A Pilgrim’s Digression

Have you ever had a dream that you remember upon waking, and you realize you may have been having the dream off and on for some time? This morning, the alarm awoke me from a nightmare that I am pretty sure is a recurring nightmare.

In the nightmare, I am a little boy about Brendan’s age, that is about four. The setting is a house that could be my paternal grandparents’ house as it was twenty-seven or eight years ago. However, in the dream I don’t recognize it as my Grandma and Grandpa’s house, at first.

As the nightmare begins, I am outside playing with the dog, a beagle. He is possibly a dog my Grandpa owned when I was very small, named Flip. In my dream, again I don’t recognize him, but as the dream has congealed into memory I think it is that dog. How did my subconscious retain this memory of him? I couldn’t have been more than three.

I am outside playing with Flip. The light is golden, but fading, as in evening. There are woods close by, as there were woods surrounding my grandparents’ house in the mid-seventies. Why do I feel such dread in this place I love above all others?

The dog seems nervous, looking off to the woods as if expecting someone. I begin to feel fear. I have been playing with a piece of dry hay, admiring its beauty. “I will keep this for later,” I say to the dog and nervously start for the house.

In the house, I hurriedly look for an envelope or piece of paper I can fold into an envelope for the hay. My fear increases exponentially. I can’t find anything for the hay, and so I shove it in my pocket. I keep going to the windows. Someone is coming. Oh God. I am going to pee myself. Someone is coming.

I run downstairs into the basement, my body shaking from fright and adrenaline. Then I run back up to make sure the doors are locked. This is how I know the house is Grandma’s: I recognize the door knobs.

Back downstairs again, I run to the side of the basement where I was never allowed to go. In real life, I eventually became afraid of this part of the basement. It was just another of my irratonal fears. Grandpa’s guns and workbench were there. Sometimes he would let me help him load shotgun shells; he always kept powder and shot in Prince Albert cans, and he would let me pull the lever on the loader that packed the shells. When Grandpa wasn’t around, I was never allowed over there, and I never would have went there anyway. It was darker, colder, uncarpeted unlike the “family room” portions of the basement.

In the dream, that’s where I go, however, the part of the basement where I would never ordinarily go. There is a woman sitting there in the gathering gloom, in a rocking chair. She wears an old yellow dress, but is fairly young with light hair. She cannot be my Grandma; Grandma had dark hair when she was younger. The yellow woman rocks in her chair on the cement floor, smiling vacantly. She cannot help me. Somehow I know she is useless and I resent her.

About six feet up the wall, at ground level, are a series of small window panes. I look up at the windows, panic rising in my chest. He’s coming. Yellow light glints through the glass. Evening light is coming. He is coming.

The shadow of boots strides across the panes of glass, blocking the evening light for a few moments. One window to another the shadow of the boots fall as he approaches the steps to the front door. He is coming. Oh God.

The alarm wakes me at ten ’til five. I hit snooze for five minutes. I lie there remembering the nightmare. When I get up, I am chilled all over. Even later, in the shower, just thinking about the nightmare makes me go cold and dead. Sitting here writing about it tonight, I feel cold. I cannot even convey in words the depth of fear I felt and still feel when I think about the dream.

My problem is I don’t fall deeply asleep until early morning. Then I have to get up before five, just at the point I am entering deep, REM, drool-on-the-pillow sleep. I never seem able to have a dream through to completion.

But what does this dream mean? I have no clue. I only hope I don’t dream that dream again. Something that should have made me happy—remembering a place and a beloved dog from so long ago that they were all but forgotten—filled me with the greatest fear I’ve felt since I was a kid and afraid of the dark.