This afternoon I was in the living room and looked up to see our cat Chet coming around the corner to sniff at our new cat’s scratching pad.
Odd thing is, Chet died last year.
Tag: afternoon
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forearms
Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream…
…we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I.
I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child.
“Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me…
…awaken with a gasp, lying on the couch with my arms across on my chest.
I cannot open my eyes. I cannot breathe. I cannot move.
Something is holding it’s hands on my forearms, pressing me down.
My breath hisses out between my bared teeth. Little gasps push out of me. I can hear myself whimpering as I struggle to rise, to open my eyes, to speak the name of my God.
Panic. I can feel my body shaking with the effort to move, those hands holding me down . . . something over me, drawing the breath out of me in long, hissing strands.
Finally I manage one word: “Ssssssssasssssstop.”
Immediately, the pressure on my arms lightens and I sit up and open my eyes.
Alone in the room.
Even now, writing this, my shoulders and forearms ache as though I’d been carrying a great weight.
And I can still hear that hissing whimper in my ears. It sounds a little bit like laughter.
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switch
Sitting in my office this afternoon, working.
A few moments ago I heard the distinctive sound of the light switch in the back hallway snapping on.
A few moments later I heard it snap off.
My wife and youngest daughter are napping upstairs.
Before I heard the light switch, it was quiet and peaceful. No telltale sounds of someone coming up or down the back stairs.
For all intents and purposes, I’m the only one down here.
But, I suppose, I might not be alone.
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ghost weather
Early summer afternoon. Overcast skies.
Waiting for storms.
The house is gray. Quiet.
Pale light from outside, dim within. The air still, dead.
Every room feels empty and full at the same time. An unseen crowd gathers.
Something around every corner.
Watchful. Waiting.
Patient.
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little girls
Reported by my wife:
A few days ago she and our daughter were in the back stairwell, getting ready to go for a walk. Once she got our daughter into her shoes, my wife sat down to put her own on. While she was doing this, our daughter went down the three steps to the back door.
My wife could hear her down there.
“Who are you talking to, honey?”
“I’m talking to the little girl,” came the reply.
“What little girl?”
“The one right here.”
A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, my wife asked “What does the little girl look like?”
“She looks like a sheet.”
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a moment of moore
On my way through the park, I see a familiar figure heading in the opposite direction. He shambles, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. His hair and beard are wild and ragged as the hem of his overcoat.I change my course somewhat to interest his. He looks up as I approach, a patient mix of puzzlement and annoyance creasing his brow.
“Mr. Moore? I am sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say thank you. Your work has meant a great deal to me.”
He nods politely and offers his hand, still walking.
As I shake it, he gives me a quick look. “Have we met before?”
I shake my head. “No sir, but I sent you one of my books a number of months ago. My photo is on the back.”
“Did you?” He frowns, studying me. Then he shakes his head.
“It was called Assam & Darjeeling, ” I offer.
His shrug is eloquent and he turns to continue on. “Nice meeting you.”
“It had a pomegranate on the cover,” I call after him, realizing that I have gone — in his eyes — from Polite Reader to Insane Fanboy Stalker in about ten seconds.
He waves a hand over his shoulder, picking up his pace.
I watch him go.
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lavender dress
My wife went to the market one afternoon this past weekend. The weather was warm and she was wearing a long lavender dress, very lovely. The dress has bare arms and drapes in a style reminiscent of a statue of a Greek goddess.
While she was out, a flash of color caught my eye in the back hallway. I saw the lavender dress, someone on the landing above the stairs leading down to the back door.
I assumed it was my wife but when I went to help carry in the bags, the hallway was empty.
This happened twice before my wife came home.
Then again tonight, I saw someone in the dress move down the back stairs.
My wife was upstairs putting our daughter to bed.
This time, though, the dress was pale blue.
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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…
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.)