The Wedge in the Doorway - 3. Chapter 3

I sit on the sunroom's couch with the computer whirring away on my lap. Afternoon sun stipples the woods. Lake Potisesse in its afternoon splendor wears a sunny gown full of life and hemmed by verdant second-growth forest.

Hardly aware of the august tableau outside the sunroom's glass walls, remembering Beth and her abrupt end captured me so entirely that my mind stumbles, my thoughts trip, my heart staggers. Unable to function, unable to get my act together, my eyes stare ahead, not at anything in particular but instead at nothing, zoned out, lost in the moment. While years separate me from her death, and while I moved on and continued living despite the loss, reliving that day causes such pangs, the real-sounding voice of a dream and the memories it draws forth finally reopening those old wounds.

I grew up a rebellious soul whose academic success warranted much latitude from my mother and father. From childhood into my teenage years I excelled in comprehension due in no small part to my voracious appetite for the written word. Science and math tasked me at first yet soon became second hand; reading and writing came as fluently as breathing and eating. Eidetic memory—photographic memory—powered my intellect, giving me the aptitude to imbibe things at an astounding rate. My mind expunged no memory, no detail, no experience, no information gleaned or learned; it deleted naught that my senses recorded. Thus at the behest of teachers and administrators, Mom and Dad provided significant flexibility in academic matters so as to nurture the intelligence and creativity their son harbored.

Sam and Monica Crichton, the two who gave me life and who struggled mightily against my recalcitrance as they attempted to shape the man I'd become, both granted me substantial autonomy when instead they could've proved necessity in court for more than a few backhanded whacks. By no means lackadaisical about parenting, however, a firm hand was readily wielded if necessary, either of my parents delivering a solid swat on those rare occasions when I pushed way too hard.

Despite their efforts, I remained nonconforming and worked hard to become a juvenile insurgent against parental supervision—against any authority wishing to guide my behavior. That revolutionary spirit followed me into adulthood where I struggled against my inner demons at the same time I struggled against society as a whole. I had one mantra: I will be my own man with no care for those who think me heretical or heterodox. No influence directed my life save me.

At least not until meeting Beth. She tamed the wild beast but didn't cage it. As a kindred spirit resisting confinement by norms, she discovered and capitalized on her talent for living in defiance of everyone else while succeeding because of the people she shunned and derided. And she kindled that same spirit within me.

* * * * *

When the malaise of sentimental pondering evaporates, my mind snaps to attention. Blanketed by the comfort of the sunroom, I relax in the illusion of being outside without actually being outside. I let the moment cloak me, let my imagination shroud the world, let my body wear a temporary untruth.

Setting the laptop aside, I wallow in my misery while attempting to wipe away emotional squalor with a fantasy of someplace different. The natural world surrounds me and my anguish quickly fizzles. No tears, not this time anyway. Instead I have the moment, the memory, the mental memento that can neither be dropped nor held. It just is.

I lean back, rest my eyes, try to rally my thoughts and disperse the debris of what was. The warmth from the windows falls on me. There's some small comfort in that.

* * * * *

"Mr. Crichton."

That voice. The man's voice. That coin-flipping voice. The chorus of his voice merged with Beth's voice.

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

I hear a coin whoosh through the air, the slap of metal on skin as it lands, the clink of a fingernail launching it into the air anew.

"What?" I mumble. Once more a dissociative state embraces me.

Did I fall asleep? Am I experiencing the same dream or am I having a waking dream? Or...

"Do I have the sleeping sickness? Is this how it starts?"

"Infirmity does not vex you, Mr. Crichton, nor does ailment afflict you. The scourge besetting your planet cannot injure you. Nevertheless you must hearken unto my words. Denounce your disproportionate despair and your decadent self-deception. We are talking, you and I, and we must talk. We do not have much time."

"Why are you doing this to me? Leave me alone. Please..." Sobbing though I don't remember crying, words fall from my weeping mouth, a punished child huddling in the corner waiting for another slap.

She feels so near with that voice. I can almost touch her, methinks. How painful a thing, how mean of my mind to wound me yet again. Damnable dreams!

