My mother threw a chair and tried to kill me.

Of course, I expected it and when she launched herself at me; I used my thirty centimetre long blade and sliced its (my mother’s look alike) hand away. The creature wearing my mother’s face howled and fell to my feet, but it continued to prod its feverish face against my leg, trying to feed on whatever it thinks I have hidden under this skin. I’ll give you a hint: an extremely malnourished body.

I kicked it away in despondency and used my blade to kill the other nightmare coming behind me by flinging it right at its skull. The nightmare wearing my mother’s face jumped on me once more—Oh, for God’s sake! Wrestling it, I twisted my legs around its waist and pushed it so I would come up on top, then I reached for the shards of the chair it threw at me and stuck it in its face.

Despite that, it was still alive and reached its other—still intact—hand at me. I grabbed the fork on the dinner table and pinned its hand down. Then I stomped on its head and scampered the other direction, not bothering to check if it was still alive.

Finally, out of the gigantic kitchen, I ran into the main hall just to find my sister battling another nightmare. This one was at least eight feet tall and had the features of a drawing by a four-year-old. We called those Maquettes. Unfinished imagination of the youth or the deeply disturbed. They were the most galling nightmare to kill.

Grabbing a floral vase from inside the cabinet next to me, I reached my arm back to throw at it, hoping to divert its attention away from Olivia, but she was ten steps ahead of me. Regardless of having no clear view of me, she knew exactly what I was about to do and yelled, “Santino, I swear on all the corpses of this house, if you throw that vase, I will make you sculpt a new one!”

“The Gobbler ate my spear!”

She climbed up our grand stairs to come to the exact level of the Maquette whilst dodging its advances to grab her and once they were eye to eye; she lept from the stairs. I rushed to catch her, but ended up merely softening her landing. “Gilipollas,” I grumbled from underneath her.

She probably rolled her eyes and got off me. The Maquette was still partially on the stairs, unsure of where Olivia ended up—they’re not the brightest. Its hands dropped to where Olivia was before she lept from the stairs and moved the rug to see underneath it.

In the meantime, Olivia had snuck up behind it and struck her blunt sword against its legs. It sliced straight through the right one, but hardly made a dent on the other. The Marquette fell sideways and landed right where the two of us had crashed mere moments ago. It tried to use its tentacle-like hands to stand up, but I hewed away its slender fingers with the umbrella laying on the ground. When it fell again—I won’t lie; I felt sorry for it.

But then it giggled.

For a creature that only had a wide hole in its face and ravenous rows of teeth occupying it, a giggle was the last thing either of us expected.

In disgust, Olivia and I simultaneously stuffed our weapons—hers, a sword and mine, an umbrella—into its horrific face until it came out the other way.

Though I let the umbrella stay in, Olivia pulled her sword out and turned away from the Maquette. She considered the mess in the hall. Our house had never been pretty, but the disastrous touch to the house every night does put our clean-freak personas to shame. The gas lamps on the walls were still broken. Some other nightmare probably scratched at our wallpapers again and not to mention the broken tiles on the ground. Thankfully, we never put much furniture out in the open.

“It feels more like a haunted house, you know,” Olivia remarked as she regarded the broken handrail of the stairs. “We can’t even fix it.” That’s true, it’ll break again.

I huffed and looked at her with irritation. “That is why we take the fight to the basement, Olivia. I told you as much.”

“Like you did with the Parrot?” She looked through the archway to the kitchen. The creature with my mother’s face had melted into a gunk, so thankfully Olivia wouldn’t have to look at it. “Besides, I think we got a lucky night. Only two nightmares got out of the Incinerator.”

Olivia was bleeding from the side of her head, her dark hair was plastered against her face and though she was still sixteen with thousands of things yet to encounter, I had already taken notice of the cloudy expression and hopelessness on her these days. So instead of correcting her and telling that actually four nightmares had got out of the incinerator, I told her to go wash up. She gave me a look and said she’ll watch the front of the house.

I didn’t bother telling her no or to keep safe when that was the exact response I was hoping to hear. There was no way for me, alone, to watch over the entire mansion from nightmares. Well, there shouldn’t even be a way for the two of us to even to run this mansion for years now, but we had. Not that we had any choice.

There was once a time when there were at least thirty people in this mansion, occupying all the rooms. Never once would you have found privacy or a room just for yourself. When kids wouldn’t have to fear nightmares breaking into the Casa Valiente because the trained adults kept guard at the gates of the incinerator and the corridors. Back then, I believe my father had been one of those guards and my mother refined his and all the other guards’ weaponry.

I suppose you could say back then things were stable and flourishing because we had people and connections and a growing profit from our second, publicly accepted, lives. But then the tragedy struck in which, and for whatever ill-fated reason, only Olivia and I survived.

What was once the duty of an entire battalion was now a burden to Olivia and me. We refine and sharpen our weapons during the day, do constant maintenance to the incinerator—we don’t have the knowledge on how to repare it—and set ourselves in the most vulnerable spots of the house at night to lure any escaped nightmares at night.

