The Anatomy of Dreams

by Chloe Benjamin

  Finally, I rolled the cart out of the closet, making sure the wheels were working smoothly—it was a finicky old cart; we needed a new one—and began to arrange the tray. From a small cabinet I took out the EEG paste and sleep mask, the tape and black marker. I arranged the electrodes, sensors, and lead wires at the back of the tray, and beside them the cotton swabs, alcohol pads, prepping gels and pastes, and my gloves. The hair clips I placed in a pocket at the front of the tray; sometimes ten or twelve were necessary if the patient had long hair, but I didn’t think we’d need more than four for a little boy. In Room 76, Gabe rolled in the camera and turned on the audio system.

  We kept an eye on each other through the window, making sure the other person was getting along okay and didn’t need help. Every so often, one of us offered a smile, and the other one returned it before getting back to work.

  By seven thirty, we knew Keller had retrieved Jamie from the waiting room and brought him to Room 72, his public office, which had a leather couch and a basket full of toys for children. Keller had been working independently with Jamie for eight weeks now, teaching him the same things he had taught Gabe and me in Snake Hollow. “Lucid dreaming can be learned,” Keller had told us, standing in the library. The first step was to improve dream recall—patients who developed this skill were almost always able to remember their lucid dreams after waking. Keller also showed us how to recognize dream signs: ill-defined light sources, repetitive symbols, bizarre text or numbers, and flashing lights, which in our study took the form of LEDs. Some researchers used mild electric shocks to indicate a dream state to their subjects, but Keller eschewed this method. He preferred that our patients be able to recognize their dream states cognitively, not physically.

  At eight o’clock, I walked down the hall to the water fountain and filled my bottle. The door to Room 72 was cracked, and I could hear Keller talking in the playful voice he used with younger patients.

  “Haven’t been drinking any alcohol, I presume?”

  There was a woman’s laugh, though I couldn’t hear the child.

  “No,” said the woman, an older voice, gravelly. “Hasn’t been any of that.”

  He was getting close to the end of the questionnaire. Gabe popped his head out of Room 76, where the bed was stationed, and I nodded, holding up five fingers.

  After several minutes, Keller came out of the office, holding a clipboard with the finished questionnaire. Behind him was a woman who looked to be in her seventies: she had a bushel of wiry, shoulder-length gray hair and quick, sweeping eyes.

  Gabe and I stood in the doorways to Rooms 74 and 76 like butlers guarding the entrances of a fancy party. The woman held the hand of a small boy, who was partially obscured behind the wide swath of her hips. He wore loose pants printed with brightly colored sea creatures and red socks; Keller must have collected his shoes.

  “You must be Jamie,” said Gabe. He stepped forward and squatted down in front of the older woman, peering through her legs at the boy.

  “That’s Jamie-boy,” the woman said. “Don’t be shy, sweet.”

  But I could tell she was hesitant. Keller’s research was experimental, still in its early stages. Most of our patients had exhausted the range of traditional treatment options, but it still wasn’t unusual for them to be skeptical of our methodology.

  “My research assistants,” said Keller. “Gabriel and Sylvia. This is Jamie’s grandmother, Rosemarie.”

  “Sylvia,” said Rosemarie. “A pretty name.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though it didn’t feel like mine. Keller only used it when introducing me to patients.

  “Spectacular pants you’ve got there,” said Gabe as Jamie moved slightly into the open. “What’s that scary thing with the big old fangs? A piranha? No—a blowfish?”

  “A blowfish,” said the boy solemnly. He was leaning against the side of his grandmother’s leg.

  “Ah,” said Gabe. “A blowfish. Just as I suspected. Also known as a puffer. Or a toadfish.”

  He filled his cheeks with air and flared his nostrils. The boy tipped his head and released a short, breathy noise, more a wheeze than a laugh. I didn’t know how Gabe knew about blowfish, but I wasn’t surprised. He was always picking up bits of odd knowledge, coming back from the library with books about metallurgy or obscure British prime ministers or the First Transcontinental Railroad, as if building a base of knowledge that would help him if his work with Keller ever ended.

