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The
Three Dreams
As exhaustion overtook him, Adam tried
unsuccessfully to stay awake. He had
what Dwight Higgins referred to as a “patch things up” meeting with the elders
tomorrow evening, which had been organized by Dwight, the senior elder of the
church. He had a speech to compose for
the meeting and a sermon to prepare for Wednesday’s Young Couple’s Night but no
energy to accomplish his goals.
His eyelids fluttered and head
bobbed forward repeatedly as he battled sleep.
He found his torso slipping gradually forward in his chair. At the threshold of unconsciousness, his
eyes finally closed and his forehead touched the desk. At first, in a semi-conscious state of mind,
he began rising weightlessly above the floor.
From across the void where his body sat, were things of this world: a
wicked wife, unfulfilled dreams, and the many cares that weighted him
down. Somewhere in that faraway place
also lay notes, a Bible and pages of scripture fluttering in the breeze. For just a moment then, as the passages
flew, he realized he was asleep and hovering around the room. He was still conscious, out of his body and
in one of those rare experiences called a lucid dream. This time, however, there were no crowds and
heavenly choruses singing. There was
only a deep and abiding sense of peace, as if his body had separated from his
spirit and he was finally meeting the Lord.
As he drifted into deeper levels of slumber,
his mind traveled back to progressive points in the week: Cora’s shower,
Sunday’s confrontation at the church, and this morning’s ordeal at the
hospital. Patches of memory blended
with fantasy to create the imagery of dreams.
Buried in this kaleidoscope was the emotional trinity of doubt,
frustration, and despair. A great mass
of clouds moved peacefully toward him while he floated from his lucid state
into a prophetic dream. A Phoenix
suddenly broke through the clouds, flapping its devilish wings. No longer aware that he was dreaming, Adam
had been startled by the specter and grew terrified as he drifted closer to its
cloud. A pitch fork was clutched in the
dragon’s hands. Horns appeared on its
head and two cat-like eyes in its grotesque face. Before long, as he watched the Phoenix’s body transform
completely into this stereotype fiend, the surrounding clouds darkened and
flashed with lightning. Following each
flash was a peel of thunder as the cloud grew darker and darker and the sky
behind faded to black. Two great orbs
expanded from the cat-like eyes, as the body transformed now into something
resembling a toad. When he was only a
short distance from this horror, however, it’s lower half turned into a
swirling column of smoke and it shrank as a genie through the cloud.
A great, featureless miasma now
gradually darkened the firmament.
Fearing that he, himself, was falling, along with the specter, to earth
or, perhaps, hell, he tried to scream but could not hear his voice. A dreadful silence, as that preceding the
Big Bang, gripped the universe, swallowing up the earth and the firmament as
well. God seemed ready to destroy the
cosmos. As it happened in the previous
dream, however, the setting, as seen in a movie set, faded to black. Adam was suddenly alone in the darkness, the
familiar backdrop of his study gradually materializing in his dream.
The shadowy warning faded as a dream within a dream,
as he appeared to awaken at his desk.
Something was with him as he rose to his feet; he
could feel it in the house, hovering at his back, watching him closely as he
walked down the hall. Closer and closer
he came to the bathroom. A great dread
filled him as he reached for the door.
As he fought the impulse, it was as if invisible paws pushed him toward
his goal. Hatred consumed him, while
fear held him in check. Out of nowhere
a knife appeared in his hand. He knew
what he must do to cut the misery out of his life, but something else, stronger
than fear, now stood in his way: . . . his soul.
******
As he dreamed, Adam wrestled with
temptation in his mind. A third
dream--the most terrible of the three--now played in his head. Occasionally his snoring was interrupted by
murmurs and faint yelps, for he frequently talked in his sleep. His eyelids fluttered and body jerked, as
something awful began happening in his dream.
In the master bedroom, while Adam
napped, his wife, Cora, wrestled with her own demons: alcohol and drugs. She had slept soundly for nearly six hours
before awakening in a sweat. Though her
flu was running its course, she needed a drink. A joint of marijuana would also be welcomed right now.
Adam would have her believe that her
alcoholism had taken its toll and her liver, kidneys, and lungs had become
permanently impaired. But her recent
trip to Doctor Bledsoe’s office had proven him wrong. At the doctor’s insistence, Cora had several tests done to her in
the lab, including a lung x-ray and blood tests that gave her a clean bill of
health. What her husband didn’t know
was that Cora had, during a sober moment, called the doctor’s office, herself,
to get the results. A mere bronchial
infection, that had been cleared up after medication, had once caused them to
suspect lung cancer. The blood tests
had been thrown in for good measure.
Even before the trip to the hospital, however, she sensed that she was
not sick, at least not terminally. Her
husband had probably been exaggerating her condition to make her behave. If this was so, he had failed
miserably. Cora, Doctor Bledsoe once
admitted to Adam, was, in spite of her bad habits, in good health. Unless he slowed down and stopped stressing
out the way he did, she might outlive him.
