anyone paying attention might have noticed the slight change in the nature of things, but would have passed it off as their imagination.

Joan Williams was a pretty young girl that classmates might vote 'Most likely to succeed'. In her previous years at school, she had been a bad student, always in trouble, never eager to work when she could be out partying somewhere, and with the sort of bad attitude that caused her parents a lot of strain. Now, in her last year, she had buckled down to work, and become such a reformed character that people could barely believe she was the same person.
No one knew the cause but her, and she would never tell anyone, partially because she felt no one would believe, or understand her. It sounded a little silly, when she came to think about it, but that hardly mattered, because it was true.
Two weeks before school started again, she had watched a film that had changed her life. The film was 'The Texas chainsaw massacre.'
She had watched it because she was bored, and someone had left the pirated video in the TV room. One of her brother's friends probably. She had watched it in terror, wanting to switch it off, but unable to move from her seat. It had never happened with any film previously or since, but this had reached inside her and flipped all her 'fear' switches. Fear of the dark, jumpiness and terrible nightmares had all followed. The dreams were worst. Terrible in their realistic imagery, they depicted her as the prey of some crazed killer, (Not Leatherface, but some new creation from her own psyche.) and she woke in tears for weeks afterwards. To break the cycle, she threw herself into work. It was a semi-religious symbol in a way, hard work to alleviate her fear, and it seemed to work, but every so often she would wake up, sheeted with sweat, crying at the images of her own death, and the white, thin face of the man that brought it about.
She was currently sitting in class; the first class of the day was underway. It was history, a subject she had picked at random a year ago. The desks seated two people, and on her right, her friend Mathew White was busy on an essay about seventeenth century medicine.
She was re-reading her own essay when a presence at the window caught her attention. The window was to her left, and she was on the closest side to it.
She turned her head.
In a microsecond, her stomach knotted up in revulsion. She only looked at him for a second, but it seemed to go on forever, her mind took in every detail.
It was the man from her nightmares. His face was human, but so thin as to be almost a skull. His skin was white, except for around the eyes, where it was deep black. His eyes were large, staring things, with pupils so large they filled almost his entire eyes, so that the white of the eye was only a thin band, and it was the only thing differentiating from his black eyelids and his black pupils. He had no ears, just horribly mangled skin were they should have been. His mouth was grinning, always grinning, and exposed his teeth, which were not teeth at all, but the tips of old, rusty screws. As he moved his head, veins stood out in his neck, looking like blue worms wriggling around under a thin layer of overdone pasta.
All this was over in a split second, as Joan recoiled away from the window, over the lap of a very surprised Mathew White, and onto the floor beyond, hurting her shoulder as she came down on the hard floor. The class all turned and goggled at her. This would be something to talk about at lunchtime.

Suzanne slept on, aware of what was going on, but powerless to stop it. She wouldn't wake until it was over.
Joan looked up from her place on the classroom floor. Everyone was staring at her, but she paid them no more attention than an antelope would a swarm of flies when it saw a lioness approaching. She found she was so scared that she couldn't breathe, and when she managed it, she was hyperventilating instantly. Panic hit her like a stab in the heart, her feet skidded on the floor tiles, and she was up, and bursting through the door.
Everyone's natural response was to turn to the teacher, to see what she wanted done, but Ms Somerville was no help, she was staring at her desk in wide eyed terror, not moving a muscle.

Ms Somerville couldn't even move. She felt like her skin had shrunk several sizes, her stomach was in a knot. She wanted to run, she really did, but her legs weren't getting the message. On her desk was a spider. It was no species that had ever been seen before, or was ever likely to be seen by anyone else but Ms Somerville, because it wasn't real. It was bigger than a tarantula, it was bigger even than those bird eating spiders you find in rainforests, but it was jet black, and had long fangs which dripped its poison onto the surface of her desk. The drops left little smoking holes where they landed.
'Its just a dream.' She thought, but she really new it wasn't. Somehow it had come to be real. She sat as still as she could and thought, 'If I don't move, it wont bite me, If I don't move, it wont kill me.'

