The First Principles of Dreaming

by Beth Goobie

  For Dee and I that night, the man about to become the subject of a province-wide search was not a church deacon or a father, not even a splayed hapless corpse, but an unspeakable horror that continued to clutch at our throats, fingers locked tight and refusing to let go. This psychic nightmare was made even worse by the surrealistic normalcy that surrounded us—the well-decorated Christmas tree visible through the Eccles’ living room doorway; the naked-woman sugar bowl next to my elbow, cradling its concealed cock; the erratic thumping that could be heard from the basement rec room as Dee’s father and some friends played out a game of darts. Mrs. Eccles was at work, Andy out with his buddies. Since the death in the room over the garage forty minutes earlier, Dee and I had showered and changed, our movements slow-motion, dense with shock. The bloodstained clothing that we had been wearing now lay at our feet, shoved into a garbage bag. Slightly more distant behind the garage, but equally bloodstained, my father’s corpse slumped facedown in the Valiant’s backseat.

  “Over by Joe’s Tavern,” rasped Dee, her voice quavery with the effort of speech. Reddish-purple fingermarks circled the base of her throat. “We’ll dump him behind the pub—him and his car. Cops’ll think it was a drinking thing.”

  “My father doesn’t drink,” I said automatically, then caught myself, shuddering long and deep. “Didn’t, I mean,” I corrected myself. “He didn’t drink.”

  “So he had a secret life,” croaked Dee. “Something you didn’t know about. Lots of dads do—d’you think I know everything my dad does? Come on, Jez—get your brain in gear. The last thing that can happen is the cops nosing around this house, got it?”

  Dully, I nodded. “Got it,” I said.

  “All right, let’s get moving,” she said. Picking up the garbage bag, she got to her feet, then stood for a moment, leaned heavily on the table. “Believe me,” she whispered, her face pale, her eyes gripping mine. “My dad can’t ever know about this, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whispered in reply.

  It was a tense, to-the-point funeral procession, consisting of Dee in the powder-blue Bug followed by myself driving the Valiant with its backseat corpse. That night, Eleusis was eerily still, the falling snow muffling the sound of the occasional passing car, the only other sign of life the odd caroling group trudging between houses brilliantly outlined in Christmas lights. Even so, it was all I could do to remain focused, the tears pouring steadily down my face as my brain staggered around the inside of my head. My father is dead, I kept thinking as we drove across town. My father is dead and I killed him. I killed him. Finally, Dee flashed her signal lights then turned into an alley that ran behind several pubs and pawnshops. Coming to a halt beside a Dumpster, she got out of the Bug and came over to the Valiant.

  “Pull in there,” she rasped, pointing to an empty area between the Dumpster and a scraggly copse of trees. “Then get in with me. We’re outta here.”

  As she returned to the Bug, I edged the Valiant into the mounting snowdrift behind the Dumpster and shut off the engine. But instead of getting out and following Dee to her car, I continued to sit, my mind also shut off as I stared out at the whirling snow. In that densely falling world, then, I felt silence open about me in slow folds—silence so deep, it went on unfolding into the next universe. And in that moment, it came to me, an understanding that rested deeper than heartbeat, quiet within quiet, absolute stillness: The essential quality of all survival is its impassivity, its ability to move inexorably onward. No matter how I longed for it, there would be no forgiveness coming to me from beyond the grave; what had happened tonight had been born out of terrible necessity, and I had now to release those events and allow the dead to pass on, without judgment, to whatever realities beckoned.

  But how was this to be accomplished? All my life I had spent hanging on—to Louisie, to my mother’s approval, my father’s disapproval. To Dee. How did I now reverse a lifelong habit of obsessive clutching, and open to absolute emptiness?

  Without warning, the driver’s door was yanked open. “Jez!” croaked Dee, leaning into my face. “What the hell are you doing? Get your ass moving!”

  All I did, however, all I could seem to do, was sit clinging to the steering wheel and staring straight ahead. “He was all right, y’know,” I whispered to no one in particular. “Before I was born, that is. He was okay before me.”

  “Don’t give me that shit!” yelped Dee, shoving my shoulder so hard she sent me sprawling across the front seat. “Don’t you go crybaby over that bastard!”

