A while ago, in a house with a basement crammed with books, an old sofa, and a table with seven seats, the first meeting of what would then be called the midnight dream society began. The meetings were at midnight, always on the seventh day of the week, and the sole purpose was to dream. They were children passionate about dreams, about books, about making dreams into realities. They talked about what they would dream if they could bring dreams to life, they lay on the carpet after classes and slept together, with their heads always close in the hope of sharing the same dream and not having to return to real life.
On one of the nights when they plunged into dreams with their bodies stuck in the real world, something went wrong in the world of dreams. They didn't yet know that they hadn't been able to wake up normally the next morning and that the books and dreams they loved to share would turn into the scene of their greatest agonies, where their nightmares would emerge instead of their dreams. The old sofa was no longer the cozy place it used to be, and the giant table in the middle of the room seemed more like an altar for sacrifices than a place to create happy memories. The place that was once colorful and cheerful was quickly overtaken by the color gray; the world outside had become a maze full of screams that the boys had only heard in their nightmares, never shared with anyone. The walls whispered in latin, "fuga ex somniis malis," and on top of a cupboard, a roll of red thread gleamed.