It seemed as if a part of me always knew. I felt that this should somehow empower me, but it never did. These were dangerous waters, where even the strongest can be swept away. I could feel the eddy and pull of strange tides all around me now, drawing me into the deep places—where the bottom is always lost to view.       

        Blood
        

        My hand came away from my head hot and sticky. I could smell it on my fingertips. I licked at it with the tip of my tongue, tasting a bitter coppery tang. If I could smell and taste it here, then it was real. I learned long ago that dreams on their own, did not touch upon our chemical senses, and any odor or flavor here was a shadow, only the memory of sensation. It meant that somewhere, in the waking world—I was bleeding.
         

        Whispers
       

        Their sound always came with the sudden awareness that I was dreaming. All around me in the darkness there were whispers, half heard voices prying their way into my mind. They all begged to be heard, but I could not separate one voice from the others. They washed over me in a tidal wave of maddening and unintelligible babble.
“No, no, no…” I screamed until my voice was spent, shouting into the darkness for it all to stop. Then suddenly, they did.
         

        Silence
       

        I stepped through a break in the trees and teetered on the edge of a cliff, looking out over a dark and hungry abyss. A shattered landscape of tiny islands floated through the misty void that surrounded me. They twinkled like tiny shards of broken glass tossed into the night, each refusing to hold still, swimming before my eyes like drunken constellations.
       

        Every tiny island was a miniature world of its own. Some were barren of all but rock while others, like the one upon which I stood, were forested with autumn trees just shedding their last vestiges of fall splendor. I could see on others entire cities where tiny lights twinkled from the windows of buildings to make artificial stars against a night sky devoid of any decoration. There were rivers that ran off the edges of these too, plummeting ever downward, and dissolving into thin misty sprays to be swallowed by the gloom.
       

        It was only a common orientation to these many disparate isles that gave me any real sense of up or down in the absence of a true horizon. I could somehow see despite the gloom, and yet there was no obvious source of light to account for it. A cold wind blew, and my nightgown snapped around me in a violent flutter. It whipped the hair into my face, and I raised my hands to subdue it when I made the terrible mistake of looking down.
    

        Yawning far below me was what seemed like an infinite gulf where if I fell, I would be smashed against one of those many floating islands. A still more horrible thought would be to miss them all together and fall for an eternity.
    

        A sickening sense of vertigo suddenly overcame me. I felt myself, inexplicably it seemed, leaning out over that terrible abyss, begging to be swallowed up by that lightless void. Somehow I found the presence of mind to catch hold of the branches of a nearby tree, denying that hungry darkness.
    

        I felt something shift in the gnarled wood beneath my fingers even as my panic began to subside. Startled, I withdrew my hand.
A twisted oaken knot split down its middle and opened. An eyeball appeared to turn wet and gleaming in its socket to regard me. I stumbled backward a few steps as the tree burst to life. Hundreds of eyes opened all at once in every dark crevice and seam, all of them shining as they turned in unison to fix me with their reproachful glare.
    

        I closed my eyes tight and turned away from the glaring tree and terrible vista of tiny worlds. Setting my feet on the forest path, I went deeper into my miniature world, steeling myself against whatever terrors it might hold.
    

        I walked for a long time in the shrouded gloom of the forest. Many times I stumbled over hidden roots and brambles on the leaf-strewn path, colliding with the hideously leering trees that seemed a staple of this place.
    

        On one such an occasion, I roused from their roost a flock of winged cawing shapes that took raucous flight high above me. Their harsh cries were those of ravens, a wretched sound I abhorred, always making me think of death. It set my teeth on edge.
    

        I could see above me, in the twisted branches, a huge specimen of the black carrion bird looking down at me coldly. It looked at me with not one set of shining eyes, but two. Twin beaked-heads were joined to a single black body. They took turns now to look at me, each twisting its neck to stare after the other had taken its fill. The bird grew tired of me and resumed its original task of prying out one of the trees gleaming wet eyes, which  wriggled in its sharp beak. The creature swallowed the gruesome morsel in a single disgusting gulp. My gorge rose as it took flight to rejoin the murder of crows circling noisily above. They called out again and again— a strange chorus as their twin beaks gave birth to stereo cries.
       

