Looking up again she thought she saw the figure of what looked like Moses and this time he had a sign he held that said, “Thou shall not kill,” and the little girl yelled, “I don’t care, he deserves it and I wish I could do it right now!” Then she ran into what was a sunlit street with lamps lit up on lamp posts and I’m still with her but I’m stopping here because I’m as tired of this whole mess as she is. Don’t forget how valuable you are to us Green Giant – we need you.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 83
Saturday night
Hi again,
This night has been filled with dreams I’d like to be able to tell you that the dreams made sense to me but none did. There was one dream where we were (Gloria and I) in an attic and we saw a tornado coming and it by passed our house and tore down a house right next door to us – then in another dream I saw a little girl who sat on a veranda or porch (it’s called) and she saw her mother and father beckoning to her in woods that were nearby. Even though the little girl knew that her parents were dead she wasn’t upset to see them calling her and told herself it was only a vision – even so, she got up – and went to follow them – she’s now running through the woods through the calm green summer light to catch up to them and all she could hear were the birds singing – she slowed down and this is when she notices that every leaf on every tree is exactly the same shape – she gets upset then feels sudden panic – the figures had halted to wait for her in the depths of the woods and then the knowledge hit her that they weren’t her parents or even a vision of them, after all, but something else entirely – the woods were growing dark and still the little girl walked on but now she didn’t run and she was scared – suddenly the woods were entirely lightless and yet all the birds were singing more loudly. She started to cry out for someone to come to help her but in the midst of all those birds singing so loud it was impossible to be heard and she started to cry – it seemed forever before she struggled awake – it was very hard to awaken the little girl.
Another dream she had was about her brother who is dead also. He had just returned from the war and he was telling Gloria, “You make everything so right for me. No matter how people nag me, I can close the front door and shut it all out. I’m different when I’m with you, it’s as if I were two people. I suppose I am, one who went to war and the one who came back. I thought of home to the point where in my mind it was better than it had really been – not finding it was so very disappointing – there’s little comfort being with family, with friends nothing is the same.” Gloria could see the difference as he talked, his eyes had a fearful quality in them as though he were looking at some kind of animal expected to become suddenly wild and dangerous. He noticed Gloria looking at him and he said, “If you only knew the hell I’ve been through and yet you’re the only one who looks at me with respect in the eyes,” then he told her he had to go to a Veterans hospital for a tumor in his neck that had to be removed and she was about to promise that she’d go to visit him every visiting day when he vanished right before her eyes and all she could see were tall buildings all around her. She started searching and calling to her brother but she just couldn’t find him and I awakened her.
Now for another dream and this was the worst dream of all. Someone is yelling at a little girl, I can’t remember who it was except that the person snarled like a wild alley cat saying, “You’d better mean it,” the little girl meant it but why did the thought of introducing another little girl to her parents cause such a headache and nausea to her. Why was she so afraid of someone else also? Memories flooded back, she was six years old and playing marbles with a friend – her mother appeared with someone else who had a face of darkness with a screeching voice who said, “You filthy – dirty girl – those clothes were fresh today – get inside at once – no, you the other little girl go home and tell your mother to keep you there – once inside the dark face beat the little girl until the sweat stood out in tiny beads all over her face and blood ran down the back of her legs – her mother said nothing – this was the first time, but there were many more occasions, always for minor things like food uneaten after a beating, or a washcloth left on the bathroom floor. What was worse than the hurt was the tongue lashings – a stream of verbal abuse more hurting than the physical damage and the damage was bad enough too – when it hurts, it hurts – the memories of all those times come back and in the dream the little girl screamed once only, “You’re destroying me it’d be better if you killed me and get it over with,” and the dark face yelled, “destroying you, you stupid girl where do you pick up those long words at your age – someday I will kill you and it will be now if you answer me back.”
The little girl shut up but the guilt hung heavy when he told her she was stupid, weak, useless, a fool – who could ever love her or even like her – what a waste of a life etc. etc..
I got tired of the whole dream and woke Gloria up – enough is enough – when you knock someone down – you should at least try to build someone up sometimes – oh well, it was just another stupid dream – but a stupid person didn’t dream it.
Goodnight for now,
Gloria’s Helper
NOTE:
In order to spare you needless confusion, let me say that Gloria’s Helper would occasionally transform the “Other” to Gloria’s “mother or sister” to help her endure the emotional shock of what she was facing.
AUTOMATIC LETTER 84
Sunday night
Dear Adam,
Once she had managed to compose herself to sleep, Gloria slept as if she never wanted to wake up. In her dreams she was pursued by a great beast of a wolf with devouring jaws and eyes that glowed redly in the night. And in spite of the fact that she knew he could overtake her with a single bound, he preferred to stay just behind her, letting her exhaust herself until her heart was bursting; waiting until it was his whim to close his jaws about her throat.
“No”! She never ever said the word out loud, it was too dangerous, startling herself into wakefulness. Her room was hot and she lay on top of the crumpled sheets in a bath of sweat. Thank God she was awake!
