Chapter 7: The Dream

It is in the cold black darkness of an early winter’s night when she discovers a deep secret about herself.  Believing it only a dream, she discovers that the secret is, in fact, all about darkness, about unlit corners, shadowy doorways, windowless rooms, about all those places the eyes can no longer see anything, not even one’s own hand inches from the eyes.  The secret that she can see clearly in the dark.

She awakes.  First in a half dreamy state as the images continue to wash over her mind’s eye like tears, images repeating, images reconfigured, images redrawn according to the whim of an unfettered imagination held captive in the world of dreams.   She watches herself move through the darkness confidently, knowing without seeing whatever is filling up the dark space.  She knows it is there. 

She wakes fully.  She is no longer moving through a dark space, seeing without seeing.  She is in her bed, she is certain, certain as the clock’s light on the nightstand revealing 3:03 on his red face, which she can see with her eyes.  That she lies on her bed , which she can see with her eyes; under her yellow and green quilt, which she can see with her eyes; in her small home far North and thousands of miles from her mother.  She knows all this in spite of what she is now hearing.  In spite of hearing her mother’s voice calling out to her, loud and clear that she should come downstairs. She knows she is in her home, awake.

Her mother’s voice persists, insists that she should come downstairs. She begins to wonder about...when other voices in her mind join in, the thoughts in her mind racing each other, one toppling over the other, words stumbling over the other , sentences piggybacking in an endless loop of syntax-less meaninglessness, all this a sure sign she is in trouble, will of course never get back to sleep and lately she is of the opinion that these noisy intrusive voices in her head are, dare she think much less speak aloud, the Devil himself taunting her, working insidiously to possess her through chaotic thoughts, ensnare her in the mind’s confused web of words: the devil of distraction.  She is beginning to believe she had be enlisted into her own private battle with Evil.

She calls out, stop the noise, be gone, demon of distraction.  She tries to pick up the conscious though of what she was wondering before Babel rose up, each voice fighting for hegemony.  Then she remembers,  yes, that’s it. She is wondering why she is hearing her mother’s voice if she is so fully awake and in her own bed.

She listens. It is dark in the room save for the clock’s obnoxiously lit-up face.  She can see all the furniture, every picture on the wall, every bottle on the vanity only because she has put them all there herself.  She can’t see each of these things with her eyes, but she knows they are there. She sees them in her mind’s eyes, in the place where memory of the familiar and safe reside.    She begins to drift away, the voices subsiding as she takes the mental inventory of her room.  The good, the commonplace and the everyday overcoming the evil of noisy distraction, sleep moves towards her like a welcoming ghost, and she curls up on her side, hugging her cool pillow.

Her mother’s voice calls out again, come downstairs please.

She throws off the covers, pulls on her blue woolen socks, wraps herself in her Mexican blanket and heads downstairs, fully prepared to find emptiness below.

Her mother is standing in the living room.  But it’s not her living room anymore.  Or is it?  Numerous tall windows fill the walls of a room larger then she remembers.  Her mother greets her with a tired, grateful smile and hugs her, something that feels out of character and yet familiar.  They sit down to chat and catch up, when her mother’s face suddenly changes as  shadows pass over it.  Her mother’s wrinkles grow more pronounced and her forehead maps out lines of concern, her eyes fix on something beyond. Her eyes follows her mother’s.  She sees the shadowy outlines of people standing in the windows.  Every window frames a dark, faceless figure.  She realizes the figures are growing larger, they begin to loom, hover, press against the window.   They are in every sense portentous.

She is afraid.   Her mother is afraid. They both know  that these figures are ominous, but they don’t know why; they are nameless, unvoiced, untold, silent ghosts.  Her mother turns to her and speaks with an authority that no one dare call into question.  Find a dark space, her mother tells her.  They can’t get you there.  And with your gift of seeing clearly in the dark, you'll escape their evil  and save the world.  And with those words, her mother points to the fireplace that suddenly appears in the room, and tells her to hide in the chimney.

She knows this is one of those times to listen to her mother.