Hologram Thoughts

This is a dream I had last night, as I recall it…

The scene looks like a university setting, on an open grassy area between many red brick buildings.  The buildings are camouflaged with ivy and ancient oaks, making them seem to fade in and out of existence in the leaf-sway on the breeze, only the lights from their myriad windows making them seem real.  A large group of people is gathered around a circle of benches on this cloudless moonlit night, they are listening to someone tell them about something, it all seems very important as I walk toward them.

I want between the benches and around those who sit on the grass, dodging flip-flops and beer cans and I move in to the center, on a mission.

“Are you ready?” the speaker asks me as I approach.

“One last thing I need still,” I say, pointing up at a building in the distance.

“Well,” he says turning to look across the lawn, “be quick about it then.”

I find myself standing now in a giant library.  Dusty books line dimly lit shelf after shelf.  I move over them, searching for a tome that I know must be here, but I cannot find it.  I grow frantic, pulling massive old books from the shelves and dropping them onto the floor in loud, dust exploding, bang and bang.  I open cover after cover, reading the first few sentences of each book seeking what I need, never quite finding the right story, until finally I understand.

I realize what I need to explain to the group below on the grass, and I race toward the stairs…but there I am stopped cold.  The stairs are too steep to climb down, and it is too far down below to jump safely.

Paralyzed with fear I stare out the windows at the group around the circle of benches, unable to reach them.

Last night I had a strange dream.  It was today, in today’s world, but I was visiting my grandparents in the home they lived in while I was a kid.  As I drove up the the house I saw something that paralyzed me with fear for a moment.  A truck had crashed into the house, specifically into the walls of my grandparents bedroom.

I jumped out of my car and ran to the truck.  I realized I knew the truck, it was my cousin Leon’s truck.  Him having been dead for a decade should have alerted me to the dream state, but no luck.

I ran up the steps and burst in to the living room.  My grandfather was sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast with his cousin Pete.  The fact that Pete is also dead should have woken me, but again, no luck.

“What happened?” I asked my grandfather.

“Grandma has breakfast ready,” my grandfather said between bites of crisp bacon.  The bacon was still hot, I could see bubbles of grease still on the bacon, and the smell was wonderful.  Now I could smell breakfast at their home again.  Bacon frying, biscuits almost ready to come out of the oven, coffee in the percolator.

I walked through the kitchen, looking for my grandmother, upset that Grandpa and Pete seemed oblivious to the truck sticking out of the house.  Walking down the short hallway to my grandparents bedroom I could hear my grandmother crying softly.

I turned the corner and found her sitting on the side of the bed, looking at her hands, and crying.

“Grandma,” I whispered. “Are you alright?”

She looked up at me, smiled, shook her head yes, and then looked at the wreckage that had been her bedroom.  The hood of the truck was at a strange angle as it rested on the bathroom sink and a nightstand.

“He didn’t mean to do it,” she said without looking up at me. “He just forgot and drove right in to the wall, honey.”

“Grandma, why isn’t Grandpa at the rest home? Why is he home, and why was he driving?”

“He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she said taking my face in to her hands as she cried.

I knelt down before her, and let my head rest on her lap.  I held her there as she sobbed quietly for a timeless moment.

“I love you Grandma.”

The group, ten or more of us, walked in silence under the beech trees. The sun was low in the sky and the shadows where coming at strange angles, making it look like there was something moving just out of my eyesight. I was in the middle, watching those in front while trying to keep the few behind me up with us, they kept trying to stop; they were too tired now.

I knew we had to keep going, I knew we could not stay the night in the woods. No shelter, no where to put your back and know you were safe from at least on direction.

“I have to stop here, this is where I stop,” she said leaning against a sapling.

“Just a little further, out of the woods and we find somewhere to sleep. I promise.” I lied.

My clothes where wool and cotton, they hung from my frame loosely and chafed my skin from the sweat and heat. The boots on my feet were tight, but only because my feet had swollen after days on the trail. Sweat poured down my face, off my nose. My hair, long and auburn, was tied in a tail and blew easy in the breeze.

I stopped and told the group to listen. Dogs barking in the distance. Hounds, closing in and coming fast – nothing left to do now but run.

***

We run into a train station. The walls are white washed and dusty, doors are mostly red paint and shut, but a few seem to sway with unseen hands opening them to see who we are.

One of the women bolts for a doorway, screaming that she has to find him. Her son has died on the trail and she cannot seem to remember that he is dead and buried. I race to the doorway that she went in, but she is not there, I can see down the hall a long way, further than she could have covered even at a run, but it is empty now, she is gone.

I turn, I hear a pounding footfall, I begin to pass out and just as I close my eyes I see her son, standing in an open loading dock.

“Evil,” I scream.

***

“Evil,” I screamed as my wife woke me this morning in the darkness.