Dangerous Dreams: A Novel

by Mike Rhynard

  “But I need to dream, need to know about Emily, whatever it takes; and since we dream mostly in REM sleep, the answer’s to find a drug that gives me more and longer REM.” Wonder if there is such a thing.

  “But what about side effects, addiction?”

  “Can’t worry about that. Already addicted . . . to the dreams. So what’s another addiction?” She trembled as she remembered one of her father’s favorite gems of wisdom: No matter what else happens in life, you’ve got to live with yourself. So never consciously do anything you might be ashamed of when you look back on it tomorrow. Tears ran down her cheeks as she brought up her search engine, typed in drugs that increase REM sleep and dreaming, then dragged her cursor down the list of hits; she was about to click on one when the phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. Whoops. Forgot to call her. “Hi, Mom.”

  Nancy said, “Hi, Allie Girl, how’s it going today? Did he call?”

  “Yeah, he did.” She thought of the Viking dream then Emily floating dead in the black water. “And guess what?”

  Nancy’s heart raced with anticipation. “What?”

  “I’m in. Somehow, he got the committee to appoint me as his assistant. Don’t know what he said, but it must have been good.”

  “Hallelujah! Are you excited?” Nancy closed her eyes, sighed, thanked God for answering her prayer.

  “Hell yes, I’m excited. I mean, after last night, I’ve just got to get to the bottom of what’s happening to me, and I don’t think there’s any other way.”

  “What do you mean? What happened last night?”

  Allie told her mother about her mutual dream with Emily, Elyoner’s disclosure of Tayler’s misdeed, the storm, the wreck, George’s heroism and death. Her tone grew morose as she told of Emily being tossed about by the black, churning water. “So Mom, it gets more depressing every time I dream, one emotional extreme after another: happy, sad, happy, sad. They just can’t get a grip, and I don’t want to dream anymore, but I’m completely addicted to it . . . got to know what happens to Emily. It’s really frustrating, messing me up, but I’ve decided the only way I can save myself is to work with the doc and try to get to the bottom of it before it kills me.”

  Nancy’s body tightened like a rope in a tug-of-war; in an instant, her mind flushed all of Allie’s words except depressing, addicted, save myself, and before it kills me; she felt a chill of déjà vu trickle down her back, a flood of panic deluge her mind. “Allie, what the hell are you saying? What do you mean? You’re scaring me.” Damn. This is not going the right way . . . but it’s heading exactly where Ian said it would go. Pray to God the doc has answers. Maybe I should tell her . . . no, it would push her closer to depression, make her do something rash. But she’s headed there anyway. Maybe knowing what’s ahead now will help her get a grip before it’s too . . . before it’s too late. She remembered Allie’s earlier guessing of the words, her seeming intuition that the dreams led to disaster. No. Dressler’s the only hope. Got to give him a chance.

  Allie read the alarm in her voice. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not going to do anything stupid.” She cringed at her lie, wished it could be otherwise, but knew it couldn’t. “You know, it might help if you’d tell me what scares you so much about these dreams . . . and how Great-Great-Grandma Ian knew they were true. And also what happens when someone dies . . . like does that dream end? Do you start a new one right away, or do you not dream for a while? And how do you keep it all from driving you nuts and taking over your life? Come on, Mom. Tell me more.”

  Nancy held her silence.

  “Mom, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here . . . Hon, I don’t know the answers to most of your questions, but I’ll tell you what I do know.” Some of it, anyway, she thought. “Ian never told me how she knew the dreams were true, but she said she was absolutely sure they were. Remember, I was a little girl, so she didn’t go into a lot of adult detail. She said that when one series of dreams ended, she always had another, but not necessarily right away; she was still having them when I knew her . . . in her nineties. And I kind of remember her saying that stressful events brought them on, but I’m not sure of that. Again, I was so young.” An image of the old woman’s haggard, wrinkled face, sad eyes flashed through Nancy’s mind; then she saw the family gathered around her coffin, talking to one another about her dementia. A twinge of sadness overcame her, sent a tear down each cheek as she remembered being the only one who’d shared intimate moments with her in her last months. No, she hadn’t suffered from dementia . . . she was all there; the others were wrong, simply couldn’t bring themselves to accept what she’d told them about the dreams and their burden—too big a leap, so they’d written it all off as insanity. She closed her eyes, again savored the memory of Ian’s warm, reassuring embrace, the sincerity and honesty in her eyes; shook off a chill as she thought of her sad end, the end Nancy wasn’t supposed to know about. And now Allie was following precisely in her footsteps, perhaps sprinting inescapably toward the same end. God forbid!