        I knew I was dreaming and still it gave me no comfort. There were dangers here, very real dangers. I felt helpless to resist the sweeping current that continued to pull me along this dark forest path. I turned away from the ghastly flock that seemed to taunt me from high overhead. I knew I must keep my head above water until the far shore appeared, and I prayed I would have the strength to reach it when it finally did.
        

        There was a nagging sense I was here to find something, it was a nameless intuition that gave me purpose with no direction. I continued in vain to scan the shadowy woods all around me for some sign or clue why I was here. The autumn leaves rained down everywhere, but they made little noise when I crushed them into the damp earth under foot. A hush had fallen over this place that made everything sound far away. The chill wind made little noise when it pulled incessantly at my hair and nightgown, and it made only the barest of whispers through the naked branches above.
         

        It was not the wind that whispered I realized; but the whispers. The elusive whispers I heard in the darkness before had never gone away, but only receded into the background, lurking just beyond earshot— as if waiting for something. The more I strained to hear those whispers, the further they seemed to fall away. But as soon as my attention was elsewhere they would return, always taunting maddeningly at the edge of what I could discern.
         

        I had stopped in the middle of the path now and closed my eyes. I was straining harder and harder to hear those whispers, to make out something of what they were trying to tell me. Instead, I heard something fluttering on the ground at my feet.
         

        I opened my eyes and looked down to see a thin strip of paper caught in a scrub of dry brush. I reached down to untangle it from the thorny branches and saw that something had been written on it. Scrawled across the paper, written unmistakably in a child’s hand, was a single word.
         

        “Mommy”
         

        It filled me with a sudden and familiar dread as the paper fell from my numb fingers to be carried away by the restless wind. I looked around and saw other slips of paper caught here and there in the brush. They were skittering along the ground, and I reached down to gather several of these as I walked further down the path. They all held the same simple message.
         

        “Mommy”
         

        The slips of paper tumbled out of my hands as I gathered up the hem of my nightgown and made greater haste down the forest path even as the winds began to blow harder.
         

        The forest was alive with fluttering strips of paper that swirled and flapped all around me in the blustering winds.
         

        “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy…”
         

        Somehow, I seemed able to read each one as they blew past me, or clung doggedly to my face and gown. Dozens of the scrawled messages stuck to me now as I fought the terrible onslaught of rising winds. I had to cover my face to keep from being blinded by them all. My footsteps began to falter as the wind blew harder, threatening to not only halt my progress, but blow me all the way back the way I had come. I bent forward, steeling myself against the chill gusts that rose against me, all the while swatting at the storm of snapping paper that continued to harass me.
         

        I squeezed my eyes shut, whispering through clenched teeth, “Mommy is coming.”
         

        The onslaught of winds rose to a sudden howling crescendo and then died away just as quickly. I was left in an eerily quiet clearing, where the last strips of paper fluttered all around me, descending to the ground like giant snowflakes. The air had grown even colder now, and I felt the tiny hairs on my skin rise. I hugged my arms to my body to ward off the chill. I could now see my breath, which caught in my chest when I realized I was no longer alone.
         

        A small boy was standing opposite me within the sparse clearing. He had a bright cherubic face and fine golden curls upon his head that somehow seemed to blow in a wind that had otherwise died away. He was not more than two or three years old and stood barefoot wearing only a pair of faded grey knickers. The boy’s skin was pale and his lips devoid of any color. He was hugging his arms tight to his body just as I was, trying to ward off the ever-present cold here. He looked up at me with fiercely blue eyes and spoke in a tiny voice that broke the spell of silence.

        “I’m cold mommy.”
         

        My heart shattered at the sound of that familiar voice. He swayed for a moment before toppling backward as if the last of his strength gave out. I somehow caught him in my arms, although it would have been impossible for me to have cross the span of distance in time. Cradling his head in my hands, I pushed the golden curls away from his sweet face, all the while whispering in his ear.
“Mommy is here baby. Mommy is here.”
         