  Pushing up onto an elbow, I stared at her.

  “You seek and you find, Jez,” spat Dee, leaning into the words, shaping them with her body. “So you found out what a bastard your daddy was. That doesn’t make him special. A lot of guys are bastards. As long as you keep your eyes open, you’re going to find that out.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to find that out!” I yelled, sudden rage jerking me upright. “Not that, specifically.”

  “Boo hoo for you!” Dee hissed back, her voice giving out on her completely. “Too bad if you didn’t get what you wanted, specifically.” Then, turning on her heel, she headed for the Bug. As I watched, she got in and slammed the driver’s door. Sinbad’s headlights flared in the darkness; AC/DC screamed briefly from the dash and bit the dust.

  Two minutes, I thought dully, before she takes off and leaves me for good.

  Turning, I looked into the backseat. A shapeless mass, my father’s body lay splayed, head tilted off the seat, upside-down in darkness. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the silence that resonated back at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t Louisie. I’m sorry I never loved you.”

  Then I got out, shut the driver’s door, and trudged through the falling snow to the Bug. As I got in, Dee held out a joint. I shook my head.

  “Come on,” she snapped. “Who’s sane here and who ain’t?”

  She had been crying; her eyes were swollen and rubbed raw. Taking the joint, I dragged deep as she put the Bug into gear and headed down the alley. Outside the car, the sky continued to fall toward earth, covering the good and the gone.

  “Sweetie,” Dee said quietly as she drove, “you’ve got guts. You did what you said you’d do. I owe you.”

  “But he was killing you!” I burst out. “And he was my father. If it hadn’t been for me…if we hadn’t been friends, none of this would’ve hap—”

  “So you owe me too,” croaked Dee, and I felt the crevices of fatigue that ran through her—deeper than moral bargains, agonized debates, any of the codes.

  “Okay,” I mumbled, half-sobbing with relief. “But we’re not done yet. Now I have to go get my mother. She’s at the church with that thing. We have to get her out of there.”

  Dragging on the joint, Dee drove through a long pause. “Y’know, Jez,” she said, hinting at sanity. “I’m tired; you’re tired. It’s been a big night. For her, it’s just one more fling with the supernatural.”

  “My mother needs me,” I said, my voice rising. “I feel it. She needs me right now.”

  Dee breathed deep, then let out a shuddery sigh. “Promise me one thing before we go into that nuthouse,” she said, glancing at me. “You’re not going to kill her too?”

  Wordless, I stared at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Just checking. It’s on Fern Street, right?”

  I nodded, then sat slumped and silent as she turned the Bug in the direction of the church. What I was going to do upon arrival was unknown to me; all that mattered was that I was headed toward my mother. Or rather, our mother. Because somewhere within, seemingly at the very core of my being, I could feel something beginning to stir. It was the gate, the place Louisie had torn into existence as she passed to the other side, and it appeared to be singing. There was no other way to describe it—at the center of my being, I felt the long calling wave of a song. As I slouched in Sinbad’s front seat, that calling wave grew and grew, filling me w
ith its urgency. And, gradually, it came to me that the gate was going to open tonight, that it was calling out that the way be made ready between the worlds—the world of Louisie and the world of Mary-Eve.

  The Waiting for the Rapture End Times Tabernacle looked like it always did on a Wednesday evening—the crimson cross flashing on-off over the front door, the parking lot full of vehicles. Pulling up at the curb, Dee gave the building a hostile glare. “That place is a bad trip,” she muttered, taking one last drag from the joint before butting out. “And I’m not up to it tonight. Sorry, Jez, but this is your baby. You go in and get your mom, and I’ll wait for you out here in Sin.”

  In the cross’s flashing light, she looked haggard. Gently, I reached over and traced the darkening outline of my father’s fingermarks on her throat. “Okay,” I said. “But keep it down on the AC/DC, would ya?”