“Santino!” Olivia yelled from the outside, her voice wary. I was in the kitchen trying to pull my spear out of the Gobbler that lay in front of our Victorian stove. The only reason I didn’t rush to her was because I knew it wasn’t Olivia, but rather another stinking Parrot.

Mumbling in anger, I pulled my spear out—if you call a half molten and liquified stick a spear, then sure you could say I got my spear out—and stepped out through the back entrance into the backyard.

Now in my entire life, I’ve only been surprised by a nightmare three times (Olivia knows only one of them) and it’s not that I was lost in my head or distracted. I’m a constant figure of vigilance and sharp eyes. Normally, nothing gets past me, and I can assure you of this. When I was eight, a Marquette had got past the night watch and snuck into the upstairs washroom, hoping to use the element of surprise and feed on the poor bastard who only wanted the relief of the night. Despite never having encountered a nightmare until then, I knew what signs to look for, even if I was half asleep. So not to brag, I knew a Marquette shaped like a snake with many fangs and claws was hiding behind the door because Marquettes left behind a trail of herb scented glitter in the air.

But then I was only half asleep. Now I was tired. My body was exhausted. It demanded food and sleep and probably a nice warm bath with bubbles and candles. So when I stepped out, expecting a Parrot with Olivia’s face and clothes, I found nothing.

Overgrown grass decayed our neglected backyard and the little decoration there was left was covered beneath the thick fog. A chasing wind blew through my thin and unwashed hair, letting me feel the cool of the night, and it cried a warning—hideee. It often did that when I was living off adrenaline. The backyard was huge and went quite far until it merged with the rocky woods. After looking left and right, I stepped down the slippery white-tiled steps and awaited the sudden arrival of the nightmare hiding in the fog.

It never came, and I wondered whether it was actually Olivia calling for me. Inspecting the malicious mist once more, I turned around. And thank God I did, because if I waited another moment, the Parrot’s fierce tentacles would’ve punctured straight through my chest. My not-so spear swatted an array of the tentacles and I ducked into the fog. The Parrot-Olivia (Why are all the parrots tonight wearing the faces of people I know?) was perched on the fringe of the roof. Just like the actual Olivia, it had ebony hair that waved down to its neck and, like her, it had dull brown eyes. Unlike the actual Olivia, it had a cast of tentacles coming out of its mouth and had several more fingers than needed.

“Mierda.” I aimed my spear at it, but the Parrot-Olivia jumped off the roof and on to the ground. It prowled forward, hunger incised on its face, saliva slathered out and it hummed a sickening a lullaby. One that I used to sing to Olivia when she was younger.

It was in the nature of all nightmares to prey on the nearest human, to devour them and continue to consume—their hunger, insatiable. The only variation in them was either their physical characteristics or strategy. Parrots almost always had one or two things that the original person did not. In the rare scenario, like the parrot which wore my mother’s face earlier, they don’t have tentacles or spikes or a rotating jaw that could bend into whatever shape it wanted. Those rare Parrots would hunt you like a zombie from a horror novel.

This one was a more common type. Its slimy tentacles would snake around my legs and waist—a horrifying sensation—and pull my body into its mouth, at which point it would do a U-turn and change from Olivia to a slobbering beast.

It lathered the grass with its gross, canine-like saliva and bolted at me on all fours. I used the stick end of the spear to stagger it back and toppled it down on the ground. I pulled Parrot-Olivia’s hair, raising its head from the ground, and before I gave it any moment to refute, I smashed its head against the rough path and grated it like a beetroot.

It tried to use its tentacles by wrapping them around my feet to trip me, but I was just not in the mood.

You might find it concerning how much I relished in destroying Olivia’s look-alike, but honestly when the only other few human contacts you have had for the last ten years was an annoying little brat who liked to eat all the good food, then you would also enjoy it. Besides, the tentacles completely obscured her features. You couldn’t even tell it looked like my sister.

Once I was done, I raised my head, taking in a deep breath, and surveyed my surroundings. The fog was dissipating; the overgrown grass once more sprouting up, and the swing set at my far right was clearer, aglow in its pearlescence. I was hit by a tinge of nostalgia and novelty—the emptiness of this once bright field did not sit well with me. Slowly, the tendrils of the fog fell back, as though it were an army retreating and fleeing from a bloodbath.

My gaze narrowed, my body trying to prepare itself for attack and failing. I turned back, leaving my spear, or what’s left of it, there. My feet slugged against the pebbles, hands bruised, and my eyes drooping. If there was another nightmare, I don’t think I have what it takes to fight it tonight.

Out of habit, I looked at the time and almost tripped. 3:47. Seriously? How much longer until sunrise? Although, the nights were getting shorter, which meant we’ll be able to be done with the nightmares quicker and even on some nights never have to deal with them at all, it was still astonishing how tired I am. Nightmares only wake up after sundown, and they would all die at sunrise. Our business was to make sure none of them ever left Casa Valiente. The Valiente have a long history with nightmares and—

“Santino!”

Thanks so much for stopping my soliloquy, useless sister! It would’ve been a disaster if I kept thinking to myself.