Lingering Dread

The first time I had the dream, I was truly exhausted. I remember that it had taken me quite a bit of effort for me to finish the dishes and wipe down the sink and counters. I don’t like to go to bed with tasks unfinished. It makes me feel anxious. Otherwise, I would have dropped the sponge into the water and crawled into the bed without even changing into my nightgown. I was that tired. Instead, I had pushed through my tasks even though I was dead on my feet, as the saying goes.

When I finally crawled under the covers, I slept fitfully, waking in jumps and starts for at least two hours before I fell into a deep dreamless sleep. The next time I awoke, I could hear a deep, low hum that seemed to shake the bed beneath me. it was completely dark in the room. I could see the digital clock on the wall shelf. It was blinking on and off as if there had been a power outage. It read 3:00 a.m.

I checked the watch on my wrist. It was an old round-faced analog that had belonged to my father. It had a glow-in-the-dark face that had fascinated me as a child. Dad had given it to me after Mom crossed over the veil. The greenish glow showed me that it was exactly three o’clock. No power outage.

Why was the clock blinking? I pondered this a moment, then took a trip to the loo. Might as well, since I was awake. I could still hear the hum. “Must be coming from a car nearby,” I thought. “How those kids can hear what they’re listening to so loudly beats me.” I shrugged my shoulders and went back to the bed. Slipping back under the blanket, I snuggled in against the slight chill in the air and pulled my feet in. I can’t stand having my feet uncovered no matter what temperature it is. Rolling over, I drifted back into slumber.

I am running. No…not me. A wild-eyed blonde in medieval nightclothes, running through woods. She is afraid. More than afraid. I can feel her terror. Panting, she runs barefoot over brambles and fallen twigs, unheeding the branches that bend and slap as she pushes through the dense forest. She stumbles, falls, picks herself back up, and continues running. She keeps turning her head to look back at where she has come from, tripping and catching herself, until she can look back no more. Stopping at a tall tree with low hanging branches, she leans back against the trunk and moves into the foliage. She is heavily pregnant. Out of breath, she stands against the tree, panting. She is not me; I am but an observer. I become aware that I am dreaming. This lucidity is not unfamiliar to me, but the scenario is unlike any I have before experienced. I do not know this landscape. The trees are older than any I have seen before, awake or asleep. The forest is denser, darker, and teeming with more night life. I note a deep loamy scent of layer upon layer of decaying leaves. This forest floor has not been touched. There is no path but the one forged by the woman who had just come through. Whoever she is running from would have no trouble finding her if they still followed. I look at her. She looks back at me, pointedly holding eye to eye contact. I feel as if I know her. I’ve seen her before. Who is she? I see her mouth moving but hear no words. I shake my head. “I can’t hear you,” I say aloud. She mouths the words again. This time I can read two of them:

“Help me.”

I awoke with a start. I could still feel the dampness of the forest all around me. What kind of dream was that? Who was that woman? She had seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t place her. I only knew that she was not me. I was only following her, watching. I pulled out my journal and scribbled down everything I could recall from the dream. It seemed important to remember. My friend Lisa, the therapist, would likely tell me I was working out some of my daytime problems and the woman was an aspect of me. Maybe I was running from myself.

I had the same dream every night for the next week. Every night, I had trouble falling asleep. Once I did, it would seem to be a deep, dreamless sleep until I woke up to find myself staring at a blinking clock reading three am. I’d sigh, take a trip to the loo, then tuck myself back into bed.

There she was again, running…running…running…terrified…hiding behind a tree…looking at me…beseeching…

Beseeching…

Help me!

The words became more insistent. Even though I heard no audible cries, the look on her face changed each night, soon revealing not only raw terror, but insistence. Anger.

Every morning it took me longer to adjust to the waking world. I would sit up in bed, my heart racing as if I had just completed a marathon. Something needed to be done about this – but what? After about a week of this, I was just about ready to call Lisa. I didn’t want to bother my friend with my problems, but I don’t have my own therapist, and I can’t afford to run out and get one.

One morning after I had shaken off the night’s fear, I decided to finally call Lisa. I would do it that evening when she was home from work. Later that day when I walked out to the mailbox, there was a distinct chill on the air. The temperature had dropped at least fifteen degrees since the day before. It wasn’t unusual at this time of year, but I had not heard that this was expected. Looking up, I noted the build-up of gray rain-loaded clouds rising above the mountains to the east. We were far past the monsoon season, but rain wasn’t out of the question. I pulled the mail out of the box and headed back into the house.

Sorting through the mail, I tossed advertisements, coupons for things I never needed, and invitations for life insurance. When I got to the invitation to join AARP – a staple in my mailbox since I turned about forty-five, I laughed. Maybe that’s it – I’m just running away from my aging self! I chuckled to myself, thinking maybe I wouldn’t have to call Lisa about this after all.

There were two envelopes that looked like real mail. Two more than usual. The first turned out to be a late Halloween card from a friend. I laughed at the cute card and set it on a shelf, then turned the final envelope over so I could read the front. It was addressed to me using my nickname, Kitty. My full name is so different from where my folks went with my nickname, it was surprising anyone I didn’t know closely could remember either of them. I looked at the return address. I didn’t recognize it, nor did I recognize the old-fashioned cursive in which it was written. It was postmarked Boston. I don’t know anyone in Boston. Shrugging my shoulders, I set the unopened letter in a basket on the counter and switched on my electric tea kettle.

