Two dreams...
The second has part of that recurring dream.
First, there was this dream in which I found our cat Kiki bleeding and very weak, having given birth to five kittens. She's spayed. The whole thing freaked me out. I tried calling the vet, but of course I couldn't dial the number (I never can, the numbers part of your brain is asleep when you are).
I think what freaked me out most was that she was so weak, and the kittens were so healthy...there was something ominous about that. I can't explain it to you. I understood it in the dream, though.
Second, I was alternately coming home from and going on some kind of trip. At first I was coming home. I lived in an apartment in a highrise building. A nice one.
My father (in this dream it was Lukas) had taken me out for a few drinks in a "welcome home" sort of gesture (this wasn't in the dream, but I knew it had happened), and he drove me home, escorted me to my door while I tipsily sang kids' songs, and kissed me goodnight and left.
I walk in the apartment and immediately know someone has been there. Nothing seems out of place, and yet I know it. Someone has been stalking me lately, I've felt it, but until now he has kept his distance.
I walk around the downstairs and find one of those mini post-its tacked to the bathroom door frame with a butterfly sticker. I don't pause to read the tiny note (which is convenient, since you can't read in dreams), wanting instead to finish searching the apartment, even though the part of me that knew someone had been there also knows I am now alone.
I peel the post-it and the butterfly sticker off the door frame, knowing I am contaminating any fingerprint evidence there might be, but also knowing that no cop will ever catch this person.
Once I'm sure all is clear, I think about calling my father. But he'll be freaked. He'll make me come stay with him. And really, I have a lot to do. I know I'm alone now, and I'm so very tired.
I wake up in the middle of the night (I think I really do at this point. I think this was a sleep paralysis moment) and know someone is in the room with me. I can't move. It's too dark to see much of anything.
But I can hear his breathing.
I feel fear unlike anything I have ever known. I know this isn't mearly a man, it is something more. Something far worse. He isn't just going to kill me, he's going to eat me alive, starting with my fingers and toes before moving inward.
And then I think, It's the Darkness. Just the Darkness. You have to think of something good. And what comes into my mind is Órrin smiling. Then laughing.
The fear passes, and I am alone again.
I know, as I knew so many things in that dream, that he would have eaten me alive if I hadn't managed to break free. Somehow the Darkness is a sort of portal that allows him to step through.
Then there is a dream-skip, only I skip back instead of forward. It's a week before, and I'm in an airport somewhere waiting for a connecting flight. All I know is that it's a foreign place. There's a girl waiting for the plane who has the latest Dean Koontz novel. I tell her not to bother with it, and hand her a copy of Bag of Bones by Stephen King.
Then I'm on the plane, it's landing. It's a rough landing. One of those where you feel as if the plane is skipping along the runway like a rock across a pond. Then we're safe on the ground, and we de-plane onto the tarmac of a small airport in the dark. It's an isolated place, but it's just where I want to be. There's something I'm looking for, and I know I will find it here.
The night air is cool, bordering on chilly, and I walk down a cobbled street. There's a sort of frontier town feel to it, but with a techno edge. And it is a frontier town, only the border it lies on isn't like any border I have ever known. And what, I ask myself, might be across that border? I don't answer, though some part of me has an idea.
It takes me a moment to realize I'm alone on the street, and yet it can't be much past 8. I pass empty bars, empty strip clubs, a whorehouse where all the lamps are turned low, and the only figure I see peeks at me from a third floor window high above, quickly moving away from the darkened pane when I look up.
I continue, finally coming upon the building I want. It is an ancient stone building, its formidable walls and domed top creating the illusion of a great sleeping beast. It looks very much like someone plucked up the Great Library at Alexandria to save it from the fire and plopped it down in the middle of the raunchier side of a tourist trap in Thailand.
Then I'm inside, walking through labyrinthine passages lined with shelves of books so high that I cannot discern their tops.
Dream-skip, and now forward, to the day after I had the terrifying night-visitor. I'm having lunch with my father (who is still Lukas), and he seems to know something is wrong, but I don't tell him what's happening. I have this feeling that telling him would be the wrong thing to do, so I pretend everything is okay.
He says he'll walk me home, so I let him. Only we aren't walking toward any high rise, and this doesn't seem strange in the dream. We're walking through a small village. I know this village. I've been here before. But in the dream, I can't remember when. I look over to ask my father something, but instead see Ryn, and I see the path we're walking, and now I know we're going through the forest again, and I panic...
Dream-skip, and I'm down in the deep archives of the library, far below the surface, looking for the secret thing. I'm not alone anymore. Something is following me. And I know it doesn't want me to find the secret thing.
"Down in the dark, where the secret things sleep," I say in a sing-song voice for no particular reason.
I see a tiny black box on a shelf above my head, and know it holds the thing I've been searching for. I use the lower shelves as a ladder to climb up and get the box. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I know the thing that has been following me is going to kill me before I can leave with the box if I don't hurry, so I run and run, getting turned around, getting lost, unable to find my way back out of the labyrinth of shelves.
I turn a corner, and there is a very old man in white robes, his long beard and even longer hair floating around him. He looks like he will have an old squeaky voice, but instead his voice is that of Sir Alec Guinness.
"Follow me. We must hurry. The is coming." (He says what it is, and the word fills me with fear, but I can't remember what it is.)
Dream-skip, and I'm in the forest with Ryn.
"Follow me, we must hurry. The are coming."
I don't argue this time. I know it's inevitable.
I see the things writhing in the darkness of the forest, a flash of light, and now I'm alone, and I've lost the path.
I find Ryn and lose him three more times before the forest takes me and I wake.
