In the dream, she finds herself in a stark and windowless room, where the top of the walls seemed to melt into the ceiling. Looking around, she sees Lily and Stephanie standing there behind her, dressed in long, floor-length black cloaks, lined with different colour silks. One wore purple, the other red and she observed hers was a silver grey. Silently, she acknowledges her sisters’ presence by a mere bow of the head. Together, they file down a grey hallway, which seems to both expand and constrict like an inflated balloon as they walk down. Finally, they reach a door which silently opens in front of them to reveal a small eerie room with slightly luminescent black walls without sharp angles or delineations. In the middle of the room, on the uneven polished wooden floor, stands their brother’s coffin. As they approach, the heavy locks, gleaming almost malevolently in the semi-darkness, fall away with a heavy thud. The creaking lid lifts slowly. As they peek inside, they notice that the coffin is lined with the most unexpected luminous green fabric, almost the colour of jade. A large black clock stands where their brother’s head should have been. As they stare at it, it strikes 10 o’clock and then the hands stop moving. A single fly begins to buzz around their heads, filling the oppressive silence. With a scream, Sophie always wakes up at that very minute in a pool of sweat, with a bilious taste in her mouth, leaving her shaking for hours. For the past two weeks, the same dream had come back relentlessly, night after night.
Shuddering, as she outlines on the stray piece of paper, the most salient points of the dream, an idea occurred to her, so simple that she could hardly believe she had not contemplated it before. What if her sisters were also suffering from recurring nightmares? After all, they were both present in her dream. Her parents, on the other hand, were absent as was Louis. Indeed, during her last phone call home, which had left her depressed and guilty for hours on end, her father had intimated that both her sisters seemed to be out-of-sorts, tired and without energy, a reaction she would have thought perfectly understandable under the circumstances, but which he seemed to question.
Now she believed that their fragile mental state might be due to repeated poor night sleeps, just like the ones she had been experiencing. On a whim, she called Lily first, knowing that the time would be about right. She was nonetheless surprised to avoid the usual rigmarole of secretaries, who invariably put her on hold. Lily herself had picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Hey, how are you?” inquired Sophie trying her best to sound jovial, “I haven’t heard from you in a while. I’m checking in. How are you coping?”
“It’s hot, it’s muggy and the city is full of annoying tourists. Didn’t anyone bother to tell those mid-westerners that the Big Apple is unbearable in summer?” complained Lily. “The job is quiet. We’re required to be at work while our clients play golf in the Hamptons or sunbathe on the Riviera. I think my new boss hates me. They hired this bitchy queen behind my back while I was home. Can you believe they took advantage of a funeral to hire Queen Bitch with a capital B? Enough to make anyone homophobic I’m telling you… Actually, perhaps I just need a holiday. What about you?”
In lieu of a reply, Sophie asked how she was sleeping lately.
“Well, now that you mention it, like shit.”
“Still jet-lagged? That’s awful,” sympathised Sophie.
“After two weeks, you’ve got to be kidding. No, it’s not that: I just keep on having those weird nightmares…”
Lily’s voice trailed allowing Sophie to jump right in.
“About Louis?” she asked gently.
“Yes,” answered Lily exhausted, her tone clearly indicating she did not wish to elaborate.
“Me too. That’s why I called. In fact, I keep having this recurring dream. I thought maybe you could help me make sense of it. You know one of those dreams you never seem to be able to shake? The ones that seem to always start exactly where you left off the time before, like when you watch TV and hit pause and go to the bathroom.”
“I get it,” said Lily hesitantly. “Mine is a bit like that too…I wake up exhausted.”
“Do you see Louis’s coffin in yours? Do you see us? I mean Stephanie and me? And is Louis’s coffin empty?”
The silence at the other end was eloquent enough. Sophie knew she had struck home. Lily chimed her agreement.
“Yes, we’re all there, we’re wearing some sort of robes, no, in fact, they are more like cloaks, more like monks than witches, and then we approach the coffin, but in my dream it’s not quite empty: there is a clock where Louis’s head should have been and when we look at it, it just stops.”
“No!” screamed Sophie down the phone. “That’s my dream! It’s impossible! There can’t be that many resemblances! That’s not right. We’re not twins for Christ’s sake! And what about Stephanie, did she say anything to you? Have you told Mum?”
“As if I am going to share something like that with our mother, who would consider it macabre at best! You know how she is: she would advise I take some Lexomil and get some proper sleep. Listen, I spoke to Stephanie three days ago though, and she sounded distant and edgy, not quite herself.”
“Like when she has no sleep?”
Stephanie was well known for having a very low tolerance level for anything when life begrudged her sleep for any reason whatsoever.
“Yeah, I guess, just like that, grumpy, short-fused…”
“OK, I’ll call her in a couple of hours, when I’m sure I won’t wake her up and I’ll probe. If by chance she suffers from the same nightmare, there is no way anyone is going to tell us that a shared dream between sisters is a normal phenomenon, even after a death. As unexpected as it was. We don’t live in each other’s pockets at the best of times and we lead very different lives from each other. On top of that we have rarely shared the same reactions when it comes to facing life’s upheavals, so I’m telling you, something doesn’t ring quite right.”
