The Shadow Over Vinland sample: “The Octopus Man”
The Octopus Man comes most every night and I don’t like him. He breathes funny and sometimes he talks but it’s not words that I know but sometimes I understand him anyway. I’m almost nine and Mom says I shouldn’t have nightmares so much and if I do I shouldn’t wake up her and Dad, and I am a big boy, but the Octopus Man isn’t a regular nightmare. He’s real. He’s never here because it’s a dream but he’s real, I know it.
I started seeing the Octopus Man right after we moved here to the desert, when I didn’t have any friends anymore and the air was so dry I would wake up with a dry mouth all night long. So that’s why I remember when I started seeing him, or when he started coming, because he’s real and my brain isn’t just making him up. He comes into my dreams but he’s not a part of my dreams because I know my brain makes up dreams from mixed-up bits of memories, I learned that in school, and the Octopus Man isn’t something I remember from anywhere.
But now I tell Mom that I don’t see him anymore even though I do because she thinks he’s just a regular nightmare and I’m too big to have so many regular nightmares. So when I see the Octopus Man and it wakes me up, I just stay in bed and look out the window. Except sometimes I get up and shut the drapes so I can’t see out the window, because after the Octopus Man comes I don’t like to see the stars. There are so many of them, and sometimes after the Octopus Man comes and I look at the stars I can really see how far away they are, how far far away and old, older than anything I can think of and older than I can think about thinking of, and it almost breaks my brain till I’ll never go back to sleep, so I shut the drapes and then sometimes I can go back to sleep. But not always. Sometimes I just stay awake looking at the drapes until it gets light and then I’m tired at school, but being tired is better than seeing the Octopus Man.
I know Mom’s told Dad about the Octopus Man, or I guess she probably told him I was having bad dreams, but I’ve never told him. That’s more of a thing you tell moms, not dads. If I thought Dad could fix it, I’d tell him. Dad’s a great fixer, and he’s real smart. That’s why we moved out here to the desert, because Dad works at a place with other smart people, and the things they work on are so smart that they’re not supposed to tell anybody, not even Mom. I don’t really understand that part, except one night when I didn’t want to look at the stars I had an idea, maybe the things they work on are so smart that if they told them to people who weren’t smart enough, it would break their brains.
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