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 85
Wednesday night
Dear Adam,
It’s really silent around here. Gloria has been dreaming again and it’s not just the bad dreams. Gloria and I are in an odd, unsettled mood besides being upset by the dreams – it’s as if the first really pleasant days that arrived in May had a sweetness that jarred odd memories in us, and it reminds us not just of the sweet scent of lilacs but of the way Gloria was once as a little child.
I mean the time when as a little girl, before the “Other”, when springtime used to fill her with a love for being alive and she’d feel filled for the beauty of every living thing that had survived the cold, dreary winter – even the mountains and the forests, changing from brown to green seemed to have to be certainly alive then, and when she’d gather the daisies and lilacs in the month of May. Gloria had the sense of walking like a May bug on the broad skin of a living thing in those flowers – how right she’d felt in her home in her place in her world then – it was as if the whole living world belonged to her in a special way. How reckless and sure of herself she felt then – this May sure has had an effect on Gloria somewhat similar to those early ones of her childhood. I’m waiting to see what June will be like.
I’ll tell you about one dream Gloria had tonight that was in June – I can see her now – a little girl – she’s glancing outside at the children playing and then turns back to writing in a notebook with the ruled squares on the pages – her eyes downcast, her little features in intense concentration, she is writing with a child’s painful deliberateness. Unguarded as her expression is, she honestly looks like an angel with her long rich auburn hair and a simple pink dress – but if you looked at this little girl’s knees and shins that are scraped in many places you’d know she didn’t have the temperament or patience of an angel because sh
e had no shyness about using her fists when provoked.
She was slender and delicate but she stood no mockery from the rough children at school, only from her brothers and sisters did she stand the teasing and laughed it off, because then, there was less of it – but to look at her as she writes in this little book she is the picture of serenity – know why? Because she is writing in her diary even though it’s just a little notebook and she is writing, “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him and someday when I’ve been here a few days, I’m going to tell him so, I’m going to look him straight in those hateful eyes and say, “You, I hate, yes, I do.” So much for the little girl writing because the dream tonight Gloria had was all about the diary – except that the dream was about the diary being found by the “Other” and read, months later and the little girl never had the chance to tell the “Other” she hated him literally because he read it for himself and the dream became most unpleasant, especially when the diary was thrown in the stove and a little girl got a painful lesson – the ‘Other” wasn’t in a very good mood. His anger really became a grudge that lasted for a long time and he let Gloria know that she was anything but a little angel.
When he’d get real angry he’d say, “I swear you’re the devil himself,” and then he’d go on about it being close to the world ending. Some days he’d insist, “Tomorrow the world ends.” We kind of believed him but with an, “I’ll wait and see,” reassurance and when he was proven wrong two, three times, the little girl didn’t get so upset by that threat – at first when he’d tell Gloria it looked like the end of the world she’d get upset because if she was a devil and the world ended there was only hell to go to after and then after a while she started thinking she was already in hell so why worry anyway.
She felt like this in the dream tonight after the discovery of the diary by the “Other”, and when she became desperate, I decided to wake her up and get her out of there – and I’m writing about it now. She had another nightmare last night and another tonight – will try to write about these tomorrow. I make notes not to forget – thank you for listening – you are of great value to me and Gloria.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 86
Thursday night
Dear Rock of Gibraltar,
It’s getting to the point where only intuition and common sense must make my efforts to understand my dreams or Gloria’s dreams. I mean a lot of times in dreams that Gloria has the evil role is played by “strangers” – it’s like in real life when you project blame on others for what you do yourself. What an awful dream we had – we (a little girl and I) we’re lost in a large building and we saw people we loved. The little girl’s family and friends but each time she’d run to meet them the faces were evil and not her family at all. I felt it was my fault that this turned out like this. She would run arms outstretched to meet her brother and he’d be a monster’s face when she reached him.
Then again there was a doll’s head on the table and people up on the hill who turned away from us and wouldn’t have anything to do with us at all – one encouraging thing though the Pyramid Lady with the extra eye on the forehead was all lit up with light and she reached out to us and when we ran to her, she smiled and said, “Follow me, I will take the masks off these people’s face so you can recognize them,” we felt real happy then, but as we started to follow tall columns blocked our way and it’s only when I woke Gloria up that she stopped being frightened.
Don’t give up on us, we’re gaining insight at some places and with your help we’ll make it – I know Gloria will – and so will
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 87
Saturday night
Dear Adam,
The street was narrow and poorly lit. It was lined with new – looking brick houses, the kind to be found anywhere on the outskirts of a small town. Ahead, I could hear the rattle of a train, quite close by, and later I came to a crossing and the station dimly lit, without passengers waiting. The train had come and gone. There were some shops, a gas station and further on some traffic lights and the new sign of a movie house. I was glad to reach the shops and the lights. I had come a long way in the dark. I had ran away from, I don’t know what or whom.