  “Yeah, okay,” she rasped, then leaned back her head and closed her eyes. Getting out alone, I pushed open the church’s front door and entered the lobby. To my left, coats filled the coatrack and boots were lined neatly on plastic floor mats. But to my surprise, the sanctuary’s amber barrier glass displayed the blurred outlines of members of the congregation on their feet, hands uplifted as wild trilling sounds came from their mouths. This was unusual for the normally sedate Wednesday evening prayer meetings, and experience told me it could mean only one thing—that even without my father’s guiding presence, the Divine Sister had once again taken hold of my mother’s body and was riding her like a surfer seeking the biggest wave.

  Hit by my own wave of adrenaline, I grabbed a nearby stacking chair and heaved it at the despised glassed-in gift shop. “Louisie!” I screamed as it plowed through neatly arranged photographs of a scowling, lonely Mary-Eve. Glass exploded, flying everywhere, and as if in reply I felt the gate in my gut blow wide open. Turning, I headed into the sanctuary, where the congregation’s cries were so loud, the sound of shattering glass had gone unnoticed. As I started down the central aisle, people to either side swayed in the packed pews, letting loose long ululating cries. My attention, however, was drawn upward to what hovered above their heads, for with the reopening of my inner gate I seemed to have gained enhanced perception, and what had previously been veiled was now visible. Everywhere I looked, the sanctuary throbbed with light, a light that shape-shifted through splendid image after image—glowing castles, radiant domed cathedrals, marble mansions, and other common fantasies of Heaven. Beneath the congregation’s feet burned a lake of fire, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse galloped sternly past, and angels clasping swords of fire circled the room. On the stage stood the Divine Sister’s red velvet box, with its ascending tunnel of light, but for the first time I was able to discern how the tunnel’s spinning motion threw off fine, lit threads that floated toward members of the congregation and slid into their brains, trapping them like insects within a gigantic web.

  And that web, I realized as I watched in stunned amazement, functioned as a conduit to suck energy from individuals within the congregation and transfer it to the Divine Sister. The more frenzied the members of the congregation became, the more energy they produced, and the brighter and stronger grew the web that held them all entrapped. This included my mother, who was, as expected, rocking and slamming in her box, but this time with a gaping hole clearly visible inside her chest, or that area of her spirit that resided inside her chest—an inner gate like my own, except hers was spewing a heated, vicious, acrid light.

  Oblivious, Pastor Playle knelt at her feet, spouting the usual verbiage about sacrifice, suffering, and the Apocalypse—an apocalypse, I thought, glancing at the congregation’s feverish faces, that was being artificially produced and maintained. At the core of my being then, my inner gate roared its call; I raced forward, shoved aside a startled Pastor Playle, and reached into the velvet box. “Mommy!” I cried, my voice abruptly plaintive and seven years old. “Mommy, Mommy, look at me!”

  About us whirled the tunnel of light, its spin fierce and unabated. I grabbed my mother’s hands and held on. “Mommy!” I cried again, my voice Louisie’s and at the same time Mary-Eve’s. “Look at me! Look at me!”

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the Divine Sister’s rigid upward stare began to falter.

  “Not up!” I half-shouted. “Down! Mommy, I’m down. I’m down here.”

  Hesitantly, my mother’s face turned toward me, her pale eyes meeting mine. “Mary-Eve?” she whispered. “Mary-Louisie-Eve?”

  Yanking open the velvet box’s half-gate, I reached toward the scream of light bleeding from her chest—the heart wound my father had created with his accusations, the gate she herself had torn into existence through repeated self-attacks. And it was also the gate, I now realized with horrifying clarity, that had called in the entity of light that controlled her—an entity that might otherwise have sniffed out the portal that Lousie’s dying had torn open within me. Fervently, I pressed my hands against my mother’s chest, trying to staunch its brilliant flow, but the gate continued to bleed light, the tunnel to spin madly about us. Then, as if on another level of knowing, I saw two transparent child’s hands rise from deep within me and pass like a dream directly into our mother’s flesh, where they cupped themselves around the wound of light. Delicately, they fluttered back and forth as if weaving, and gradually the gate to the realm of the Divine Sister began to close, the flow of light to diminish. Finally, the wound healed over and light ceased to stream from our mother’s chest. For a moment, the child’s hands remained cupped around the scarred mother-heart, fluttering like butterfly wings; then they withdrew back into my body.

  A long shudder ran through my mother. Raising her head, she whispered, “Where am I?”

