Arcane rituals

This dream, one of the darkest I can recall having, came on the night of a full moon, and the midst of a 10yr relationship dissolving into nothing.

Starting from when I can remember, I was in the back room of what appeared to be some kind of shop.  It was night time and I was with 2 other people.  We were there to conduct a ritual to summon an entity for protection, but I don't know why.  The ritual had 3 stages, and I appeared to be the only one doing all the work (the others stood around talking and getting in the way).

For the first stage, I had to use a small brush to paint a symbol on a panel on the wall in front of me with some unknown translucent substance.  As I did this, I could hear tribal drumming coming from inside the main area of the shop.  For the second part, I had to use a stopwatch and count exactly one minute before continuing with part 3, which involved painting another symbol on the same panel.

As I was trying to use the stopwatch, one of the people with me kept on interrupting and ended up derailing my efforts, so I had to start the timer again.  Unfortunately, as I was doing this, I became aware of the fact that there was only a single minute window in which to perform the stopwatch part and I had now missed it, which meant the ritual could not be completed.  As a result, the entity we intended to summon for protection ended up attacking us.

I saw a formless, shadowy creature swiftly emerge from the shop and grabbed one of the people with me before pulling him back into the shop area.  I panicked as I realised we were in serious trouble, and as I prepared to leave, I found I was suddenly naked.  I tried to run through the shop past the entity and my now consumed companion (as there was only one door) but ran back to grab my clothes.  I grabbed them and made a start for the door before I suddenly woke up.  I don't know what happened to the last guy.

As I drifted back off to sleep, the dream continued, only this time I was on a street corner with about 4 women who were talking to me about characters in a story I'm writing in real life, which suggests I'd somehow managed to escape the shop before.  One of the women was standing by an alcove and her shadow was projected onto the wall behind her from the streetlights.  However, as she went to move, her shadow remained.  The shadow then walked over to me and everything quickly went black.  I then found myself in what looked like a small walk-in closet and was sitting on the ground.  There were some other people there with me and they were talking but I can't remember what they said.  I then heard some creepy chanting which immediately disturbed me.

I tend to have a measure of lucidity in my dreams and have often escaped undesirable situations by simply taking off and flying away, and this is what I attempted to do here as I sensed something malevolent was near.  I shot up towards the ceiling but couldn't go any further.  I heard a snap then woke up again.

As I lay in my bed, I felt as if I was being dragged back into the dream, so I had to fight to keep myself awake, knowing that if I 'd returned to the dream, the outcome would not have been good.  As I lay on that threshold between waking and dreaming, I remember seeing luminous geometric patterns forming on the ceiling, something I often see when I abruptly wake from a dream.