This prognoses was, of course, before her bout with
the flu and her most recent binge.
Rising from the bed, she felt the room spinning in all directions, her
feeling of nausea growing as she staggered down the hall. She needed a drink. . . She needed it now!
Reaching the bathroom would take all
her strength. It had been her haven and
place to escape. There, when her
husband was away on church business or cloistered in his study, she would sneak
a smoke and sometimes take a drink. It
was where she hid her gin, marijuana (when she could buy it) and, more
recently, her stash of pills. Sometimes
she would sit on her throne in the darkness to play it safe, while he was off
on an errand, whiling away the hours before he returned. Occasionally, when she had the house to
herself, she would brazenly drink or smoke where it suited her, often in front
of the television or passed out on the bed.
When she was not in an alcoholic or drug induced state, she would be in
another world that would have been much worse in her husband’s eyes:
prostitution. Added to her household
allowance, it had allowed her to buy alcohol and drugs and was the reason why
she had an endless supply.
This time, when she reached the
bathroom, she remembered that her husband had poured out her gin but had failed
to find her stash. After lifting off
the toilet lid and fishing around at the bottom of the tank her fingers brushed
the plastic sack containing the pills that would supplement her gin. A yelp of glee escaped her throat. Just one of the tiny white tablets would do,
when it would take several gulps of redeye to make her drunk. Gin and, for that matter her old standby
marijuana, left telltale odors her husband would quickly detect, whereas her
“magic pills” left no such trace.
Perched shakily on her throne, she
began pulling off her sweaty clothes in preparation for a shower, but quickly
changed her mind. The last time he
caught her “butt-naked” she got a freezing shower. This time she would, she thought carefully, take one of the pills
and retreat back to her bed. She would
be clever this time, so that her husband would not know. When he went looking for her she would
pretend to be asleep as the world around her spun and she floated around the
room.
To her befuddled mind, a sense of
security still hung within these walls.
The glare from a sudden match gave her face a devilish glow. With the cigarette dangling from her mouth,
she groped behind the toilet until she found her stash. Groaning with delight, she lifted it up
shakily, tried to remove just one, but ended up cramming several of the tiny
pills into her mouth.
The realization she had just
overdosed herself on amphetamines was clouded by the fast-acting drug. Dimwittedly now, she settled in the place
which had become her spiritual home. A
look of ecstasy grew on her face as the drug took hold. She was beyond pain at this stage. Even the lingering symptoms of the flu were
barely felt. Almost instinctively then,
she tried putting her stash back where it belonged but found her hands not in
tune with her brain. The signals, close
to the motor reflex level, were becoming vague. Instead of putting them behind the toilet, she spilled her pills
onto the floor.
Disoriented and on the verge of
unconsciousness now, Cora sat there staring into space, a strange light glowing
in her eyes. Helpless, hopeless, and
godless, she felt her body listing as a boat on a stormy sea, slowly capsizing
onto its side. A familiar voice, she
usually heard in her head, now whispered into her ear “good girl Cora, you’re doing just fine!”
Cora had forgotten her original plan
to return to the master bedroom and was too far gone to care. Moving, as a vapor across the floor, Satan, exited
the restroom and reentered the hall.
Once again it could hear snoring down the hall. So far, its scheme was working: Adam was on
the breaking point, especially after today.
Cora, it was confident, would push him toward the edge. It was good that he had slept long enough to
allow her another binge—this time with pills.
Now, it was time to awaken him and give him another shock.
******
Gently, to rouse the reverend, Satan
blew warmly into his face. Responding
slowly at first, Adam tumbled through dark shadows before awakening at his
desk. For several moments he just sat
there, staring into space, basking in the warmth, lulled by the quiet,
increasingly aware of its presence in the room. Gradually, with a feeling of déjà vu, he stood up, looked around
his study, and walked shakily down the hall.
The kitchen, he discovered, was in
the same shape as his mind: messy and incredibly jumbled. Piles and puddles greeted his gaze. A rotten smell pervaded the air. Only, after great effort, could he find the
coffee canister. Impatiently, he found
a coffee filter, stuffed it into the basket and filled it almost to the
brim. It didn’t matter how it would
taste; he wanted it strong--black and sugarless to match his mood. After waiting only a few moments, he jerked
the pot out of the coffee maker, allowing the basket to drip onto to the hot
plate as he poured coffee into his cup.
Jamming the pot back in, he listened briefly as the plate sizzled and
steamed, thinking fleetingly of Dante’s Inferno and the poet’s depiction of
hell.
After a few sips of coffee, it began
coming back to him, slowly, as a dark wave filling his mind, until both the
dream and wake up call swam darkly in his mind.
At first, he made no connection between the
two. He expected nightmares after
today. A strange calm filled him as he
sauntered back to his desk. There was a
lull in the house that he could not explain.
A sense of destiny, long absent from his thoughts, grew in the
calm. It was as if something incredible was going to happen; and it was
beginning in this house.