  “With me,” I whispered back, and began undoing the bonds that held her in place. Immediately, Pastor Playle stepped forward, protesting, but I turned on him in such fury that his eyes widened and he stepped back. Carefully, I helped my mother to her feet. As we started down the platform stairs, her knees buckled, but then she seemed to gain strength and we continued along the sanctuary’s central aisle amid a dense silence. With the healing of my mother’s inner gate, both the tunnel of light and the multiple visions of Heaven had vanished; all about us, the congregation now sagged in the pews, drained empty husks. Step by step, my mother and I pressed forward against the enormous disapproval that clung to us, trying to impede our progress; inch by inch, I fought the weight of Pastor Playle’s eyes, glued to our backs and desperately hanging on. Ahead loomed the doorway to the lobby; like a weary but successful Orpheus, we gained its threshold and passed through. Sliding my mother’s coat from its hanger, I placed it around her shoulders.

  Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps an understanding that this was an ending of sorts, a cutting of all ties, but not once did my mother glance in the direction of the shattered gift shop, nor did her eyes flick back toward the sanctuary and the Divine Sister’s velvet box. Past the mural with the bleeding Jesus and His docile flock we plodded, through the outer door and into the crimson cross’s sullen heartbeat flashing across the mounting snow. As I opened the Bug’s passenger door, Dee came abruptly awake and began shoving packages of cigarettes and marijuana into the glove compartment while I settled my mother into the backseat. Reluctantly, Sinbad’s engine wheezed and coughed, then eased into its familiar idle.

  Alone, I stood a moment outside the car. The air about me was quiet, resting without wind, no hint of apocalypse or portals to other worlds. As I watched, countless snowflakes drifted downward in utter peace, each kissing the earth, a love intricate beyond comprehension.

  “Louisie?” I whispered, not expecting an answer, my mind simply adrift with the snow. “What’s it really like up there? Y’know—Heaven, Billy Graham, God?”

  For one last time then, the gate within me opened wide, and I saw a vast array of angels singing so intensely, they roared with joy. And it came to me suddenly that what I was seeing was the fundamental
underlying essence of all matter, the molecules of the universe, and that all of it together, this radiant roaring consciousness, was God.

  And then the gate at my core began to close. Briefly I saw them again, the two shimmering child’s hands, fluttering within me in a delicate weaving motion. Lifting my own, I pressed them firmly to the outside of my belly and watched the inner hands complete their healing work. Gradually, gently, the long-ago wound closed over, folding into a double-winged scar. One gateway between the worlds, and all the pain that had created it, was gone.

  I stood alone in the dark and the snow fell toward me, kissing my face.

  •••

  Pressed against the long song of Dee’s body, I rose and fell on the sleepy cadence of her breathing. Outside, the wind blustered through ice-silvered trees and the snow continued its tortured pilgrimage down the alley, but here in the room over the garage the mind rested—a sanctuary set apart from the rest of the world. In one corner, the electric heater hummed its blood-red light; on the opposite wall, Mick Jagger’s lips defied all natural laws; across the bed stretched the eternal gleaming smile of Marilyn Monroe. Things, I thought musingly, were much as they had always been; at the same time, so much had changed. Still tacked to the inside of the door, Farrah Fawcett’s mutilated face gave out its familiar warning, but the red-handled jackknife was gone, probably tossed months ago into a randomly selected Dumpster, along with a certain garbage bag of bloodstained clothing. The bloodstained floor had since been scrubbed and bleached and painted over black.

  “Always wanted to do that, anyway,” Dee had said tersely when she showed me the finished job. “Walls and ceiling are next, when it gets warm enough to ventilate. When I get the guts.”

  Which left only the frozen pool of blood waiting under the snow at the back of the garage, and my father’s body, yet to be discovered. With the calendar currently standing at mid-March, that was bound to happen soon. Although Lawrence Philip Hamilton’s disappearance was at this point considered officially suspicious, the missing-person investigation had been put on hold. There was simply nothing to prove he hadn’t deserted Eleusis, along with his wife and daughter, for something he found more appealing. Faced with more pressing concerns, the police had let the matter drop, and neither I nor my mother had taken it upon ourselves to encourage them.