The Realm Unknown: Chapter One

Chapter One: The Oatmeal

Nathan woke up screaming. This had happened every morning for the past year and a half. Every night the eleven-year-old experienced strange, mysterious and ultimately terrifying visions - bad dreams that he never could never quite remember, nightmares that startled him into a waking scream at precisely 6:05 a.m. every dawning day.

The good news was he no longer needed an alarm clock.

He tried to catch his breath; his scream turned into a gasp, and the gasp melted into a deep, frustrated sigh. Blinking, he scanned his bedroom. Movie posters on the wall. Books on his shelf. Lego pieces scattered across the hardwood floor. He was home. Safe. Wasn't he? Wherever the dream had taken him, he had returned to the real world in one piece. Where was I this time? He wondered. He didn't know. It was as though he had spent the night flying, fleeing, seeing something, but what? As with each morning, upon waking, tiny fragments of the dream, like dewdrops on the grass, evaporated from his mind as the real world, the normal world, took over.

His cat Sarge, a fat hairy tabby with one missing ear, stared at him from the end of the bed. Like most cats, Sarge expected to be pampered for at least fifteen minutes and then promptly fed. Unlike most cats, Sarge didn't purr. It was believed the old cat lost his purr after getting hit by a car for the second time. Now, all the cat could do was huff through his nostrils. Nathan believed Sarge huffed twice when happy and once when annoyed. As the cat rubbed against Nathan's shoulder, it huffed twice.

"G'morning, Sarge." Nathan stroked the cat's bent tail. It had become permanently bent as a result of the third car accident. Then, Nathan looked down at his hand. It was shaky, still jittery from the already forgotten dream. "Must've been a bad one," he told Sarge who huffed once in disgruntled agreement, for no cat likes to hear a boy scream early in the morning. "I wonder what I'll draw today."

Yes, the dream must have been more frightening than usual. So frightening, in fact, that Nathan noticed he was sitting on something soggy. His mattress.

Uh-oh, he thought. His pajamas were damp. So were his sheets. Well, at least Aunt Katrina hasn't found out, said the part of his mind that always looked on the bright side. Throughout his cramped bedroom an unpleasant yet unfortunately familiar smell lingered in the air. That's the third time this month, he scolded himself. You're pathetic. He looked across the room at the full-length mirror on the closet door, stared at his messy red hair, and his sleepy-eyed, freckle-faced reflection who nodded in agreement, as if to say, "Yep, you're a loser."

Nathan took a good long look at himself. He was eleven years-and-nine-months old, complete with a thick head of hair, oversized ears, which he hoped to eventually grow into, and dark-blue eyes which were more serious and more disappointed than grown-ups were used to seeing in a boy his age. "Aren't you a bit too old to be wetting the bed?" he asked his reflection in the mirror.

Flip-flip-flip-flop-flip.

It was the sound of footsteps walking down the hallway toward his room. Nathan quickly bundled up his soiled sheets, looking for a place to hide them. The closet and underneath the bed were too obvious. He decided to remove a pillow from its pillowcase and put the embarrassingly wet bedspread in its place.

Aunt Katrina opened the door. As usual, she looked tired. She leaned against the doorway and folded her skinny arms across her chest. "Good morning," she said. "That sounded like a level four scream." This was their routine. Level four was quite bad. Level three was average. Level five was the worst. Fortunately, Nathan hadn't reached a level-five wake-up scream in quite sometime. But for Katrina, being jolted up from a blissful slumber by a level four scream wasn't exactly tranquil living.

"Sorry," Nathan said. Since his aunt had become his legal guardian, Nathan had apologized no less than 3,821 times. He had a feeling she was getting sick of apologies. Every time he uttered the words, "I'm sorry," she rolled her eyes as if to ask, "Why did I get stuck with this immature little dork?"

But instead of saying that she replied, "That's okay sweetie." That was another part of her routine. She turned away. "I'll make breakfast, you get ready for-" She stopped and refolded her arms. "Did you wet the bed again?"

"Of course not," Nathan lied in his most sincere and matter-of-factly voice.

"Then I better call the police."

This startled the boy. "Huh?"

"Well," Aunt Katrina went on, "somebody must have stolen your bed sheets."

"Fine! I did it! Here's your evidence!" He yanked the sheets out from the pillowcase. "Happy?"

"Ugh, Nathan that's gross. Take these straight to the wash. Maybe if you're forced to do your own laundry this will stop happening." She left the doorway and flip-flopped down the hall.

The basement was dank and dark. A single light bulb dangling from a frayed cord cast long shadows upon the cobwebbed walls. The corners of the basement were filled with boxes of junk, mostly moldy old books his father collected and planned to someday showcase in a mahogany bookshelf he never got around to building. There was a work bench with dusty tools, trays of random screws, nails, and other sharp pointy objects, not to mention a beat-up washer and dryer surrounded by an arsenal of bleach, sprays, detergents and other potentially deadly chemicals.

It was a terrific place to play.

At least it had been. There was a time not too long ago when Nathan hadn't been afraid of the dark, or of monsters lurking behind cupboard doors and underneath furniture. Only babies were frightened of those things, or so he told himself. Yet, as he stood in the doorway, peering down the steps into the gloomy shadows, he couldn't help but feel as if someone was-

"Meerrrow!"

It was Sarge the cat. Like his purr, the cat's shoddy vocal chords had been damaged, so that when he meowed he sounded like an underwater police siren.

Nathan gasped and tripped down a few stairs, saving himself by grabbing onto the railing.

"Sarge!" Nathan blustered. "You could have killed me!"

Sarge huffed twice, which meant that he was quite pleased. Normally, he wasn't such a mean cat, but this was before breakfast, and even the kindest felines are a malicious nuisance when dealing with an empty stomach.

Returning his attention to the mission at hand, Nathan held his breath-mainly because the basement was stinky but partly because he believed that evil creatures lurking in basements never attacked children who held their breath. Then, he dashed downstairs, threw the bed sheets into the wash, jumped out of his still soggy pajamas, threw them in as well, pulled a new set of clothes off the hanger and jumped into them. Finally, he bounded to the top of the stairs and started breathing again.

Gasp!... Whew! He made it out alive.

Basements were not Nathan's only fear. In fact, for months, he had been keeping something he called "Nathan's Fear List." It wasn't a list he had written down. Rather, it was a list he kept in his head, sharing it with himself and his best friend Dexter. Lately the list had been growing. Over the past year and a half, ever since his parents had passed away, he had become increasingly frightened of the following:

Basements

The Dark

Monsters

Vampires, Werewolves,

Sharks

Swimming Pools (Especially shark-infested swimming pools)

Spiders

Large Dogs

Big Giant School Bullies

Skinny nerdy kids who might be big giant school bullies in disguise

Heights, Depths, and everything in between...

It was a long list... but it was about to get a new item: Breakfast Cereal