  “Mom . . . Mom . . .”

  “Oh . . . sorry. Just thinking about something . . . you know, I forgot to tell you that Ian had a butterfly birthmark just like yours—same place, same shape and size. She showed it to me once, and I remember being very impressed. Funny, but I didn’t think of it when I first saw your birthmark, never made the connection. Weird. I wonder if—”

  “No kidding. Wow! That’s wild. Just like mine . . . and you don’t have one?”

  “Nope. Just you and Ian. So maybe it’s something the dreamers in the family share. I’ve never seen the mark on anyone but you two.”

  “Mom, what was Ian like? Did she just die of old age?”

  Nancy froze as if hit by a stun gun, her mind fogged with confusion.

  “Damn it, Mom! You okay?”

  “Yeah . . . I’m . . . I’m okay.” Long pause. “Allie, I want to come see you again. I don’t want to talk about this over the phone. I need to be with you.”

  “Jeez. It must be really bad. Come on, Mom. I can handle it.”

  “No . . . how about I come over tomorrow?”

  “No, Mom! That won’t work. I’ll probably be at the lab getting wired up. Why can’t you tell me now?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s the wrong thing to do. So how about the day after tomorrow?”

  Allie knew her mother, knew her heels were dug in; also knew how much she needed her, wanted her to be with her, console her, reassure her. But what if I’m doing drugs? Hm. “Okay. Day after tomorrow . . . come in the morning . . . I may be in the lab in the afternoon . . . won’t know until I meet with the doc today. Ooh! I need to get going. Call you later, Mom. Bye.”

  “Okay. Keep me posted. See you soon . . . love you, Allie.”

  “Love you too, Mom.”

  “Allie . . . don’t do anything dumb.”

  Dr. Dressler said, “Well, Allie, how’d it go last night? You look kinda tired. I’m sure my late call didn’t help.”

  Allie gave a cynical snort. “No, I went right back to sleep.” Thank God for sleeping pills. “But I never seem to get much rest when I dream, always wake up feeling spent, helpless, and sad. But that’s probably because I’m so emotionally caught up in it and not much good ever happens, especially to Emily.”

  “Another bad one, huh?” A little hint of onset depression . . . not good . . . need to watch her.

  “Well, it started out good but then went steadily downhill.” Allie handed him a printout of her dream log then recounted all the major events. Her face lit up like a floodlight when she recounted her mutual-dreaming experience, her realization that Emily was alive. “Doc, knowing she was alive, even in the coma, was incredibly exciting . . . like being there . . . I was lucid and actually remember twitching or something. It really floored me when I realized we were dreaming the same dream—me here today, and her at Roanoke over four hundred years ago, somehow connected through time in dream space. D
oes that make any sense?”

  He nodded as he took notes at a feverish pace. “I’ve never heard of it with people in different epochs, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’ve never heard of a lot of the things that are happening to you.” He looked up, noticed the peaceful, serene look on her face. She’s a beautiful girl, he thought . . . honest emotions, happy and sad, always fresh and exciting to be with; her face is a window to her soul.

  Allie snickered. “Well, you’ll also see stuff in there about Emily thinking she has Viking blood, and about a new Indian she met who knows he has Viking blood—a really handsome man . . . who, by the way, she kind of has the hots for. Anyway, I’m thinking there’s some kind of Viking connection to all this, but I don’t have a clue what it might be or why.”