“It might be just us two,” said Lily a lot calmer than she felt. “Wait until you talk to Stephanie before drawing any conclusions, you promise?”
“Sure, and I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve spoken to her. Meanwhile, have a good afternoon.”
“Hey, thanks for calling. I thought I was going nuts. Now I know there’re two of us going nuts. I’m really looking forward sharing a room at Bellevue. They say the asylum is quite nice this time of year. Love you too.”
“Before I go,” added Sophie, “can you do me a favour? If you have the same dream again tonight can you write down the details? At least those you remember when you wake up? I don’t know why I’m asking but I feel it might be helpful later. Do you know if Stephanie still keeps in touch with Justine, her psychiatrist friend? I’m sure she’d know someone who can interpret this dream for us. Admit it, it’s not that common.”
“Nothing pedestrian ever happen to us, that’s for sure. Talk to you soon,” replied Lily hanging up the phone thoughtfully. Her dream had suddenly taken on a completely different meaning.
When Sophie hung up the phone, she was quite agitated. Her instincts had been right. There was something more to the stupid dream than met the eye. She tried to recall what she knew about Jung’s collective unconscious theory but, in her limited knowledge, a dream shared by three sisters, even in slumber, was not what he had meant by ‘collective’. Or was it? After all, did not they share the same culture and the same upbringing? Did they just not live through the same traumatic event? Weren’t those very factors the basis of his theory? Yet, would they react in the same way and dream the same thing, just because they were sisters? If that were true, then the dream held some sort of key; it meant something and Sophie swore she would figure out what it was. At the very least she needed her sleep back so that she could once again function normally. Clearly she had not been herself since the fatidic phone call on Bastille Day. She looked at her Cartier watch for the third time in as many minutes, but the hands had barely moved. She needed to do something to kill the time before she called her other sibling. She grabbed her smal
l gym bag, checked mechanically that her swimsuit was still curled at the bottom and left the house. The walk to the gym was brisk and in no time at all she was frothing the water with a vengeance. She loved that particular pool with its kitschy trompe-l’oeil of the Tuscan countryside seen through a colonnade. There was hardly ever anyone there, and most times she had the pool all to herself. After a couple of kilometres, she could no longer feel her arms nor her legs and decided it was time to hit the sauna and sweat out the lingering smell of chlorine from her skin.
The phone was ringing as she turned the key in the door and switched off the alarm. She ran to the study and grabbed the phone.
“Hello?” she answered breathlessly.
“Sophie, how are you?”
“Steph! What a coincidence! I was about to call you.”
“Oh were you now?” replied her sister teasingly.
“As a matter of fact, I was! I was waiting for just the right time not to risk waking you up, because you know how you get when we wake you up!”
“There would have been little risk of that. I can’t say I’ve had my full quota of sleep lately…I was lonely. I wanted to talk to you…”
“About the dream?” interrupted Sophie.
“What dream? What do you mean the dream?” replied Stephanie taken aback. “Why are you asking me about a dream?” she added anxiously. “How in hell would you know that I’ve been having nightmares? Are you becoming psychic in your old age?”
“Let me tell you exactly how psychic I am. You can stop me at any time,” replied Sophie with a smile. “But since you’re in front of your umpteenth coffee, do you mind if I light a cigarette and close my front door? I’ve just walked in.”
“Oh! I’m sorry? Where were you? Is this a bad time?”
“No, darling, it’s never a bad time. Relax. I just went for a swim. Now,” added Sophie inhaling deeply, “let me tell you how psychic I am. In this dream you’re walking down a corridor. It never seems to end and the walls morph as you walk along. You enter a small room, but the walls are neither straight nor solid; they seem to melt at the seams. When you approach the coffin laying directly on the floor, the locks fall on the floor very noisily… How am I doing so far?”
In a strangled voice Stephanie whispered back, “Did you have my head bugged? Have you planted cameras in my subconscious? You’re spooking me: that’s too weird and no, I don’t believe for a second that you woke up this morning with ESP and decided to test me. But I haven’t spoken to anyone about this, so, for once, I can’t even accuse our mother of telling tales out of school. I didn’t say anything to Lily either, lest she thought I had completely lost it.”
“Will it spook you even more if I tell you that the reason I know is that Lily and I both have shared the same dream almost every night for the past two weeks? How bizarre is that?”
“I’m speechless,” replied Stephanie shaking out her hair. “Did Lily mention, while she was at it, how much shared accommodations at Bellevue go for? If we tell anyone, we’d be locked up for sure, with no pass out. I think we’re just under shock and suffering from too much stress. The dream is absurd anyway. The logical explanation is that we aren’t handling our recent loss, that’s all.”
“Do you really believe that?” asked Sophie sceptically.
“No, not really. It’s just too weird and too real,” agreed Stephanie, her mouth suddenly dry. “So now what?”
“Can you write down everything you can remember the next time the dream comes knocking? Lily is doing the same. Then we can compare notes. By the way, are you still friends with Justine? Could she help us with a dream interpretation?”
