/yesod

Author: T.M. Camp

  • masks and shadows

    Changing the sheet on my daughter’s crib tonight, strange flashes of faces in her room — white and black, bold stripes and contrast, large teeth and bulging eyes framed by wild hair . . . almost like the stark, menacing glee of Japanese oni masks.

    These flashes, somewhere between a mental image and a visualization — not quite registered by the eyes or by the mind, but in a layer between them.

    They’re there, they’re gone.

    Puzzling.

    Later...

    Passing by the kitchen window I catch a glimpse of a dark figure striding across the roof of my neighbor’s house. 

    There . . . then gone.

  • the floating eye

    ...and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body.

    “Oh god, her eyes...”

    I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right eye has become detached and is floating freely between one socket and then other as she tilts her head, a dreamy smile on her face.

    It is horrible to see. It is my fault.

    So horrible that, later that day, I decline to tell my wife the particulars of my dream. I want to spare her the horrors of that image, the drifting float of our child’s eye.

  • robotic

    ... a brief visual flash this morning, something white and glossy scuttling across the floor towards me . . . about as wide as the coffee table, slightly taller, ducking its head to pass beneath it . . . insectile . . . vague impression of shiny black eyes, stripes along the legs and torso . . . attention and intelligence directed at me, artificial somehow and yet alive...

    And then . . . gone.

  • opening night

    ...I find myself in the front row, enduring an abysmal production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by my ex-wife.

    It’s godawful. Pretentious and ponderous. They’ve changed the language, modernized all the poetry out of it. And, insult to injury, they’ve added songs, turning it into a musical.
    bogle
    Only Puck holds any interest. Dark and twisted, a spiky clenched fist of mischief scuttling around the poorly-lit stage.

    The production closes with a clueless rendition of You Are My Sunshine — rewritten by my ex to include a commentary on the unreliability of love.

    Ugh.

  • great

    I would be delighted if my ex-wife didn’t show up in my dreams, however briefly, ever again.

  • early morning

    Pushing through the soft fuzz of the baby monitor, my daughter’s cries jolts me awake: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    I’m up and across the hall before I have a chance to clear the mist from my head. Standing over her crib, I pat her back and tell her it’s okay. Once she settles down I head back to bed. 

    I make the mistake of checking the time. 5am. 

    Just enough time to slip back to sleep before it’s time to get ready for work.

    My wife curls around my back — familiar and comforting, this shape we make together.

    Just as I’m drifting off, I hear my daughter again, fainter this time: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    I raise my head and listen. 

    Silence.

    Then, again: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    I sit up, my wife asking me what’s wrong.

    I can hear her calling faintly, as though from a distance . . . as though she’s moving further away. 

    “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    The light on the monitor is dim. No sound but the white noise buzz.

    “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    Faster now across the hall, at her crib in an instance.

    She lies there asleep, content. Safe.

    I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to ignore the faint cry that still pierces in the air, just barely audible.

    “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    My wife asks me what’s wrong. I shake my head, embarrassed and apologetic for disturbing her sleep. She puts up with so much of my insanity. Too much.

    “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    I get up and go to the little window, just open a crack to let in the hint of spring.

    Outside a bird calls, lonely in the early morning dark: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”

    I shake my head, kiss my wife, and head downstairs to get ready for work.

  • doing the dishes

    ...and as I turn to put a glass in the cupboard I startle and flinch backwards from the dark figure standing right at my left shoulder. 

    Vague impressions . . . someone looking into my face . . . a male presence about my height but larger, heavy-set almost . . . broad head, the bare suggestion of something there . . . a hat, perhaps?

    And then it is gone.

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good. 

    Here’s what’s left...

    ...a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are...

    ...my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days. 

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song. 

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings...

    ...I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.

  • Sunday nap

    ...there are three children playing at the curb, jumping in and out of a deep puddle of mud and dirt. The oldest of these, perhaps eight years old, stops in the midst of bossing the other two around and turns as he notices me...

    ...and a man’s voice tells me “Look to the world around you...” as I wake up, wondering where this dream or vision came from.

  • brief reunion

    ...we sit together in the small living room, balancing plates on our knees and doing our best to keep up the conversation despite the fact that there are some genuinely difficult conflicts unresolved between a few of us. And the fact that some of us are dead.

    It’s a surprise to see them, my grandparents. Odder still is the appearance of multiple versions of my grandfather — he sits with my grandmother, each of them in their late fifties, full of good humor and health . . . and he sits next to me in his early nineties, broken and cadaverous, his eyes pits of sorrow.

    My mother is there . . . but there is something odd about her. I can’t quite tell what it is and I don’t understand why no one else seems to notice or care...

    ...and when I wake, I wonder what it means . . . wonder if a call will come today with bad news.

