At Night We Dream

The steps ran upwards, each one just wide enough to make you feel as though they were designed for a larger person to climb.  At the top was a cavernous seeming porch with each front corner supported by a smooth sided column which appeared to rise from the stone floor and disappear into the stone arch of the roof.  It was a thoroughly intimidating approach and I stood at the foot of the stairs, resisting the urge to ascend.  I was urged to this action by a soft, effeminate voice which beckoned, “Come with me,” in a manner which offered little patience with delay.

Then it was over.  The ceiling fan gently stirred the air above me sending a soft breeze across my face and the near darkness around my bed enveloped the cocoon of my sheet.  The clock read 3:16 AM so I lay there waiting for sleep to return.  I lay still and watched the fan blades turn above me until I heard a soft voice whisper, “Come with me,” and bolted upright to look for someone in the room.  The clock read 6:01. 

I pulled back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed rubbing my tired eyes.  I must have gone back to sleep yet I felt as though I’d not rested at all.  The dream had recurred every night since the funeral and I had no idea what it meant.  I took my hands from my face and looked at the empty side of the bed, recalling that whisper from the dream.  It was the same voice every night and the voice was hers.

To the bathroom, teeth brushed, face scrubbed, and into the kitchen to make coffee.  The morning flowed on autopilot, every action more the result of muscle memory than thought.  It had likely been this way for years, really, but before the day was so much more real that it seemed organically connected.  Since Alisha had disappeared there was no connection, just action which carried me through every meaningless day, each a repeat of the one before.

“Come with me.”

The voice refused to depart and behind the lids of my closed eyes lay those stone stairs and those smooth, featureless columns.  I got up and returned to the bedroom with my coffee, getting myself dressed just like the morning before.  I felt enclosed in a loop of tape, live, rewind, repeat.  After dressing I walked back to the kitchen and poured a second cup of coffee, just as I had the morning before.  

I backed out of the driveway.  There was a turnaround that I always used because I hated backing into the road but today I backed out.  I needed some small rebellion, some alteration to life that required new thought, and this seemed a simple beginning.  The horn and screeching tires from behind me were definitely new and startled me briefly from my somnolent existence.  The driver of the other car roared past me as I dropped the car into forward, offering me a hand gesture accompanied by some commentary loudly expressed through his open window.  The car slid forward into the abyss of familiarity again, pushing me once more into the repetitive momentum of the day.  That was ok then, moving along now.

“Come with me.”

I was sitting in the parking lot with my head cradled in my hands against the steering wheel.  I had no actual recall of getting here but my coffee cup was empty beside me and her voice echoed in my brain again.  My head hurt with it.  My ears felt strained from trying to hear a sound that existed only behind them and my eyes ached and burned as though assaulted by unbearable visions. 

I wasn’t at all certain what I was doing.  I read email, replied to email, signed some papers and sorted others into different stacks to be passed along to others.  Everything here was as much automatic response as making coffee and getting dressed had been.  There was a difference though.  Here people approached me and spoke.  After a month the same question was repeated often, much like the monotonous days themselves, “Are you ok?”  What a stupid question, of course I wasn’t ok.  At this time I wasn’t even sure what the term meant and I ached inside to scream that every time the query flowed from mouth to ear but the response was as automatic as breathing so I gave what was expected.  “I’m fine.”  The expectation made it a magical phrase that held the well-intentioned cruelty of the question at bay.  Hearing it inspired satisfaction and swift retreat in those who asked sincerely wanting to help but desperately hoping not to be asked.  In others, asking was simply a formula anyway and the reply completed it.

The sullen monotony was changed to raw grief again when the funeral home called around three to tell me that the stone had been placed.  After I hung up the phone, I sat there at my desk and cried with my head in my hands.  Several coworkers made their way uncomfortably past my door until finally Steve came in and sat in the chair across from not saying anything.  Steve was my manager and, odd seeming as it might be, a great guy with whom I got along as well as anyone at the office.  He patiently waited until my tears finally dried on their own and asked if leaving early would help.  I explained the call and told him that it just brought everything back to the surface.

His reply was immediate.  “There’s nothing here that we can’t pick up for you or just leave for another day.  Do what needs to be done.”

I picked up my things and walked back to my car, leaving the fluorescent bathed tomb of the office behind.  I sat in the car for at least fifteen minutes, feeling the sun’s heat slowly washed away by the conditioned air flowing from the vents.  The first seemed to scrub me clean and the second felt like a baptism, rinsing away the pain and leaving me raw and new.  I was strangely energized and aware as I pulled onto the road and pointed the car toward the cemetery.