Joan looked around her, insure of which way to turn next. The school seemed too dark; the lights weren't working all of a sudden. She couldn't find her way out. Normally all she would have to do to escape was run down the stairs outside the classroom door, and walk straight to the exit. But she just couldn't find the exit now. She knew it was there, but the school seemed to be twisting itself around as she neared the way out. One second she would be walking down the corridor past the Home Economics department, towards that exit, and suddenly she would be outside the science labs.
And all the time, lurking behind her, moving in and out of the shadows, the white-face man was stalking her.
She looked around now, and sure enough, he was there. She could just make out the shape of his white skull-like head in the darkness of an alcove. He smiled his grotesque screw lines smile, and disappeared again. Joan knew this part well; she saw it in her dreams. The white-face man would stalk her until she was half crazed with fear, then he would strike.
She desperately wanted to find someone to help her, because she never did in her dreams, but this wasn't a dream. She hadn't seen anyone since leaving the classroom in a panic, but there were classes on, no one was ever about when classes were on. She dived for the nearest classroom door, and opened it. No one was there. She tried another one; no-one was there either. She was alone. Not quite alone.
She heard a noise, a familiar one, the white-face man's breathing, the scrape of one screw-tooth against another. She screamed, she ran, not wanting to live out the rest of the nightmare. But it was inevitable, she told herself, you have never got away from him, and if she didn't this time, the penalty would be worse than waking up with sheets soaking with sweat, and crying uncontrollably. This was real, this was for keeps, if he caught her, she would die. She would feel those screw-teeth bite into her head, shrieking through her skull, biting down into her brain, and it would hurt, it would hurt for real.

Joan didn't realise that there were people in the corridor with her, she just couldn't see them. Not one of them could see anyone else. They were all in the thrall of Suzanne's talent. An unaffected observer would see lots of people acting very strangely.
A boy ran down the corridor, screaming and waving his hands about as if he were on fire. A girl ran the opposite way, yelling that the monk was going to catch her. One girl was sitting in a corner, crying for her mother, who, apparently, had left her behind. A boy was, for reasons of his own, trying to open the lift shaft. All around were screams and cries, from people who, having realised that their nightmares had come true, were now realising that nightmares come true are nightmares that are much worse.

The action was solely confined to the school. Solely, that is, apart from one little shot, which went out to one man.
Sean Bucher, working in the lumber yard on the other side of town, knelt down in the toilet of the yard canteen. He felt the wet mud under his knees as he did. He looked up at the tombstone before him and cried, he was back in the cemetery. As his sobs died away, he realised that this was his nightmare. The gravestone before him did not read, as Suzanne had thought, Marie Elizabeth Bucher. The gravestone read, Suzanne Mary Bucher. It was his nightmare, and, he quickly came to understand, it was coming true.
'NO!' He screamed, 'NO IT'S NOT TRUE!'
A little voice called up in his head. It said, 'It's coming true.'
It was Suzanne's voice, quiet and sane, in control, as always, but also in pain. She was calling to him in the dream his mind was in.
'You're dying?' He gasped
'Yes.' His daughter replied. She sounded fainter.
'This isn't real, its my nightmare, its just a dream.' Sean sobbed.
'Its not real yet, but your dream is coming true. When I'm dead, your nightmare comes true.' Her voice was flat, expressionless except for a hint of pain, and still getting fainter.
'Can I stop it? Can I help you?' He gasped.
'Help me.'
'HOW?' He shouted.
'Help me.' It was so faint as to be on the edge of hearing, but it told him what he needed to know. He could help her by helping her. He stumbled to his feet, and ran for home.
His dream was killing her, he didn't know how to stop it, but he could try. He had to try, his nightmare was something he had never held back, never even tried to, but he would try now.