“I suppose so, but probably not before she writes me a script for some anti-psychotic drug!” replied Stephanie trying to make light of the situation.
“Maybe so, but we’ve little to lose. You can tell her it’s my dream and it has been eating at me and that you’re concerned for my mental health. Blame it on me. Tell her I’m trying to understand what’s going on and break the cycle so I can get some sleep without resorting to heavy sedation. Send me an email once you have contacted her. I love you.”
“Will do. Hey, Sophie, I feel much better now knowing that I haven’t completely lost it. Do you think the coffin could have been empty? We never did say good-bye, did we? We never saw him. We had to take the coroner’s and the embassy at their word,” added Stephanie as she slowly replaced the phone back in its cradle.
The very next day, when the three siblings compared notes, they completely freaked out, the details all similar, the progression exactly the same. Justine, whose help they had enlisted thus analysed the dream. In Stephanie’s shaky voice, the latter had sensed the urgency of it. While dream interpretation was not a daily occurrence in her treatment of schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders, she knew enough of the basics to deconstruct the symbols and reconstruct the reality behind them. At this point, the only thing which made her hesitant was the manner in which she should deliver her message. She suspected that the dream was a shared one or that at least two of the sisters shared some of the information, or they would not have bothered calling on her. It was actually an interesting enigma and trying to make sense of it had been both fun and challenging.
The grey corridors whose length the three cloaked sisters glided down indicated the beginning of a treacherous journey, full of twists and turns, a path leading them into the unknown. The grey twisting walls described both their confused state and their latent feelings of depression. When they entered the small windowless black room, they in fact stepped into another world fraught with danger, a world of which they had no experience. They enter it through a door which opens wide in front of them without them having to push it open. This represented a new opportunity in life. The locks fall off the coffin all by themselves: the sisters had been kept in the dark as to what had really happened, yet were on the verge of discovering what it was. On the other hand, the empty coffin in the middle of the room revealed how strong their lack of closure was since they never had the chance to say goodbye or set the record straight, or have the time to tell Louis how much they loved him. There was no doubt in Justine’s mind that the entire dream was related to Louis’s death and that it was trying to tell them something. The ticking clock suddenly stopping was indeed the most worrisome bit. Normally, dreaming of clocks which stops when the dreamer looks at it, indicates sudden death but it also stood as an indication of time running out, of needing to speed things up to avoid the dreamer’s own death. The clock however stopped on the number 10, the number meant for closure. Yet reaching closure would be fraught with danger since the buzzing flies symbolised the surrounding of enemies or the irrevocable spread of a contagious illness. Stephanie had indicated that the three women wore a cloak, a sure sign of needing protection, yet the cloaks were lined in striking colours, illuminating in fact each sister’s individual character; one was pure and spiritual, the other kind and compassionate, while the third possessed a raw energy and courage that was quite uncommon. At the very least, the dream was full of contradictions. On the one hand, it vividly highlighted the sisters’ emotional state and their unresolved issues vis-à-vis their brother, and on the other, it was indubitably a call for action. She felt that something needed to be done in order for her friend and her siblings to regain peace. When she called Stephanie a couple of hours later, she analysed for her the various components of the dream, adding gently that if her sisters had similar recurring dreams, they should probably go and look for the answers they sought. She agreed that the recurrence of the same dream was obviously not quite right and couldn’t be dismissed as just a fluke, yet she admitted that she could not advise them on a particular course of action.
Lily was first to get the call and she wrote everything down carefully. She told Stephanie that she needed time to think and would call her back in the next day or so once she had processed the information at hand. No sooner did she hang up the phone that it rang again.
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“Hello? This is Andrew Brown from the law offices of Ferguson and Freehill on Madison. May I speak to Lily Cluny?”
“Speaking.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Oh, Mr Brown, I’m sorry, I thought it was my sister ringing back from Amsterdam. How do you do? What can I do for you?”
“Our Bangkok office requested I ring you. Your brother, Louis, has instructed them to deposit money into a numbered bank account in Geneva in your name. Do you have a pen to write down the details? Miss, are you still there?”
“My brother, Louis, my late brother, Louis, you mean?” replied Lily, her voice shaking.
“What do you mean ‘late’ brother? The instructions were given a month ago. We were instructed to let you know after the 1st of August. We’ve been trying to contact you ever since. As a matter of fact, we’ve left you several messages.”
“Mmmm… I know,” said Lily clearing her throat to hide her embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was urgent. My brother died in Thailand two weeks ago. I’ve been out of town for the funeral and was just trying to get my act together…” Again she segued. “According to the autopsy, death by snakebite. But you must be mistaken: he couldn’t have left me any money. It doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t have any money of his own,” she now sniffled, completely taken aback by the scenario.
“I’m so very sorry for your loss. On behalf of the firm, please accept my condolences. Obviously, we hadn’t been informed. And he did have money: your account was in fact credited with a half million US dollars.”
“What? Are you sure? It’s impossible! Where would he have gotten that kind of money?”
The Samui Conspiracy Page 18