  “They’re kind of freaky looking, aren’t they?” Gabe asked, still squatting.

  “No,” said the boy, but he was smiling.

  “A fair point,” said Gabe. “Freaky looking—that’s not the right way to put it. This fellow here”—he pointed to the blowfish on the ankle of Jamie’s pant leg—“this fellow is downright handsome. A nice monster—that’s what he is.”

  “A nice monster,” said the boy.

  One year ago, we’d learned, he was riding with his family in a miniature steam train at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago when the train made a sharp turn toward the bachelor monkeys. A sudden leak in the firebox forced a blast of flame out of the door, and though the train was evacuated as soon as it came to a halt, those who sat closest to the engine—a father from southern Illinois, along with Jamie’s parents and half sister, a college student at the University of Chicago—were already dead. It was a freak accident: later, investigators found that a new zoo employee had accidentally packed the firebox with three times the normal amount of liquid fuel.

  Bystanders ran to the train to help. One woman, an off-duty firefighter, retrieved Jamie. He had been sitting behind his sister, sheltered from the worst of the blaze, and only his left hand had burned. Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital were able to preserve the use of his fingers, but his skin was waxy and scarred.

  Now Jamie lived with Rosemarie in her apartment in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. For ten months, he had been suffering from night terrors that made him scream in his sleep and bolt out of bed. In the morning, he remembered nothing. For the past two months, Keller had tried to improve Jamie’s dream recall—when he woke up each morning, Rosemarie was to gently ask what he remembered, then record his reply on a notepad—but the boy was inconsistent and difficult to read. Still, he seemed to understand the concept of dream signals and knew how to respond to our LEDs, so Keller believed it was worth attempting an overnight study. If we could get him to start dreaming lucidly, his recall ability would likely improve.

  The boy yawned, his shoulders quivering.

  “It’s past your bedtime, isn’t it?” said Rosemarie, putting a hand on his head. “Usually he’s in bed by eight. But tonight is a special night.”

  “How late do you get to stay up tonight, Jamie?” asked Gabe.

  “Till nine,” the boy said.

  “That’s right,” said Gabe. “Till nine. And it’s already eight fifteen. I think it’s about time we showed you your bed. Bigger than your bed at home, I’d expect.”

  “How much bigger?” asked Jamie. He hadn’t moved from beneath his grandmother’s hand, but his eyes were focused on Gabe.

  “Well, that depends on the one you’ve got back home,” said Gabe. “I think you’ll have to tell me how much bigger it is. How does that sound?”

  He held out his large, worn hand.

  “Okay,” said Jamie, though he kept both hands behind his back.

  “Just a minute now,” said Rosemarie. She looked from Keller to Gabe, and back to Keller. “Now, this is where I—say good night?”

  “It all does seem to happen a bit fast,” said Gabe.

  Rosemarie’s wrists were knobby and her ankles soft and tubular, encased in nude pantyhose that stuck out from beneath her pants. But her hand on the boy’s head was firm.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Keller.

  “He’s in good hands,” I said.

  “Sylvia will see you
down the hall,” said Keller.

  Rosemarie squatted down to take the boy in her arms. Her knees landed on the linoleum floor with the tired grace of aging animals, the brittle memory of old bone.

  “Be a good boy,” she said, and he leaned into the soft pillow of her chest. “You remember what we practiced.”

  Gabe guided Jamie to Room 76 and gently closed the door. I walked with Rosemarie to the stairs. As we climbed, her shoulders began to quiver.

  “It’s been terribly frightening,” she said. She paused on the landing, her back against the wall. “I’ve been so afraid.”

