Confident that he can now succeed in bringing the sextant into his dreams. Phil woke up and hurriedly took the sextant out of its box.
He once again put it in between his hands and concentrated, minutes later he woke up in the grassy plains but he still failed.
Frustrated Phil tried a couple more times but all ended in failures. Phil decided to give up for now and choose to travel into the plains of sleep and explore instead.
Phil dove and arrived in the plains of sleep, he found himself in the plains of desire and idea, a place where dreams correspond to the unconscious whim of the dreamer giving them a nice and relaxing dream.
Phil traveled and sometimes looked into other people's dreams. Some of the dreams he had seen were mostly dreamers who either wanted to be rich or famous and that reflected their dreams where they were praised by many people and looked up to. While others just wanted to relax and have no problems in life, most of their dream is where they just float in a wide ocean without a care in the world or relax in a blanket of clouds.
Everything in this part of the plain was filled with happiness or satisfaction, but sometimes this mood is often invaded by the outburst of miasma coming from the abyss.
Phil by pure luck saw this happening, a column of thick miasma erupted from the abyss traveling towards the plain of desire and idea affecting those that were unfortunately hit in its wake.
Phil watched as the miasma lingered for a minute and slowly disappeared. Although the miasma itself was gone those who were affected were still having nightmares. Phil watched as one of the white figures writhe as if in pain or discomfort. The once white figure was slowly tainted by deep purple close to black, the figure slowly sank as negative emotions piled up inside it.
Phil followed and watched the figures that were affected by the miasma. Phil sighed in relief as he observed some of them were healing, the black spots in their bodies were turning white and they floated up back again. While others could not endure the nightmare forcing themself to awaken and disappear in the plains of sleep.
Phil noticed that those who forced themselves awake left behind a patch of miasma from where they disappeared. He was taken aback when he saw the miasma turn into a figure and screamed as moments later it dissipated.
While most of the figures escaped the nightmarish catastrophe, some unfortunate ones could not. Phil followed one of them, a small figure as tall as a child, the figure writhes in agony and tried to yank the tether on its head but to no avail, the black spots slowly spread into the figure's body corrupting it in the process.
The figure exhausted, stopped its writhing as the speed of its descent increased. Not wanting for the figure to be completely corrupted, Phil embraced the figure and entered its dream.
Phil was assaulted by dizziness and the temperature dropped to freezing levels, he tried to open his eyes still groggy due to the sudden entry, he saw darkness but strangely unlike the void he was in before creating the grassy fields, this darkness was foul like something was lurking in it waiting for Phil to put down his guard and attack him.
Phil forced himself to calm down as he slowly recovered from his nausea, the darkness still unsettled him but he needed to look for the owner of the dream and save it from being corrupted completely.
He walked in one direction hoping to meet the owner of the dream, after walking for a few minutes he finally found a small house, it was a two-story English house with a blue roof and white walls.
Phil felt strange as he stared at the house, it was perfect but too perfect that it made Phil a little scared. He knocked at the door and moments later he heard someone running.
"Who... who is it?"
"Uhm hello, I just want to ask who lives in this house."
The door swung open and Phil saw a little girl with curly blonde hair wearing a white dress.
"I live alone in this house big brother. Do you want to play with me?"
"Why are you here alone?"
"I don't have any parents and nobody likes me. Please play with me big brother."
Phil was a little unsettled as he looked at the sad face of the little girl. 'Something is not right' he thought as he agreed on playing just to make the girl happy and bring her out of her dreams.
Phil entered the house and noticed that the house was nice, he felt relaxed and slowly forgot about his fears. He looked at the girl who was skip-walking in front of him, he smiled since he saw the girl happy and was enjoying herself.
"Big brother, what's your name?"
The little girl asked as she cutely tilted her head. Phil smiled at her and answered.
"I'm Phil but you can call me big brother. What's your name?"
"People call me Victus, but big brother can call me Vicky instead."
"Okay Vicky, what do you want to play?"
"Let's draw big brother, I have lots of paper and paint. Let's draw together."
Phil and Vicky played together, at first they draw and when they finished drawing they ate their lunch. Phil was amazed at the wonderful food Vicky's house has to offer, it had everything from candies to cakes, different flavor ice cream, and even full-course meals. Phil enjoyed every moment he had with Vicky, after they ate they rested in Vicky's room and took a quick nap.
Waking up they played again, tag, hide and seek, catch they played it all.
A day passed and Phil could not help but think that he had forgotten something, he felt that there was something important he has to do, he tried recalling what it was but in the end, he did not remember. Phil shrugged his shoulders and thought that it must not be that important since he had forgotten about it.
On the third day of his stay in Vicky's house. Vicky invited Phil to play with her dollhouse, he showed Phil a room containing a replica of the house but smaller in scale, Phil was impressed at how detailed the dollhouse was.
Phil peeked inside and saw how similar the dollhouse is to the actual house. Phil was mesmerized and praised Vicky for owning something of this quality. Vicky smiled and wanted to play with Phil when suddenly Phil's stomach grumbled, Phil apologized as he stood up wanting to go to the pantry and have something to eat, Vicky stopped him and made him stay in the room as she volunteered to get food for the both of them.
Phil smiled as she praised Vicky in his heart for being such a sweet little girl, Phil was still smiling when he suddenly heard tapping.
'Tap! Tap! Tap!'
Phil looked at the window but nothing was in there.
'Tap! Tap! Tap!'
Phil froze as he slowly turned his head towards the dollhouse. In the room where Vicky's bedroom is located was a tiny girl with black hair crying, she was shouting at Phil but he could not hear it.
Phil quickly opened the roof of the dollhouse revealing the tiny girl.
"Please help me!"
The tiny girl screamed crying her tears out.
"What are you?"
"I'm Annie and this is my house. Please help me, a monster suddenly came here and attacked me, it turned me into this and told me that it will keep me here forever."
The girl cried as she tried to explain her situation to Phil.
Phil stood motionless, his body turned cold as he asked the girl.
"Do you know Vicky?"
"Yes, Vicky is a doll I own."
The door creaked as it slowly opened, Phil heard Vicky's humming on the other side, he quickly took the tiny girl as carefully as he could and hid her in his pockets.
"Stay here quietly, I will help you escape here."
"Annie nodded and hid in Phil's pocket."
Vicky entered the room with a silver tray in hand.
"Big brother I brought some biscuits and cake for us to eat."
Vicky smiled at Phil and walked towards the table setting the tray down. Phil slowly walked towards the door seeing Vicky distracted wanting to run away and escape.
The humming suddenly stopped and Phil froze in his place he looked at Vicky and saw her looking at the dollhouse without the roof. Phil blamed his stupidity since he forgot to put the roof back after he took Annie out.
The air was still as the temperature dropped drastically, the white walls of the house slowly turned gray as shadows seeped out of the crevices.
"Big brother, I thought we were going to play some more."
Vicky spoke, her back towards Phil.
"Big brother, did you lie to Vicky?"
"We were supposed to play, eat and sleep together."
Vicky's voice changed, although her sweet voice was still there, multiple others overlap with it.
"Forever..."
"But big brother does not want to stay."
"So Vicky will keep big brother here... forever..."
Vicky slowly turned towards Phil, her face white as porcelain her glass eyes moved erratically as cracks slowly formed on her face, her movements become twitchy, her joints are now visible. The once sweet and cute girl now revealed her true form, a porcelain doll.
The doll kept on twitching as cracks ran down its body, its erratic eye suddenly stopped and focused on Phil.
"Stay here forever big brother."
The doll smiled and moments later it lunged towards Phil.