  • footsteps and flashes

    After dinner, my wife runs to the store. My daughter and I play in my office.

    The whole time, my skin is crawling. I have a sense that someone — or multiple someones — is passing through my office, moving past us unseen.

    The sensation is uncanny, disquieting. My daughter seems not to notice.

    When my wife returns, I make no mention of it. 

    As we’re getting our daughter ready for bath time, my wife heads upstairs for a towel.

    She comes back into the room a minute later, unsettled. “I just saw a light move across the stairs.”

    It was a white light, smallish. She saw it briefly. But she saw it.

    We nod, matter of fact. Just another thing to add to the growing list of things we’ve noticed in the new house.

    Later that night...

    I’m finishing up a few things in my office, getting ready to head up to bed. I hear footsteps on the back stairs. They stop for a moment, then continue down.

    I go out to look, assuming my wife came down to get some water. 

    She isn’t there.

    I go back in my office. A few moments later, the footsteps again. This time on the front stairs.

    I open both doors of my office, looking to the front and back of the house.

    No one.

    It’s worth noting that there is no odd feeling, no crawling skin or discomfort or fear. 

    No sense that anything is wrong.

  • fragments

    ...a long bodied cat, muscular and lean, stalks through the room — insane eyes, gaping mouth drooling as it swivels its head from side to side . . . its long gray fur matted and ragged, trailing after it in the air...

    ...I turn and see the electrical plug floating in the air before my face, the cord dangling. With a start, I snatch it from the grasp of the unseen hand and shudder.

    I lay it down on the bedspread and turn to the nightstand. When I turn back the plug is floating there again. I dart my hand out and grab where the wrist would be, feeling something unseen struggle against me.

    I let it go, fascinated and supremely creeped out. Objects on a nearby shelf rattle as something passes around the room. The lamp overhead swings and I can see, in my mind’s eye, something there circling overhead — a faceted, multicolor crystalline rat. Waves of malign hate pour off of it.

    I command it to appear, my voice full of authority and strength.

    Unable to disobey, the creature shimmers into view — altering its form, taking a friendly cartoon shape as though made out of balloons.

    I grasp it in one hand and command it again, demanding it shed its false form and reveal itself for what it truly is.

    It struggles against my hand and the slow pull of my voice, drawing it out, forcing it into a form I recognize...

    ... I wander through the modular home, amazed that I’d forgotten we bought it just in case the new house didn’t work out. And in the back bedroom something terrible and sad lies under a sheet on the top bunk...

  • afternoon nap

    Mind wandering around as I waited for sleep to come, dozy logic moving from Macon Leary to Edward Gorey to Ernest Hemmingway . . . then, the image of a local highway, the flashing lights of police cars against the pale winter sky.

  • eastern promises

    I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go...

    ...the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals...

    ...a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky...

    ...the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out...

    ...tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world...

    ...gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them...

    ...edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets...

    ...standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape...

    ...spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment...

    ...the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand...

    ...the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist...

    ...and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.

  • honeysuckle

    About a month ago I noticed that whenever I walked into the kitchen of our house I could smell honeysuckle. This went on for a number of days before I mentioned it to my wife.

    She couldn’t smell anything.

    Even more strange, this only happened when I walked through a particular doorway. Coming in from another entrance, there was nothing.

    It’s worth mentioning that this is the same doorway that, sometimes, I will see a pale figure passing through as I approach.

    Not often, but it’s there.

    After a few days, the smell of honeysuckle went away.

    Tonight I smelled it again. 

    And tonight, for whatever reason, I’ve been seeing movement — odd, almost geometric figures — at the corner of my eyes.

  • payroll

    ...I find that I have overslept and am in a rush to get a stack of deposits to the University’s bank by noon, otherwise all of the faculty and staff paychecks will bounce.

    The deposit is a stack of checks and slips totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are pink and yellow carbon copies, very slippery to keep in order. I leave the darkened school library — exhausted students sprawl here and there across chairs and couches, utterly done in by finals and the drunken afterglow parties.

    I pass through a maze of corridors and stairwells, time slipping away. Once I get out to the parking lot, I see a few professors heading to their cars. Everyone wants to get to the bank before noon. It closes early on the weekends, of course.

    Running out of time, I try to flag down one of the faculty but they do not see me. I end up running through the surrounding office park, cutting between buildings and scrambling over landscaping. 

    Arriving at the bank, I see the tellers inside beginning to pack up for the day. I bang on the door but they wave me off, mouthing “we’re closed.”

    Somehow I manage to climb up to a small skylight and, quite suddenly, burst through to the floor below in a shower of glass.

    But, after all that, I make the deposit in time.

  • the new office

    ...and I’m surprised to find out that not only are each of us getting our own office in the new building, but we’ll have an attached bedroom as well. A few of my coworkers even have bunkbeds.

