by Jeff Siamon
He made some herbal tea. He had acquired the taste living with Evie. Making it was a sort of homage to her. Which he acknowledged as a pathetic gesture in between sips and the thought that the next thing on the agenda was what to do about going to bed.
Forewarned is forearmed, he reminded himself. Maybe tonight whatever was out there would reveal itself. Then he remembered he had left Little Connie in the car. (That’s what he decided to call his cells in the beaker.) And he debated for several sips whether to go and get it. (Him?)
He lost the debate.
He was still thinking about it on the elevator ride down. Maybe he should try and sit up all night. With himself on the bed beside him. Maybe that would rout out whatever it was.
He half expected something extraordinary to happen when he opened his car door to retrieve the case. It would be busted open and the beaker gone. Or more dramatically, the beaker would have exploded and the car would have been transformed into that pulsating dark mass that had seemed to have attacked him.
But there was nothing out of the ordinary. Not with his car or the case.
Nothing out of the ordinary either when he went back up in the elevator and into his apartment.
He placed the case on the table beside the computer. A defiant act? His cells next to what had been a conduit to whatever-was-out-there, out there.
The screen saver had taken charge and the screen was dark. Connie looked at it and wondered. Should he wake the computer for another challenge? But he was tired. All of a sudden. Actually, several fathoms beyond tired. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. And just as suddenly, all this ─ the mental phantoms he had imagined ─ seemed ridiculous. All he wanted now was to get some sleep. And dreams and phantoms and fears could go to hell.
24
Heart pounding. Running. From or to, he didn’t know.
This was a different dream. This running. This motion. Not passive. He’d look over his shoulder from time to time. As if something or someone was after him. But there was nothing but a wall of blackness. Like it was night. And he felt that that was strange. His dream-self felt. Because in front of him, it wasn’t black. Nor above or below him. Everything around him, it seemed, was this dull grey. So dull, in fact, that he couldn’t distinguish between where the sky ended and the ground began.
He ran until he couldn’t take fast enough breaths to keep going. Then no breaths at all. And he stopped. Head bent over. Hands on his knees. Gasping and shaking from the effort of running. Dreams are crazy, his dream-self thought. Running when you have no reason to run. Fearful when you don’t know why you’re afraid.
He spent a moment to consider all this. As well as the different tone of his dream. Bent over and breathing so hard that his chest hurt. But it was a brief moment. His consideration. For like a thunderous wave in the ocean crushing onto a seawall, the black behind him ─ with a roar of a cyclone ─ struck him with such force that he collapsed. Then everything became dark. Black. So heavy this blackness was, that now his gasps were desperate. Desperate for breath. Desperate to be free from whatever was covering him. He felt ─ his dream-self felt ─ he had been entombed by this blackness. Suddenly buried alive.
The dream was new. Different, his dream-self reminded him. The fear was still there. But it was a combatant’s fear. Adrenalin-based. It motivated him rather than immobilized him.
As the dream went on. As he wriggled to free himself of this blackness. For seconds. Then minutes. Then what seemed like hours. The blackness never changed. It didn’t morph into two small spheres as it had in his dream. The two eyes of the dream girl. It was absolute black. Like deep space black without the pinpricks of galaxies or stars. A black hole of blackness. And sometime during this blackness and his struggles, he had a revelation. His dream-self had a revelation that this was not about fear and flight. His fear and flight. It was a challenge. Like the challenge he had made to his computer screen. Between his dream-self and this black hole of darkness. If he couldn’t throw it off, then he would become one with it. Both his dream self and his real self would be gone.
After this revelation ─ now more of a certainty ─ the struggle took on a new form. No longer a thrashing struggle. A random waving of arms and legs like a captive animal caught beneath a net. It became a contest of wills. Determination and concentration. These were his dream-self’s bulwarks of defense.
And that’s when he woke up. While his mind willed his will against whatever force or thing was threatening him. Or thought he woke up. For though he had the tactile impression of sitting up in bed, he still felt dream like.
The black was gone. There was now brightness where dark had been. More so than his apartment could ever produce. So much so, he had to close his eyes on it. Shut tightly as he sat up. And he remained like that for quite some time. Trying to decide if he was dreaming or really awake. For even though his eyes were closed, he could sense the brightness through his eye lids. Hear the quiet around him. Sense its hollowness that made it seem to come from vast distances. When he sniffed in the quiet’s dryness, it parched his nostrils. When he moved, he felt the roughness beneath him as if he were sitting on sandpaper.
Then there was the heat. It awoke his sweat glands so that perspiration suddenly covered his face. His body. Running down his cheeks. Crawling around under his clothes.
Dream or reality? Every sensation told him it was real. That it literally had the taste of reality. Especially when a trickle of perspiration found its way to his lips and into his mouth. He opened his eyes on the sensation. Blinking into the glare around him. Blinking for several minutes until the brightness became less painful.
And what he saw was not what he had expected to see. His expectations coming from his other dreams and all his episodes. There was nothing pulsating or dark around him. No waves threatening to engulf him. The only thing familiar was the sand. And the endless desert of its expanse.