Sal Evans quite liked lions. She liked the way they looked, the way they acted, and the way they moved. She always watched the nature programs on them. But for some reason they chased her in her dreams. The dream was near the conclusion, and she always woke up before the lion actually caught her, but this time, she understood, she would not wake up. She didn't want to think would happen next.
The lion rounded the corner, Sal was trapped, trapped in the dead end corridor, and all the doors were locked.
An onlooker may have noted the fact that several doors stood open, but Sal seemed not to notice. There was also no lion. There was, at least, no lion that anyone but Sal could see. The onlooker would have been puzzled then, when Sal was thrown up in the air by an unseen force, a bloody tear across her stomach. They would have been amazed and shocked to see bites appear from no-where. It was also odd to see Sal flail at some unseen target, apparently connecting with it, by the way her fists moved, suddenly stopping as if striking something. Chunks of one arm disappeared as if by magic, and, as Sal died, so too did whatever was savaging her.

Joan skidded to a halt; she was in a dead end. She didn't notice Sal lying dead beside her, she couldn't see that people were all around, locked in their own little world of pain. The only one she saw was the white-face man, walking towards her.
Joan started to scream, she screamed in fear of the purest and truest nature, and fell to the floor, where she curled up into a ball, hoping for any kind of respite from this. She got none.
The man drew closer, black tongue flicking over his screw teeth, eyes staring horribly from their black sockets.
She lay and gibbered, just like she did in her dream.
The white-face man was twenty feet away.
She lay and cried, just like she did in her dream
The white-face man was fifteen feet away.
She lay and realised that she was going to die just like she did in her dream, only much worse.
The white-face man was ten feet away.
She realised that she could do nothing, just like in her dream. But, wait a minute, she never did anything in her dream. She just ran, got trapped, and died. But this was life, this was no dream. In dreams, your actions were controlled by the dream, not by you. You couldn't change it…
But this was life, and she could change things.
The white face man was five feet away.
She couldn't believe she was about to do this. She didn't want to do it, but she had to. This was her life, and she was in control.
The white-face man reached her, and raised a clawed hand.
Joan raised a fist, with all her might, into a wild punch. It connected solidly on the freak's neck, and it reared back, screaming in a shrill, fierce tone. It came again, raking its claws at her. Joan stuck out a foot at groin level; there was a satisfying crunch. One flailing claw slid across her calf, leaving a deep gash on her bare leg. It hurt, but Joan ignored it. She was too scared to care about it right now. She was also exhilarated, 'FIGHT BACK!' Her mind roared at her. 'WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK OF THIS BEFORE?'
Joan thought she knew why. Nightmares follow a script, but it takes a strong person to break it.
She launched herself on the man, who was clutching his own little world of pain. She landed punches and elbows to its face, yelling triumphantly as each blow struck.
The awful thing fell still after ten such blows, and Joan screamed in victory. She couldn't believe it had been this easy. Of course, that wouldn't make up for all the mornings she had woken up in hysterics, bedclothes strewn across the floor, screaming and holding her head where she imagined he had bit her.
It would be a long time before-
Hands closed on her throat, and Joan looked down into her new nightmare.

Sean ran up the stairs, it took a long time, because every couple of steps, he would kneel down, start crying, then shout out, 'She's not dead!' apparently to convince himself this was so. He made it to Suzanne's door, gasping to get his breath back, and opened it.
Suzanne was lying on her bed, her hands were holding fistfuls of bedclothes, she was very still, she was very white.
Sean panicked for a moment, but he steadied himself. 'She's not dead.' He repeated to himself.
He moved beside her and shook her. She didn't respond.
He shook her harder and Suzanne didn't stir.
'Suzanne?' He gasped, voice trembling. He took her wrist and felt for a pulse. He got none.
'Sue? Oh Sue oh please no…' He collapsed on top of her, calling out her name. His insides felt like they were shrinking, tightening up. He fell to the floor and vomited, or at least tried to. He could hardly remember when he last had anything to eat. His meals were all liquid these days. His daughter lay dead, and he had spent so much time drinking, he hadn't even spoken to her properly since the funeral. He banged his head on the floor a few times, hoping to dull the pain inside him.