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

"The hour grows late, Mr. Crichton," the voice says, "and you must listen to me. The Untouched must arise before the Sleepers awake. Peril abounds, Mr. Crichton."

"Aren't we humans forever in peril?" I snidely respond. My mood has no patience for more of my own mental games. Even if he/she/it is nothing more than a dream, this conversation disinterests me.

"David Crichton, you listen to me right now!"

My eyes snap open at the sound of Beth's clamoring voice, clear as the difference between day and dark, this time unadulterated by him, the coin-flipping man, the formless being we dare not acknowledge. No, in this case her voice comes through loud and clear, the tone she used in response to my flippancy. The timbre cut through my neglect, a vocal blade only I felt. It always worked.

"She's not here. She's not speaking. Stop using her to get to me." I sound fractious. I don't care.

"Then attend to my counsel judiciously, Mr. Crichton. Time is of the essence if you aspire to endure forthcoming tribulations."

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

"Fine. Let me drop everything and focus on you. How may I be of service?" My response and inflection to that tone of Beth's came in the form of complete disrespect, a condescending declaration of my own gravitas. The same spirit churns within me as I add, "And don't blow smoke up my ass. Put up or shut up."

If my dreams intend to vex me like this, they can expect both barrels.

Awaiting an answer from the her/him/it of my mind grants time to notice pressing darkness outside the windows. It makes me squirm, try to push into the sofa, try to squeeze down amongst the cushions, try to get away from this malign and boiling shadow. Fright jumps to the forefront of my thoughts. Flaming eyes hover in the murky dark, more than I saw before, more evident. Malevolence penetrates the glass and strikes me with great force.

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

"The hour has grown late, Mr. Crichton." No more Beth voiceovers. He drops the pretense of using her to get to me. Now he presents as unadulterated and undeniable, an unnameable thing that shouldn't manifest in my dream because it shouldn't exist. He speaks with that voice, the sound of an ancient thing long hidden that no one should face, that no one should hear. "Soon they traverse the threshold—"

"Who? The Dreamdarkers?" I'm a petulant child. Again.

"The Dreamdarkers, the nameless, they who dwell in the dreamworld. Yes, they approach. Imminently they penetrate the barrier, Mr. Crichton, and subsequently their incursion commences. The peril materializes sooner than you can envisage. It is of paramount significance that you hearken unto my counsel."

It violates me that this otherworldly vocalization can invade my mind, my dreams, and it offends me that it can duplicate precisely the tone and language of my dead wife. Setting that tool aside doesn't lessen the offended anger it sired.

"Stop talking to me. I don't owe you anything. And stop using my wife's voice. You're pretending to be somebody you're not. Beth's dead and has been for years..." Primitive weeping overtakes me, fright and grief and exasperation melding into an overwhelming torrent.

Damn it! I can't play this game. I can't handle what my mind's throwing at me. What's wrong with me?

Billowing blackness smothers the room. The darkness radiates ill will, palpable and disconcerting. It appears more animate, more alive, a writhing mass of terrible intent that I can't ignore. Gloom. Misery. Evil.

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

My fear becomes pungent. It stinks, the stench of terror and nervous sweat.

"We are conversant with each other, Mr. Crichton," the voice states matter-of-factly, as though I should readily accept its offering of dismal warnings in a dream rife with dark and dread. "You are the appointed visionary, he who dreams in the light. You are the Untouched." Then it switches to Beth's voice and adds, "Vey, it's time to poop or get off the potty. You have to face this, babe."

While most call me David or Dave, Old Stu McCreary even daring to call me Davey, two people call me Vey—Mom and Beth. One of them is dead and the other certainly isn't in my house.

My mother came up with the nickname. Monica knew everyone would call me something expected, some part of my real name. David seems logical and Dave seems familiar. Always one for originality, Mom decided she would instead use Vey. Most think she calls me the letter V since it sounds like that—vee—but she definitely calls me Vey.

If Davey represented the most casual name the world could come up with and if Dave ran a close second, Mom wanted to call me something unique. She saw no reason why she couldn't use the last part of my name if everyone else kept screaming the first part. Vid wouldn't cut it, so Vey it became. Beth latched on to that label and took it for her own. In the end I never allowed anyone other than her and Mom to use it. It stayed special.

