Lara Croft: A Plague of Dreams
Lara Croft fiction by Sarah Crisman
SCrisman@juno.com

This story is a work of fiction, and is not meant to be interpreted in any way as reality. CORE, EIDOS, and anyone else associated with Tomb Raider are not related to me or this story. Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and all other aspects of the game are © 1996 CORE Development and EIDOS Interactive. The text of this story is © 1997 Sarah Crisman, and cannot be changed/altered in any way without her permission.
The story is based on a small piece of work found in a mysterious little book known as “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick,” and those who have read or are familiar with this work will know the idea. I look forward to hearing your reactions to my interpretations of this particular piece. Those of you who are not familiar with this book, written by Chris van Allsburg, would do well to pick up a copy and see where YOUR imagination goes. In my case, it has taken me here. I hope you stay with me for the remainder of the trip. ;-)

Sarah, 1997

A mini bus carrying a group of assorted passengers pulled up directly outside the mansion that was at the top of a rather tall hill, and sprawled out across the flat area created by nature, a flowing mesa. Throwing the bus into park, the driver signaled to the woman in the front. She was rather tall, with long legs decorated in brown shorts and wearing a short sleeve shirt that hugged her frame closely, but not too tight. She stood up and looked over the passengers in the vehicle before raising a hand for silence, and addressing them in a loud voice so she would be heard. “Alright, students, let’s proceed off the bus, one at a time. After you get off, find yourself a partner, and stick with her for the remainder of the trip. Let’s go, now. We can’t keep them waiting.”
The group of girls, altogether about thirty in number and around sixteen or seventeen in age, rose silently, walked down the middle aisle of the bus, and exited through the doors. All of them were dressed in a similar manner, with only the styles and colors of the shorts and tops varying from girl to girl. There were a few grunts of displeasure when they stepped out from the air conditioning of the bus and into the humidity outside, but the adult with them herded them over to the large double doors of the mansion, and they all walked in.
Two of the girls tarried, talking quietly about this trip.
“What are we doing here?” the first one asked.
“I think we’re going to see some books or something,” the second one replied.
“Books?” snorted the first. “Not enough that we have to read all those books that we get assigned to, now we’re going to see more? I don’t understand it…”
“Hurry up, you two!” the woman called to them, waving her arm in a manner that suggested she wanted the two teenagers to quicken their pace and get inside.
Nodding, the girls walked slowly to the doors, nodding and saying a proper greeting to the two guides that held the doors open for them.

The blast of cold that hit their faces startled them at first. Up ahead, the tour had already started, with the guides: two older girls looking to be about eighteen or so, and a boy about the same age, explaining where they were, and why they were here.
“Alright, is everyone here?” the first guide asked.
The woman looked at the girl’s name badge. “Yes, Holly, I think we’re ready to begin now. Please, lead the way.”
Holly turned away and looked at the assemblage with a smile. “Good morning, everyone!” she called.
“Good morning,” chorused the reply of voices dimly.
“Aw, come on now!” Holly said. “That was really weak. Good morning, everyone!!”
“Good morning!” the group replied, louder this time.
“Well, thank you!” Holly grinned. “My name is Holly, and I’ll be your guide through the library today. With me are Bethany…”
The girl next to Holly, who had a very well-proportioned body, with long, dark, raven hair did a mock-curtsey to the class.
“…And this is Anthony,” Holly continued.
Anthony, the boy, was taller than everyone there by at least three inches, and he bowed low, with a grandiose, sweeping gesture that made several of the girls in the front row giggle. “You can call me Tony,” he joked with them.
“If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and make sure you tell me if I’m not speaking loudly enough,” Holly bubbled.
The three guides began walking down the main hallway of the mansion.
“Welcome to Linden Manor,” Holly said, walking backwards so she could address the group. “Now, before, I said something about a library. But before anyone asks, yes, this is a home. We do have people living here, so there will be some parts of the building that we can’t show you. But Mr. Linden has kindly allowed us to make a sort of museum out of the parts of his home that he very rarely frequents. Mr. Linden has the largest private collection of books in all of Europe.” Holly paused for a breath, then continued. “His personal library is home to over 275 thousand books, all catalogued by author and title, and all maintained in special areas. If you notice that the house is cool, it is because the air conditioner runs all the time here, even in winter, to keep the humidity level to a minimum because of all the paper. But don’t worry,” she winked, “we don’t lead tours through here when it’s that cold.”
Several of the girls giggled, as Anthony made a leering face at Bethany and Holly, and rubbed his arms for emphasis of how cold it really got in the house. They turned left and walked down a carpeted hallway with many doors on either side of them. The paneling along the hall had been lightly carved into frescos of various kinds of trees extending into the ground, giving the impression that the roots of information grew very deeply here.
“The doors in this hallway all lead to bedrooms,” Bethany started. “None of them are occupied, at the time, because Mr. Linden very rarely gets so many guests that he has to fill these rooms nowadays. But at one time, all these rooms were servants quarters. They were hired mainly while the library was being constructed, mostly for the building of the shelves, and the transportation of the books from all over the world. Mr. Linden has books in many languages other than English. Among them are copies of the Bible in Greek, Hebrew, and German, a copy of Alexandre Dumas’ ‘The Three Musketeers’ in French, the original German edition of ‘Madam Bovary’ by Gustav Flaubert…”
“An original Hindu copy of the ‘Kama Sutra,’” Anthony interrupted with a snicker.
“…an Italian manuscript of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ a copy of Japan’s first recognized novel, Murasaki Shikibu’s ‘Tale of Genji’ which is so old that the pages that have pictures are all actual pieces of hand-carved wood, and many other works in Russian, Polish, Chinese, and many other languages.”
“How do you keep track of all the different books in all the different languages?” one girl asked.
“Well, it’s not easy,” Anthony replied. “At first, all the books were just stacked on the shelves, with no regard to any sort of classification. You found fiction with non-fiction, poetry with short stories, and The Bible with The Necronomicon.” He paused, and lowered his voice slightly to sound more sinister. “Which does exist, by the way, despite what Lovecraft would have us believe. In fact, you can find it in the section on cults.”
“What’s the Necro-thingy he’s talking about?” the second girl asked the first from the back.
“The Necronomicon,” the first one whispered in reply. “I think its a spellbook or something.”
“But, eventually,” Anthony went on, “Mr. Linden was able to hire people out to be full-time cataloguers of his books. They’re now sorted according to language, author, title, and time period. No more ancient Greek mythology stuck in with Piers Anthony.”
“Does Mr. Linden speak all those languages?” one of the girls asked with wide eyes.
Bethany and Holly laughed. “Goodness gracious, no,” Holly replied. “Mr. Linden is strictly an English speaking gentleman.”
“Then why collect them at all?” the girl asked again.
“Mostly curiosity value,” Bethany answered. “After all, it’s not too often you can see so many books under one roof. The Library of Congress in the United States is the only place I can think of that could possibly match his collection.”
The tour stopped before a pair of large oak doors with teak inlay, gigantic brass knockers and gleaming doorknobs. The polishing job was superb, to the point that all traces of fingerprints had been removed, and it cast back the reflection of anyone looking at it.
“When we step in here is when you’ll really feel the cold,” Holly said. “If you’ve got sweaters or jackets, now would be a good time to put them on.” She smiled, turned one of the large knobs slowly, then gave the door a small push. The hinges, though several decades old, did not even so much as squeak when it opened.
The three guides enjoyed the looks on the girls’ faces as their eyes met the stacks, shelves, and rows of books. They were everywhere, across every shelf, upon every window ledge. And through another door, there was another room, just as large, and laid out exactly like the first.
“You will notice several things in here besides the temperature,” Holly said, walking them through the room, which was carpeted with a thick, plush, wall-to-wall. Towering columns of Corinthian design jutted up from the floor and disappeared into the ceiling. A large shelf on the west wall was home to the statue of a gargoyle, but rather than looking fearsome, this gargoyle was decked out in reading glasses, a smoking jacket, and was holding a copy of Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ in its over-sized, clawed hands. It was also sitting in the stance of Rodan’s statue, ‘The Thinker,’ which only increased the overall humorous look of the thing.
As the first girl from the back gazed at the walls between the tall shelves, she could barely make out writing carved into the stone. After moving a little closer, she could tell what the writings were: the names of various authors and storytellers over the ages. Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Homer…One didn’t even need to pick up a single book to learn something from this place, she told herself.
“First of all, the floor gives way a little under your feet,” Holly continued. “Don’t worry, no one here is overweight. That’s soundproofing, like in a ballroom. There are shelves on the floors below us, and Mr. Linden didn’t want anyone who might be studying or reading to be disturbed by people walking above them.”
Bethany gave a slight shiver, and it soon became obvious to anyone looking at her that she was a little on the chilly side.
“Secondly, you’ll also notice that my voice doesn’t echo off the walls. Another built in assurance that others wouldn’t be disturbed. In a normal library, sound would travel everywhere, but thanks to the special construction of these rooms, sound is absorbed by the walls, rather than reflected by them.
“This is so cool,” the first girl in the back said to her friend. “And I don’t mean the temperature.”
The other girl nodded in agreement, utterly speechless by the volume of books she could see.
“You said this was a library,” one of the girls in front said, “does that mean we’re allowed to check out books here?”
“I wish,” Anthony said with a chuckle. “No, it’s actually not a library anymore. But we use the term out of tradition, because Mr. Linden did let people borrow his books from time to time. And…” He pulled a random book off the shelf beside him, and opened it to the front cover. “…every book has one of these in it.” He pointed to the plaque on the inside, a very decorative reddish gold affair with fancy pictures drawn in the borders, and a flowing script which read: ‘Property of Mr. Linden’s Library. Acquired January 3, 1976.’ “These plaques all identify that the book came from here, as well as tell when Mr. Linden bought them. He wrote out every single plaque himself. Not all at once, of course, but Mr. Linden insisted on doing that part without any help. Now that’s dedication.”
The tour group passed an open door where a man was sitting, leaning over a table, and looking at a particular book with a magnifying glass. He appeared to be about sixty years old, with a short white stubble beard, and silvery-gray hair. His spectacles hung loosely on his nose, and the hand that held the magnifier lens shook slightly. A cane with an ivory head carved in the form of a serpent rested lightly against the side of the table.
The girl at the end of the group edged her way into the room, and stood next to him, peering at the words. The man didn’t notice her, so absorbed in his work was he. Then the girl gave a slight cough, and his head slowly rose, as though he knew exactly who she was and why she was there. “Hello there, Miss,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly clear for a man his age. “What might I do for you?”
“I’m sorry to intrude,” she said, bowing her head. “Please forgive me for disturbing you.”
“Oh, not at all. Not at all. I don’t get many visitors around here. So, tell me, is there another group going through?”
“A tour, sir? Yes, in fact, I’m with them. I had better be getting back…”
“Here, see if you can help me with this,” the man said, as though he had not heard her response. He handed her a book that had been out of sight previously because it had been on his other side.
“Sir, what is this?” the girl asked, looking at the book he had given her. It was written in English, but appeared to be a translation of the other book the man was looking at.
“My version of Cliff’s Notes,” the man rasped. “This book here is written in an ancient version of old English, from way before either you, or I, or our grandparents, or even their grandparents were born. And I have trouble making it out sometimes. So I have to use the translation into modern English to boost me along.”
“Sir, why not just read the translated version?” the girl asked.
“Because I enjoy a good challenge,” the man replied. “There’s not much challenging about growing old. So I have to make some up. I have to get my fun somehow, eh?”
“Are you one of Mr. Linden’s workers?” the girl asked.
The old man chuckled. “No, m’dear, afraid not. I am Mr. Linden.” He extended his hand, and the girl took it, a little unsure of herself. “Welcome to my library.”
“It’s gorgeous, sir,” the girl told him.
Mr. Linden closed the book he had been perusing, and placed it under his arm. “Ah, well…I’ve read this one before. I don’t suppose I’ll get anything more out of it just because it’s in another language.” He pushed his chair back, and, using the desk for support, hoisted himself to his feet. For a moment, it looked as though he might topple to the ground, but he steadied himself, then walked over to the girl. “You know, there’s something about you I like,” he told her. “You’ve got that same adventuresome, devil-be-damned spirit that I do. Or at least, that I used to have at one time. And that was a very long time ago.”
The girl laughed a little, blushing at his words, but very unsure of herself. “Adventure, sir? No, that’s not me. I don’t care much for adventures. I think I’d rather stay indoors and read my books, do my homework, and go to bed.”
“Hmm…” Mr. Linden said. “Well, perhaps my mind’s not what it should be. But you like to read, you say?”
“Yes, sir, very much, sir.”
“Well then…I’m sorry we don’t have a gift shop.”
“It’s just as well, sir,” the girl replied with a shrug, “as I don’t have a pence on me.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” the man said, sitting back down on the chair. “You can have the translation of the book I was reading.”
“Sir, that wouldn’t be proper,” the girl said. She offered him the book back, but he refused it.
“And you don’t have to keep calling me ‘sir,’” Mr. Linden told her. “All my friends call me Mr. Linden. And I consider you a friend. So, please, keep the book. If I want to read it again, I can always find another copy somewhere. Or I can sit down and translate it myself. My mind isn’t exactly mush yet, you know.”
“Thank you, sir- er, Mr. Linden,” the girl told him, then she turned to leave.
“Ah…wait just a moment, if you would,” Mr. Linden asked her. “I’m terribly sorry, but I forgot a couple things. First of all, let me write you a note. We don’t want my employees thinking that you are stealing this. They seem to be ever so stubborn about those sort of things, which is just as well, I suppose, but…” His voice trailed off as he pulled a small book plaque from a cubbyhole in the secretary desk behind him. “Now, what did you say your name was?”
“I never told you, sir,” the girl answered.
“You didn’t? Well, that’s a relief. Glad my memory isn’t as bad as I thought it was. But anyway, tell me your name. After all, it won’t do to give a gift to someone without a properly filled out To/From tag.”
The girl told him, and he scribbled something on the plaque before opening the cover of the book, affixing the plaque over the old one, closing it, and giving it back to her. “There you go.” He seemed a bit troubled for a moment as he looked her over. “One more thing, my dear,” he said. “Be very careful with that manuscript. It could be a little, well, dangerous in some parts.”
The girl smiled. “I love danger-filled books, sir! Um, I’m sorry…Mr. Linden. It’s so hard to remember that…”
“It’s OK, my child. Now, run along. If I remember the tour correctly, you’ll need to go down two flights of stairs, make a right through the middle of the book stacks, make another right at the French section, and by that time, you should catch them.”
“Yes, Mr. Linden. Thank you, sir!” She turned and walked away from the room, headed down the flights of stairs, and followed his instructions carefully. It was just like being lost in a gigantic cavern, with how dark it was. But finally, she found the French section, and soon after that, her tour group. She followed them absently, her mind completely elsewhere. The words of the tour guides were heard by her, but she was not listening. She knew she was walking, but was unaware of where she was going. Mr. Linden’s words kept ringing in her mind, and she longed to simply sit down and read the book. Her family occasionally sent her books, but she hardly ever got one that had any real danger in it. Adventure stories were her favorite. But she often felt like she couldn’t identify herself with the characters. They were always so dashing, and bold, and she was always so timid. The mere thought of going somewhere alone made her sick to her stomach. And holding a gun…that was out of the question. Reading about it really got her blood flowing though.
But romance…now there was boring stuff. Her room mate sure seemed to be into it, and kept trying to get her interested in it as well. But it was all so fake. Nobody could ever do the kinds of things people did in those books. They would get arrested. But, then again, could anyone really swing over a bottomless pit with a whip? Or swim underwater for ten minutes straight without taking a breath? Or outrun barbarians and escape with the treasure? But that was more interesting to her than two people (or more sometimes) screwing their brains out every fifth page. Was that really love?
“Hey, you awake there?” They had reached the bus, and she didn’t even know it. She was sitting down in the seat next to her room mate, and the vehicle was moving. How had she gotten from where she had been all the way back to the bus? It seemed a little strange. She remembered someone asking to see her book, then giving it back to her, but other than that…
“Yeah, I’m awake.”
“Where did you go, anyway? I had to pair up with Stacy and Barb because you decided to disappear looking for Harrison Ford or who knows what in that library. Say, where did you get the book?”
“Mr. Linden gave it to me,” the girl replied.
“Oh, I get it now,” her friend said with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “You did him a favor, and he did you one too.”
“Please,” the girl said. “This isn’t one of your romance books here, it’s real life. Normal people don’t think about sex twenty four hours a day.”
“Sorry dear, that’s abnormal people who don’t think about that. Are you sure you’re a teenager?” she replied.
“Unless my birth certificate lies,” the girl said.
“But you met him? Was he really old?”
“No, actually, he was a bit youthful for his age. But he seemed to think I should have the book. Said I have adventure in my spirit, or something like that.”
The second girl laughed. “OK, sure. If you’ve got an adventuresome spirit, then I’m a virgin.”
“I know. Weird, isn’t it?” the first asked. “I wonder where he got that idea?” It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t even read what he’d scrawled on the inside of the book he gave her. She opened it to the plaque inside, and her eyes played across the script. It was a little difficult to make out in places, but finally she got the entire thing. ‘This book is a gift from Mr. Linden’s Library, given without need for repayment, on this 11th day of June, in the year of our Lord A.D. 1984, to Miss Lara Croft.’

