/yesod

Tag: children

  • “She won’t rest.”

    My daughter is almost nine but we still use a monitor so that we can hear her if she wakes up in the middle of the night.

    My wife has gone to bed and I am up late, doing some work I brought home from the office.

    The monitor crackles and my daughter calls for me.

    When I head upstairs, she is already out of bed, standing there in the semi-dark.

    “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

    She looks at me, eyes clear but confused. “She had to… she wasn’t…”

    I try to lead her back to bed but she stays there, looking around the room.

    “A lady was… she had to get up, her daughter… She won’t rest. She won’t rest.”

    I help her back into bed, make sure she’s settled, and head back downstairs.

  • feet wrapped in rags

    …the children come out from the alcoves and holes, ragged scavenger ghosts huddled together and shuffling along the dusty floor, their hollow eyes sweeping back and forth, mouths gaping . . . they are in thrall to an old woman, an older ghost, who herds them like cattle and feeds off of their misery…

    I stand on the rickety wooden steps, watching them from above, not daring to step down into the range of their clutching hands.

  • a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa

    Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees outside.

    Women huddle with their children, people cover in corners and try to stay out of the way as pictures fall from walls, little knickknacks shatter to the floor.

    I can feel a pressure in the house, a suction that ebbs and flows as the storm overhead rages on. I move from room to room, peeking out of windows as I pass, making sure they stay open so that the suction won’t blow them out completely.

    Through one window, I watch as a massive trees outside comes down. The entire house shudders under the weight of it. People are screaming now.

    I look up to the mass of gray swirling in the sky, like ink in milk . . . funnel clouds dance around each other, like strands of barbed wire twisted together. I count five of them, shouting out to the people to take cover. The funnels move in.

    I head into another room and suddenly the house is vibrating, a low hum that slowly builds to unbelievable intensity. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my molars, in my gut.

    People are praying, people are crying.

    Looking back on it now, I am surprised I did not think of the gods.

    The ceiling of the room I am in begins to peel away, I move quickly to the other side of the house . . . Just in time to see something so odd, my eyes have trouble making sense of it at first.

    It is a rubble in the suddenly still air of the room, a wavering column of distortion that runs from floor to ceiling, as wide as a refrigerator and spinning. It moves across and through the opposite wall without leaving a trace of its passing.

    Then all is quiet once more — save for the sobs and cries from the other rooms.

    Later…

    The specific circumstances of it escape me now, but at some point I am helping out with a local theatre company in town. One of the actors has an old van that we need to pick up to haul props. I volunteer to go over to their house and collect it.

    They live in a seedy part of town, their house is a hoarder’s nightmare. Out back in the tall weed a is a rusty van, engine idling.

    I go to see if they’re inside, ready to go . . . only to find that while they are inside, they’ve already gone.

    Her face is bloated, her lank gray hair matted to her skull with sweat and vomit. There’s no way of telling how long she’s been this way.

    Repulsed, I back away.

    And later still…

    “I need to talk to you,” my son tells me. I nod and suggest we go out back where it is quieter and the people at the party won’t bother us.

    Why we are having the cast party in the dead woman’s house, I don’t know. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I have a vague recollection of being worried that she might be discovered back there and somehow spoil things for everyone.

    On the rickety back porch, I see the van in the weeds — the engine has long since run out of gas — and I suddenly remember that I never called the police.

    My son is already down the steps, trying the side door of the van. I call to him to leave it be but he is curious. Something dark and vile has pooled at one corner in the grass below, running from the door frame like a faucet accidentally left on.

    He opens the door and I hear his disgust. He starts to move the body, to try and get her out but she’s become a liquid, gelatinous mess. I tell him to leave things as they are, otherwise the police might suspect him of trying to cover something up.

    He runs inside to call 911.

    Standing there in the dead grass, I turn my head to look down the broad alley at the back of the house. A few yards down there is a splintered wooden fence, leaning to one side. A large dead tree bends low over it, the skeletal boughs hanging over the alley.

    Caught in the boughs is the body of a small child.

    And just before I wake…

    My wife and I are walking through the house, we cannot believe that we are so lucky to have a place of our own at last. In the attic room we find an old leather sofa that the previous owners have left behind. I flop down on it in exhaustion. Under my hand, the dull surface gleams as I wipe the dust away.

    My wife stands at the gable window and looks out onto the street below. She turns and raises her blouse over her head, tosses it aside. Her jeans and panties follow. By the time she gets to me, I am ready for her.

    She straddles me and we begin to move, the old sofa creaking under us.

    Somewhere down below in the house, we hear a door slam. A woman calls out, we hear the voices of children, little feet running up the stairs…

  • dark ride

    I am surprised to see a Ferris wheel looming over the downtown district, pale against the darkening sky. As evening descends, we make our way towards the carnival.