I grab my head, trying to block her voice, and I shout, "Stop it! You're dead!"

Clink!-Whoosh!-Slap!-Clink!

"Your wife has much sagacity to impart to you, Mr. Crichton. You must listen both to her and to me. The lightless advance. They pursued you, the dreamers, and they are coming."

"The lightless? I thought they were called—"

"The Dreamdarkers. Yes, Mr. Crichton. The nameless, too." No more hiding behind Beth's voice. The bass drum of a coin flipped repeatedly beats the tempo of his reverberating words, and his words tremble my bones and make my heart skip beats. "We confer vis-à-vis the Dreamdarkers, the lightless dreamworld inhabitants—"

A shadow form, something unreal yet real, a shape made of seething darkness with eyes aglow with crimson fire slams into the window beside me. The glass rattles, threatening to explode inward.

I scream. A sound penetrating and guttural pours out of me, the terrified howl one would make while watching a wild animal tear off one's limbs and pull out one's innards, a primal and visceral wail. What emanates from my mouth seems alien and I hate it. It scares me to death as it issues from my throat. I've never known fear potent enough to make this noise, yet it surges out of me with primitive abandon.

* * * * *

Afternoon light reflects into the sunroom as I jolt from sleep and spring from the couch, the last spoonful of a cold moan dripping from my lips. My body shakes with spasmodic tremors. Fully awake, covered in chilled sweat, standing next to the windows, I gape in absolute horror.

No darkness dwells here. A beautiful summer day in Texas surrounds me, the sky clear and blue with a few cirrus clouds interrupting the cyan monotony. A gentle breeze strokes the lake's glistering surface and soughs freely through the forest. This is the real world.

I wipe tears and sweat from my eyes and cheeks. A few deep breaths relax me somewhat, though not completely.

"What the hell?" I mutter.

The world appears as it should appear. No menacing abyss surges against the house. No predatory eyes smother me with a sense of the pack ready to spring atop the prey. No voice echoes from a disturbing dreamscape with warnings and mysteries, not Beth's, not his—the other's—and not anyone's voice.

I stand alone after my second nightmare in twelve hours. With more certainty than ever, I suspect my grasp on reality slips and my mind plummets into heretofore unvisited depths of emotional despair.

Or am I discovering SACSS has predictive symptoms, except no one would ever admit having them?

Strong of mind and heart and will and body, my wife's passing didn't make me cave, neither did 9/11, nor did the unpleasant yet not unexpected increase in deaths amongst my elder family members, grandparents and aunts and uncles. None of these things caused the mental or emotional collapse of Dave Crichton, for Dave Crichton isn't weak. The weight of life doesn't crumble me and I refuse to entertain the notion now. So my mind journeys on a search for answers.

Dreamdarkers. The word rattles in my brain, familiar in an unidentifiable way, striking with unnerving intimacy. It presents a troubling quandary as I can fathom no reference for it yet know with certainty that it lies as near as would a lover. Its closeness begs for explanation. The thought of investigating its foundations within my memories declares the answer holds naught save the promise of death. A void dwells there, looking for those answers, the same void that leaped against the window.

Dreamdarkers. The word violates me. Promising nothing wanted yet everything needed, it unsettles me with its nightmare invasions. Some known unknown in the guise of Beth predicts a horrible thing, an unspeakable thing, some ineluctable terror from which I should run yet cannot escape. While the meaning of the word eludes me, it keeps turning up, a bad penny laced with Armageddon. I can't ignore it.

Dreamdarkers. The word vexes me. What does it mean? If my mind offers it in dreams, then my mind contains the information. I remember everything. Tenaciously. Knowing the word yet finding no corresponding memory to explain it confuses me. Everything known to me has memory associated with it; each item stored in my gray matter comes replete with every remembrance attached to that item. Yet this one doesn't.

Dreams are subconscious ruminations bubbling to the surface when the conscious mind loses control and can't quiet such notions. The lucid dreaming study said as much. So why does my mind dredge up a woman lost to the carnage of civilization so she might communicate drivel? Dreams like this have never invaded my sleep. Flying represents the best insanity my dreamscapes offer.

So what the hell is going on, Dave?