Lara sat up in bed suddenly, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She reached over and turned on the light on the night table beside her bed, throwing off the sheet that covered her and letting the cool breeze of the air conditioner blow over her nightshirt and bare legs. In the next cot over, her room mate stirred. “Oh, Lara, are you alright? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Lara said. “Nothing at all. Just, well, bad dreams I guess.”
“Again? You’ve been having bad dreams ever since our trip to that library a couple days ago.”
“I know. I think it may be the book.” She looked at it, laying on the table, a small piece of paper poking out from between the pages showing where she had stopped reading a few hours earlier.
“Then stop reading it for heaven’s sake!”
“Well, I would, except...”
“Except what?”
“Well…I can’t.”
“Why not? Why can’t you? Nobody’s glued your eyes to the pages.”
“Genni, every night I have the same dream, only a little different. And if I stop reading, I’m afraid that I’ll stop having the dream.”
“Oh get real, Lara. If it’s scaring you, and you think keeping that book closed will stop it, then just throw the bloody thing away.”
“That’s just it,” Lara argued. “I don’t want to throw it away! I want to finish it! Or, to be more precise, I want to finish my dreams.”
“You just said they were the same every night.”
“Yes, I know that, but they get longer every time. I get more answers every night after I read the book.”
“Answers? Answers to what?”
“I can’t explain it, really, but I’ve got to finish it.”
“Lara, you know what? You’re sick. Go downstairs and see the nurse. You’ll probably have to wake her up at this time of the morning, but she’ll give you something to keep you from dreaming. Then throw the book away and don’t think about it again. With any luck, you’ll be back to your normal sleeping habits in a couple days.”
“Genni, I don’t want to stop dreaming! I can’t stop dreaming. Not now. I’m too close.”
“Lara, listen to yourself! Close to what? If you won’t or can’t explain, then give me the book and let me read it. Then maybe I’ll know what in heaven’s name you’re talking about.” She took the book off the table and opened it to the first page. She stared at it for a moment, then closed it. “Lara, how on earth can you understand that?”
“It’s in English, how else could I understand it?” Lara frowned at Genni.
“Weirdest English I’ve ever read,” Genni said, screwing up her face as she looked at it. “Looks real disjointed, piecemeal, if you know what I mean.”
Lara shook her head. “I haven’t a clue what you mean. It’s a clear as daylight to me. In fact, I think I’m going to read a little more.”
Genni shoved the book back at Lara. “Fine. You rot your brains and wet your bed. I’m getting some sleep.” She rolled over, pulled the covers above her head, and shut her eyes.
Lara opened the book again and scanned the words. She didn’t know what Genni was talking about. The book made perfect sense to her. And, before long, it had pulled her into its world yet again.
And it was funny…she could understand the book, but couldn’t really tell what it was about. She could never remember the dreams, either, nor why they scared her. All she knew was that this book was…special somehow. And she was determined to find out why. Well, Mr. Linden, she thought to herself, perhaps I do have a little of that spirit inside of me yet.

* * * * * * * *

Genni looked horrible, Lara thought as she looked at her room mate that night. She seemed to be getting sick. Probably that stupid flu that had been going around. Several other girls at school had gotten it, and they were down in bed. But none of them looked as bad as Genni did when Lara had woken up that morning.
Lara had gone to her classes, but Genni had called the nurse to her room to verify that she was ill. The nurse just recommended more sleep for her, and gave her an excuse for absence from classes along with a small supply of medicine to help boost her immune system.
“Genni…are you alright?” Lara asked, smiling down at her.
“Lara?” Genni replied, opening her eyes to a squint. “I’ll be OK. I just think that damn flu got a hold of me. And boy, is it putting up one hell of a fight. I feel too sick to even sleep tonight.”
“Well, you probably should sleep,” Lara told her, patting her hand gently.
“But I don’t want to sleep,” Genni replied. “I mean, I’m tired, but I don’t wanna go to bed, you know?”
Lara nodded. “Well, listen. You do whatever you like. If it makes you feel better, then go ahead and stay up a bit. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”
“OK. Good night, Lara. Thanks for understanding.”
Lara smiled as she crawled under her covers. “I finished that book last night. It was pretty good. And you know what? I haven’t had a bad dream yet. I’m beginning to think it’s all just a coincidence.”
Genni coughed. “I hope so. I was worried about you for a bit there. Sleep well. I’ll be better in the morning.”

Genni was wrong. She looked even worse than before now that Lara could see her in the light. “Genni, maybe we should get you to a hospital…”
“No, I don’t want to be alone there,” Genni said, fearfully.
“Genni, they monitor you twenty four hours a day,” Lara argued. “And you’ll be able to sleep better-“
“I don’t want to sleep, Lara.”
“Genni, please-“
“I don’t WANT to sleep!” Genni snapped.
“Why not? Bad dreams?”
“No…I don’t know…maybe. I haven’t a clue. I just know that I don’t want to sleep. I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“Good Lord, Genni, no wonder you look so terrible,” Lara murmured. “You’ve got to sleep, dear. You won’t get well if you don’t build up your immune system and let your body recharge.”
“Look, I’ll call the nurse later. We’ll see what she says about it, OK?”
Lara nodded, but threw a subdued look of pain across her face to show her room mate that she was worried about her. “You know best, Genni. I’ll see you later. I’ll be late for class if I don’t leave now.” She shut the door slowly, hoping that Genni would be OK.