Joan tried to breathe, but the man's bony fingers dug into her windpipe, She punched at it, but couldn't get a good shot in. She couldn't kick it either, because she was sandwiched between it and the wall. Its eyes stared right into hers; the huge pupils filled her vision.
She saw the things mouth open, and it's freakish teeth coming towards her, meaning to end her life in the most horribly painful manner possible.
With the last of her strength, she drew back an arm to take a last, desperate punch, and had a better idea, and extended her index finger. She struck.
Her finger went into the eye up to the second knuckle. The eye burst horribly, in a spray of yellow goo that covered her hand. The thing squealed and let her go, and Joan filled her lungs again. She felt like passing out, but she kept a grip on the white-face man's skull by hooking her finger and holding on behind the nose. It thrashed around, trying to break her hold, but Joan wasn't about to give up. Its remaining eye rolled madly in its socket, its white face spattered with blood and yellow pus. She punched her other finger through the eye, and more goo spewed from the socket. She hooked this finger around, so she could touch her fingers inside the thing's head. Its arms flailed madly, but didn't attempt to hit her. She pulled it down and kneed it in the stomach. Something burst there, and innards flopped out onto the floor. Its claws scrabbled on her face, leaving bloody lines as they went. Joan screamed, and let go. She fell back, still trying to recover her lost breath. The thing was still standing, it was trying to pick up its intestines and stuff them back in, but they slipped between its fingers.
It seemed quite fragile really, but unstoppable at the same time.
'It's a dream.' She thought.
She remembered her dreams about it, how it had killed her so many times, and how it had never occurred to her that she could fight back. She was flooded with fresh anger, pure and clean, she would have revenge. She got up and ran at it, with a roar that any Scottish warrior would have been proud of. She grabbed it around the back of the head, and jumped, knocking it off its feet. As they fell, she put her knee on its neck, and kept it there.
They hit the floor, and Joan's knee crushed the thing's neck, and the head popped off messily. Joan was left holding it. Blood sprayed from its neck, the sides of its head where its ears should have been had burst open, and bits of brain dripped out. Blood poured out of the eye sockets. Worst of all, or at least worst of all in Joan's opinion, was the way its mouth kept opening and closing on reflex.
She swung it at the corner of the wall beside her, were it burst in a final shower of gore.
She collapsed, spent from the fight, but also elated. She never dreamed of the white-face man again.

As it died, something passed back to Suzanne. It was beat, the dream had ended. Someone had fought back. And suddenly everyone was fighting back. The survivors were confronting their nightmares. Around the school, people were having revenge on invisible enemies. One boy was jumping up and down on invisible rats, yelling with glee; another was sitting under a fire hose, putting out invisible flames. A window shattered as a stool was thrown through it, and a girl climbed out of the room she believed she was locked in, picked up the stool, and used it to re-arrange the face of a monk only she could see.
Throughout the school, similar scenes were being enacted. No-one who had survived would ever dream those things again.

Sean sat in a huddle in the corner. Hot tears fell to the floor. He stared at his dead daughter. He felt guilty. He had never been there for her since her Marie died. He hadn't been a good father, he hadn't been a bad father, he hadn't been any sort of father at all. His nightmare was a warning to wise up, but it was a warning he had ignored.
He looked at the poster on the wall. It showed a monster destroying a city. The poster read, 'They couldn't believe their eyes! They couldn't escape the terror! And neither will you!'
'Neither will you', he told himself. 'It's come true, she's dead, she…'
And then, what had reached the people in the school reached him. The realisation that he could fight back. He got up quickly, and rushed over to Suzanne. He felt for a pulse, and, although his mind was telling him that he could feel nothing, he knew, he knew in his bones that there was a pulse. It was fast and strong, and completely real. He just had to believe in it.

Suzanne was in the school. She was everywhere in the school. She was the one who had killed those people, and she was the one that those people were now killing. Suzanne's nightmare was what would happen if she caused something like this to happen. And now it was, because she was dreaming it. She couldn't control the dream; it had made her do what she did. But now, she knew she could fight it. She could feel someone shouting in her ear, her real ear, that it was all a dream. She listened, she understood, and she woke up.
And everything stopped.

the end

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