    It is dark everywhere. There are no flickering lights, no music — just the mechanical clack and clank of the rides, the muted murmur of the crowds.

    (This seems ominous now, awake. But at the time, dreaming, it did not seem so.)

    Bright rings of neon dart overhead, flying saucers, small and almost toy-like. I remark to my companions that the adult rides are further down.

    We find ourselves in a queue, jostled by children at every side. At the front of the line I watch a kid climb into a small bucket-like car and rattle away on a track into the darkness.

    “It’s a ghost train!” I exclaim. “I love a good ghost train.”

    I realize I’m speaking in a British accent and make a conscious effort to drop the Doctor Who act.

    At the front of the line, two queues feed into the start of the ride. Everyone fumbles in the darkness, taking turns to climb into the little carts. I let one of my friends go ahead of me and then wait for a small child to take their turn.

    As I’m getting ready to take my turn, a fat middle aged couple shove ahead of me dragging their little pig-faces son with them.

    I step back and watch in amazement as they try to squeeze their combined bulk into the one-person cart. An impossibility, so the husband lays down over the cart and his impossibly bloated wife lays on top of him, her doughy face turned up to the sky. Their son scrambles on top of this quivering bulk and the cart spins off as they lie there like starfish with their limbs out for balance.

    My turn. I do my best to fit my lengthy legs into the next cart. It’s a bit cramped and I consider making a joke about having to fold myself in half but I realize that everyone is waiting for me. So I do my best and soon enough I’m off in my little cart.

    It’s a bit of a disappointment, too dark to see anythIng. I rattle along, vague shadows passing by.

    There is a little pause at a station, where a worker waits before sending me on through the last bit of the ride.

    This point in the ride is staffed by a young woman with long dark hair, her pale skin glows in the semi-dark and her soft voice has a light English accent.

    She flirts with me for a moment while we wait. I feel awkward and self-conscious all folded up in my little cart. And she’s too lovely, I can barely look her in the eye.

    It’s a relief when the ride moves on — the final sequence is a rolling section of track, a child-sized roller coaster. The ride opens up and the sky is lighter now. I coast through a landscape of unkempt hedges and stunted topiary animals as the ride comes to a stop…

    . . .

    The morning after the fair, I wake in a hotel suite overlooking downtown. The sky outside is pale and the light is cold, even harsh.

    The woman from the ride is there, wrapped in a thick white robe. As she passes by the bed on her way to the bathroom, I pull her down to me.

    She protests as my hands slide over her hips, exploring. “I have to take a shower,” she gasps as I slide my thumb into her. I feel her constrict around the base and she closes her eyes for a long moment.

    But then she pushes off of me and heads to the shower, leaving me there to throb with frustration.

  • comedy and tragedy

    …when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back.

    A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear unprofessional.

    We arrive at the venue — an old theater in Charleston, West Virginia. A few people are already in the balcony seats, waiting for the show to begin.

    While the comedian gets ready to go onstage, I call my wife to apologize and break the news.

    “I should be back around midnight,” I tell her. Then I remember the driving time. “Actually, it’ll probably be later than that.”

    She is annoyed, rightfully so. But she doesn’t press the point.

    I feel terrible and offer to rent a car so I can return early.

    She hesitates before answering. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

    She tells me that there’s been an accident. The father of the two girls who lives across the way fell from their balcony and died.

    (Somehow I recall an earlier dream, while dreaming this one, in which the man’s mentally disabled brother also died. This family has seen nothing but tragedy, in my dreams.)

    I rent a car and, in time, arrive back home. A cloud of sadness hangs over the apartment complex, clinging to everything.

    Looking across the way, I can see into the windows of the neighboring apartment where the two little girls play on their bunk bed. I worry that they might fall.

    An elderly man comes into their room — their grandfather, I assume. He moves so slowly, weighed down with age and sorrow.

    I make a mental note to go over after dinner and offer to help.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • the dancing toy

    …disturbing discoveries in the new house continue as we settle in.

    (I should mention that this is not our actual house, not the new house we moved into earlier this year, but some alternate, dreamspace version that has that same-but-not-the-same quality which you only find in dreams.)

    There is the painting in the upstairs bedroom, for instance. At first glance, it appears to be that of an old sailing ship, seen from behind, silhouetted against the night sky. Upon further inspection, however, it’s actually a spaceship, seen from behind, heading into the clouds. It’s an ingenious optical illusion and I’m quite impressed by it, both in my dream and upon waking.

    But nothing on earth has the power to move this painting from where it hangs in the room. I try more than once, encountering a puzzling invisible force that halts my progress — like two pushing two positively charged magnets together. I can slide it along this force, but never past it.

    This same force prevents some objects from being brought into the room as well. Just inside the doorway they will stop against some force that, while slightly giving, remains unyielding.