The more I reflect upon the nightmares, the more I convince myself a mental breakdown has caught up to me. One of the threats to mental health is that mental sickness hides behind the veil of sanity.

My parents warned me about my "fragile state" after Beth died, and they made me promise I would tell them if I ever found cracks in my psychological edifice. Worse still, I grew up with guidance counselors and psychologists teaching me to cope with my uncommon memory skill and its unceasing deluge of feedback related to everything I experience. Many times people said I would break if I couldn't withstand the burdensome memories and their unremitting presence, their piercing clarity and detail, their absolute relationship to the thought that beckoned them.

A child psychologist once explained, "Photographic memory isn't as anomalous as it sounds. There're people who can tell you precisely what they wore and ate and did if you give them a random date. There're others who can tell you every major news headline from a specific date no matter how far in the past you go.

"What makes you different from them is twofold: you seem to record everything that your senses take in and you have an innate ability to catalog, store and retrieve those memories with lightning speed, fantastic details included. If you don't learn to manage the tool you have, the tool will overwhelm you. You'll lose control by swimming in the present while drowning in the past. It'll break you."

Losing control? Break me? Now? Oh, I think so. In fact, you betcha!

No, people won't hear of these dreams. If insanity wants finally to embrace me, we'll hold each other in the aloneness of my own existence. I'd be remiss by dragging others into my newfound personal downfall.

OK, making sense of these dreams is impossible. So stop trying. This is a new experience for me. Maybe it comes with age. You're thirty-five now. It's never too early for the onset of senility.

Stop overanalyzing, Dave. They're dreams. They don't make sense. That's their mystery and fascination. You're not Freud's successor and you're not going to answer a question the rest of science has yet to riddle.

My thoughts do little to settle me. I never before had nightmares. More importantly, dreams of people—Beth included—haven't occurred in my thirty-five years of sleeping. Dreams for me manifest as abstract or magical yet ultimately insignificant.

I berate myself for this folly. Somehow I blame myself into feeling guilty for potentially harboring a bleak mental state. Somehow I see the irrationality of these experiences as representative of the inevitable break foretold so often in my childhood.

I don't cave to pressure and I don't acquiesce to force. Instead I storm my way through and live my life and refuse to concede. No level of my mind can discern why it began to malfunction. So I set aside worries about the arrival of craziness. I won't be intimidated, not even by my own mind, and I won't back down.

The day's growing late, Dave. Dreams be damned, you've got a book to write.

Yes, you're right. Time to brush away nonsense and take hold of substance.

The laptop rests quietly on the table. My attention should focus there. If William has any hope of making a difference in his world, if THE END has any hope of hitting the last page a day late as my custom dictates, I need to redirect my concentration to the unfinished novel suspended in digital limbo on that small portable computer.

Sleep will come later; it always does. Haunting demons—internal or external—can face me then. For now, more important matters require attention.

Like this damn book!

In order to complete it, I need vices. And that requires a road trip.

* * * * *

A quick jaunt to the office bathroom allows me to throw cold water on my face. Again. I ignore similarities to this morning and I ignore incessant urges to look at the scale on the floor. Lamentations don't equal written words, and self-pity and navel-gazing do not a novel make. My mind sharpens a bit in response to the refreshing splashes against my skin.

I'm in control, damn it. Nightmares are for the weak. I have better things to do, more important things to do.

The thought energizes me with a mission. After drying my face I jog upstairs to the master suite. Fetching and donning a mahogany tee shirt that says something about everything being dirtier in Texas—wink-wink-nudge-nudge-knowing glance—I check myself in the mirror for ensemble clashes. Realizing the shirt correctly matches shoes and shorts, the accomplishment gladdens me and sends me back downstairs with confidence.

After hastily glancing at the clock on the microwave—quarter past three in the afternoon—I grab my keys and walk to the garage door.

Setting the alarm briefly enters my considerations. The house's technology never gets more exercise than monitoring the grounds and related systems, but somehow it seems germane at this moment, critical to ponder security, safety. Again I brush errant thoughts aside and exit the house.