As Lara walked down the hall to her room, she could tell there was a great disturbance somewhere. She hoped it wasn’t keeping Genni from sleeping.
As she got closer, however, she saw that the commotion was coming from her room. Anxious to know what was going on, and panicking at the same time because she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know, Lara dropped her book bag to the ground, scattering a couple textbooks across the floor, and dashed down the hall.
A man in a white uniform stopped her. “I’m sorry, Miss, but you can’t go in there.”
“What do you mean, I can’t go in there?” Lara asked. “This is my room.”
“Hey, I’ve got her room mate out here!” the man called inside.
“Let her in then,” a voice inside ordered.
The man in the uniform ushered her inside. There were doctors and nurses almost everywhere, all surrounding Genni’s bed. Every one of them stared down with empty, blank faces at the cot.
The first thought Lara had was that Genni looked completely well, considering her state that morning. Her skin was back to its normal smooth texture, her eyes were closed. The sheet covering her had slipped down a little, exposing the tank top that she slept in. A single arm poked out from the covers and lay across the sheet. Lara smiled. Genni was asleep, finally. Then she noticed the book. It was lying open, across Genni’s arm. Her smile vanished. It was the same book that she had been reading. The one Mr. Linden had given to her. And from between the pages sprouted a dark, violet colored ivy. What was that? She had never noticed it before, but it seemed that it completely infested the entire book. It was jutting out from under the cover, between the binding and the spine, and from several more pages inside. Genni had been reading the book, obviously…but what had happened?
She reached out and took hold of Genni’s hand gently. “Genni…hey, wake up. It’s Lara.”
“Miss, don’t do that,” one of the doctors ordered, grabbing Lara’s arm and pulling it back. Genni’s arm flopped down, hanging off the edge of the bed again.
“Well, why can’t I?” Lara asked. “What is everyone standing around here for? Wake her up so we can find out what’s happened!”
Lara’s teacher, Miss Tennyson, appeared by Lara’s side, and put a hand on her shoulder as a gesture of reassurance. “Lara…” She paused and licked her lips. “They can’t wake Genni up.”
“I can wake her up,” Lara said, a tear falling down her cheek. What was going on that a team of doctors couldn’t wake her room mate up?
A man who appeared to be a doctor in charge barged into the room, moving people out of the way as he came. “I came as quick as I could,” he said gruffly. Then looked at the girl on the bed. “Oh my God…What happened?”
“We don’t know,” one of the men replied. “Just take a look at her, would you?”
“You’ve already done all the routine stuff, I suppose?” the doctor asked.
The man nodded. “We don’t need you for any of that. We just need you to make the pronouncement.”
Lara looked at Miss Tennyson with wild eyes. “Pro-pronouncement?!?”
The doctor who had just come in the door nodded, then placed his fingers on her neck. He waited for a moment, then grabbed her wrist. After another few seconds, he put his hand on her chest. Then, as though not trusting his own judgment, he put the stethoscope under her shirt and felt around for a long second. Then he rose and shook his head. “Alright. She’s dead. Somebody take that book and-”
“WHAT?!?” Lara shrieked. “You’re lying! Genni is just fine!”
“Lara-“ Miss Tennyson started, but Lara broke away from her and ran to the bed.
“Genni…Genni, wake up and show them what a good little actress you are…” Lara sobbed.
“What happened here, anyway?” the doctor who had just arrived asked one of the people on the scene.
“She called the nurse this morning shortly after her room mate left,” the man said. “So the nurse came and had a look at her. About all she could tell was that the girl hadn’t slept in several days. So she left, and said she’d come back with something to help her sleep. She said the girl told her that she didn’t want to sleep. When she came back, the girl was reading the book there. And she put up such a fight that the nurse called for several people to help her. Kid was really thrashing around, fighting. She did not want to sleep. Kept screaming that she didn’t want to sleep, that she couldn’t go to sleep, that she would be in trouble if she slept. But finally they got her sedated. She fell asleep like you see here, and when the nurse came back in a few hours to check on her, that’s what she found.”
“You killed her!” Lara screamed at the nurse, as two men grabbed her to keep her from attacking the poor woman, who was in tears already, and making her cry harder. “You killed Genni!” Then she stared at the book through her tears. Mr. Linden’s book. She looked at the page Genni had been reading. She remembered the text from when she had read it. ‘Herein lie the souls of all the unclaimed, all those who were sick or suffering. Those who had illnesses, or were haunted and killed in the dreams of another.’
Lara exhaled sharply as she read the last line. Killed in the dreams of another… Was that why Genni hadn’t wanted to sleep? And was that why Lara had been having her nightmares? But she had finished the book; nothing had happened to her. But then she remembered that Genni was a slow reader. Had she not finished it in time? Her thoughts went back to the old man. He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late.
A complete mess of entangled emotions, Lara collapsed to the floor and covered her tear-streaked face as the doctors placed Genni’s body gently on the stretcher and carried her out the door.

