"So, you're dreaming that your spirit or consciousness is being dragged out of your body and put into what is possibly another body." She finished the last of her beer then added, "And these voices are trying to make you stay? What could that mean? What situation would be occurring if that happened? What would be happening if that really occurred?"
Frank raised his eyebrows and glanced to the side as his unspoken reply that he had no idea.
"Maybe...did you ever have an operation...surgery? Anesthesia? A bad reaction to anesthesia?"
"No, never."
"Anyway," she said, "they were using the name Lowell, not your name."
"Kind of looks like a dead end," he said. "I guess I won't find out who Mr. Lowell is or where this dream takes place."
"Did you ever hear of lucid dreaming?” When he answered that he hadn't she explained. "It's when you're dreaming and the dream is so ridiculous that you realize that you're dreaming and then you can change your dream while you're still dreaming." She gave him a quizzical look to see if she'd lost him. Then she elaborated. "You could make the body or whatever it is open its eyes and you might then be able to see what's going on. Maybe you could even talk and ask what's going on. Maybe," she said in a rising tone, "you could move around, get up, explore, see where you are."
Frank thought about it for a moment. "How do you make one of these lucid dreams happen?"
"That's the problem. It involves a lot of trying and also programming your mind to have them. You have to put yourself in that state of mind before falling asleep. It's not easy.” She confessed that she'd only had a few in her whole life. “But I think that you're so aware that something strange is happening to you when you have your dreams about Mr. Lowell that you should be able to influence it. If it is a dream you should be able to turn it around, make things happen the way you want. If it's not a dream, then I don't know, but it's worth a try. The first thing I always try whenever I realize that I'm having a lucid dream is to imagine that I'm flying."
"Wonder Woman, huh?" he kidded.
She smiled. "You mean Super Girl? Wonder Woman can't fly I think."
His perception of her voice trailed off into a blur in his mind which wandered on to other thoughts about Lynn. Regardless of what he felt about his dream and the concern it caused him, he realized that he also felt something different. He found himself imagining the table disappearing and the two of them drifting into the space left behind. Their lips touching, their arms...
Her talk on lucid dreams trailed off as she noticed that Frank was no longer listening.
"Hey Frank! Come back!"
"Sorry," he said. "A daydream. Was I staring?"
"Yes. Just a little bit." They both laughed and when they let the laughing taper off to a smile, they found themselves gazing at each other in a way that created a feeling of warmth.
"I'd better get going," she said.
They walked out into a tapering-off rush hour and a low sun that had plunged Boston into a canyon of shadows from the taller buildings. Warmth still radiated from the pavement and concrete, keeping the air summery despite the blocked out sunlight.
Frank thought about offering her a ride out to Brookline where she lived. He could then head west to Route 128, that led from the south shore of Boston to the north shore, like a great big semi circle. Then he would go north on 128 to Danvers. It was only an extra half hour to his usual commute but he decided it wasn't appropriate just yet and settled for continuing the discussion tomorrow. "See you at work," she said as they headed in opposite directions. She walked a little way, then stopped and returned to Frank. A shaft of sunlight formed as the low sun peeked between two buildings and back lit her as she moved toward Frank. The sun shone around her head and glistened through her blond hair where it touched her shoulders, like flickering rays of light through a forest, and it was only when she stood again in front of him that her features resolved themselves out of the silhouette. The beautiful smile again became visible.
"If you need to talk about it, call me," she said while writing her phone number. "If it happens again, call, okay?"
He thanked her and watched as she disappeared into the distance and the remains of the rush hour crowd. He found himself sort of wishing that the dream would come again so that he'd have an excuse to call her.
CHAPTER 4
Frank called Allison and received his instructions for the weekend. They were to meet at her house and drive over to her uncle's to dump off Frank's aging Chevy and pick up the Mercedes. She made sure he knew the proper attire and protocol. Frank started to tell her about the nightmare but Allison said she had a lot to do and would talk about it Saturday evening.
Frank sighed after hanging up, stared at the phone for a while, thought how nice it would be to skip the weekend event and just get to the part that would come later in the evening, when they would either return to her house or his and she would proceed to drive him insane with that body and face, that hair, those hands. Then he realized for the first time that it was only the middle of any date with Allison that he enjoyed. The opening was usually something he could barely tolerate, maybe a tennis party, in which, if he was roped into partnering in mixed doubles with Allison, he would play well enough for most of the match. But knowing how Allison hated to lose, and hoping he would be roped into less mixed doubles matches, he would, when the score was something like Ad in, match point, purposely double fault or lob the ball too far back behind the baseline. If he really wanted to go all out, he would over hit the ball and send it out of the court, over a row of nearby hedges, onto the polo field where it would hopefully land right in the middle of a chukker.
There were less mixed doubles but there were still those fund raisers for the Essex County Republican Women, usually at the local yacht club. Frank would sneak off secretly and wander out to the end of the dock, remove his shoes and dangle his feet in the water, giving salutes to the yachts putting in and out of the harbor. He noticed that people on the yachts like to wave and to be acknowledged.