Surfacing at the end of his dream
was also the resignation he had as he fell asleep at his desk. . . What was
going to happen was out of his hands!
He had tried and tried again; it
was now up to God! Such thoughts
were momentarily comforting. But there
was something else that troubled him now.
He remembered a voice in his dream asking him “Adam, why do you wait?” The remainder of the dream came to him
slowly as sudden, terrible flashes of death and destruction aimed at his wife.
For a few moments, it remained
fragmented, lacking a purpose or plot.
Gradually then, as incoming waves, they washed up on the shore of his
conscious mind: grisly reminders of his dream.
The macabre blood lust began stabbing his conscience then and, at the
same time, echoing the anger he felt. . . More and more pieces washed up, until
the entire dream flooded back, as one terrible whole. Again and again the scene replayed: the stabbing and headless
wife, until finally, during its last rerun, the voice was heard blaring in the
background, coaxing, taunting, and telling him what to do.
Strangely enough, as he sipped his
coffee, the horror faded as had the creature in his second dream. Both the first and second dreams had almost
been forgotten but the nightmare he just experienced seemed smeared throughout
his skull. After dreaming it out, much
of his anger seemed spent. It was not
his fault what he dreamed. . . It was what caused it that bothered him now.
A voice, he had never heard before,
had entered his sleep, directing his actions against his wife. Gleefully, almost erotically as he listened
to its command, he had hacked his wife to death: on the toilet, on the floor,
and finally in the hall. During the
meantime, as would a mad dog, she bit, tore, and scratched him, as though she
were impervious to his knife. But in
the end, as with Medusa, he had cut off her snarling head, triumphantly tossing
it into the commode. It had been the
worst nightmare of his life. Horrifying
as it was, though, it was the voice telling him what to do that gave him pause.
While he slept, it appeared as if Satan was in
control. It was true that Satan used
the wife to tempt and taunt the minister, but doubt, frustration and despair
had worn him down. Through her
misdeeds, the devil set the mood for what played in his head. Adam had walked onto the dreamscape driven
by pent-up hate. Though it was
comforting for him to say “the devil made me do it,” however, Satan had not yet
entered his mind, so it knew nothing of his dream or its success so far. . .
Yet victory seemed close now. It could
see it this moment in the reverend’s gray eyes and had sensed it in his
demeanor today—strong emotions: anger. . . desolation. . . and hate.
Sitting back in his chair, Adam shut his eyes and
managed a brief, contrite prayer. “Oh
Satan, you crafty fellow,” he then uttered, half seriously to himself. For awhile afterwards, as he finished his
coffee, he tried blanking it out: the terrible dream and ominous voice. He even tried, with less success, to blank
out his feeling that Satan, not God, was in this house. He could feel its presence in his study, as
he had yesterday. There was, as there
had been then, peace in his home: a tainted, unsettling quiet in which his wife
shared his house but not his life.
While listening to the silence, he
kept his eyes closed and sniffed the air.
It was clean, crisp, and pure.
At least in his study there was not a trace of liquor or smoke. After reflecting a moment, he was reminded
of what he had felt a few days ago when the phenomena first began. It had started as a cold breeze, slowly
warming up to his soul. It continued to
move about, as if it had a life of its own.
With sudden misgivings now, he stood
up, exited his study, and began another inspection of his home. Unlike before, he found the breeze
synchronized with the house. There was
no difference in the temperature outside his door and what he had felt at his
desk. When he reached the living room,
however, he sat down heavily on the sofa and shook his head. A conviction grew in his mind that he could
not shake. . . The voice in his dream and the breeze in his study were one and
the same thing. Something evil was in
this house; it had entered through Cora, his wife. Whether or not it was actually the devil or from her own free
will, it was testing his faith and threatening his very soul.
******
Jumping up from the couch, Adam
clinched his fist, swore aloud, and paced anxiously around the house. For several moments, as he paced, he mumbled
the Twenty-third Psalm. He also quoted
from other psalms, beginning with the first, his voice flat and eyes moving
restlessly over the floor:
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel
of the ungodly. The ungodly are like
the chaff which the wind driveth away.
The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the
congregation of the righteous.”
His voice trailed off momentarily,
until he began quoting from the Sixth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-fifth Psalm, at
times abridging them to suit his mood.
When he had reached the Sixty-ninth and Seventieth Psalm, his quotations
had elevated from mere chanting to a plea that God intervene now, this very hour.
“Save me, O God;” he cried “for the
waters are come in unto my soul. I sink
in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the
floods overflow me. I am weary of my
crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fall while I wait for my God. Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord!”
At this point, when he found himself
shouting at the top of his lungs, he shrank self-consciously into a chair. Now the
entire neighborhood knew! The
temptation to walk out of this house and never look back was suddenly strong. The fear of losing his sanity was weighed
against the ambitions of his ministry.
Everything would be wiped out immediately if he could just walk away. With his ministry, would go his wife, her
addiction, and all the cares of this world.
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