    The gossip around the office is that this is to allow for a more Mad Men like atmosphere.

    “Aren’t we way too busy for a bunch of womanizing?” I ask. 

    No one answers. They’re all too busy getting ready for the big new photo shoot with our latest client, Versace.

    The office is full of art directors, make up artists, and celebrities called in for the shoot. 

    I pass by an office where Christian Bale is getting his hair dyed a brilliant royal blue.

    I trade quips with George Clooney in the hall. He is wearing a two foot tall jet black fright wig and sports an impressive handlebar mustache — perfectly suited to go with his leather chaps and Village People bondage gear.

    It’s going to be an interesting day, I think to myself.

    (For what it’s worth, the tag line for the advertising agency where I work is “Exactly like nobody else.”)

  • the shadow on the stairs

    Dozing on the couch while the baby has her bath, I dream…

    …and at the turn of the stairs I look up to see a shadow slowly slide down the wall and onto the floor, like a black puddle of oil.

    From this pool, a figure slowly rises — an almost cartoonlike shape of a man, pale eyes like saucers peering out at me. 

    It drifts slowly down the stairs, halfway emerging from the shadow on the floor . . . drifting towards me.

    I run down the stairs and through the darkened living room, falling on the floor — my arms and legs suddenly heavy — immobilized. 

    I watch, helpless, as the shadow drifts down the stairs. 

    And I struggle to free myself when...

  • daycare rescue

    Somehow, I have become two people. There is the adult version of me, as I am now. And there is the teenaged version of me. 

    Together, we are plotting to rescue my youngest daughter from her daycare. The details of why she needs rescuing aren’t explained but, armed to the teeth and sick with worry, we make our plans.

    (Even in my dream, the proximity of guns and children disturbs me. My younger self tries to reason with my older self, to convince him that it’s better to go to the police. But he/I refused.)

    We sneak into the school one night — something else that isn’t explained, why it’s nighttime — doing our best to bluff our way past the receptionist. Explaining why there are two of us is difficult. 

    My older self is relieved when my teenage self says “I’m her older brother” — good thinking, kid.

    We do our best to keep the guns hidden as we make our way through the halls. But one of the kids sees the sawed off shotgun my younger self carries under his/my trenchcoat and we’re off to the races. 

    Teachers and parents and children scramble everywhere in a panic. With the police on the way, we rush into a classroom and get my/our daughter out safely. No one has been hurt, no one has been caught.

    But back at the house, the police are waiting — painting the cheap stucco walls of our neighborhood with screams of blue and red.

    My older self says “Take care of her for me...” leaving my younger self to hold onto his/our daughter while he/I (the older version of me) leads the cops away. He doesn’t get far. And neither do we.

    It is terrifying, stressful, and heartbreaking. And I am relieved when I wake.

  • echo | the recursive old woman

    Another entry from one of my old journals, this time from 1996. 

    It begins simply enough...

    I’m standing in front of a shelf full of journals and books in the dead man’s rooms.

    You can read the rest here.

  • music from an unknown room

    And, again, there was music playing when I laid down to take a nap earlier today.

    Faintly . . . as though someone was listening to a radio in another part of the house.

    But, of course, no one was.

  • music from an unknown room

    And, again, there was music playing when I laid down to take a nap earlier today.

    Faintly . . . as though someone was listening to a radio in another part of the house.

    But, of course, no one was.

  • a friend in need

    We’re all a little worried about Patton Oswalt.

    Having known him since we were kids, it’s obvious he isn’t himself lately. He’s depressed, lethargic, and we’re all little bit worried.

    But he’s a celebrity. It’s not like we can just check him into a hospital. So my wife and I and a few other friends go on Patton watch.

    I take the first shift, spending the evening with him driving around town. 

    After hitting a few bars, we end up wandering aimlessly through the darkened streets. He’s got a very cool, fully restored 1970s van with wood paneling and shag carpet. 

    I look over at him behind the wheel and ask “So… What do you want to do now?”

    He considers for a moment. Then he turns the wheel sharply, crashes the van through a small wooden fence, accelerates up over a hill and down into a small lake.

    As the engine misfires and dies, we sit there bobbing along.

    “I kinda knew you were going to do that,” I tell him. I figure it’s good he got it out of the system.

    “Holy shit,” he says. “Do you think we’re gonna sink?”

    I shrug. I figure were pretty buoyant for the time being.

    We drift closer to shore. Relieved, I gather up my cell phone and an old dream journals I’ve been carrying around lately.

    Then Patton rolls the windows down.

    The van tips in his direction and water starts to pour in. I scramble out my door and managed to step onto the shore without getting too wet.

    I look back as the van drifts away and sinks.

    Patton Oswalt goes down with the ship.