The close of any date with Allison was filled with thoughts of what is this all about. Sure, she's one of the most desired women on the North Shore, but I just don't feel it for her. I'm not even sure she feels it for me. She just decided that she wanted me because I was okay at football at Danvers High and somewhat of a minor local hero from time to time when I managed not to fumble the ball when the college team got out in front by a comfortable margin and let me into the game and I'd luck out with a good run. She wanted me because a lot of other girls wanted me and she wanted me because she thought that she could mold me into what she wanted me to be. She could see into the future when with the right financing and the support of the Essex County Republicans, maybe she'd be the wife of Congressman Tilton.
But, oh, Frank thought, the middle of the dates. The middle more than offset any discomfort he felt at the Cotillions or the meet the local politician nights and more than offset any misgivings he'd have later on in the night.
Frank collapsed in his recliner and picked up a book. A half hour later he put his book down having put thirty more pages behind the book mark with little awareness of what he had read. His mind drifted to thoughts of the strange nightmare, drifted to thoughts of Allison and their relationship, and to thoughts of Lynn and the time they 'had spent together that day. He switched on the TV, searching every nook and cranny of the channels and after rejecting dozens of laugh track offerings and lawyer or police shows he settled on a news show. After awhile he sank back into the recliner and fell asleep.
He dreamed of his old Chevy, saw it slowly fall to pieces, ending up as a pile of parts in his driveway. Then someone came along and offered him money for the parts and the dream turned into a good one, but just as he was right in the middle of the transaction his dream was interrupted. His body jerked violently. He found himself, or his spirit, receding from his body, which fell to the floor like a rag doll tossed away by a bored child. He felt himself receding at an increasing speed and gr
abbed towards what he was leaving. Nothing to grab. Panic set in. He turned to confront whatever was pulling him along but nothing was there, only a suction effect or a feeling of magnetic attraction. There was the frightening feeling that he was falling, while his eyes told him he was ascending. He had vertigo or motion sickness from the disorientation and if his stomach had been there he would have vomited.
His semi-circular canals told him that he was upside down but the feeling in his stomach told him that he was upright and going forward. A slight feeling of air passing his body told him that he was moving upward. He didn't know which sensation to believe.
The limits of his vision closed around him and his visual field assumed the shape of a tunnel, which he was whisked through fighting to grab the ungrabbable walls. He exploded out of the tunnel and had the sudden impression that it had been the tunnel that had moved and not him. Regardless of what had moved he found himself in unfamiliar surroundings, found himself in surroundings unfamiliar to most of the human race. In the direction that the tunnel had receded he saw, starting in the unfocusable distance and extending right up to his being, a silvery cord, misty looking as if it were cold and mist was condensing into a cloud along parts of it. He looked at the point where it passed through his being. No detail to it. It looked like light, rather than a solid cord, or like a flexible laser beam. He looked in the opposite direction and saw the cord continuing off into the distance. Frank moved his hand to touch the cord and realized that there was nothing to touch anything with. He had no physical hands, no physical body. Yet he was here, but only as some kind of consciousness. He felt vulnerable, a combination of the strange surroundings and the insecure feeling of not having a body wrapped around his consciousness. All around him was a diffuse light and no detail and no objects.
A disembodied voice spoke, not from any discernible direction. Frank just seemed to be within the sound. “You must resist,” the voice said. He saw nobody. He wanted to look around for the source of the voice and started to use swimming motions like a weightless astronaut, but realized that there were no arms to swim with. He managed to turn around just by thinking it, and again there was no body there. The voice spoke again. “You must tell them of the problems they are creating. This is not the way.” The voice fell silent and as if someone or something that was controlling things took a cue from this, Frank felt himself tugged in the direction that the cord was heading. He sped along it. A tunnel took shape at that end and he fell into it, or once again, it may have risen to engulf him. He could believe at that moment that he was the center of all things and that space and time revolved around him.
There were no reference points, no way to tell what was actually moving. At a seemingly increasing speed, until his forward motion was a blur, he sped through the tunnel. For a micro second he saw something, but before his mind could register a clear image, he smashed into it and was inside the body of Lawrence Lowell. The wave of psychic energy caused Lowell's body to jerk. Frank felt as if the entire 180 pounds of what should have been his body had been crammed into a shoe box but his consciousness expanded to fill the space he was in. He heard a voice which varied from sounding like a diver breathing a helium mixture to that of a synthetic early type of computer voice and back again to the diver's voice and then variations between the two. The voice said, “Mr. Lowell! Mr. Lowell! Can you hear us?”
“Brain activity indicates that he can. He's with us! Said a second voice.
A third voice said, “Mr. Lowell, can you open your eyes? Can you say something? Move?”
Frank was terrified. “Noooooo!,” he screamed in a long wail and the word exploded out of the mouth of Lawrence Lowell. Frank thought of his body lying on the floor of his living room and immediately receded from Lawrence Lowell's body along the same path he had earlier taken. He heard the voices fading in the distance, “We're losing him again! It's happening again!”