* * * * * * * *

“Been a long time, Mr. Linden,” Lara said, as she sat, facing the old man, legs crossed in a totally business-like fashion.
“Lara…I’m sorry. I never had any idea that book was capable of such a thing.” Linden sat watching Lara and Michael as they regarded him with unblinking eyes. “In all honesty, I don’t know what came over me. I mean, to give a book that dangerous to a mere child… I had to be losing my mind.”
“Mr. Linden,” Lara said, leaning forward. “You had warned me the book was dangerous, but I took that in the wrong connotation. I thought you meant that the stories inside the book had danger in them. Apparently, I was wrong. Had you ever really read the book before you gave it to me?”
“Read it?” Linden asked. “Yes, I had. But to me, it was all a lot of gibberish. I stopped about halfway through. In all seriousness, I was just trying to scare you. And I thought to myself, even if it was dangerous in some way, this wasn’t the original text. It was a translation. What could it possibly do? And now, I pay the price for a lack of intelligence. Your friend is dead, and I can’t change that.”
“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Lara said. She opened the familiar brown satchel that went with her everywhere and removed an item carefully wrapped in brown paper. As she unwrapped it, the shape of a padded envelope emerged. Lara opened the clasp and removed a very worn book from the inside. It had no binding to speak of, and was on the verge of falling apart. In fact, several pages fluttered to the floor when she pulled it out, which she bent over to retrieve. But there was a gigantic wad of papers with it, and she pushed the book gently back into the envelope. The papers she kept out and held in her lap.
“What is that?” Linden asked.
“This is an original manuscript,” Lara said, patting the envelope with the old book inside. “Michael and I found it not too long ago. But it’s too fragile for what we need. I had a good friend scan the important parts in and print them out. That’s what these are.” She held up the papers. “Mr. Linden, the translation was, for the most part, right on target. But there were parts that were wildly inaccurate. The page that Genni was reading when they found her made reference to death in a person’s dreams, which would make sense because Genni did not want to sleep. But the original words differ greatly from the translation, as I found when I read this. Or at least, the words are different when translated properly. In the words of the older language, there were two terms for death. They both translate as ‘death,’ but one of them is an idiom, which means ‘eternal sleep.’ A translator could misinterpret this as meaning death, but it is literally ‘eternal sleep,’ or ‘endless dreaming.’ ”
Linden’s mouth dropped open slightly. “Then you are saying…”
Lara nodded. “Genni is still alive. I know it sounds impossible. After all, her body was buried, and she showed no signs of life. The doctors that checked her out determined that already, and I’m not about to dig up someone who has been buried for this long. But, if I have someone’s cooperation, I can bring her back.”
“Then why come to me?” Linden asked. “Not that I am unwilling to help, but Michael is certainly more accessible than I am as far as things like that.”
“I can’t help her,” Mike replied. “I haven’t read the book.”
“I refuse to let him,” Lara said. “I won’t have him go through what I have if I can help it at all. But you have read it, Mr. Linden. Maybe not all of it, but you’ve read some of it.”
“What, exactly, are we talking about here?” Linden asked. He should have been scared, but there was no fear in his voice.
“We both have to go to sleep. At the same time. With the same thought in mind: finding Genni and bringing her out of the place she is trapped in.”
Linden leaned back against the chair and inhaled deeply, then exhaled just as slowly. “Well, Lara, I don’t know how easy that would be for me. Because I haven’t had a dream since I first read that book over twenty years ago.”
“If that were the case, you’d be dead,” Mike told him. “Dream deprivation causes insanity, and eventually death. Any basic Psychology course will teach you that. You have to have dreamed, even if you don’t remember them.”
Linden shook his balding head slowly. “No. I’ve undergone all the tests. Clinics have hooked me up to monitors and had me sleep off and on for weeks at a time. And never once did they detect any signs that I was dreaming.”
“Then their machines are faulty, Mr. Linden,” Mike said. “Twenty years without dreams simply isn’t possible.”
Linden sighed. “Believe what you will. But I sleep only in twenty minute increments throughout the day. I never have the time to dream. Nor do I want to.”
“Why not?” Lara asked.
“Because I am afraid of what I might find if I do decide to dream,” Linden answered. “And that simple, single thought has made me completely alter my sleeping habits.” There was a long pause. Then he spoke again after clearing his throat. “You realize that this is dangerous. According to the translation, there is the possibility that one of us, both of us, or even people completely unrelated to us in any way could be drawn into that prison and never escape again. Or be killed merely by the shock of such a transition.”
Lara nodded. “Michael will be monitoring us while we’re in. If anything strange happens, he’ll wake us up.” She put on a solemn expression. “Mr. Linden, I know this is dangerous, but it’s the only chance I’ve got of ever getting Genni back. And until I have tried and possibly failed, I will not forgive myself.”
Mr. Linden began to laugh suddenly, seemingly without reason.
“What’s so funny?” Michael growled at him. “This is a friend’s life at stake here, and all you can do is laugh?”
Linden’s somber look returned to his face. “I apologize. I was merely remembering that day, so many years ago, when that teenage girl walked into my study and told me that she was not cut out for adventure and danger.”
Lara nodded. “I’ve eaten those words many times since then, Mr. Linden. Many more times, perhaps, than I should, and I would gamble that I will continue to work them over like some large piece of fat that I cannot spit out for many years to come.”
“Like Satan with Judas Iscariot,” Linden said so quietly that none of them could make it out totally.
“What was that about Judas and Satan?” Lara asked.
“Forgive me,” Linden asked, “it was merely a reference to the first part of Dante’s brilliant masterpiece, ‘The Divine Comedy,’ most commonly known as ‘The Inferno.’ Satan is confined to the lowest pit of hell with the traitors, where he forever chews on the soul of Judas, the greatest traitor in Christian teaching.”
“You certainly know your literature,” Mike commented.
“One of my favorite books, actually. Dante was certainly a man who could dream. A man that could envision a concept as complicated as hell, yet express it in such a way that even the casual reader can understand it. Simple divisions by level of the crime committed. Making a sort of organized chaos out of hell.”
“I’ve read it before too,” Lara said. “I found it fascinating at the time, but I have to admit that I find our current situation a bit more pressing. I’m not going to leave her in there for any longer than I have to.”
“Very well,” Mr. Linden said as he rose from his chair. He took his walking stick from where it lay against the armrest, and placed it before him as he slowly walked out of the room. “Come on, then. I have just the room.”
After casting a questioning glance at her, Mike got up and followed Lara and the older gentleman out into the hall.
Lara had to admit that the place was a little different from what she remembered of the day of the tour. But the layout was all basically the same as she followed him down a hall and through a door they had not gone through those six years ago with Holly, Anthony, and…what was her name again? Bethany, that’s right, she told herself. Bethany had been so quiet when Lara was around that she often had a hard time remembering the girl’s name. Woman, now, Lara corrected herself. Bethany would have to be almost 25 these days.
For being old, Linden possessed an almost uncanny speed with which he moved about the house. He seemed to know every squeaky place in the floor, every crack in the wall. The fact that he had lived here for over fifty years probably had something to do with it, of course. But there was always something eerie about following someone through confusing territory when they seemed to know exactly where they were going.
Finally, Linden led them to what appeared to be a dead-end corridor, stopping by the wall at the end. He motioned for Lara and Mike to come forward.
“Mr. Linden, no offense, but I was hoping for a bed to sleep in for this, not the floor.”
He shook his head from side to side. “Now, now, you young people are always so impatient. Here, help me move this wall panel…” He began to press a part of the wall inwards, and something clicked. “Hurry up!” he ordered them. “The mechanism will lock again, and I can’t hold it for very long.”
Lara shoved the part of the wall he was pushing on the side, but nothing happened.
“No, the other way,” Linden winced. “Pull it towards you.”
Nodding, Lara grabbed the seam and tugged. There was a faint scraping noise, like the opening of a sliding shower door, then the area was open.
“Why, may I ask, are we going in here?” Mike asked, poking his head through the opening.
“Because I want to be certain that we are not disturbed,” Linden replied. “As far as I know, I’m the only one in this whole mansion that knows about this door. We will be fine once we get inside.” So saying, he stepped into the passageway, and pulled a chain hanging from the ceiling. A dim light bulb sputtered to life as the electricity surged through seldom-used circuits. Mike and Lara followed him, and he led them down a continuation of the hall. The door slid shut behind the group, silently clicking into place, and leaving no indication if its whereabouts. After a couple more minutes of dark hallway, they emerged into a very bright room. The light, as it turned out, came from a gigantic sunroof, the location of which was obscured by the fact that the rest of the roof was built slightly higher in order to hide the window from casual outside observers. There were two beds in the room, a table, several chairs, and bookshelves lined the walls.
“Welcome to my private study,” Linden smiled. “I go here, sometimes, to peruse my most favorite books, and to think.”
“Think? About what?” Mike asked.
Linden cast a long, forlorn glance at a picture hanging just above the table. It was of a beautiful woman, vibrant with life, and exuding love and care from every inch of her ear-to-ear smile. “My wife, mostly. She died a great many years ago, while my collection was less than half of what it is today. I think her death spurned my desire for books. After all, besides her, my books were all I had. We never really had any friends. But we never needed them. We always had each other, and that was what counted, I believe. This was our bedroom, at one point. Thus the two beds. One thing Samantha never believed in was two people sleeping in the same bed.” He paused to release a sigh. “I think it was her religion that did that to her; glad I never got brainwashed into that habit.”
Mike pulled a chair away from the table and moved it over between the two beds. “I guess I’ll just sit here and observe, huh?”
Lara nodded silently. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Linden. About your wife.”
Linden took another look at the picture, then looked at Lara again. “There was nothing to be done. It was cancer, you know. Not much can be said after all these years. You can have her bed there,” he said, pointing to the cot on Mike’s left. “I’ll sleep in this one.” He sat down on the side of the bed and kicked off his shoes, then propped his walking stick against the wall before pulling his legs up onto the bed and laying back into the pillows.
Lara unlaced her boots and removed her socks, leaving them on the floor, before pulling back the sheet, and sliding under it. “It’s awfully bright in here…”
Linden lifted his head up and addressed Mike. “If I could ask you to pull that cord on the wall over there, that will extend the shade to cover the window.” Mike pulled the indicated cord, and slowly, a massive light-blocking shade covered the window, plunging the room into darkness. After a few minutes, Mike’s eyes adjusted to the dark. “Lara? Mr. Linden? Are you alright?”
“Yes, Michael, I’m fine,” Lara replied.
“And you, Mr. Linden?” Mike asked.
There was no reply, then a sudden snore that gradually grew in crescendo, then fell in a like fashion.
Mike and Lara both giggled. She looked up at him. “Shall we let Mr. Linden sleep then, Michael?”
“If he’s to be believed, he’ll be awake in nineteen minutes and thirty-six seconds,” Mike nodded, reading his watch with the Indiglo button. He slipped under the sheet with her quietly.
“Plenty of time,” she whispered in his ear. They kissed long and hard as he slid her shirt slowly up her chest and felt the soft skin of her breasts as they brushed against his arm.
He felt her undo the button and then the zipper on his jeans, then she slid her hand inside his pants. Taking the hint, he slid the zipper on her shorts to the bottom, unsnapped the snap, and slowly lowered them to her knees, taking her panties with her. His hand slid up her thigh, past her pelvis, and slowly circled her belly button before rising up to embrace her breast. After a couple quick passes, her nipple was very stiff, and he slipped his mouth over it, tasting the wonderful flavor of her skin against his lips and feeling the heart-stopping sensation of her hands caressing him.
His hand left her breast and made its way down into her inner thigh, where he brushed her lightly until he could feel her stretch a little, then he slipped his finger over to her lips which had parted slightly. She shivered as he traced their contours with his fingertip. His lips returned to hers as he felt her tongue slam its way into his mouth, seeming to wrestle with his. It was a no-win situation. He let her tongue pin his. When he felt she had opened enough, he slid his finger gently inside her, touching her briefly everywhere, and being careful not to linger too long in any areas. He felt her getting wet as he continued. How much time had passed? Would Linden wake up and find them like this? Did he even care?
Lara continued to caress him through his underwear, then he felt her hands reach for the elastic and slide underneath. The sensation felt the same as it always did, and it drove him to kiss her more passionately. He slid across her clit, and felt her exhale slightly as he did so. Good. She was still sensitive. He let his finger go in deeper, feeling her opening up for him even more as he did so. She spread her legs wider, giving him full access, and he used it well, lightly tickling her insides, and feeling her clench her toes each time he got a little orgasm out of her. But after a while, he decided to hold back no longer. He moved his tongue across her teeth, into contact with her tongue, across the inside of her cheek, and back to her tongue again as he continued to caress her intimately under the covers.
Shivers went up Lara’s spine as his arm came into contact with her breast, and his hand started a virtual explosion in her loins. She thrust herself up against him, and he went in deeper this time. She felt the surge starting as it always did in her legs, and it sped through her with alarming quickness as he concentrated on her clit. She held off for a moment, but in a little while could do so no longer, and she came heavily, breathing into his mouth, shaking in the bed, and pulling his hand out from between her legs. He stroked her nipples lightly with his fingers, and she orgasmed one final time before collapsing onto the bed, head hitting the pillows, and bringing Michael’s head with it. She kissed him again and again, then they heard the form in the bed next to them stirring.
Hurriedly, Mike extracted himself from the covers, rebuttoned his pants, and slid into the chair, while Lara lifted her shorts back to where they belonged.
Mike checked his watch. Twenty minutes on the dot. This guy wasn’t kidding.
“Enjoy your nap, Mr. Linden?” Lara asked.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” Mr. Linden said, sitting up. “Just resting my eyes, I was. It’s been a long day, after all.”
Mike giggled. “With all due respect, sir, you were asleep.”
Linden sighed. “Ah well, I guess there’s no fooling you people. Anyway, I’m ready to try this crazy stunt whenever you are. But Lara, I don’t know how you can be tired at this time of the afternoon.”
“Well, let’s just say that this trip has taken an awful lot out of me,” Lara said. Although Mike couldn’t see her, he was certain that she was either winking at him, or smiling. He wasn’t sure which, so he winked and smiled back at her.
“I see. I know it’s a long trip up here. But let’s get started, shall we?”
“Yes, the sooner the better,” Lara said. “Michael, are you able to see enough to monitor us? Remember, if you hear anything funny, like strange, irregular breathing or anything like that, wake us up. I’ll try to remember what happens so I can write it down. I’m sure you’ll be interested in reading about it.”
“Another best-seller, eh Lara?”
“Let’s hope so. Shall we get started, Mr. Linden?” She yawned, then closed her eyes. Michael got the feeling that she was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

For the first few minutes, he watched them both intently. But when nothing happened, he began to get restless. He got up and walked around the room, then sat down again. He was getting awfully sleepy. An experience like that always takes something out of you, he thought. Not that he was complaining at all. So he sat in the chair again. “I’ll just take a little nap, nothing long,” he murmured. He leaned his weight against the back of the chair and shut his eyes. It was very comfortable, actually, with the head cushion and all, and with the sun from the skylight blocked by the shade, it was just the right brightness for his tired eyes.
Michael dozed off into a dream and a memory that he would never forget as long as he lived.