    I wait. After a few moments he surfaces, sputtering, covered in duckweed and laughter.

    Squishing all the way, streaming gray-green water, we walk back to his house.

    While he gets cleaned up, I make some calls. “The situation has gotten a little bit more complicated.”.

    When my wife arrives, she is particularly worried. She reveals to us that Patton has surgery schedule for tomorrow, which is the source of his depression.

    “Oh, right. Is this for his penis thing?” someone else asks.

    Apparently Patton was born with a very small... member. It’s haunted him for years and he’s finally famous enough (and rich enough) to afford a surgical procedure to enhance it.

    Still coming to terms with this news, I realize that we haven’t seen Patton in a while. After a quick search, it’s clear he’s snuck out the back.

    While a few people go off to see if they can find him, my wife and I and another comedian — I don’t remember who now — sit and talk as the sun comes up.

    At one point, the comedian gets out his marijuana and rolling papers. He offers the joint to me. 

    I tell him I not only don’t do drugs, but have never done drugs. 

    He gives me a look and I suddenly feel very old and conservative, like Don Draper hanging out with beatniks.

    He puts in a VHS tape from the doctor who is performing the procedure for our friend. I have to admit the before-and-after shots are impressive. 

    Apparently the doctor Is particularly popular with rappers. Who knew?

    Sometime later, Patton returns… a changed man. 

    He is glowing with pride and infused with glee. It’s a relief to see him, and see him so happy again. 

    “It went great!” He proclaims, hands on his hips. “The doctor says I’m ready for action again.”

    “I’ll be the judge of that,” my wife says.

    Patton unveils his majesty and, I have to say, I’m impressed.

    Not only is it quite large, both in length and girth, but the doctor has also done some sculpting as well, giving it the appearance of a cartoon shark. Fiberglass teeth complete the hot rod look.

    “I’m not entirely sure that’s what ladies want...” I say carefully, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

    I’m awake before he can reply.

  • echo | mother, father, cat

    I’m starting the process of transcribing dreams from my old journals. It’s interesting, to say the least. Leafing through those old notebooks, doing my best not to get drawn back into the past while I sift through these old pages for little scraps of dream.

    The first of these was just posted below.

    I’ll post more and more of these echoes in the days to come, but this first one is from a night in August over twenty years ago. 

    It begins with a series of questions...

    Do demons stand still? Can you look for them in corners or out of the way places? Do demons stop long enough for you to see them?

    You can read the rest here.

  • the fuzzy pink octopus spider monster

    This is the first dream I can remember — obviously, it’s not the first dream I ever had. That’s long gone now. But this is the earliest one I can remember...

    ...we’re driving in the car, my two brothers and me. Out mother is behind the wheel. We’re on our way to the grocery store. My older brother Scott sits up front, talking to our mom. My brother Jim and I are in the back seat, holding our pet rabbits. They are white, a perpetual look of panic in their pink little eyes.

    I realize somehow that something is not quite right with the rabbits. I see a vision within the dream, a flashback of our side yard where the hutch is kept. I see a wispy apparition flowing through the air towards them. It is pale pink, long snakelike arms or tentacles trailing through the air, reaching out blindly to tap along the fence like a blind man seeking out an open path. It is covered in stringy hair, pale pink and white, a gaping black hole of mouth and wild, insane red eyes.

    Hate pours off of it, clouding the air with ribbons of red, like a drop of blood in water. The monster finds the hutch, bends back the cheap plywood lid, and drifts inside. The rabbits explode in a frenzy of stamps and squeals, then go silent.

    Somehow this spider, this octopus, this monster has split itself into two. It shifts form, taking the place of the two rabbits — are they dead? did it eat them? — it becomes them, impersonates them . . . only recognizable by its hateful red eyes staring out from the two imposters.

    These same eyes looking up at me in the backseat of our family station wagon, the lengthening ears becoming long snaking tendrils filling the car, reaching out in the golden afternoon light to wrap around my mother”s throat, my brother’ arms, our faces, muffling our screams...

    I don’t have an exact date for this one, but we had the rabbits when we lived at the house on Peppertree in Dublin, California. Which puts it sometime in the mid 1970’s. 

    I was probably six or seven years old. And the horror of those tentacles waving in the car haunted me for weeks. I still feel a pang of it even now.

    As silly as it sounds, a shapeshifting fuzzy octopus spider monster is really pretty terrifying. Especially at that age.

    Years later, I saw it again: There’s scene in the movie Poltergeist where a malevolent spider-like creature prevents the mother from rescuing her children...

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    That’s about right. Dye it pink and you’ve got the creature from my dream, more or less.

    (I’ll ignore the question as to why something from my dream in the mid 70’s would show up in an 80’s movie. Sometimes it’s better not to know. We’ll chalk it up to coincidence.)