Frank slammed back into his body with a force that would have caused a crater if he hadn't been just a spirit. His eyes were already open. They were dry and he had to blink the moisture back into them. When he pulled his arm out from under his body and sat up he felt the pins and needles sensation as the blood rushed back into his arm. There was a feeling in his lungs as if the air was knocked out of them, and it was as difficult filling them up again as it is to get the first breath into a new balloon. He sweated and his heart pounded against his rib cage. The exhaustion and the mental drain were crushing. He looked at the phone. It seemed a million miles of effort away from him.
CHAPTER 5
“It happened again!” he said on the phone. “And it definitely wasn't a dream. I fell to the floor and my arm was under me. When I reentered my body my arm hurt pretty bad so I would have awakened if it was a dream.”
“And you weren't asleep?”
“At first I was asleep but when it happened I woke up and as my spirit left, my body fell onto the carpet. If I was still asleep I would have awakened. I really left my body. I was in that place again.”
“Did you hear those voices?”
“Yes, those voices again, but another too.”
“You mean another at that place?”
“No...” A moment of silence as Frank searched for the words, followed by, “At another place. But not really a place. Between places. Between here and that place with the voices talking to a Mr. Lowell.” He was unable to explain further and just said, “Between, just between.”
“The spirit world? The afterlife?”
“I don't know. The words just don't exist to describe it. There was a sort of voice but I didn't actually hear it. Just there in my mind. But I couldn't say what direction it came from...or even if it came from any direction. Do you know what I mean? Indescribable.”
“What did it say?”
“It told me...a male voice I'd say...to resist. It said they are causing problems and to tell them this is not the way.”
This? What does that mean? This is not the way.”
“I guess it means what they're doing to me.”
“A spirit? Could the voice have been a spirit?”
“I don't know.” Frank felt frustrated at his inability to explain to Lynn about any of what had happened but then he told her about his return. “I controlled it. Like those lucid dreams you told me about. I thought 'I want to be back in my body,' and I rushed back to it. Before that I just was scared and just watched and waited to see what would happen to me. I think I can control it. Maybe I could stop it the second that I feel it happen.”
“That's encouraging, anyway, that you can control it. By the way, I hope you didn't forget your ruby slippers there.” When Frank didn't say anything, she explained. “I mean it sort of sounds like Dorothy clicking her heels together and saying “There's no place like home.”
Frank managed a laugh. “Those guys weren't Munchkins. It scared the hell out of me.”
“Are you okay now?”
“Yeah, I think so. I'm just kind of scared to go to sleep.” Frank looked longingly at the recliner.
“Maybe it's only a once-a-night thing.”
“I don't know. These people seem to be trying to succeed at something or achieve something. I get the feeling they'll keep trying.”
There was a moment of silence, then Lynn suggested. “Let's go to the BPL tomorrow and see if we can find out something about this Lawrence Lowell that you keep hearing. Maybe something on the Internet about him too. Maybe it's a real person. Wouldn't that be something?”
“The BPL sounds great since we can do it together. I'll be looking forward to it.”
“I will too.”
For a while neither of them said anything. It brought to mind memories of teenage phone calls when neither could bring themselves to hang up and ended up spending about ten minutes saying goodbye.
Through Lynn's open window the evening breeze brought the scent of newly blooming lilacs, and along with it, a feeling of Spring fever. She wanted to say something that would give Frank a suggest
ion that he meant more to her than just the chance for her to finally be able to use her knowledge of parapsychology. She wanted to.
CHAPTER 6
Lynn had wanted to end the phone call with something like, 'I really like you Frank. It just about kills me every time I see you with Allison, acting so devoted to her and acting so bored to death at the same time. If you want to, come over. Sleep on the couch. We'll have breakfast together. We'll take an early morning walk. I want to be with you tonight.' But she had ended up instead by saying, “Call again if you want to...any time. I mean it. This is fascinating. Don't leave me out of any of this, okay. Well, see you at work...and later, off to the BPL and let's see about this Lawrence Lowell.”
Lynn closed her eyes and for a while drifted in and out of semi-consciousness. Her rhythmic breathing lulled her further, deeper into a dream. She felt a tingle on her skin, sea air, chilled by the cold surface of the sea and the night itself. Many people were in a boat, waiting for her, mostly women and children with a few men in uniform in the boat. Terror filled her as the progress of the dream allowed her to remember why she was here. A man had held her, given her a hug, then separated from her. He held her hand and looked at her. Lynn realized it was her husband. This man had Frank Tilton's face but she knew, as people do when they dream, that he was her husband.
The woman that Lynn was, had looked at the man and was filled with despair at the look of sadness on his face. The deck tilted further as they stood there. Tears came to Lynn's eyes. Women and children were crying as they left their husbands and fathers on the deck and got into the boats and Lynn realized that when she got into that life boat and pulled away from the liner that she'd never see him again. She threw herself against him and held tight. He gently moved her so that he could talk to her.
The Ice House Page 3