* * * * * * * *

When he opened his eyes, Michael could tell he was sitting somewhere. The seat was small, but comfortable. The floor beneath his feet was metal, and there was a slight humming sound coming from both behind him and in front of him. Then he saw the people sitting nearby. There was a girl next to him that looked to be in her early twenties. Sitting across from him were three adults, all men, somewhere in their thirties. Next to the girl were a pair of women who were talking softly to each other. Everyone was bundled up tightly in fur parkas and had boots on their feet. Michael wondered why they were so cold; he certainly didn’t feel a chill, and he was just in a tee shirt and jeans. “Hey, why is everyone so wrapped up? It’s not cold in here.”
“They can’t hear you, Michael,” said a voice behind him. He turned to his left and looked into the face of Lara. “Lara? How the hell did we get here? I remember being in the house and…” His voice trailed off as he realized they were flying in a plane. Then he stood up slowly and walked over in front of the girl next to him. She gave no impression that she saw him; rather, she merely called to one of the other woman in the plane. He waved a hand in front of her face, but again received no reaction. He turned to confront Lara again. “What’s going on? Why can you see me if they can’t?”
“Because this is a dream,” Lara said.
“Why am I in it?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know.”
“And where is Mr. Linden?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lara, what is-“ He was cut off as there was a sudden, sickening crunching sound from one of the wings of the plane. His eyes widened. Oh my God… He looked again at the face of the girl, which was now covered with fear. The face of a very young Lara looked back at him. The sound happened again. And everyone was silent. “Lara…Jesus Christ…this is the plane crash!” He looked up, still not believing, at the luggage racks. Sure enough, there were suitcases and skis piled up in the corner and when he went to the rear compartment and peered through the circular window there, he saw more supplies.
Someone screamed as a loud explosion echoed through the cabin, and the pilot, in a shaky voice, announced that their side wing had scraped the tip of a mountain. They had lost one of their two engines. “Brace for impact, everyone,” he ordered as calmly as he could.
Tears welled up in the young Lara’s face; tears that were mirrored on the face of the ‘real’ Lara behind him. He tried to put his arms around the young girl, tried to console her, but it was no use. He couldn’t feel her at all. Everyone began to scramble for everything in order to assume crash positions.
He turned to Lara, who still had tears running down her face. “Lara, why didn’t anyone move you too?”
“I was the only one of my family on this trip,” Lara said. “I was forgotten about by everyone aboard the plane.”
There was a sudden jarring jolt as a wheel smashed into the jutting side of a cliff, and the plane tilted harshly, spilling everyone to the deck. The real Lara fell too, but Mike simply stood there, unaffected. He rushed over to help the real Lara stand up. At first he had been glad this was all a dream and that they could not be affected by anything. But now a sharp realization hit him in the face. Even though it was just a dream for him…for Lara, everything was just as real as the day it had happened. If they were not careful, she could die in here.
“The plane crashed over the Himalayas,” the real Lara recited as though from a book. “The remains were found three days later. By that time, snow had covered my tracks, and the rescue team had no idea someone escaped. I wandered through here for several days before I finally found a civilization.”
There was a horrendous boom that, while loud in Michael’s ears, must have been absolutely deafening in Lara’s. Another jolt sent screaming people rolling down the aisle, and dropped all manner of bags from the luggage racks in the back. Mike grabbed for Lara’s hand and caught it just in time to keep her from joining the pile of bodies at the rear.
Mike looked towards the cockpit where the curtain divider had fallen down, and saw the mountain looming ahead of them, the plane dipping ever lower and lower, bringing them into a straight, head-on collision.
Mike observed as the dream Lara, acting in the only manner that would save her life and allow her to meet up with him later, grabbed a rope from the floor, tied it to her waist, then tied it around the seat in front of her. She stuffed a pillow against her chest, another against her face, then hugged the chair with all her might. Time slowed to a crawl as the cliff face got closer and closer.
The impact was hideous. Mike saw the pilot thrown forward from his seat, through the window, and get crushed to death in between the plane and the mountain. Another man, arms flailing, sailed across the cabin, smashing his face against the walls. Blood exploded from his ears, nose, mouth, and eyes, and he hit the floor, dead.
The real Lara had braced herself exactly behind her dream counterpart, with her legs and arms wrapped around the padded seat as best they could.
The emergency exit exploded open violently, sucking the two women closest to it out. Their screams, filled with the utter terror and horror of people about to die, were lost as the rumble of the plane tumbling down the slope filled everyone’s ears. Mike watched as the cabin tilted crazily around him, as though he were the center of a gyroscope. The real Lara had blood seeping from her ears from the change in pressure, which must have been absolutely murderous at this velocity and height. He walked over to her and embraced her. “Remember, it’s only a dream.”
Eyes clenched tightly shut so she could not see the world, Lara nodded. “Cover my ears.”
“What?” Mike asked.
“Cover my ears. Quickly, please!”
Without further questions, he obliged, and suddenly realized why. The two remaining men in the plane vomited explosively, splattering the plane with the expulsions, and then the plane turned upside down. The two lost their grips on the seats the were holding on to and flew up to the ceiling where there was a sickening crunch as they were impaled on the long screws that were sticking down from the top of the plane. Another stomach-turning, ripping noise, and they were dislodged, and slapped the floor. Mike wasn’t certain, but he thought he heard ribs and spine snapping.
The plane took a final rolling tumble, knocking one of the bodies out the door and smashing it, and leaving the other one with a dead arm wrapped backwards around the seat in front of them. Finally, there was a final crash, and the plane ground to a halt on its side. The dead man with the twisted, broken arm hung above them like a mockery of a Raggedy Ann doll, swinging slightly from side to side.
Mike, Lara, and the dream Lara all looked up to see that they were all in one piece. Then there came another faint rumbling sound.
The real Lara dropped from her perch on the chair and jumped out the exit door. The dream Lara followed close behind, occasionally looking back at the window of the plane.
Mike cast a glance in their direction and immediately wished he hadn’t. A tremendous avalanche was smashing its way down the slope towards the wreckage. Tearing his eyes away from the sight, and remembering that he couldn’t get injured in this dream, he dove for the door, rolling down the slope, getting covered in snow that was neither cold nor wet, and landing at the feet of both Laras. The first part of the avalanche struck the plane, smashing it to pieces with the ferocity of the natural attack as the three watched from a small alcove-like opening nearby. The huge snow slide thundered the rest of the way to the ground, and the echo assaulted their ears for several minutes to come.
Mike looked at the dream Lara who just sat there in stunned silence. The real Lara wasn’t really in any better condition. “Hot damn…” he muttered.
Slowly, the real Lara got to her feet and walked over to him. “I’m alright, Michael. And she will be too,” she said, pointing to the girl huddled there in the snow.
“Lara…how on earth you survived this, I’ll never know.”
“Oh, I know quite well how I survived it,” Lara remarked. She pointed behind the figure of the dream Lara. As Mike cast his eyes in that direction, he could see a faint form behind the girl. “See that woman back there?”
Mike nodded.
“Meet my guardian angel, Michael,” she smiled.

* * * * * * * *

He suddenly realized that this wasn’t where he had been just a moment ago. Now, instead of the icy mountains of Nepal, he was standing inside a large room of the Croft manor in England. He saw Lara beside him. Apparently, she too was confused as to why she was here.
They were in the center of the massive Den, which held several sofas, love seats, and chairs. The one closest to Mike had a happy floral print to it, while the chair nearest Lara was a dark, dreary shade of chocolate brown. Next to the sad looking chair was a coffee table with a neat stack of magazines. The top one was a ‘Time.’ Underneath that one were two political magazines, a ‘Tomorrow’s Government Today?” newsletter, the monthly ‘GreenPeace’ publication, an organization to which Lord Croft always gave generously, and a ‘National Geographic.’ A newspaper sat folded at the end of one of the sofas. It looked, for all the world, like any normal household.
“Lara, what is this? Are we still dreaming?”
“Yes, I think so…But I don’t know why we would be in my house.”
One of the doors opened, and Lord Croft walked in. He was still dressed in house pajamas, with slippers on his feet, and a robe that trailed down to the floor, tied and knotted in the front. His hair was damp, giving them the impression that he had just come from the bath, and there was a slight stubble of beard upon his chin, indicating that it was still too early for a shave. His pipe was clamped between his teeth, and he puffed upon it while he tromped over to his chair, unfolded the newspaper he had under his arm with aristocratic flair, and began to scan the contents slowly, eyes moving left to right, then back again, and repeating the action.
“I don’t understand this at all,” Lara murmured. “Why are we watching Daddy?”
A noise from outside the room, sounding for all the world like a slamming door, reached their ears, along with fast, running footsteps. Lord Croft sat up, listening to the racket. There was broken chattering between two individuals, and a very excited voice from one of the speakers. It got louder, until the door burst open and in sailed Lara, a tremendous grin plastered across her face, clutching what looked to be a necklace of some kind. “Hello, Daddy!”
Without giving him time to reply, she raced over to the chair that faced his and dropped into it, holding up the necklace. “Look at this, Daddy! I found it! I finally found it! I don’t know why all those other people had so much trouble with it, I mean, the runes were just an ancient form of Sumarian. Any fool who studied the Rosetta Stone could have told you that. But look at it! Go on, look! See how pretty it is? And you know what else, Daddy-“
“Lara!” Lord Croft interrupted. “Where are your manners, dear child?”
Lara looked at her feet, then spoke in a small voice. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I just-“
“You acted for all the world like a bloody American! Rude, bursting in here without so much as a knock on the door, speaking loudly and rapidly, forgetting to be the girl that your mother and I have always tried to raise you to be.” He paused, and tilted her head up by placing one hand under her chin. “Lara, dear, what is wrong with you lately? You are gone for days, then come back overjoyed, but not to see us. You want to show us the latest little bit of junk you’ve dug up somewhere.”
“But Daddy, the museum said they would pay-“
“Pay? Lara, what on earth do you need money for? You know that you are a part of this family as well as your mother and I are! If you need money, you have only but to ask and it is yours. I would much rather see you come to me than going out and playing little archaeologist, getting dirt under your fingernails, and spending time with deadbeats and whatnot.”
“They’re not deadbeats, Daddy, they’re people just like me.”
“This is not the way I raised my daughter to be!” Croft thundered.
The real Lara suddenly turned away, unable to watch any more. She knew exactly where this was going.
“You were sent through the best schools in this country!” Croft roared, stamping about the room and wagging his finger at her. “You graduated the best finishing school in the world at the top of your class! I know you have more sense than to run around like some wild child in a sandbox hunting down those little treasures you insist on finding. Let Jacque Cousteau do that sort of thing. The French are like that, Lara. A refined, dignified, upper-class British lady like yourself is not.”
“I’ve met Mr. Cousteau, Daddy, and he’s not some criminal.”
“He’s a fisherman and a drunkard who takes pictures of seaweed!” Croft exploded. “I will not have my only daughter behaving in this manner! Lara, what has happened to you? You never used to act this way! But ever since that plane crash in Nepal, you have been totally uncontrollable. You have been raised to be a dignified young woman, and I want this foolishness to stop.”
“No!” Lara shouted back at him. “Look at what you do all day! You sit in this house, drinking your tea and reading your paper and magazines! You watch the BBC all day, drinking in the political things, and you listen to NPR at night to get even more of it! Occasionally, you go out hunting with your upper-class friends, or perhaps on a fishing trip! But you never live!”
“Living is not flying around the globe chasing tigers just to find something that is over ten thousand years old! It is staying at home and keeping up with what is going on in the world. Current events is what will change this world, not broken slivers of clay and beads.” He sat back in his chair with a huff.
“Daddy, we learn from the past,” Lara argued. “I’m not comfortable anymore with living in this sheltered existence you’ve raised me in. All along, there were fascinating things out there, but because you made certain I was always wearing a white dress, I couldn’t ever get near them, because I would get dirty. And now, I’m an adult, I’ve grown up, I’ve learned for myself and by myself what is out there, and I love what I do! Why can’t you be satisfied with that? Your daughter is doing something that makes her happy! Something she enjoys! Would you rather she sulk around here all day, being morose, or would you want her to be enjoying herself?”
“Your principles are misguided,” Croft rebuked her. “Gallivanting around like a madwoman searching for pottery is not what you were raised to do. For heaven’s sake, girl, I had already picked the man you were going to marry before you ran off and he decided that you were more trouble than you were worth.”
“You picked?!?” Lara screamed. “Don’t even give me a choice in the damn matters then!”
“You will not swear in this house,” Croft ordered. “I did not raise you to have a filthy mouth like some pub-hopper from Devonshire. And apparently, it was a good thing too. You obviously would not have had sense enough to choose anyone of any importance. This man was royalty, Lara. He would have made you a fine husband. You could have had anything you wanted!”
“I shall swear if I damn well please!” Lara countered. “I’m twenty-one now, Daddy, and you can’t make the rules anymore. And when I am ready to marry, I will pick the man I want, not you.”
“You will live by my rules as long as you are under this roof!”
“Then I don’t want to be under this roof! Will you let your grip go, Daddy? I’m not a fragile little girl any more, I’m a grown woman. Stop trying to catch my leash and let me run free!”
Lord Croft and Lara sat, staring at one another, anger seething through them both. The tension was so tangible, Mike felt he could reach out and touch it. He looked over at the real Lara, who sat with her head in her hands, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he walked over to her and put his arms around her. “Lara? Lara, it’s OK. It’s only a dream. Remember?”
“This is exactly the way it happened,” Lara sobbed. “Daddy and I got into a big argument, and he…he…” She stopped, unable to finish, and Mike looked at the scene once again. Lord Croft had risen from his chair and towered over Lara.
“Very well,” he spoke softly, the hatred in his words almost visible. “Go on ahead and do what you are doing. Completely ruin your life. I care not. You are being so selfish that I cannot believe you are the same girl I fathered twenty-one years ago. Your mother is ill, and yet you never return home to visit her. She worries about you, yet you show no signs of maturity. What can I tell her day after day after day? Her daughter is off hunting for King Tut’s tomb and doesn’t care about her family anymore? Very well then. That is what it shall be. As of this moment forward, you are no longer a member of my family.”
Lara’s head rose. “What?”
“You are not my daughter. My real daughter died in that plane crash. The girl who came back was not her.”
“Daddy, you know that’s not true!”
“You have said it so yourself!” Croft yelled at her. “My daughter, the one I loved with all my heart, is dead, killed by this wayward vagabond who took her name just to spite me! Whence Mr. Commorford returns from his vacation in two weeks, I shall drive out there personally and have my daughter’s name removed from the family will. If she desires to live alone, then she shall be alone. You, ungrateful woman, are hereby expunged from this family like the pus from a blister. Now leave this place before I call the police and have you removed forcibly.” He turned and strode towards the door.
Anger coursing through her like a poison, and mingling with the shock from the words she had just heard, Lara raised the talisman she had found and stared at it. Then she threw it towards Lord Croft, heard it break against the wall by his ear. “Then to hell with you too!” she screamed at him. Lord Croft never cast a look back. “You have fifteen minutes to leave before I have someone drag you out. I suggest you take whatever of your belongings you want from this house and depart from it posthaste.” He slammed the door behind him, and Lara sank to the floor in tears, burying her face in the cushion of the chair.
Mike looked at the real Lara, who was still crying. “Lara, what is the meaning behind all this?”
“These are my dreams,” Lara replied. “And if Genni was having nightmares like this, no wonder she didn’t want to sleep.”
“Why not try to wake up?” Mike encouraged her. “We can try this again later.”
“No,” Lara shook her head vehemently. “I have to finish this. And at this point, I doubt I could be woken up. You’re not there to wake me, and no one else in the house knows we’re here. We have no choice but to continue on and find Genni.”
“But why is all this directed at you?” Mike asked.
“Because of the book,” Lara said. “The book is wearing me down, trying to get me to stop. It wants me, just as it wants Mr. Linden, and you as well.”
“Speaking of Mr. Linden, where is he?”
“I don’t know, Michael. But I hope he is doing better than we are.”
Mike watched the scene around him fade away, and he felt the darkness surround him as he blacked out.

