Dream Thief by Stephen Lawhead Page A

windswept sky where thin clouds raced overhead to disappear beyond the horizon. As he watched he was overcome by the urge to follow those feathery clouds, to see where they went.
    He began to run, lifting his feet and leaning ahead. But his legs did not obey properly. Each step dragged more slowly than the last, as if his strength were being mysteriously sapped away.
    Soon his legs had grown too heavy to move. He felt himself sinking into the arid soil, sucked down as by quicksand.
    He struggled to move as the dry red sand rose above his knees, but his weight pulled him down and down by centimeters. He screamed and his voice rang hollow in his ears. He looked around and saw that he was trapped in a great glass bubble and the sand continued to rise.
    Now it seemed to be falling out of the sky, burying him alive. He felt the gritty sting and heard the dry, bristling hiss as it pelted down on him. It filled his hair and eyes. He looked up and saw the glass bubble narrow far above him and sand pouring through a tiny opening to come trickling down. As the sand rose to his chest he pushed it away with his arms, but it fell relentlessly and soon he was deeper than before.
    He screamed again and heard the ring of silence, knowing that his cries could not be heard beyond the glass. As the sand closed over his head he realized that he was trapped in an hourglass, and the sand had just run out.
    SPENCE AWOKE WITH A gasp and sat bolt upright on the couch. The sleep chamber was perfectly dark—a black, velvety darkness which pressed in on him with an oppressive weight. He could feel it enfolding him, covering him, smothering him.
    He wanted to get up, to run away and escape the awful presence of the dream. But an unseen force held him in his place. He lay back down slowly and as he did so he saw something in the heavy darkness which made his breath catch in his throat.
    Directly above him, midway between the couch and where he judged the chamber ceiling to be, a very faint, greenish glow hovered, shimmering in the dark. He sank back into the cav couch and watched as the glow intensified and took the shape of a luminous wreath with tiny tendrils of light radiating out from it. The center of the wreath was dim and unformed, but he sensed that something dark and mysterious boiled within the radiant halo.
    There was a familiarity about the glowing green halo which puzzled him. He felt as if he had seen or experienced it before somewhere—but where? He could not remember. Still, the sense of recognition persisted, and with it mounting fear.
    His body began to tremble.
    In the center of the halo the dim outlines of amorphous shapes could be seen weaving themselves of blue light. Subtle and indistinct, they flared and subsided; shifting, roiling, synapsing inside the green aura. The transparent, blue fibrils sparked silver flashes that glittered when they touched the green halo.
    The thing seemed to tug at him, drawing him up and into it. He had the sensation of falling. He reached out a trembling hand to ward off the fall. Fear arced through him like a high-voltage shock. His heart seized in his chest, clamped tightly in an unseen fist. Blood drummed in his ears.
    The swirling inner eye of the shining wreath distilled into a translucent core, a round, glimmering mass made up of tiny, pinpoint flecks of pure light. The ovoid shape spun slowly on its axis. Spence dug his fingernails into the fabric of the couch as his flesh began prickling to the thin, needlelike tinkling of a sound felt rather than heard. The sound of his dreams.
    Spence fought a wave of nausea rising in him. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He struggled weakly to look away, but the force of the shining thing held him fast. His mouth opened in a silent scream of terror; his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth.
    Still the shimmering mass rotated slowly and Spence sank even further into the depths of the nightmare. He watched it— turning, turning, refining