Once my tea was brewed, I went into the living room and sat down in the little rocking chair. I patted my lap and looked at my ancient dog-friend, Gina. “Well, hop on up.” She wagged her tail and cocked her head at me, then jumped onto my knee. She settled in between my thigh and the chair’s arm. I sat there sipping my tea and pondering the dreams. I hadn’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since the dreams began. What was going on? What is it about three am? The last thing I remembered before I drifted to sleep was setting my teacup on the table next to me.

My walk to the post office was exhilarating. The winter air was crisp and cold, with little to no breeze. Humidity was low, the skies were clear, and everything seemed perfect. Pulling the door to the post office open wide, I stepped inside. It was dark. Pulling off my sunglasses, I noted that the lights were dimmed, though there was a line of customers at the counter. It seemed odd to me, but nobody else acted like anything was amiss. I stepped forward to get into line—and bumped into a woman in front of me. I swear I had not seen her before. When I walked into the building, the nearest customer was a good five feet away from me. Now, this woman was right in front of me and the next person was at least four feet in front of her. I felt chill run through me and the hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood up. For a moment I felt dizzy, as if I might pass out.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Would you please step closer to the line? The door is right behind me. I need to move.”

The woman turned her head very slowly, jerkily. Lights blinked in my peripheral vision and I heard an electric sizzle. I was transfixed as I watched her turn her face toward me. It was pale, thin, with bright blue eyes that burned like ice when they met my eyes. I was encompassed by a white noise that seemed to come from everywhere all at once. The crackling electricity combined with the same low hum I had heard the first night of my dreams. The woman moved her lips. Now I recognized her. It was the young woman from my dream forest. This time I could hear her voice, scratching through the noise like fingernails on a blackboard. Help me! It seemed much more than an entreaty. There was a sense of accusation interwoven into abject fear.

I instinctively reached out to place my hand on her shoulder, to calm her, to bring some reassurance. My hand fell through the apparition. I pulled my hand back, bringing it to my cheek. It was ice cold. I gasped, and the woman dissipated. Her form simply twinkled out and she was gone.

The lights brightened and I stepped past the place where she had stood to join the line to the counter. Nobody had moved. It was as if the last few moments had passed outside of time.

I called Lisa that night. After I explained the reason for my call, she suggested we get together. “Dreams fascinate me,” she said. “I want to talk to you face to face and take notes. May I come over?” We set a date for breakfast on Saturday, almost a week away. In the meantime, she told me to try to find something in my life that I might be running from. I thanked her, but as I hung up, I grumbled, “as if I haven’t already been trying to figure that one out!”

The many emotions I had been feeling since the dreams began slipped into an unshakeable sense of foreboding. Perhaps if the days had passed uneventfully, the feeling would have disappeared. That night the dreams had turned into terrifying nightmares. Where I had just sensed the fear in the other woman, now I, too, felt terrified. I would be back in the dense and gnarly woods, watching the woman running from someone and hiding. Now it was a different part of the forest each night.

Her pregnant form was ungainly but she was fast and she was cunning. She found places to hide that I would not have thought of. I watched as she crawled into the small crack of a large tree trunk, somehow squeezing her large belly enough to crouch inside. Another night she dug a hole in the mud along the side of a small creek, covering herself in the mud and fallen foliage. In my dreams, no one ever caught up with her. She was ahead of them, but they could not be far behind, for the sounds of crashing tree limbs and crunching leaves permeated the scene.

I was relieved to awaken each morning, to look about my room and assure myself that nobody was being chased now. By the end of each day, though, the strong sense of foreboding would descend upon me. I began to notice a low hum filling the silence. It was the same hum I had heard both the first night and in the post office dream. At first, I tried to convince myself it was the sound of the electric appliances, the constant noise of human civilization. I tried to convince myself it was nothing unusual.

But it was unusual. The question was, is it real or is it my imagination? Was I losing my mind? Were my dreams a sign that I was becoming unhinged? Was I chasing my own psyche?

On Friday, the day before I was to meet with Lisa, I realized I hadn’t journaled my dreams as faithfully as I should have done. I was planning to bring it out during the meeting so I wouldn’t forget anything important. After dinner I brought the journal to the kitchen table and read through the pages where I had recorded the recurring dream. As I read, a low, rumbling hum began to rise around me and my right hand began to itch to pick up a pen. I let myself give in to the urge. I turned to the first blank page and set the pen to it. I had barely started to write when suddenly words were flowing from the pen without thought or purpose on my part.

When I was finished, I set the pen down and looked at what I had written. I was surprised to see that all the words were well-formed and a name was clearly spelled out. Millicent.

Millicent. An old-fashioned name. I was thirsty. I took a long drink of ice water, then sat back with the journal.

Millicent is afraid. She is afraid of the dark. Her heart hurts. Millicent is afraid. The dark is too dark. The others are coming. Where can Millicent go? Help her. Help her. Help me. Help…

This was repeated over and over for six pages. Every few lines or so the writing would shift from the third person to the first.

Millicent is afraid. I am afraid of the dark. I am not alone. I don’t want them to come. Help me.

A strong sense of foreboding enveloped me as I read.

Who is Millicent?

And what the hell is she doing in my dreams?

Suddenly and inexplicably, I remembered the letter I had placed in the basket the other day.