He woke up to the sound of organ music, and looked up to see himself seated in a large, gothic cathedral. Lara was next to him, but her eyes were closed. He tapped her on the shoulder, and her eyes fluttered open. “Lara? Where are we? What is this place?”
She looked around. “It…looks like a church of some kind. But I don’t-“ She stopped and glanced around. Everything was just as she remembered it. There were the same stained-glass windows. The same wooden pews. The same smell of incense… “I know where we are,” she said, her face deadly serious.
“Well, talk! Where is this?”
“This is my mother’s funeral.”
“What?”
“She died shortly after Daddy and I had our little disagreement. And before Daddy was able to change the will.”
“I remembered wondering why you still got part of your family’s money when you had been disowned,” Mike said. “This all makes some sense now.”
They sat and watched the minister giving his opening remarks, then the service began. Mike sat, remembering in a back corner of his head that he had not been to church the week before because he was helping Lara find the book. He felt a little guilty, but wondered if, perhaps, this dream would make up for that. They were fairly close to the front, and, remembering that he couldn’t interact with anyone, he stood up and walked past the assembled congregation. Lady Croft must have had a lot of friends, he mused to himself. The cathedral was absolutely packed, with people standing in the back, and along the aisles in the side of the building. He walked towards the altar, where Lady Croft was laid out in an exquisite coffin, and looked down at her. He had heard Lara talk about her mother several times, but never knew what she looked like.
Even in death, she looked stunning, and he knew in a moment where Lara had inherited her beauty. Her hair was short, and brown in color, just like Lara’s, save for a couple small streaks of sliver which ran through it like trickles of water from the side of a mountain. Her lips were still full, though he suspected that the makeup was partly responsible for that. She looked, for all the world, like a typical housewife who had performed her duties of child rearing and keeping the home for fifty years. She was the kind of person who made you want to know her, just because of who she was. Mike felt suddenly very sorry that he had never met her. He had come too late. A small tear worked its way down his cheek. Well, regardless of what Lara thought, he wasn’t completely immune to this stuff.
He turned and scanned the people in the pews in front of him. The rest of the Croft family sat in silence, heads bowed. There were a lot of them, Mike realized. Probably cousins, aunts, uncles, and other assorted relatives. Regardless, the Croft clan appeared to be quite large. He frowned, then looked them over again. Where was Lara?
He walked back over to the real Lara. “Lara, I can’t find you up there. Where are you sitting?”
“I’m not up with my family,” Lara said. “I’m in the very back pew. And from what I can remember, I never got to go up and see her before they carried her out.”
“Then let’s go up there together,” Mike suggested.
Lara looked at him as though he had just pulled a frog from his ear. “I’m sorry?”
Mike took her hand and helped her up. “We already know you can’t change anything here, because these dreams are from the past. But this is the present. And this may be the only chance you get to say good-bye to her. I suggest you use it, and let it all go.”
Lara pursed her lips, and for a moment Mike actually thought she wouldn’t go through with it. But then, she rose to her feet calmly, exited the pew, and walked down the aisle with Mike at her side. Out of habit and respect, she genuflected at the altar, then stood up again and walked towards the casket. She paused a moment. Do I really want to do this? What if I don’t like what I see? Michael said she was there, but what if she’s not there? What if she’s not my mother? Michael hadn’t ever seen her before; he doesn’t know what she looks like. What if? What if? What if? She growled at herself inwardly, at the part of her that held true fear. Get up your courage, damnit. And stop hiding behind all those ‘what ifs.’ It’s a dream, and that dream is from the past. ‘Ifs’ don’t matter anymore. It’s the ‘nows’ that do.
And with that argument settled, Lara tentatively took the last step forward and closed her eyes. It all came down to this. And she trusted Michael. Quickly, so as not to give herself the chance to change her mind, she opened her eyes and stared at the figure in the coffin.
And she was forced to smile. Mommy… She looked so pretty there. So calm, and at peace. There were no more cares. And suddenly, Lara realized that that was what she needed to see. The burden of that final moment lifted itself from her shoulders. And while it didn’t quite make her feel light enough to fly, it did help some. She bent down, kissed her dream mother on each cheek softly, then turned away. There were no more tears to shed. There was no reason to cry any longer.
Slowly, she and Michael turned and made their way down the aisle towards the doors of the cathedral. The tiles beneath their feet gave off no sound as they walked across them. They passed people wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs, praying silent rosaries or novenas, sobbing on their spouses’ shoulders. And there, in the back, sat the dream Lara, fists clenched in silent anger and misery. But that part of the real Lara was no longer there, and she merely smiled with the knowledge that, some day, this dream version of herself would understand it all.
The massive doors of the cathedral parted slowly, revealing not the outside world, but rather a bright, fulfilling light. Lara clutched Mike’s hand tighter, and they walked into the luminescence, which almost seemed to be full of a tangible joy. And, after a moment, Lara rested her head on Mike’s shoulder, and they both fell asleep again. This time, it was her, and not the book that had won. Her thoughts turned to Genni before she drifted off again in her sleep, and also to Mr. Linden. Surely, he would be there at the end, when they needed him the most. But for now, it just felt good to sleep, surrounded and penetrated by that warm, generous light…


* * * * * * * *

Lara opened her eyes as a blast of cold hit her face. She sat up, wondering what had happened to the light from before, but she hardly had time to think of it when a creaking sound made her leap to her feet and scan the area around her. The air was filled with a mist of some kind, a cruel fog that chilled her exposed skin and forced its way into her clothing, soaking it, and seeming to penetrate into her heart. “Michael? Are you in here?”
Her words echoed back to her from some point she couldn’t distinguish. But there was no reply. Not from Michael, not from anyone. Just the firm, undeniable coldness of the mist, and a feeling of uneasiness about Lara that she couldn’t shake.
Her hands dropped to her side holsters, reaching for the magnums that were always there. She found them empty. She went to remove the satchel from her back, then realized that it also was missing. Likewise, the knife in her boot. Gritting her teeth, cursing in her mind, she waved the mist away from her face and tried to collect her thoughts. The evil of this place was undeniable; the mist alone made that obvious. She suddenly noticed that there was no light coming from anywhere, yet she was somehow able to see. She looked down, which proved to be a huge mistake. There was no ground under her that she could see. “Wonderful,” she muttered. “So where the hell am I?”
A long, piercing, inhuman scream sounded from somewhere in the distance, causing her arms and legs to break out in goosebumps. It died slowly, and even after the original howl was over, the echo persisted from every direction for several minutes. It hadn’t exactly sounded like Michael, but… She shook that thought from her head. These were her dreams. Michael played no part in them whatsoever; the chances that he could actually get hurt were-
A second scream, stronger, closer, and louder than the first assaulted her ears, and she threw her hands over them. The cry stopped, but was replaced by a low, persistent moaning which seemed almost worse than the original screaming.
An image flashed past Lara’s head, causing her to duck reflexively, but when she whirled around to face it, there was nothing. Turning her head slowly from side to side, she caught a glimmer of it in her peripheral vision. But when she looked directly at it, it wasn’t there.
“What the hell is this place?” she asked herself softly. The pitiful wailing that she got in reply offered her little comfort. She started to walk forward, then decided against it. She turned and walked to the left as the mist rose up to envelop her in its icy caresses.
The lack of sound as she walked away from what she considered to be the center of the room was almost as bad as the screaming from before. There was little comfort in the sound of her own footsteps, and her own breathing. After a moment, she stopped walking, inhaled deeply, and held it in. The breathing continued.
She whirled around, but could still see nothing through the mists. “Who is that?” she demanded loudly. “I’m looking for Genni. If you know her, or the way out of here, tell me now.”
“Lara?” the voice quavered. “Oh, thank God it’s you I found…” Lara watched as Mr. Linden stepped from the mists. “Where on earth are we? And how did you get down here? I’ve been stuck in this hole for what seems like hours. Try and get Michael to wake us up.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Linden,” Lara replied. “Michael’s in here too.”
“What?” Linden asked hoarsely. “Is he with you?”
“Well, he was. We got split up after my mother’s funeral.”
“Pardon me? I’m not following you.”
“Long story, Mr. Linden.”
They resumed walking before Linden turned to her again. “You will pardon my saying so, Lara, but it appears we have plenty of time…”
Another blood-chilling howl tore through the silence, setting their teeth on edge. “And I wish they would stop with all that racket,” Linden muttered. “I’m too old to take this sort of thing.”