        He did not stir at my touch, and he did not move at the sound of my voice. Instead, his eyes stared up vacantly, while no breath passed his pale bluish lips. He lay there still in my arms, so very still. His skin was cold to my touch, even as my hot tears rained down on his cheeks.
         

        “William,” I cried. “My sweet little Willmouse. Mommy is here my love.”
         

        There was barely enough of him to weigh anything, and still my arms ached with the burden of him. I had to shut my eyes, unwilling to meet that glassy-eyed stare any longer. (Dear sweet William, why are you so cold? How have you wandered off on your own to such a dark and lonely place?)
         

        I felt him slip from my arms, and my eyes opened wide in panic. His poor frail body had fallen apart and now lay scattered in pieces all around me. Except, it wasn’t his body anymore, but pieces of a doll that looked so very much like my William. Desperately, I tried to gather them all up, I had to sew him back together, to make him whole. Make him healthy. Make him live.
    

        I found a silver needle and a spool of crimson thread in my hand, and frantically I went to work reassembling my little Willmouse.
Working feverishly while blinking away the tears, I stitched his arms and legs back together, pushing the pale stuffing back into his body and sewing it up again neatly. I thought the work nearly complete when I realized with panic, I was still missing one of his shiny black button eyes.
         

        Gently, I set the doll aside and began searching through the fallen leaves for it. I moved slowly at first, but began to search more and more frantically when I could not find it. Fear seized me when it became obvious the eye would not be easily found. I tried to remain calm, telling myself over and over again that it was only a doll, but my frenzied hands probed through the dry leaves again and again.
    

        “Mommy?”
         

        I froze. Looking up, I saw that it was my William once again. Only this time, I could still see the tiny red stitches I had sewn running across his pale skin.  I felt horror rising in me at the crisscross of crimson threads weaving in and out of the pale flesh of his wrists and ankles, and more horrible still, the bright red zigzag of it across his chest.
         

        And, oh God, his face! The gaping black socket where his eye should have been, weeping bloody crimson threads of its own.
    

        “Mommy?”
         

        Stumbling backward into the fallen leaves, I found the strength in my body gone. William only continued to stare at me with an expression somehow both sad and vacant. That perfect angelic face that I knew like my own was now alien behind the red ruin of that baleful missing eye.
         

        He opened his lips again as if to speak, and I knew that I would go mad if I heard him repeat that single, beautiful, heartrending word again. However, it was an alien sound that emerged, and not William’s voice at all. The sharp discordant noise filled me with fear. I didn’t recognize it at first, so out of place it seemed, until something came out of his mouth and landed on the pale cotton hem of my nightgown.
         

        It was an insect. A gleaming black cricket that crawled a few inches up my gown and rustled its wings, disgorging its disquieting chirp once again. The volume of that sound seemed out of proportion to its small shining body. I felt the sound vibrate though me, echoing in the deep hollow places within me. Another cricket landed on my cheek and I swatted it away in disgust. No sooner had I brushed it away when another landed on my breast, and then another on the back of my hand. With growing alarm, I looked back at William, and the scream that had been building inside me for so long was at last set free.
         

        A torrent of gleaming black crickets was spilling from the bloody hole where his eye should have been. He opened his mouth, and a flood of the wretched insects began to pour out. His mouth opened wider and wider to accommodate the horrid cascade of crickets, stretching his lips from ear to ear into an inhumanly distended grin. His entire head had swollen with the raucous tide of insects, growing now to grotesque proportions.
         

        Still screaming, I scrambled backwards, crab-like on my hands and feet, to get away from the swarming wave of chirping insects. Even the sound of my screams was drowned out by the deafening cacophony produced by the crickets. They were sweeping over my legs in a creeping tide, and where they touched my naked skin, I felt a cold far greater than that of the chill air or the damp ground.
    

        I glanced upward and saw that William’s head had grown to titanic proportions, far too large and heavy for his tiny frail body to support as he toppled over onto his side, still disgorging the crawling black mass.
The sea of chirping black crickets was rising over my body now, numbing it and leaving me both cold and paralyzed. With the last of my waning strength and fading sanity, I threw my hands over my face as the tide of insects engulfed me.  
    

        There was only the cold, the darkness, and then—
        

        Whispers