First, there was this dream in which I found our cat Kiki bleeding and very weak, having given birth to five kittens. She's spayed. The whole thing freaked me out. I tried calling the vet, but of course I couldn't dial the number (I never can, the numbers part of your brain is asleep when you are).
I think what freaked me out most was that she was so weak, and the kittens were so healthy...there was something ominous about that. I can't explain it to you. I understood it in the dream, though.
Second, I was alternately coming home from and going on some kind of trip. At first I was coming home. I lived in an apartment in a highrise building. A nice one.
My father (in this dream it was Lukas) had taken me out for a few drinks in a "welcome home" sort of gesture (this wasn't in the dream, but I knew it had happened), and he drove me home, escorted me to my door while I tipsily sang kids' songs, and kissed me goodnight and left.
I walk in the apartment and immediately know someone has been there. Nothing seems out of place, and yet I know it. Someone has been stalking me lately, I've felt it, but until now he has kept his distance.
I walk around the downstairs and find one of those mini post-its tacked to the bathroom door frame with a butterfly sticker. I don't pause to read the tiny note (which is convenient, since you can't read in dreams), wanting instead to finish searching the apartment, even though the part of me that knew someone had been there also knows I am now alone.
I peel the post-it and the butterfly sticker off the door frame, knowing I am contaminating any fingerprint evidence there might be, but also knowing that no cop will ever catch this person.
Once I'm sure all is clear, I think about calling my father. But he'll be freaked. He'll make me come stay with him. And really, I have a lot to do. I know I'm alone now, and I'm so very tired.
I wake up in the middle of the night (I think I really do at this point. I think this was a sleep paralysis moment) and know someone is in the room with me. I can't move. It's too dark to see much of anything.
But I can hear his breathing.
I feel fear unlike anything I have ever known. I know this isn't mearly a man, it is something more. Something far worse. He isn't just going to kill me, he's going to eat me alive, starting with my fingers and toes before moving inward.
And then I think, It's the Darkness. Just the Darkness. You have to think of something good. And what comes into my mind is Órrin smiling. Then laughing.
The fear passes, and I am alone again.
I know, as I knew so many things in that dream, that he would have eaten me alive if I hadn't managed to break free. Somehow the Darkness is a sort of portal that allows him to step through.
Then there is a dream-skip, only I skip back instead of forward. It's a week before, and I'm in an airport somewhere waiting for a connecting flight. All I know is that it's a foreign place. There's a girl waiting for the plane who has the latest Dean Koontz novel. I tell her not to bother with it, and hand her a copy of Bag of Bones by Stephen King.
Then I'm on the plane, it's landing. It's a rough landing. One of those where you feel as if the plane is skipping along the runway like a rock across a pond. Then we're safe on the ground, and we de-plane onto the tarmac of a small airport in the dark. It's an isolated place, but it's just where I want to be. There's something I'm looking for, and I know I will find it here.
The night air is cool, bordering on chilly, and I walk down a cobbled street. There's a sort of frontier town feel to it, but with a techno edge. And it is a frontier town, only the border it lies on isn't like any border I have ever known. And what, I ask myself, might be across that border? I don't answer, though some part of me has an idea.
It takes me a moment to realize I'm alone on the street, and yet it can't be much past 8. I pass empty bars, empty strip clubs, a whorehouse where all the lamps are turned low, and the only figure I see peeks at me from a third floor window high above, quickly moving away from the darkened pane when I look up.
I continue, finally coming upon the building I want. It is an ancient stone building, its formidable walls and domed top creating the illusion of a great sleeping beast. It looks very much like someone plucked up the Great Library at Alexandria to save it from the fire and plopped it down in the middle of the raunchier side of a tourist trap in Thailand.
Then I'm inside, walking through labyrinthine passages lined with shelves of books so high that I cannot discern their tops.
Dream-skip, and now forward, to the day after I had the terrifying night-visitor. I'm having lunch with my father (who is still Lukas), and he seems to know something is wrong, but I don't tell him what's happening. I have this feeling that telling him would be the wrong thing to do, so I pretend everything is okay.
He says he'll walk me home, so I let him. Only we aren't walking toward any high rise, and this doesn't seem strange in the dream. We're walking through a small village. I know this village. I've been here before. But in the dream, I can't remember when. I look over to ask my father something, but instead see Ryn, and I see the path we're walking, and now I know we're going through the forest again, and I panic...
Dream-skip, and I'm down in the deep archives of the library, far below the surface, looking for the secret thing. I'm not alone anymore. Something is following me. And I know it doesn't want me to find the secret thing.
"Down in the dark, where the secret things sleep," I say in a sing-song voice for no particular reason.
I see a tiny black box on a shelf above my head, and know it holds the thing I've been searching for. I use the lower shelves as a ladder to climb up and get the box. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I know the thing that has been following me is going to kill me before I can leave with the box if I don't hurry, so I run and run, getting turned around, getting lost, unable to find my way back out of the labyrinth of shelves.
I turn a corner, and there is a very old man in white robes, his long beard and even longer hair floating around him. He looks like he will have an old squeaky voice, but instead his voice is that of Sir Alec Guinness.
"Follow me. We must hurry. The is coming." (He says what it is, and the word fills me with fear, but I can't remember what it is.)
Dream-skip, and I'm in the forest with Ryn.
"Follow me, we must hurry. The are coming."
I don't argue this time. I know it's inevitable.
I see the things writhing in the darkness of the forest, a flash of light, and now I'm alone, and I've lost the path.
I find Ryn and lose him three more times before the forest takes me and I wake.