Mike woke up on the ground, with the sensation of laying in a puddle of something. He quickly sat up, and brought his hand to his ear and head. There was no bleeding, which was a good sign. His hand dipped into the pool and came up again filled with stagnant water. “Gross.” He shook the water off his hand and wiped it on his jeans. “Wait a minute… How come I can feel this water?” He couldn’t feel the snow before when he was in Lara’s dream.
A low rumble from overhead reminded him of an autumn thunderstorm. “Lara, where the hell are we?”
Mike finally began to get really worried when there was no answer. But she wouldn’t have left him alone. She might have gone off exploring a little bit, but she wouldn’t have left him behind. “Lara! Hey, Lara!”
“Your friend is not around,” a sinister voice murmured in his mind. “You have been abandoned here to whatever fate is deemed appropriate.”
“Who are you? What are you talking about? You can’t do this to me!”
The voice laughed. “You know nothing of this world. You are trespassing into areas as well as worlds that you cannot possibly imagine.”
“Enlighten me,” Mike said sarcastically. “Pretend I’m an ignorant fool, and tell me where I am. And for heaven’s sake, show yourself or something.”
“I have no need to pretend with you. And I believe you already know where you are. It was you who figured it out in the first place.”
“If this is some kind of dream world, then where is Lara? I don’t remember her ever talking about this dream.”
“Until now, none of you consciously knew it existed. But at night, when you turn your subconscious over to those realms that you do not comprehend, this is where I am born. I have lived for well over two million years on this planet alone. Much longer on other worlds where life developed before it did here.”
“Listen, you sick bastard, let’s cut the shit and get to the point.” I can’t believe I’m cursing out my own head…
“I am here to protect that which I cannot allow you to have. I am here to defend what is rightfully mine from the interlopers who trespass against me. And if that comes at the cost of your lives, then so be it.”
“Where is Lara?” Mike demanded.
“Your friends are somewhere else,” the voice said, as though it were distracted.
The scenery around Mike changed, morphing itself into the hallway of a large house. Feeling as though he did not possess full control of his body, he stepped forward down the walkway. Right, left. Right, left. His feet seemed to work without his command to do so. Stop! he ordered, but they paid no attention. A doorway came into view, and got larger and larger as he approached it at his uninterrupted pace. Finally, he stood before it, as it rose up in front of him. The top of it was so far into the sky that it was lost among the clouds. Funny…the house had no roof.
“You hurt me before, Michael,” the voice told him. “Lara was supposed to be worn down by her dreams. But you…helped her. You intruded where you did not belong. And for that, there can be no lighter sentence than absolute, overpowering, eternal fear.” The doors in front of him slowly creaked open, and Mike, against his will, peered inside. He shut his eyes, but an even stronger force ripped them open again. Beyond the door was darkness. Then he heard the first hiss. The two eyes swayed hypnotically in front of him. His heart hammered inside, as though trying feverishly to burrow out from behind his rib cage and burst forth from his chest. He knew those eyes; had seen them before. They had almost taken his life at one time.
With a supreme effort of will, Mike tore his gaze away from the shape behind the door, and forced his legs to move. He ran down the hall, hearing the startled squeal of the creature behind him before it lept from the doorway, two claws clacking as they hit the floor and the monstrosity chasing after him.
Still running as fast as he could, Michael turned back to see the velociraptor gaining on him, ever so slowly. There was no escape. There were no other doors. And no matter how hard he tried, eventually, it would run him down. He heard it snort again as it increased its pace. He looked down at his clothes to see a shredded shirt and blood-covered jeans. There was a huge tear in his side, and it burned as though on fire. No, he told himself, this is just a dream. Just a dream. Wake up, God damn it. Wake up.
Mike felt something large, snarling, and very angry smash into his back, sending him into the air. He had one final opportunity to study the carpeting on the floor before the ground rushed up to smack him in the face.

* * * * * * * *

Lara and Linden continued to trudge through the mists, occasionally having to wave their hands in front of their faces to clear a line of sight.
“Lara, I know I’m a fool for asking, but do you have the slightest notion as to where we are headed?” Linden puffed. Even though it was just a dream, he was still old, and the constant walking was wearing him down.
“I haven’t a bloody clue,” Lara snarled, more at the mist and lack of recognizable landmarks than at Linden’s question. “Somebody or something has set us up real good here.”
Her next step ended her in mid-air. “What the- Woah!” She flailed her arms wildly, then pushed back with her other leg. She sat down heavily on her rear end, the rock completely unforgiving. Slowly pushing her way back from the pit, she stood up. “Ouch.”
“Oh my! A pit!” Linden declared, rather unnecessarily. He hurried over to her side. “Are you alright?”
“My pride’s a little bruised, but I’m OK,” she responded. “Now who in their right mind would have a huge pit right here?”
“Oh, come on, Lara. You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten this already.” That voice was just a bit too familiar.
Lara whirled to face the speaker, and somehow wasn’t surprised in the least. “I might have known I’d run into you somewhere in this twisted place.”
Duncan, her former partner, stepped fully from the mists. “I thought that little pit might jog your memory,” he sneered.
Damn, she thought, even in my dreams he’s as much as bastard as ever. “So why are you here? We left you down another big pit with your lovely spear back in the States.”
“No,” Duncan corrected her, “you left the real Duncan in that hole. But you still carry around some baggage in your head from before that.”
Lara noticed the rope and grappling hook in her hand. For some reason, she turned to the rock face in front of her, and cast her line. The first try missed completely, skidding off the pebbles on the ledge. Just like the first time, she thought. But I’ll get it right this toss. She gave the hook a little more rope, and delivered it again. This time, there was a resounding chink as the grapple caught between two stones on the upper tier. Why am I participating in this? She asked herself. Shouldn’t there be a dream version of me around somewhere?
Duncan walked over to the rope and gave it a good tug. “Hmm…seems tight enough. You,” he pointed to Mr. Linden.
“Me, sir?” Linden asked, taking a step back.
“No, the boulder on your right. Of course you, you idiot. Climb this rope and make sure its OK so that Lara can continue on her journey.”
Continue on my… What the hell? “Wait a moment!” Lara said. “Don’t go near that rope, Mr. Linden.”
“But if this is the only way to continue,” Mr. Linden started.
“Exactly,” Duncan said. “The way must be tested, of course.”
“No!” Lara rounded on Duncan. “You leave him out of this! It’s between you and me, not him!”
Duncan cackled his grating laugh. “My dear, when will you realize that I’m not Duncan? I’m here to help you.”
“You see, Lara, he only means to help us out,” Linden told her.
“Don’t listen to him,” Lara ordered. “This man is a conniving, backstabbing bastard from back when I was in school. These are all dreams, Mr. Linden, but taken from real life. In the real event, Duncan fell down that pit when the rope broke.”
“Ah, but this is not real life,” Duncan lilted. “This is a dream. You said so yourself, my dear. And in a dream, you are totally safe. Not a thing can hurt you. Am I correct?”
“Lara, if this is the only way to proceed, then I will climb the rope. In fact, I feel younger and healthier than ever! Perhaps a good climb will do me good.” Linden headed for the rope again, but Lara moved in front of him.
“Mr. Linden, this is a trick! My subconscious, or the book, or something is trying to get us killed.”
“Nonsense,” Linden said, heading for the rope. “This fellow looks like he couldn’t hurt a soul. Why would he lie to us? Besides, as long as he doesn’t climb the rope, then your dream will be different than what really happened. Perhaps he’s had a change of heart?”
“Lara, you have to believe me. Michael sent me here to help you out! I’m not the Duncan you are thinking of.”
Would my own brain, my own subconscious lie to me? Nothing else before this has been a lie… “If Michael sent you, then where is he, and why can’t he come himself?” Lara confronted Duncan one last time. She took a step towards him, indicating she desired an answer immediately.
“Michael is having troubles of his own,” Duncan replied.
“Cute and cryptic,” Lara spat. “Where is he? Take me to him. Then we’ll see about climbing your little rope.”
“I wish I could,” Duncan said, “but this blasted labyrinth changes every time you turn around. I was lucky to run across you when I did.”
Lara shook her head. “No, Duncan. I don’t think so. This is too convenient. Near the same pit? With the same rope and hook?”
“Coincidence, I swear,” Duncan said, crossing his heart. “Watch. Mr. Linden there will prove it to you.”
Lara turned and her face went white. Linden hung on the rope, about halfway across the span. “Mr. Linden! Turn back!”
“Never!” Linden called back cheerily. “It has been ages since I’ve been able to do this sort of thing. It won’t hurt to do it again!”
“Sorry to disappoint you, old chap,” Duncan said, his eyes glowing a fiery amber color, “but I’m afraid it will this time.” Without warning, the fibers of the rope between the stones began to give way. There was a slight jerk which dropped Linden a couple inches.
“What-?” Linden asked. He hurried, trying to turn around, but one of his arms slipped off the rope, and he swung madly in the air. “Lara?!? What’s going on? Help me!”
“Go ahead, Lara,” Duncan sneered. “Help him.”
She ran for the rope’s end still laying on the ground. Ran with all her might. And yet, she seemed to be going nowhere. Damn dream! Lara cursed to herself. It’s a damn dream. My feet do touch the ground. Now go, damn it!
The rope slipped down a little more as Duncan watched the fraying ends slowly unwind themselves. “Better hurry, Lara. He’s not got much time left, you know.”
Lara forced her feet onto the ground and hurled herself towards the end of the rope. But it was falling. Falling too quickly. Linden was dropping through the air, and the rope was trailing. With one final burst of desperation, she hurled herself at the last little bit of rope. The ground slammed into her, driving the breath from her lungs, but she felt the rope in her grasp, and closed her hand…on nothing. A millisecond before she could get ahold, the rope slide through her fingers, and she watched as Mr. Linden fell, screaming, through the air, the mad echo of his voice careening off the cavern walls and into her ears like the whine of an electric guitar as its player ran his fingers across the strings.
“No…” The word was barely a whisper as it rolled off her slightly parted lips. “No…” She shook her head as she stared at the empty blackness before her. She hadn’t just let him slip. He hadn’t just fallen into that hole. This was all just a dream. A very bad dream. She clamped her teeth together and rose up, hands shaking with anger. She turned on Duncan, the full force of her anger welling up into a single clenched fist which snaked towards his unprotected head like a viper.
There was no impact. Duncan laughed at her as the fist passed harmlessly through his form as though he were made of the same mist that was now rising up to engulf the room. “You’re right, Lara. This is all a dream. And you should know by now,” he told her, turning translucent, “that you can’t attack a nightmare.” There was a final, cold laugh as Duncan disappeared into the swirling mists, leaving her alone again.
Chest heaving from the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body, Lara worked her way back to the pit. She glanced over the side into the darkness and the mists below. “Mr. Linden?” There was no reply. Mentally, Lara cleared away the sorrow. There was no way she could continue clawing her way through the mists like this. She had to take action. And while her mind dictated to her that sliding down the side of the pit into the inky blackness was probably not the best of actions to take, she was beyond caring. As the dark ran past her eyes, it got harder and harder to breath. She could no longer feel the ground beneath her feet. Within seconds, Lara’s eyes closed, and she became one with the darkness which surrounded her.