I hoped I would get to my destination before long. I was worn out. It was my tiring, walking along the main road as I had been doing, before I reached this place. The traffic swished by, so close, the lights of the cars were dazzling and sometimes a horn blared and startled me and made me stumble. There was a sidewalk now, it was better here. I turned the corner and came into what must have been the main street. Although it was dark the shops were still open, still bright with lights in the windows. There was more people here. People spoke to their companions but all I could hear was a babble of talk. It seemed they spoke a language I didn’t know. They looked through me as if I were invisible and I moved through the crowd as if I were invisible.
I stepped off the curb to cross the street. The truck came from nowhere twenty tons of racing metal bearing down on me, a moving mountain rising to the sky, it was going to kill me. I was going to be crushed, mangled. I heard a thin scream going on, perhaps my own. In the split second between safety and disaster, I was roughly seized by the arm and dragged back onto the pavement. The man who had saved me was staring into my face. “Hey, lady you tired of living?” he asked. Shaking my legs like jelly, I said “I’m sorry,” and I woke up.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 88
Sunday night
Dear Adam,
I was going for a walk and it was night. I turned the corner by the traffic lights and came to a main street with bright lights in the windows. I opened a door close by thinking it was a store and it was a stairway. I went up step after step but never got anywhere just more steps as I came down and left the building.
In a side street were some market stalls selling vegetables and a big man who looked like a boxer was selling fruit. His loud gravelly voice bounced off the buildings on either side of the street, and was swept around the corner by the wind. I stood listening for a minute; he was mad, the big man with the broken nose and a day’s growth of beard and his shouting voice was something I could understand. He noticed me and began to direct his sales talk to me. I spread my empty hands. “I haven’t any money,” I said and walked away.
This is when the truck almost hit me. I said I was sorry. “No need to say sorry to me,” said the man. “You’re the one who nearly had it.” He turned to a woman behind him. “Thought she was a goner. She just walked straight out, never looked, just walked straight out…”
The woman asked, “You all right dear?” “Yes,” I said, “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you very much, I’m quite all right really.”
They nodded and moved on, the man still muttering angrily to himself and once again I was alone. I had been going to cross the street. Now I was afraid to. What was there for me on the other side? I didn’t know. I didn’t know why I was there or where I was.
I crossed the pavement slowly and leaned against a storefront. Before, I had moved as if in a dream without will. Now it was as if I had awakened and the reality more of a nightmare than the dream. I leaned against the plate glass, enveloped by panic. I woke up then and it took a long time before I went back to sleep.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 89
Monday night
Hi again,
I’ve taken your idea – simple but it works to let Gloria relax and rest and I jot down a few words and notes about her dreams as to get the key to the whole dream. I know from experience now that no matter how sure I am of a dream at the time unless caught on paper its most of the time forgotten in part – one thing though is that anything important simply grabs hold of the mind and doesn’t let go.
Like tonight, I woke Gloria up feeling something important had happened – that I had reached out and maybe grabbed hold of an important image – a while later it was hazy and now I can only remember t
he dream by seeing the picture of it in my mind.
I’m going to tell you about this dream without being aware of who the people in it were. It had to do with a little girl again – I see two people – a girl and a man holding a chair, he’s telling the child to put a sweater on or a coat because they’re going out and won’t be back till very late. He picks up a chair and the little girl sees it’s not the large chair he was holding (he’s set that one down) it’s a little chair and a look of alarm comes to the girls face – she wants to know where they’re going and he says, “It’s a surprise, you’ll see, come on and stop the questions.” The two are walking down the road and he stops by the forest and goes to the grave, he had destroyed where a little body had been. You can barely see the marks now – the little girl stays back till he angrily beckons for her to follow – when they get there, he picks up a spade and starts to dig near where the grave had been and when he’s dug a hole he puts the little chair in – scoops the little girl in his arms and sets her on the chair. She’s terrified because he tells her, “This is the surprise, you were so nervous about, see it’s going to be fun, you were lonesome and upset about the baby you thought was buried here. I figured, I’d bring you near here, and leave you here, but first I’m going to throw some sand on you so you can feel closer to the baby you thought was there. Here is where the dream got bad because the little girl covered with sand up to her neck and she’s screaming, “Let me out, it’s going to get dark and I’m scared,” and he says, “Only dead people here no one will bother you,” then he stops shoving sand at her and says, “If you promise to knock at my door tonight and say, “I want to come in” well, I’ll think about letting you come with me.” The little girl doesn’t know what he’s talking about but she’s about to promise the moon to be let out – then the man says, “Well, I don’t know,” and started to throw more sand on her – when it hit the little girl’s face. I woke Gloria up, so I don’t know what happened next and I gave up the nightmare – have more notes but I’m very cold and very tired so I’ll stop here – don’t think I’m too much help tonight but don’t you give up – it’ll get better and we need you as we always do.
Gloria Rising: A Story of Hope and Survival In Dark Evil Places Page 14