Dream or reality?
He sifted his fingers through the sand by his side. Its grains felt too real to be dream-like. He held some up to his eyes and then scattered the grains into the air. Too real, he felt. As was the blue sky and the white blaze that was the sun.
So how do you tell if you’re dreaming. Do you pinch yourself? And if you do, does it hurt like in a dream or in reality? He pinched himself but he couldn’t tell. Had he been dreaming in the speakeasy? Were the people he saw dream people or real?
It seemed there was no way to tell.
The logical conclusion was that since there was no sand in his apartment. In his bed. He was dreaming. A reasonable assumption. But as he considered the idea, the way a dreamer looks upon his dreams and himself in the third person, he blinked away the desert and its sands. He was back in his apartment. Sitting up on his bed in exactly the same posture as he had been sitting on the sand. In barely a blink of an eye. He wasn’t even breathless as he usually was after his dream. Only the perspiration on his face and under his clothes was familiar. The reaction he always had from his nightmares.
And he might have dismissed any possibility that he hadn’t been dreaming. (As crazy as that possibility seemed.) Expect for two things. When he opened one of his hands after realizing that it was tightly clenched into a fist. When he spread his fingers apart, several grains of sand fell onto the bed cover. And if that wasn’t proof enough, the dim light in his room suddenly became the white glare of the desert scene again. The rumpled covers on his bed once again were the grains of sand. The window beside his bed had been replaced with sand dunes that, mirage-like, shimmered in the intense heat. They extended as far as he could see until a rivulet of sweat blurred his vision.
He shut his eyes on the desert scene. Then wiped the tears of sweat from around them. Dream or reality? It didn’t seem to make a difference which one he chose.
He sat. Eyes still closed. Expecting. Waiting to return to his real waking self. Conrad Brinkley in his perspiration-soaked undershirt. In his sleep-wear boxer briefs. Sitting up in his bed.
But
when minutes passed and he could still sense the intense light through his closed eyelids. The intense heat. As he wiped away the perspiration from his face as fast as it formed, he could only think. Could only conclude that dream or not, what he was experiencing was real enough.
He opened his eyes. Rose to his feet. Looked down at himself to see what he was wearing. His undershirt was gorged with sweat. His boxer shorts damp as well. His cast darkening from the perspiration. His bare feet, half buried in sand, beginning to burn from the heat. He looked around himself. In front. Behind. On either side. The view was the same. Desert. Sand dunes untouched by everything but the sun.
He wondered: What do you do ─ dream self or real self ─ if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a great expanse of nothing? For as far as he could tell, there wasn’t a plant of any kind to be seen. What do you do when you have no idea what to do?
The sun was past its zenith. As far as he could tell, squinting up at it. Either coming up or going down.
He turned his back on the sun. And waited. That’s what he had decided. He would wait for a time, then turn towards the sun to see if it was higher or lower in the horizon. Whether it was rising or setting. If it were rising, he would walk into its direction. If it were setting, he would go into the opposite direction.
These were really absurd decisions, he told himself after he had made them. Because in any direction, he had neither an idea where he was going or any hope that there was something out there to which to go.
But the question still remained: Dream or reality? The only thing he thought made it a dream was that he felt no fear. He was absolutely calm in the face of ─ if this was somehow real ─ certain death. In the middle of a desert. Alone. No water or food. No shelter. If he was really here, you would think he’d be frightened out of his mind. But he wasn’t.
That’s what he reasoned as he waited for the sun to change its position. That’s why when the sudden rush of fear invaded his senses, he was more surprised than fearful. He allowed the fear to grab at his emotions and at the same time, felt emotionless. Calm. Unafraid.
Then he realized why. It was the same sense of fear that had struck him in the hospital. A fear that wasn’t his own. And to that ─ this alien sensation ─ he hardened his face to it. And without summoning up the words, challenged it. This fear. Warned it that he could wrestle it down. As the black behind him had wrestled him down. Challenged it to try to chisel away his determination. Like: give me your best shot.
So concentrated was he on this contest of wills that it seemed to dull the sun’s glare. Even cooled the hot sands. This standoff. This contest. Like a mind wrestling match.
At that moment, when the two forces seemed to be evenly matched, it happened once again. The same sensation he had had in the hospital. Only stronger. A connection to something or someone shook his body as if he had a sudden attack of shivers from the cold. Only, like the fear that had invaded him, he was sure without knowing why, that it wasn’t his shivers. Even as it gripped him so powerfully, he fell to his knees. Then prone onto the sand. Shivering and writhing uncontrollably. Sputtering sounds and cries and howls that weren’t his own. While his other self ─ the self that was apart from this fear ─ was calm and calculating. Forewarned is forearmed. If he concentrated on his own self. His true self. He could master this other thing. Bring its fear down to its own knees.
And concentrate he did. Brows furled. Eyes tightly shut. And all the while, howls and screams flew out of his mouth. Arms and legs flailed. And all the while he reminded himself that none of this was his. That, rather than wanting to flee from this horror, he was the cause of it. It was he that had induced this fear.
