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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 pitchfork 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 prognosis 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 gin
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 rinse, but quickly changed her mind. The last time he caught her “butt-naked” she got a freezing
shower. This time she would, she
thought slyly, take one of the pills and retreat back to her bed. She would be clever this time, so that
her husband wouldn’t 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 that 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
first 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 a while
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 couldn’t shake…. The voice in his dream and the breeze in his
study were one and the same thing.
Something evil was in this house, testing his faith and threatening his
very soul; it had entered through Cora, his wife.
******
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.