Pink Light

There was this sound. The kind of sound you hear when asleep. Your mind takes that sound and turn it into a dream. I don’t normally remember my dreams. Most people I’m told, don’t remember their dreams either. That is why I guess this dream must have some significance. It must have a meaning, but I can’t figure out what it is. 

The sound I remember, and most of the dream, some of the dream. It was a tapping sound, as if coming from under water. Or that thumping sound when you are testing a melon, by tapping on the rind to determine if its ripe. That echo, like a drum, but softer, like it is off in the distance, but just loud enough to hear. I guess that is why I remember it so well. It is stuck in my head and I can’t get it out. 

When I woke up, I knew I had been dreaming about something, it felt like something bad. I was sweating. I felt hot and cold at the same time, and yet I felt nothing at all. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but… I think whatever it was, was in my head. My mind was trying to keep me from remembering. I’ve had times like that before, just not in my dreams, I don't think. It was when I saw something that bothered me. Something I couldn’t understand, didn’t want to understand, and yet it was there, like watching a movie for someone else. All you can do, is ask why?

I was waiting on the corner at the bus stop. I worked in this printing place after school. It was late fall and it had begun to snow. The first snow of the year. You could smell it in the air before you could see it. It was getting colder. I could feel the temperature dropping, my breath turning to steam, what my grandmother called spirit breath.

I remember watching it leave me and disappear into the blackness. There was a tavern by the bus stop. It had an instrument above the door, made up of florescent tubes. They twisted and turned in this pinkish glow. The form from a distance appeared as a guitar, but from up close, it looked like nothing but spaghetti, pink spaghetti. Some of the strings were dead; tubes of nothingness. 

When I breathed out, the steam would move up towards the spaghetti and turn into a pink mist.

Except for the dim light from the sign and a street light down the block, it was pitch black.; only the distant light of the city fighting its way through the cluttered night air.

It was late evening, so the street was empty of cars for the most part. It resembled a ghost town in a western movie, except for the snow. As I looked down the street to see if the bus coming, I noticed something move across the road from me. I couldn’t tell what it was at first. It looked like a black ghost slipping along this fence, that was supposed to keep you from seeing the junked cars behind it. But a lot of the slats were missing and you could see the pieces of head lights and radiators, bent fenders, and hoodless engines. I always found the place to have a beauty of its own; the damaged shapes and all.

I didn’t see the bus, and had thought about going back down to the basement to get warm. I figured because of the first snow, maybe the buses were running behind schedule, so I could get warm for a few minutes, and then come back up. As I turned to head for the stair well I noticed the black ghost step onto the street. It was nearly invisible, the snow falling harder now. 

A car came around the corner heading towards the distant rainbow of lights. Its headlights glowed, wide frightened eyes peering into the darkness. The beams searched the road ahead, but with limited reach. I could see what was going to happen. It was similar in the dream.  I could hear the sound of the car, the crunch of the tires on the snow, and the dull thud, like a remembrance of thunder.

I saw the man hurled through the air. The car swerving to a stop, now resting sideways in the roadway. The black ghost moved reluctantly through the speckled blackness, finding the street, sliding on the frozen pavement, leaving a steaming reminder on the street as its progress slowed, and then it stopped. It looked like a pile of smoldering rags. Steam leaving the ghost, as the man in the car jumped out, and ran towards it. Standing above the form he did nothing, but stare.

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t move, help. It was as if I was forgotten by time. I could see the smoldering pile of rags, the driver, the red glow of the tail lights mixing with the exhaust, and moving heaven word as if it were accompanying the ghost to wherever ghost go; but it was as if I was watching for someone else. I just stood there, as if everything in the world had stopped, been suspended. I don’t know how long I stood there. Another car came and stopped, then another, and then I could hear a siren in the distance, and then I saw the marque on the bus down the street, its yellow glow, and black letters normally visible above the windshield, blank. 

It’s strange, but I don’t remember much after that. I don’t remember getting on the bus or going home. But when I woke up I remembered the dream. I remembered the sound of the tapping on the window, the room vibrating with a hollow sound that made me hot and cold at the same time. I had the same sense of awareness that I had that night. The eerie silence, the hollow tapping sound, everything still as if suspended in time. I could feel the sweat slide down my cheek. I looked out the window. I couldn’t tell what time it was. It was still dark, only the neighbors porch light glowed like a shrunken moon on the new snow. And then I saw, what I knew to be a face. 

I didn’t recognize it. But as it grew closer, I realized it wasn’t a face at all, but a mask. The mask pressed against the window glass, stared at me with vacant eyes, and a hint of a smile chiseled of its lips. Its head was bare.  Steam appeared to roll from its scalp, a tumultuous fog. 

I didn’t see the face of the ghost hit by the car, but I knew it was his face behind the mask. I watched as a gloved hand appeared alongside it. A finger began to tap on the glass. The muted tapping echoing through out my attic bedroom. It was as if I was inside a drum attempting to understand a message. There had to be a message. The tapping had a cadence to it, like a song, a poem, or possibly, a prayer. Still, I couldn't understand.

I could only listen to the muffled tapping, and watch the masked face become distorted by the pinkish steam escaping its scalp, and condense on the glass. The hardened purple lips began to move. At first I couldn’t understand what it was saying, if anything. Then the letters began to meld with the glass. Pink letters, aligning to form the words, “Let me in.”

 I closed my eyes, and felt myself being surrounded by time. I felt nothing. A numbness settled on me, the shroud of eternity enveloping me. Everything growing dark, and as still as the astronauts description of space. The only sound, coming from the other side of frosting glass, a cadence of taps; telegraphed SOS type signals, repeating the same message over and over, “Let me in.”

All I remember after that, was the sound of a single tear sliding down my cheek and falling onto my chest, never to be seen or heard from, again.