I hadn’t been there since the funeral and if not for the strange, new energy flowing through me I wouldn’t have gone at this time.  As I drove through the gates I could feel pressure against me, a force which held me away, but I pushed my way into it.  It did not disappear at the gate but rather seemed to strengthen as I got closer to the grave, pushing me away, discouraging the viewing of my wife’s marker.  Despite the growing pressure, I made my way to the graveside and looked at the stone.

The discouraging force seemed to snap as my gaze fell upon it.  It was an angel.  Delicately carved feathers made up the wings on her back, slightly open, and her legs curled beneath her seated form while her face was upturned to the sky.  It was the face I’d come to see.  Her parents had ordered the stone, giving a sculptor a photograph and asking that the face be in her likeness. It was amazing, exquisite even.  I was spellbound for some time, I have no idea how long, then slowly reached out to caress the cheek.

The spell was released completely as my fingers brushed over the cold stone.  It was a beautiful likeness but it was hard and cold, everything that Alisha was not.  I leaned my forehead against the one wrought upon the stone and cried, long and full.  My knees sank into the mud of the still fresh seeming earth as I collapsed against the sitting form. 

“Come with me.”

It was her voice.  I looked around with swollen, red eyes and found no one yet again that voice whispered in the wind.

“Come with me.”

It beckoned and I followed.  I had no idea where I was going and paid no attention, I simply walked, zombie-like, weaving among the stones surrounding me.  The light faded as Ifollowed that whisper.

“Come with me.”

I stumbled through a world which seemed a bit less real with every step.  Everything seemed to fade away into a mist in which only my immediate surroundings existed, punctuated by that siren’s call.  It was her voice, Alisha’s voice.  I was sure of it and I followed where it drew me heedless of anything beyond it.  It was my world and I gladly faded into it, until I saw where I had been drawn.

The world was gray and insubstantial around the edges but the steps ran upwards in front of me, large enough to make me feel childlike in comparison.  At the top two smooth columns rose from the gray pool of stone to uphold the roof of a cavernous entrance, shadowed and secret.  Flowing from the depths of that sculpted lair came the voice, no longer beckoning but almost commanding.

“Come with me.”

I resisted.  The dream was graven in my mind and I recognized, dimly in my stupor, that it wasn’t a daydream but rather a nightmare.  I struggled to turn but the voice changed, not commanding but seducing.

“Charles, come with me.”

It was Alisha!  Some magic wrought by the placement of the stone had returned her and I eagerly took the first step.  There I stopped, my mind attempting to reassert the knowledge that any magic of this type was something to flee, not to follow.

“Charles, come.”

This time the voice seemed to caress my check and stroke softly down my back.  Its gentle touch soothed my fear and drew me up the next step.  “Charlesss,” the extended, breathy whisper sent pleasant shivers through my body and the same force which had pushed me from the gates now drew me into the darkness of the arched portico.

“Come to me, Charlesss.”  

Charles had been in bad shape yesterday afternoon when I had him leave early, so him not showing up on time wasn’t terribly bothersome.  When it rolled past ten o’clock without even a call, however, it began to worry me.  I called his cell and then his home, getting an answer at neither, and sat wondering what might have happened.  It occurred to me that the stone had been placed on Alisha’s grave yesterday, the call about that is what had him so upset.  I called the cemetery office and asked if by any chance a Charles Tillman had been seen there.

“Do you know Mr. Tillman?”  The voice on the phone seemed excited, perhaps disturbed.

“I’m Steven Hadley, his manager at work.  He didn’t come in and I’m just hoping to locate him.”

“The police are here now, I’ll let you talk to one of them.”

There was a shuffling sound and muted voices over the line before one spoke out strongly. “This is Lieutenant Simmons, can you give me your name, sir?”

“Steven Hadley.”

“And what is your relationship with Mr. Tillman?”

“I’m his manager at Johnson and Williams accounting.  What’s happening?  Where is he?”

Simmons ignored my questions, “When did you last see him, Mr. Hadley?”

“He left the office just after three yesterday afternoon.  He was called by the funeral home and told that his wife’s headstone had been placed and when he didn’t come in I hoped that someone there might have seen him.  What has happened to Charles?”

The voice on the phone sighed, “Mr. Hadley, we don’t know.  His car was found by the groundskeeper here this morning but we haven’t found a sign of him.”