Shutting the door, ideas and thoughts continue stewing. Before I know what hits me memories flood into conscious grasp. At last I realize why Dreamdarkers seems both familiar and more than a quirky dreamscape remembrance. I remember why it's something more than bizarre refuse from a nightmare. I remember its intimacy.

* * * * *

Beth arrived at DFW International Airport following a business trip to Washington D.C., a common destination for her commercial travels. She stressed on the phone how much the trip had fatigued her and how returning home would thrill her. I pulled up in front of the terminal by her gate and barely made it out of the car before she solemnly moped through the large glass doors with her suitcase dragging obediently behind her. The wheels made that rhythmic thud-thud-thud as they skipped across grooves in the pavement.

"Hey, babe!" I greeted enthusiastically as I dashed around the car and took her valise.

We kissed and hugged tightly before she said, "I'm so glad to be home. And I'm so glad to see you."

An emotive resonance hid in her voice, a frightened desperation quite unlike any impression she'd given before. It prompted me to ask with uncharacteristic gravity, "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

Panicked eyes betrayed her voice. While the look announced disaster, her mouth forcibly lied. "I'm fine. It's been a long trip and I'm really tired. I just want to go home."

While I situated her luggage in the trunk, she opened the passenger door and fell into the car, slamming it shut before I could say anything else. Infrequent dismal moods were my forte; Beth never showed a dispirited outlook. In the worst circumstances she found the humorous or lighter side of things. She allowed nothing to get the best of her, indomitably plowing forward and burying her adversaries along the way. This atypical self concerned me.

I shut the trunk, climbed into the car, started the motor and pulled away from the curb. Merging into perpetually hectic traffic surrounding the airport, I turned to her and earnestly inquired, "Beth, what's up? You don't act okay."

"I'm tired," her autopilot responded. No thought to the answer, no consideration for the question. Only the minimal reply needed to dismiss inquiry.

Glancing sideways as I maneuvered through countless lanes of unsympathetic automobiles, I let the I-know-you-better-than-that tone enter my compassionate voice when I reached over and took her hand while prompting, "It's me, remember? I can tell something's wrong."

She gave a quick look, a serious look measuring me and the situation. Then she surrendered by squeezing my hand and admitting, "Maybe it's more than that. I had a nightmare on the plane."

"Honey, that's a paltry concern in the scheme of things. A mental hiccup, nothing more." Pacification through flippancy or disarming through indifference. Call it what you will. Belittling the cause of her mental state seemed imprudent and uncaring, yet she knew as well as I did that it constituted my approach to life. Live one day at a time, one moment at a time, and waste not a second looking back, for mostly what lives in the past is trivial rubbish that looks far too important in the magnifying glass of hindsight. We both knew this about me, so she wouldn't take offense.

Beth turned and gave me a sullen gaze which surprised me for its alien presence on her countenance. "Don't patronize me, Dave. I'm not in the mood."

I gave her hand a more sincere squeeze before offering, "I'm sorry. I didn't consider a nightmare that important because I don't have them. Care to talk about it?"

"No."

We rode in silence for several miles, merging from airport roads to the highway, then from the highway to the interstate. I feared an uncomfortable silence would fill the drive home, our first uncomfortable silence in the two years we'd known one another.

After ten quiet minutes she finally asked, "Do you remember about a year ago when we talked about Gifts from a Quantum God? You'd finished it and had received confirmation your publisher would carry it?"

"Of course."

"Remember when you told me about the inspiration for the next book you were thinking of writing?"

"Jason's Tale? Yes, I remember our conversation and I remember what inspired the story. It was a..." As my voice trailed off, I turned toward her with a shocked and questioning look. "It was a nightmare."

"A nightmare," she repeated. She said it so stolidly that I was left to wonder if she assumed she had sufficiently explained the situation.

The nightmare in question didn't originate with me; I don't have nightmares—That is to say, I never had nightmares before now. The dream that spurred my imagination to create Jason's Tale came from Susan Kessler, a friend since elementary school. She told me about it one day over lunch.

She'd dreamed she was trapped in a nightmare where something that lived in her dreams endlessly stalked her. These nightmare inhabitants had no physical presence but lived exclusively in the realm of thought. With eyes wide and a tinge of residual fright in her voice, Susan told me the danger felt so threatening that she woke screaming through a flood of tears. Her body soaked in sweat, goose bumps covering her skin and her frame shaken by chills, she hadn't returned to sleep that night.