  When I returned to the basement, I was annoyed. It had taken almost ten minutes to usher Rosemarie out of the building, and I’d had to console her all the way to the door. When I walked into Room 74 and grabbed hold of the rolling tray, I forgot to unlock its wheels. My sudden push made the hair clips and some of the electrodes fall to the floor.

  By the time I had cleaned them, I was late to Room 76 and flustered. I knew Gabe had noticed—it was already eight thirty, and we were supposed to have Jamie fully prepared by nine—but he didn’t show it. When I walked into the room, they were chatting about Calvin and Hobbes, Jamie narrating his favorite strip while Gabe leaned toward the bed. When the story finished, he turned around as if I’d surprised him.

  “Ah,” said Gabe. “Here’s Sylvie. She’s come to show you all the machines you get to play with, and then I’ll be back before you go to sleep.”

  I could tell that Jamie didn’t want to see Gabe go. But he was sleepy, and he lay obediently while I uncapped a jar of rubbing alcohol. He wrinkled his nose at its acid perfume as I dabbed the places where the electrodes would be placed.

  “Tired?” I asked, smiling.

  “No,” said Jamie. But his eyes glazed over as I taped each of eight channels to his skin. Every so often, I pinned his hair back with a clip, and this got a laugh out of him, the same short wheeze.

  “I’m not a girl,” he said. I noticed a small, dented scar on his forehead—two connected semicircles, like a child’s drawing of a seagull.

  “Boys can wear their hair back,” I said, taping an electrode to the left of the scar, at his temple.

  “I never saw one,” said Jamie.

  “Well, I see you,” I said.

  He was still smiling—his two front teeth overlarge and spaced slightly apart; permanent teeth, I thought, while the rest were baby teeth—as he looked at the camera.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A camera,” I said. “It records videos. Movies.”

  “I’ll be in a movie?”

  “That’s right.” I rolled the camera toward him. “Your own movie. Look.”

  I turned the camera toward the wall, its lens pointed at the small window, and showed him the screen. The camera was already running—Gabe had activated the recording in Room 74—so this would be filmed, too. I rolled the camera back to its place and turned it around again.

  “Do you remember your mantra?” I asked.

  His eyes were still on the camera.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something to repeat over and over again, to remind you that you’re asleep. You practiced it with your grandma, remember?”

  Jamie nodded, but I could tell that he was struggling to bring it up.

  “‘When I see my hand . . .’” I said, prompting him.

  “When I see my hand in my dream,” Jamie said, “I know I’m dreaming.”

  It was a simple stimulus-response technique first developed by Carlos Castaneda, a writer and anthropologist. Castaneda reasoned that the dreamer’s body was one of the few elements that did not change between sleep and waking life—and that it could therefore be used to anchor the sleeper in an otherwise changeable dream world, reminding them both of their identity and their state of consciousness.

  Jamie kept his burned hand hidden: his elbow bent, the little fingers wedged beneath his torso. He held his other hand up, showing me.

  “That’s right. Perfect.”

  I stepped back to examine my work. The electrodes were precisely placed and taped; it was why Keller always left this part to me.

  “Where did . . .” said Jamie. He paused and looked toward the door. “Where did he go?”

  “Gabe? He’ll be back in a moment. We just have to run a few tests to make sure everything is working the way it should be, and then I’ll go get him.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  “Fun tests,” I said. “Like this. Close your eyes. I’m going to time you, and after thirty seconds you can open them—but no more or less.”

  He did so.

  “Now open them for thirty seconds. You can blink, but try not to move. Try to be still as a plank of wood.”

  Jamie clenched his jaw, his eyes on the ceiling.

  We began each session with this series of bio-calibrations to make sure the signals were accurate. I had him look left and right, to mimic the activity of the eyes in REM sleep; cough, which set a standard for snore levels; hold his breath; move his feet; look up and down. When we finished, I looked into the glass window and nodded. I couldn’t see in, but I knew Gabe was there, watching me.

  “You passed,” I said. “You were great. Now let’s get you under the covers.”