    Today I am bringing a small muppet toy of my daughters into the room to put it away. Something takes it out of my hand and twirls it dancing through the air around me by one arm. It is as if some invisible child is at play, teasing me. But there is something cruel, angry behind this unseen hand.

    I am frightened by this but I pretend to be delighted. I think that this will fool whatever it is that’s behind this. I laugh, feigning wonder. I reach out and pluck the toy out of the air, feeling the faint tug of force as it gives way.

    The toy dances away from me again, snatched out of my arms and dangled above my face like one child playing keep away with another.

    I do my best to smile and laugh, even as the unseen force drapes the arms of the toy around my shoulders, wrapping them across my throat . . . slowly tightening them like a scarf.

    And I wake from my afternoon nap, my mind troubled and my skin crawling.

    Even now, as I hurry to take this down before the details of the dream fade, I realize something even more chilling: Whatever unseen hand was at work in my dream, it was large enough to lift the toy high overhead. And I am over six feet tall.

    That is, it is no child.

  • an uncomfortable visit

    …shocked at how seedy the old neighborhood looks, I feel a pang of survivor’s guilt over my own relatively comfortable life now.

    Through the open door of the apartment, I can see that our old neighbors are sitting down to dinner. I’m stunned for a moment to find that the little boy my son used to play with is now a paraplegic. I’m already regretting the visit as I knock.

    Shuffled of chairs inside, dishes and silverware clatter on a tabletop. I’m interrupting dinner. Idiot.

    The husband opens the door, still chewing.

    I’m puzzled by a poster of an old comic book character on the wall behind him.

    He’s puzzled by my visit, doesn’t recognize me at first. Then his eyes light up and he calls his wife out to say hello. He tells me to wait for a moment, that he’s got a gift he’s been saving for me. I do my best to demur but he’s already rummaging around in the chaotic jumble of old toys and rubbish in their little apartment.

    At the door, his wife asks about my kids. We trade polite pleasantries for a few minutes. She tells me that crime in the area has made it almost impossible to raise a family. Uncomfortable, I joke about dressing up like Batman and clean things up.

    In the stairwell behind me, I hear a door slam. Mutter of voices, a low level of panic. A woman cries somewhere up above.

    A man with a handgun makes his way door to door, collecting this week’s rent and/or protection money.

    She does her best to hold on to her fear. I do my best to hope that the thug didn’t hear my ridiculous crimefighter comment.

    Her husband comes out into the hallway to confront the thug. I can feel the anger building in his wife, that he would jeopardize their safety with this pointless bravado.

    Things get complicated, convoluted . . . the sands of dream shift under my feet and slides into another, disjointed direction…

  • nephew, demon

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated September 12th, 2001]

    And in my dream my three-year-old nephew [REDACTED] — plagued by depression and despair all his short little life — has finally given into his despair, twisting a length of picture hanging wire around his neck and hanging himself. I find his stiff body eyes open, jaw clenched. Although he is dead, his body continues to move and walk. He is speechless and his face is blank, almost hateful. We all avoid him, his stiff legged roaming across the floor, his baleful gaze. When his mother comes home, it is up to me to break the news to her. His mother, in my dream, is my aunt [REDACTED] — the mother of my cousin, I know, makes no sense — but she is full of cold rage and asks me why I didn’t take the wire from around his neck she blames me, I am certain of it and I can only point in horror to his animated corpse. Ignoring me, all business now, she takes the horrid little child and her arms raising him up and speaking quietly to him. She is a Christian fundamentalist and I realize that there is something far worse at work here then death. He twists away from her, in her arms, and stares at me with a blankly cunning look — and hideous, diabolical language pours out of his mouth like vomit, demonic and awful. He spews his bubbling, babbling talk at me and in growing horror I find my breath is gone, I cannot speak, I cannot pray any words of protection, my lips are numb and my tongue is thick in my mouth, and then, With ever-growing horror, I hear my own bubbling voice respond in kind, echoing his hideous demonic voice with my own.

    I wake in horror and dread, mouthing the words “Veni Sancte Spiritus” in my gasping, choking voice.

  • brief despair

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated August 10th, 1998]

    …horrid dreams, my two children poisoned and dead in their coffins, and no one to save me from my despair…

  • wedding errand

    Walking through a parking lot towards a line of children. Accosted, my money taken. Finally convincing them to let me go — “Please, I’m getting married today.”

    Amazingly — I’m released.

    But the ceremony has started and I’m late.

    Putting on a tuxedo in the great underground empire while searching for a washcloth.

    Sent on some pissant while of an errand by my wife, my own wedding starts without me.

    * * *

    My chest is continually constricted and I have blood in my eyes.

    The gray dawn has returned and my nights are only pain.