  He’d returned to penning comments on her log. “Well, maybe we’ll figure it out. Lots of dots to connect. Oh, before I forget”—he picked up two small digital recorders, handed them to Allie—“use these as your logging devices, primary and backup, so you can capture your dream events more quickly. We’ll transcribe the recordings each day for backup, but I’d still like you to write them out for me if you can . . . and always state the date and time and what kind of mood you were in, and how tired you were when you went to bed and when you woke.”

  “Sure, Doc, but I don’t really need recorders. I still remember every detail of every dream I’ve had since they started.” She then related Elyoner’s revelation, her hopefully safe voyage to Chesapeake with two infants, Tayler and Emily courting, George and Emily’s discussions, the Spaniards, Emily’s emotional conflicts and feelings for the men in her life. A thin dampness spread over her eyes like morning dew as she described George’s death, Emily’s gut-wrenching agony, her desperate plight. She hid her face in her hands, whimpered softly for a few moments, then rubbed her eyes, looked at Dressler. “Sorry, Doc . . . this really sucks, and it’s not fair . . . too much for a kid her age . . . but somehow, she just keeps on pushing through it. She deserves to be happy and carefree, and it tears me up that I can’t do anything about it.” She started crying again.

  Dressler’s pen was still; he looked at Allie, again marveled at how deeply connected she was to Emily, felt his heart swell with compassion. Without thinking about it, he stood, walked to her, then sat beside her, put his arm around her and pulled her against his side. My God, she moves me, he thought. This is torturing her—feels so close to Emily, so emotionally entwined; it’s painfully personal. But why? “Hang in there, Allie. I know it’s tough, but we’ll figure it out . . . and knowing the why of it will make it much easier to handle. We’ll get there.”

  Allie rubbed her eyes. A good comforter, she thought with a sniffle— gentle, reassuring, like Mom and Dad. She blubbered, “Thanks, Doc. I just can’t help it . . . like one of my best friends died and my closest friend is about to die. I’m okay.”

  “Sure?”

  She nodded.

  He walked back to his chair, looked at her for a moment, then scanned her logs and his notes. “There’s a lot here . . . a whole lot of things going on in you all at once . . . so many, in fact, it’s hard to know where to start, but here’s my thought.”

  Allie watched him with an intense, expectant look.

  “I think we first—like, today—make a list of all of your dream characteristics and then place them in order of importance.” He shook his head. “No. That’s not right. Importance doesn’t play. What matters is causality, or sequence. Follow me?”

  “I think so. You want to arrange all my dream characteristics in order of what-causes-what, or what happens first in the chain of events. So the first thing causes the second thing to happen; and that second thing can’t happen unless that first, causal thing happens; and then that second thing enables, or causes, the third thing—a chain of events, where each event enables the next. I like the word enables better than causes because the first event doesn’t necessarily force the next event to happen; it just lets it happen if it wants to.” She thought for an instant. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s both.”

  Dressler locked his eyes on her, nodded, mentally smirked. Got a damn good head on her.

  “How about this?” she said. “In the beginning, something makes me start the dream sequence; then something else figures out what I’m going to dream, plants it in my head, and hits the start button; but there’s no pause button, so the dream keeps on going when I’m not dreaming, whether I’m asleep or awake . . . I think.” She gave him a quizzical look. “And it keeps on going until who-knows-when because I don’t know how or when it’ll end. But the important thing is that once the causal events happen, all the real dream characteristics—like recall, knowing languages, the fact that it seems to be true history, sensing emotions and thoughts, pain, et cetera—get turned on, or enabled, and happen continuously and simultaneously. So the first mystery is why and how my dreams happen, and the second mystery is why they’re the way they are. See what I’m saying?”

