4.

How ironic it is that our base, our place where we begin our fight against these Dream Demons is a place where we go to in our sleep? Although, from what I gather, no one knows the exact origins of this world or anything else about the place for that matter including its creation, apart that it exists and works through our brain waves. It is our base of operations, our battle headquarters.

Being in this place, it's not like being in any regular dream. Being here feels real, nothing is disjointed, it is almost like having a life separate to that of the waking world, while existing alongside it too. And as it is, if it wasn't for this place, I wouldn't have been able to thwart an apparent real world demon attack. That man in the crashed car surely would not have survived if it weren't for what I have been going through. Something about that moment irks me, other than the fact I saw a Demon for a first time.

In this new world, this virtual world, contacts would be made, and friendships would even form, for Keith was right with telling me that I would come across others there, however just by going to this place causes and creates a problem of its own. Even though our bodies are resting during our time there, our minds are not. My mind, our minds are alert and active depriving our resting bodies of proper REM sleep, or so I am told.

The only one whom had any sort of control on what was and is happening is Keith. He appeared to be able to come and go from this world as he pleased, and he never explained how he was able to do this only for the fact that he could. I remember from my first conversation with him that he said that an alarm was going off in his real world; maybe this is how he can exit the dream world. A tether to hang onto. Anyway, if this is a war and we are the soldiers then Keith is apparently the commanding officer, however that would be something that was about to change.

Night number three, after once again falling asleep I went back to the bench where I first met Keith, by now I am quite tired, things have begun to catch up on me. I could really do with a proper night's sleep. I wish I knew how Keith manages to mix coming to this world with living in the real world with working in a decent sleep too.

A note had been left on the bench with my name on it. It was from a guy called Mike and in this note he told me that Keith had told him to leave it for me and not only that, for it would appear that Keith had been taken by a demon. Taken by a demon? What?

Mike believed that Keith was still alive. This Mike person also left his phone number. I memorized it and before I was to wake, I contacted as many people within the dream or virtual world as I could to get them to meet with me in the real world, and eventually with great difficulty I would manage to wake myself up.

With another night falling upon us, more than twenty people had gathered in the real world and this included myself and Mike. Distances in which needed to be travelled to bring us all together had been covered in a matter of a few short hours. And now, we had till morning to get to Keith, once the morning light came, we knew from past experience of others, that Keith would be dead. The demon or demons would not make it easy for us nor would they allow us to go get Keith in plain daylight.

Mike had a fair idea of where Keith was being held. To me, this seemed a little too ... convenient. For all we knew, this could be a trap with Keith as the bait, like I'm brought into something like this and before I can get any kind of hold on it, this happens. Anyhow, if it is on the straight, it is possible too that there may be more than one demon holding Keith. As far as I see it, who knows? Possibly, there was something else going on here.

Taking thing as they seem for the moment, the demon, or demons, could also be storing Keith as the main aim, even before I came along, was to take them out. They feed on us apparently. Yeah, they apparently fed on what is freshly captured but if we are making it all the more difficult then perhaps a store is being gathered. Keith could be one of many, captured and held for feeding at a later time.

This, as it is, gives us something to go after, gives us a plan of action ... so here we go and go in the real world, they need our bodies, not our minds, only so much can be done in our dream world.

Even though there are so many of us going after Keith, we would most likely get to come up against a creature or two and expect to fight what basically is a shadow or shadows that fly and can make us see things that aren't actually there. How's that for a prospect? What plan could we consider in order to assume victory? With what the others knew on killing or exercising demons, either religiously or otherwise, we knew that so much of said information would not work on these dream demons.

They are not physical entities so shooting them with silver bullets or stabbing them through the heart with stakes will not do anything and even reciting religious incantations of any sort will not work, so I am told.

The one demon I had previously encountered had no physical body and I could see right through it. What we do know however is that they hate the daylight, or any light for that matter and that includes fire. They live and work in darkness and they like it that way. The casual way of even just telling all this as if it is another day at the office when it certainly is not. Not your average creature feature of the week. Any fear I may have been feeling, couldn't really manifest even with the fact I was all in on this, for in my reality I had little or no idea of what the hell I was doing.

Keith was being held in a cabin, deep into a wooded area, twenty miles away from where we had our real world gathering. Whatever vehicles we could muster between us took us and our equipment as far as it could then it on by foot from there. Looks to me as if I'd got with seasoned vets, pros of the strange and unusual, all prepped and ready for what was to come. So, I told myself, whatever is to come, I'm in good company.

We had five maybe six hours of night-time darkness left, and it would be most likely that the demon or demons would not leave it so late to feed on Keith if they were to feed on him soon rather than storing him somehow.

I am still new to all this, but those who had gathered had been involved for quite some time, that indeed was quite obvious, and they all seriously came well prepared. They had guns with bullets filled with salt, I wasn't so sure these would be of any use, but what did I know? There was plenty of crucifixes and holy water too, but we still didn't know what we were about to walk into. I just have to trust those around me.

How many demons are we about to encounter? Are we going to encounter any at all? What will they make us see? Would we be able to tell reality from illusion? We are going into battle, a battle that may determine the outcome of this supernatural war and I did not like our chances one little bit.