Her dream had inspired the story of Jason Picoult, my second book called Jason's Tale, and involved a world where nightmares communicated messages from demons living inside the main character. They used these dark visions to show him what they intended. Although each nightmare revolved around him as the victim, that came as projection of his subconscious. The malevolent spirits schemed against others but allowed his persona to communicate their aim.

In due course he learned they carried out their vicious attacks using his body, waiting for him to slumber then operating him like a brutally homicidal somnambulist. At the end, when he thought he knew the truth and tried to escape, he found the demons survived as different personalities trapped inside his mind. He didn't suffer possession; he suffered from split personalities. This truth impelled him to commit suicide by cop since the unstoppable evil he experienced came from his own mind.

Beth continued, "I'll admit my nightmare wasn't spectacular. It was dark with something moving through the darkness, something watching me. It was hunting me. It reminded me of a story Irene once told. It's the same story I mentioned to you when you were writing the book about Jason."

Despite vivid clarity of those past conversations, she needed to talk, so I inquired, "What do you mean?"

She kept her voice careful as she explained, "You told me about Susan's dream. I told you dreams are just dreams. 'There's a perfectly reasonable explanation,' I said. And there was and is. Dreams are just mental movies."

She took a deep breath, bracing herself against what came next. Then she continued, "But nightmares delve deeper than that. They're still of our own design, sure, but they come from places we don't like to visit. Anyway, Irene told me a story long ago. It was about dreams and nightmares and what they meant. I blew it off as an old wives' tale. This dream on the plane though... It brought that story back with vibrant clarity."

"You mean her story?"

"Uh-huh. She'd said dreams were the creation of our own minds but they tapped something that wasn't ours, wasn't us. I never knew what that meant. She also said nightmares were when that other something called us back, when they decided to star-69 us. She called them Dreamdarkers. She said they were coming for all us dreamers."

"Dreamdarkers? What's that supposed to be?"

"I don't know. That's who she said called back in nightmares."

"The idea isn't uncommon. Many societies believed—some still do today—that dreams are a spiritual experience. Nightmares are the darker side of the soul, the darker side of the god or gods involved. I don't think her idea on that is too different. But her name for it is certainly original, if not tedious."

Beth gripped my hand, breathed in deeply, exhaled with exasperation, then added, "She was old and I was young. I thought she was a crazy nutbag, you know, an old lady with reduced mental capacities. I loved her dearly and hated her passionately. Her imaginings were always getting away from her."

"Is that what upset you?" A smirk passed briefly over my face when I added, "You dreamed of something pursuing you in your nightmare, and now you credit Irene's wisdom? Gosh, honey, are the Dreamdarkers finally coming?"

Beth smacked me in the arm while giving me a look of consternation. "What?" She said it more as an insult than a question. "Are you on something? Or do you need to be? Of course that's not what I think."

A giggle slipped out of me. My own comment seemed both slapdash and ignorant, not to mention intentionally chiding, as though explaining to a juvenile that the sun didn't orbit around Earth despite playground proclamations by the class dunce. Beth's response proved I made my point, albeit somewhat maliciously. I jumped an assumption or two and went right to my fictional world to explain her mood. And she knew precisely what I'd done; hence she felt a tad frustrated with me. In turn, I felt silly for it and found it humorous that she called me on it without hesitation.

"What's funny?" she asked brusquely.

"Me. That was stupid. Sounds like brainstorming for a book, huh?"

She laughed. Although she restrained the snicker, it showed a loosening of her mood. Then she said, "You got that right. Sorry I hit you, but you threw me off the bridge of sanity and into the sea of lunatics."

"But that's your favorite swimming hole!"

She hit me a second time with less force and more laugh.

"Three doctors time?" I queried.

"Amen, husband of mine," she replied before letting a heartfelt chortle escape. When she finally relaxed a bit she added, "Yes, we need an appointment with the doctors when we get home."

"I got you covered, wife of mine." I squeezed her hand.

In our relationship's infancy, Beth and I realized we shared three vices that kept life interesting and survivable. In time we labeled them collectively "the three doctors." Of course no one understood the idiom's meaning, which pleased us.