  With the setup complete, Gabe returned from the other room, which meant Keller had taken his place. Jamie lay on top of the bed’s white sheets and blanket, his limbs spread, as we tried to ease the covers over them.

  “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “Don’t want to?” asked Gabe. “Who ever heard of that? Not sleeping under the covers.”

  “I don’t want to do it,” Jamie said, more forcefully. His eyes shifted from Gabe to me.

  “You’ll get cold,” I said.

  “I won’t.”

  “It’s a cold building,” said Gabe. “Very cold down here in this building.”

  “I’m not cold.”

  Gabe glanced at me, then at the window separating Room 76 from Room 74.

  “All right,” he said. “Your choice. We’ll just have to put your belt on this way.”

  We started at the end of the bed. I eased the first strap from my side of the bed to Gabe’s, and he buckled it in.

  “What are those?” asked Jamie, moving his ankles beneath the lowest strap.

  “Seat belts,” said Gabe. “For the rocket ship.”

  “The rocket ship?”

  “Didn’t anybody tell you this bed is a rocket ship? That’s why it’s so big. And when you fall asleep, it blasts off.”

  Gabe was pushing it here, I thought. Even Jamie seemed dubious. But he was silent as we buckled each row of straps.

  “And here’s the last thing you need,” I said. “It’s a mask, with special lights inside so you can see the stars. Do you remember what to do, when you fall asleep and see stars?”

  “I move my eyes,” said Jamie.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Can you show me how?”

  He moved his eyes four times, horizontally: left-right, left-right.

  “Aren’t you good,” said Gabe.

  “When I see my hand in my dream,” mumbled Jamie, “I know I am dreaming.”

  He was sleepy now, his left hand unguarded. Up close, the skin was thick and marbled, pink-and-white fingers curling toward his palm. The hand looked so tender, so damaged, that I had the sudden urge to hold it in my own.

  “That’s right,” said Gabe. “But they feel real to you, don’t they?”

  The boy stared at Gabe, unmoving. I looked sharply across the bed at Gabe, then at the window between the rooms.

  “They’re dreams, though,” Gabe added. “Just dreams.”

  When I left the room and walked into 74, Keller was sitting stiffly before the window.

  “What was that?” he a
sked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, closing the door behind me.

  “Likes to push the envelope, that one,” said Keller grimly, picking up a Styrofoam cup. “Coffee?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, taking a seat beside him. “Well—what kind?”

  “Half-caf. Here.”

  He took a thermos from the floor and poured its contents into another Styrofoam cup.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Keller nodded. He was in his fifties now, nine years older than he had been when I first arrived at Mills, but he didn’t look much different—he had the same pale skin, the same substantial nose and dark, full eyebrows. I had never seen him with any other facial hair, but he didn’t look gaunt. His features were robust and muscular, his skin lined with idle expressions: two permanent grooves between his brows, crow’s-feet raying out from each eye. His pupils were a striking, aquatic blue, almost cerulean, the irises lined in black. Our patients probably felt he looked severe, but I thought his dynamism also made him handsome.

  It wasn’t long before Jamie was asleep, Gabe sitting in the chair beside his bed. He flipped through the Isthmus, our local paper.

  “Must have been tuckered out,” said Keller, inching his chair closer to the window.

  We allowed Jamie to sleep through the first REM cycle. Eight minutes after the next cycle began, Gabe put the newspaper on the floor and gave us a thumbs-up. I triggered the light stimulus—eight flashes in two seconds, transmitted through the LEDs in Jamie’s sleep mask.

  We waited, Keller and I in Room 74 and Gabe in Room 76, still as he could make himself.

  There was no response. Keller tapped his Styrofoam cup on the table.

  “I’ll try again in two minutes,” I said.

  Gabe relaxed, though he leaned forward again when two minutes had passed. I triggered the light flashes. Jamie stirred slightly, shaking his head, but he didn’t move his eyes.