  “I do. And I think you’re absolutely right.” Got a damn good head. “For sure, there are causal, enabling events, and pure characteristics, but I think the approach I mentioned is still appropriate. So let’s put all the things that happen—causes, enablers, and characteristics—on a hierarchical chart, based on causal and enabling sequence, and go from there. And where we’ll go is the development of possible theories for each cause and characteristic—both existing and new, both single and multiple. Then we’ll devise experiments to evaluate each theory, and based on results, tie the causal, enabling, and characteristic theories together in an overall governing theory, evaluate some more, and finally . . . hopefully . . . settle in on an all-encompassing theory we can extrapolate to normal people.” He looked suddenly embarrassed. “Excuse me, Allie. I said that poorly. You’re not abnormal; you’re just incredibly unusual because you’re a live, walking, vivid, percolating dream lab that’s directly and visibly connected to whatever forces out there and inside you stimulate your dreams and make them happen the way they do. Are you with me?”

  Allie smiled, nodded. “Yup . . . and I like it. Cool stuff. So let’s get movin’. We’re burnin’ daylight!” She handed him a piece of paper. “Here’s a list of my dream characteristics, all lumped together. It’s more organized and complete than what I gave you before. We can start from there.”

  He took the paper from her, held his eyes on hers for a moment, then scanned the list:

  1.Probably stimulated by stress

  2.Subject-matter-selection methodology unknown, but content new and unfamiliar

  3.Historically accurate content

  4.Some dreams cover several scenario days

  5.Scenes seem to accelerate between REM periods, but I see them in real time during REM

  6.Also at an accelerated pace when I’m awake

  7.Same story from dream to dream—story-like (movie-like) content

  8.All dream characters unrecognized, but recurring

  9.At least one mutual dream with Emily Colman, who lived (maybe) over 400 years ago

  10.Hear and remember dialogue—all dialogue sensible

  11.Understand different languages and Indian hand signs

  12.Feel emotions and thoughts

  13.Emily seems to be the conduit to dreams—she’s in majority of scenes, and I feel her emotions and thoughts the strongest—but also see and feel others in scenes without Emily

  14.Lifelike reality, intensity, and vividness; true color, sound, smell, and taste—not bizarre in any way

  15.Emotionally attached & close to dream characters (especially Emily)— things that happen feel personal, as if happening to me or a close friend

  16.Butterfly birthmark becomes warm and itches just before, during, and after dreams

  17.Detailed breadth and depth of events recalled after each dream—retained for (at a minimum) days, perhaps longer—TBD

  18.Lucid dreams—real time awareness that I’m dreaming, but no ability, thus far, to affect content

&
nbsp; 19.Frequency is every time I sleep

  20.My mother says the dreams occur to female family members every 4 or 5 generations—great-great-grandmother was last known dreamer

  21.Said she knew the dreams were true, but my mother doesn’t know how she knew

  22.Mother knows more than she’s told me, and it scares her a lot

  He shook his head. “This is amazing when you see it all together; and I can’t help thinking there’s a key in here that’s going to unlock mysteries . . . all because your characteristics are so visible, sharp, and repeatable. So over the next few days, I’m going to study the list and start trying to figure out theoretical bases for each item . . . likely more than one in many cases. And I also expect a fair amount of overlap between characteristics. Meanwhile, we need to get you going in the sleep lab and do some correlations between your dream logs and polysomnograph results. Ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Alright. Well first, it’s awkward to work with people on a last name basis. So if I’m going to call you Allie, you have to call me Steven. Okay?”

  Allie nodded. She’d never called a professor or teacher by their first name, felt awkward doing so, especially when they were nearly twenty years her senior. But something about him put her at ease, overcame her inhibition. “Okay . . . Steven . . . Steve?” She chuckled. “Which do you like?”

  He smiled back at her. “Well, my mom called me Stevie, but I thought it sounded wimpy, so I ditched it when I went to college. My colleagues call me Steven, and my friends call me Steve . . . and my ex-wife called me Doc, like you do. So why don’t you call me Doc or Steve.”

  Allie’s face was the color of a boiled lobster. “I’m sorry. I . . . I . . .”

  His smile took on a soft, gentle curve. “Nothing to be sorry about, Allie. Don’t worry about it.” She’s even prettier when she’s upset: fresh, natural, genuine . . . smart; really like her. “So, here’s the plan. Come to the lab tomorrow about 7:30 p.m. Dress relaxed . . . bring whatever you normally sleep in, and we’ll get you wired up with the various polysomnograph leads.”