The three doctors provide no medical care. The phrase refers to a conglomeration of three words beginning with "dr"—drift, drugs and drink. Drift means change, stepping out of ruts. Drinks and drugs speak for themselves.

We drove in silence for a few miles. My hand rested in hers atop her leg, the occasional squeeze lending support. The silence didn't feel uncomfortable.

As I navigated from the interstate to side roads, she spoke. "The odd thing is the nightmare hit me. It brought back memories of that conversation with Irene. I don't know how to explain it. I felt lonely for her. I suddenly missed her. A lot. That's why I was in such a sour mood when I got off the plane. I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize, Beth. It's understandable. You were close to your grandmother considering she raised you. She was your mother for all intents and purposes. You hated her as much as you loved her, so memories have a stronger impact. An unexpected remembrance should rouse a little emotional turmoil. I bet it's normal. Maybe not healthy, but normal." The last part I gibed intentionally.

She struck me in the arm with a backhand before snorting her disapproving humor. She'd be fine.

It had troubled me to see her in that mood, however. So abnormal for her. She stayed on top of things when she let her hair down; she stayed on top of things when the world crushed in atop her. Thus some part of me enjoyed that small loss of control. It showed an attractive hint of vulnerability.

* * * * *

I latch on to that memory hoping to grasp enlightenment. Beth's grandmother Irene was an old Cajun gal, her beliefs merging Christian, Creole, Cunas, French and American, along with a plethora of other collectives indicative to the meshed New Orleans citizenry. With what little Beth told about her and my limited familiarity with the various faiths in that part of the state, I still don't comprehend what the word represents.

Dreamdarkers. Is it a thing? More than one thing? An ideology? A principle?

Wives' tales often have some link to everyday occurrences. Vampires or werewolves might explain an atypical death. Witches or warlocks might explain a prolonged streak of bad luck. A simple coincidence might bridge singing birds to an ailment. A random nerve impulse somehow becomes reason to associate warm sensations in the ears with a distant and unheard conversation—if such a conversation even takes place.

Grasping coincidence and assigning to it some grand meaning comes easily to humans. Such claptrap has as its primary trunk a reasonable cause that becomes twisted beneath layers of fecund imagination, and soon we define happenstance as omen and suspicion as clairvoyance and coincidence as premonition, and these leaves of ill wisdom we hand down from generation to generation. We nurture ignorance because we use it to shield us from reality.

Yet Beth's grandmother offered Dreamdarkers without reason or explanation. She provided no foundation for the belief. The entire story seems imagined on the spot, perhaps to frighten a young child scared of thunderstorms. Irene had a mean streak a mile long.

Is it that simple? Do fragments of personal memories evoke these nightmares? Did I unconsciously dredge up the Dreamdarkers from a conversation impossibly forgotten and thereby give them life in my slumbered visions? Did unmitigated angst after each of those dreams represent an extension of my dead wife's fear? Did my imagination enliven an old wives' tale with otherworldly participants? If the answers lie in so pedestrian a premise, why do they continue? And why do the dreamscapes seem consecutive, each extending from the previous?

More disturbing, why did the memory hide from initial investigation? I have photographic memory; it records everything. In addition I have a gift for tracking and accessing stored memories. That makes it frighteningly simple to locate and retrieve every known detail from past experiences. But as with other functions of the mind, eidetic memory breaks down with age. I wonder anew if advancing in years plays a part in these uncharacteristic mental stumbles.

But you're thirty-five, not ninety-five. Come on, Dave! You're not old, not by a long shot. Sure, you're not twenty-five and you're certainly not fifteen, but thirty-five seems a long way from the place where mental circuitry begins to short and fizzle.

"You're reading too much into it, Dave," I muse aloud.

And I am. Reading too much into it. I must've remembered that conversation, had "a bad spell" as folks around these parts would put it, and I somehow created a terrifying dreamscape that repeated because it remained violently entrenched in my mind. I wouldn't let it go, I kept thinking about it, so it stayed with me.

"That's it exactly." I allay confusion with words I distrust, for the situation doesn't make sense as it stands. Not one bit.