Abe stood from the old army cot positioned in the corner of Fort Chimera, his home and man cave residence. He'd built the structure from scrap metal, junkyard parts, and wood right before bulldozing his house down.

Course, when he’d sobered up he felt like the biggest jackass for knocking down his own goddamn house. Thankfully, he didn’t too much mind living entirely inside Fort Chimera and the wood from his house had made an amazing bonfire last Fourth of July.

He needed to wake and open the tackle shop, but an ominous presence lured him outside. Trapped in a self-aware subconscious state, Abe made his way to the camo-painted door, which had originally belonged on a Caterpillar dump truck.

A sepia tone colored his front yard and his truck parked on the dirt driveway. The heap of ashy debris that was his former house was miraculously smoking again.

Abe descended the metal stairs toward an obvious path cut through the new woodlands that were not part of Sacred Oaks, and he knew every inch of Sacred Oaks better than he knew his own whiskers.

He heard none of the typical sounds most common to woods–crickets and birds and locusts–yet he went deeper into the forest of his dream world.

He was having another vision; something that had invaded his dreams since he was a small child. Papa Chief Red Crow told him once, “You beware them dream gods. They don’t come fuckin’ wit you for no damn reason.”

Formed from towering trees, a corridor stretched before him like a mystical black and white tunnel. A young man stepped from the gray trees at the far end of the forested hallway. He wore a leather vest with crisscrossed bones. He had a face that reminded Abe of a predatory animal. Dark, dangerous and cunning.

Between him and the neanderthalic visitor, a tree stump grew. The boy pulled back his hood and their eyes met. His hair was as long as Abe’s but darker than blackened fish.

Abe saw nothing within the youngster's expression. Abe spoke, but no words sounded from his moving lips.

From his waist, the boy unsheathed a dagger and stabbed it silently into the stump. Giving Abe a nod, he turned and disappeared into the woods.

Abe waited until the ghostly projection was out of sight before approaching the stump. His hand reached out to grab the dagger but it swiped through the handle. He tried again, but again his hand passed through the handle with a ghostly wisp.

He panned the eerie woods and called out to Vicki, Shane’s dead sister. She’d first appeared to him in his dream world shortly after Amy had been admitted to the psych hospital. Ever since, she’d been appearing to Abe in his dreams.

She wanted him to help watch over Amy and Shane. Abe assured her that he would and that she could pass onto the next dimension without worry for them. But she’d never left him.

Vicki, appearing dressed in the same shorts and shirt she’d died in at ten years old, appeared on the other side of the stump. Before he could utter a syllable, she easily slid the dagger from the wood and offered it to him.

Abe’s eyes opened. He found himself no longer in the eerie woods. He was now in his own bed, lying on his back. Three lawnmower blades slowly rotated above him. His ceiling fan. Abe rolled off his cot and examined the dagger in his hand.

A name was etched into the ivory handle: TOBIAS.