As if he were some biblical prophet in the desert of evil. In the presence of something whose only meaning, only purpose was self preservation at any price. He mentally wrestled with this force. Struggled to drive it into submission with the determination of someone fighting to save a life. Like a she-bear defending its young.
And as he did so, the cries out of his mouth became fewer. Grew fainter. His limbs no longer twitched. The heat of the day, once dangerously oppressive, cooled. And everything around him became calm.
He got to his feet. Slowly. His legs shook from the effort. As did the rest of his body. Now his breaths came fast and deep. As if he had run a race. And won. He looked around himself. Wiped the last of the perspiration from his face and eyes. Dream or reality? It didn’t matter. He knew in those challenging moments, he had brushed up against evil. Incarnate. A force of destruction. Why it existed. Where it existed. He didn’t know. But evil was coming this way. He was sure of it. Dream or no dream. Yet, while the feeling was alarming, he remained calm. As he had during his mental battle with whatever this force was. Calm, despite standing without shelter, food or water in the middle of this desert expanse. He only had one regret. That if he should perish in this dream/reality, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what was about to happen. What was happening. For in that brief flash of connection, he saw without seeing. Heard without hearing. Knew without forming words that this force was devouring the humans of Earth. Consuming them with its fear and loathing. Consuming them or forcing them to perish if they resisted. Spiriting them away to some unknown place. To some unknown fate. He knew it with certainty.
25
So. What to do? Dream or reality?
He couldn’t see that any direction he might take was more promising than another. He could either remain where he was. Sit and wait for ─ he didn’t know what. Probably the end of him if this wasn’t a dream. Or walk in one direction or another.
The sun was dimmed now. As if a fog-like mist had filled the air. That would make walking easier. To be without water ─ easier.
He began to walk. The sun at his back. Looking behind every so often at his footsteps to make sure he was following a straight route. And as he plodded ahead, his feet sinking in the sand so that each step took some effort, he had the realization that, having repulsed this invasion, he had somehow changed. He had the feeling of a rush of dominance. Of power. Like having achieved some athletic accomplishment. A kick-off returner who had just run the full length of the field for a touchdown. He felt invincible. And crazy as it seemed to him ─ warrior strong.
That would have been a laugh a few weeks ago. More than a few laughs his whole life. And laugh out loud, he did. At that thought. Conrad Brinkley ─ sports hero? Warrior? He had always loved sports. In public school, he had been an eager participant, despite always being chosen last when teams were made up. Despite cries of “oh no, not Brinkley” when the team’s coach would send him in to play. Usually for the last few minutes of a game.
But now, this sense of force ─ a quiet of emotion ─ it possessed him. He had the unruffled feeling that a seasoned soldier has before a great battle. Assurance. Calm as he walked on to nowhere in this endless desert. Calm to meet his fate ─ whatever it was.
A crazy notion, to be sure. That’s what the part of him that was still the old Conrad Brinkley thought. This stance of cool. Pretty ridiculous for all the good it was going to do him. As a dream, it was just the pathetic wish fulfilment of a nerd. If it was real, there was no one to witness his heroic majesty. Also pathetic.
He walked for what must have been a few hours because when he checked the angle of the sun, it had sunk close to the horizon. The hours gone by weren’t reassuring. Other than his shadow, the desert sands remained empty of everything but sand. Several times, he had climbed to the top of a towering sand dune to get a perspective of where he was only to see more sand dunes in every direction.
By the time the sun had begun to set, the air had cleared of its mist and a rash of stars began to appear. That was something, he thought, resting on the edge of a sand dune ─ the stars. At least if he ended up dying in this wilderness, he’d have some sense of where he was.
The sunset was slow in coming. The cloudless warm glow lasted, he thought. for significant minutes. Significant because it gave him infor
mation. He had always been an addict for data. Dream or reality, long sunsets meant that he was far from the equator. In his real life ─ his waking life ─ the latitude of the sun was over forty degrees.
It had been years since his one university astronomy course. Constellations had never been his strong subject. Too interested in terrestrial things. More the math of the cosmos than extra-terrestrial visions. He looked up at the sky. He’d wait and see what the stars told him. Not that it really mattered, he thought. But it was a puzzle to solve. As much for the satisfaction of finding a solution as it was to help him ignore the growing thirst that had inveigled itself into his otherwise positive attitude. The Big Dipper would at least tell him what season it was. Also direct him to the North Star. Direction and season. At least he’d have both to lead him to wherever.
Not much of an advantage except that information was always a comfort to him.
He decided to wait for enough darkness to make out the Big Dipper. And, anyway, it soon would be too dark to continue on and see his footprints behind him. He wouldn’t be able to tell if he were walking in a straight line or not.
“Not that that was going to make any difference,” he said to himself. Aloud.
His voice startled him. The first intelligent sound he had heard since this all had begun. It was an eerie sensation. The sound of his voice. He spun around ─ very unwarrior-like ─ as if the voice had come from someone else. At the same time, he felt foolish for thinking such a thing.