* * * * * * * *

Mike opened his eyes to discover that he was still on the floor. His clothes weren’t bloody anymore, and there was no visible aspect of the ferocious attack of the velociraptor from before. Slowly, he pushed himself up to his knees and took a couple deep breaths. Then he rose to his feet and glanced around. He was in a totally different area from before though. Something had moved him around. There was no indication of where he might be. Then, with a resounding thwack, Lara Croft’s unconscious form slammed to the floor about five feet away. Wincing at the landing, Mike rushed to her side, forgetting about everything else for the moment. “Lara? Holy shit!”
She stirred at the mention of her name. Someone was calling her. She slowly opened her eyes and stared at the formless blob that was leaning over her. She blinked, and the shape coalesced into Michael, and she heaved a sigh of relief.
He put his arm under her back, and lifted her gently into a sitting position. “That was one hell of a landing you took there.”
“Yeah, I never was very good at those,” she winced, standing up with his help. “I hurt. Like hell. All over.”
He nodded. “Can you walk? We’ve got to try and find Mr. Linden, then get Genni and get out of here.”
“Michael, Mr. Linden is…dead.”
“What?” Mike took a step back. “By what? How?”
“He was lured down a pit by Duncan,” she said. “I don’t think he survived. There’s no way.”
“Duncan?” Mike asked. “What on earth was he doing in here?”
“Something else unpleasant my memory decided to dredge up,” Lara said. She pointed to a bright spot up ahead. “Look, there’s a light. Let’s go see what’s over there.”
Nodding, Mike followed her towards the light. As they got nearer, the light got larger and larger, and they soon had to shield their eyes from the glare. Then, just as Mike felt his pupils couldn’t possibly contract any more, they found themselves inside a brightly lit room. Then the light dimmed as a large form shaped itself from out of the mist. A large, dark form. And in its hand was a writhing figure. It was hard to make out any details of the figure that was thrashing around, since the form seemed to absorb all the light that was thrown at it. But the figure seemed to get its mouth free, because it suddenly emitted a piercing scream and shouted, “Let me go!” in a voice that Lara recognized, even after all that time had passed.
“Genni!” Lara yelled.
“Lara? Is that- mfffph!” The form covered Genni’s mouth with a skeletal hand.
“Silence…I gave you no permission to speak,” the shadow rumbled. It shrank slowly, until it was the size of a slightly larger human being; about seven feet tall and broad shouldered. But Genni had shrunk with it, and she was barely larger than its hand. “Greetings, Lara. We meet again, apparently. I have looked forward to this reunion, though I wasn’t certain that you would make it here alive and in one piece.”
“Let her go,” Lara seethed slowly. “She’s completely innocent in these matters.”
The shadow laughed. “Oh really? If that is the case, then why did she read the book?”
“She didn’t know any better,” Lara said. “Neither of us did. We were only teenagers, for heaven sakes!”
“Funny,” the shadow giant mused, “because if she was totally innocent, then why did you kill her?”
“I did no such thing,” Lara snarled.
“Lara isn’t that kind of person,” Mike spoke up. “She would never hurt a friend!”
“In Genni’s dreams, you were her murderer. You stalked her night after night, through this very realm, and when she turned to you for help in the real world, you ignored her until it was too late. And since you have done so, I have kept her quite nicely in here. She makes such a good soul-mate.”
“Who are you? And why are you doing this?” Lara asked, watching Genni helplessly flailing her arms and legs in the air.
“I am all that is dark within you, Lara. I am the part of your subconscious that continues to wrestle with things you think are long since past. I see the evils in your actions. I watch your obsessions. I own your pain. I am the part of you that you refuse to acknowledge. And when you read the book, I absorbed that as well. I am division by zero. I am an imaginary number. I am the formula you cannot compute, the language you cannot understand, the hurricane you cannot stop.”
“I can defeat you,” Lara snarled. “And I won’t hesitate to kill you to get Genni away from you.”
The black mass gave a throaty laugh. “You cannot kill me, Lara. I’m a part of you, now and forever. And even now, the hatred you feel makes me even stronger. I feed from your pain. And as long as you hurt, I will continue to exist. And in this realm, I am master. You cannot harm me without my say-so. Because I own this side.”
“You don’t own me!” Mike snarled, running at the shadow.
“The feelings that Lara harbors for you are so strong that I may as well control you,” the shadow sneered. With hardly an effort, the darkness swatted him with the back of its hand, tossing Mike completely across the room and slamming him against the wall. Mike crumpled to the ground in a heap, out cold. “And I intend to see that you never leave this world. For while you can’t harm me, I can destroy you at will.” A claw extended from a lone black finger, and the creature brought it up.
Lara braced herself to dodge the blow, but much to her surprise, the apparition didn’t strike at her. Rather, it brought the claw across its own chest, opening up a gashing wound and spilling a foul ichor from the incision.
Lara screamed as raw fire shot through her chest. A huge, jagged slash ripped through the front of her shirt, tearing it from her body completely, and a massive slice cut through her upper torso, which vomited blood from the violence of the attack as she staggered on her feet and covered the wound with her arms.
“What’s wrong, Lara?” the shadow asked her. “I barely felt that. Perhaps I need to try again?” The form attacked its leg with the hideous claw, starting at the waist and working down.
Lara collapsed to the ground in pain as the trail of blood extended down her leg, tearing her shorts off, ripping her sock in half, and completely obliterating her boot. Dark, red blood was starting to pool around her prone form from the attacks.
“Stop it!” Genni screamed. “You’ll kill her!”
“I promise that I won’t,” the shadow told Genni in condescending tones. “You see, if she dies, I die. So I figure I’ll keep her here for a few thousand years, just to play around with.” The shadow began to shape-shift again. It drew in color, took on a fleshy tone, then added more and more colors until it resembled Lara down to the last detail. The gashes on its chest and leg stood out as enormous scars. “I am the master here,” it said, voice perfectly in pitch with Lara’s.
“Wrong there,” came a voice from behind it.
The pseudo-Lara whipped around and found itself face to face with Mr. Linden. “You are dead,” the fake Lara said. “Duncan saw to that.”
“Wrong again,” Linden said, fire in his eyes, and a youth in his expression that was almost unholy. “This is a realm where you claim to have power over those who dream. Well I’ve got news for you, my friend. I haven’t had a dream in over twenty years. I conquered your kingdom a long time ago.”
“Impossible,” the other Lara spat.
“Really?” Linden asked, his frame changing. He became a strapping young man of about twenty five, with sturdy legs and arms that rippled with muscles. “You may not realize it, but I looked like this once. It’s an image I have burned deep into my head. This was the me before I got old and buried my nose in books all day to escape. I’ve decided to stop running.” He gestured at Lara, and the blood vanished. Her wounds closed up, and she got to her feet. Then, with a wave of his hand, he was clutching a sword in his fist. “Fantasy novels were always my favorite,” he informed the creature.
“You cannot hurt me,” the fake Lara told him. “You will only kill her if you try.”
“I’m in charge here, remember?” Linden snarled, and hurled himself against the second Lara, who reverted to its black shape again, dropping Genni to the floor in the process. The shadow yanked a dark blade from the nether portions of reality, and there was a deep crash as the two weapons collided. But whereas the shadow staggered back after the attack, Linden merely stood his ground. “Time to wake up, Michael!” he called, and Michael stirred against the wall.
Hissing, the shadow attacked again, but Linden blocked the stab and brought his sword up rapidly. The shadow roared in pain as Linden’s attack severed its hand. But when Linden glanced at Lara, she hadn’t felt a thing.
Genni crawled over to where Lara and Mike sat huddled, and threw her arms around Lara. “You came! I knew you would!”
Another howl of agony marked Linden’s removal of the monster’s arm, but again Lara felt no pain. Both of her arms were still firmly attached.
In a fit of rage, the shadow creature formed a pistol out of the inky darkness, and fired at Linden. But the black projectiles merely sailed through him. Linden attacked again, and the shadow lost its other arm. The screaming was almost unbearable in the small space, and Mike, Lara, and Genni all covered their ears.
Linden backed the shadow into a corner and placed the blade of his sword at its throat. “Admit defeat,” he growled.
For a moment, the shadow seemed to take on a timid appearance. But then it burned with renewed ferocity, and it launched itself at Linden. He tried to parry with the blade, but the shadow split in half, and stabbed into his body. Within moments, the entire form had worked its way into Linden. “If I cannot destroy you, then I will control you!” boomed the voice from within Linden.
“It matters not,” Linden said. “You have been reduced in power. You can no longer hold Lara and Michael within your grips.”
Linden suddenly reverted to his older form. “I have you now,” the creature snarled. “Those three are insignificant.”
“Lara!” Linden hollered at her. “Use the guns! Quickly!”
Lara looked down by her foot where her twin magnums lay. Linden had broken the hold! She picked them up as Linden continued to writhe. “Throw it out of you!” Lara screamed. “I can’t get a clear shot!”
“Forget about me. Kill it!”
“Mr. Linden! There has to be another way-“
“There is no other way!” Linden yelled, his face contorted with pain. “End it now, before it’s too late!”
“Yesss…Hate…hate…hate!”
Lara raised a single gun to her eyes and stared down the sight. Linden was doubled over now, being consumed from the inside. Without her total control, her mouth began to form words. “Herein lie the souls of all the unclaimed, all those who were sick or suffering. Those who had illnesses, or were haunted and killed in the dreams of another.” Her finger pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, and Linden jerked as each bullet slammed home before crashing finally to the ground. He didn’t move.
Genni got to her feet as a golden gleam surrounded her. “Thank you, Lara. I own you one, dear.”
“Genni…wait! You’re not a captive here anymore! Come back with us, OK?” Lara said.
Genni giggled. “Lara…I don’t have a body to return to. Besides, I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time.” Genni started to swirl into a mist before their eyes. “I’ll see you again sometime, Lara. That much I’m sure of. And when I do, we can catch up on all the stuff we’ve missed these last few years.”
“Genni…”
“Though it seems that you’ve got a good fellow with you,” Genni observed, “and since you’ve been adventuring, I guess that makes me a virgin, eh?” she laughed.
A single tear of joy trickled down Lara’s cheek as she watched Genni glow even brighter, then fade away. “I did it for you, Genni. I did it all for you.”
A burst of light opened up in the sky, and drew Linden’s body up into it as the world around Mike’s and Lara’s eyes got hazier and less-defined.

* * * * * * * *

Mike opened his eyes. He was sitting in the secret room in Linden Manor. Lara lay on the bed to his left, and Mr. Linden was on the one to his right. He heard Lara stirring in her bed, and stood up slowly, then walked over to her and helped her up. He embraced her warmly, and felt the wetness on her cheeks. “Lara, are you alright?”
She nodded. “I’ll be fine, Michael. But I think it’s time we told the manor staff about Mr. Linden.”
Mike looked over at Linden’s body on the bed. He wasn’t breathing. “He sacrificed himself, Lara. I guess he felt it was the only way he could repay for causing this whole incident in the first place.”
“Mr. Linden was a good person, Michael. Much better than either of us could ever be. I feel it’s only right to tell the workers.” She walked down the hallway, still lit by the same sputtering light bulb, and opened the hidden door. After informing someone that Mr. Linden had passed away in his sleep, the two departed from the manor and back to Lara’s home.

“Lara?” Mike asked when they were in her room that night.
“Yes, Michael?” Lara replied from under the covers.
“I think I had better sleep with you tonight.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. In case I have any dreams like I had today.”
She curled her arms around him and pulled his lips against hers. “Who said anything about sleep, Michael?”
He grinned at her. “Do I look tired?” He kissed her in return.
“I think I’ll just let our dreams be played out in the real world tonight,” Lara whispered, pulling him against her and purring a most inviting purr.