seymoure

Phantasm

“Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.”

-Marsha Norman

After a simple sandwich, that they had the nerve to call Barbeque, and a call from Chester that he was ensconced in his suite and a bit overcome by the whole deal, I was nearly ready to hit the sack.

First I opened up my laptop and inserted the CD. It was extremely straight-forward. Eddie had given me a lot of pictures. The victims, the lobby and elevator shaft, the plane crash site, the bodies from the other deaths and some mug shots of the investigating police.

And an unexplained shot of Terry Mahoney. He was about 40, in a brown suit with horn rimmed glasses. His hair was medium length; his mouth was nearly lipless. He had the expressionless face of a man who is working. There was not even the slightest trace of a smile anywhere on his face. Maybe that was because he was standing in front of one of those “Perfect Spring” billboards, but I doubted that. Never forget that smiles are not just on your mouth. A person can smile with their eyes most often. Their cheekbones also tell of their smiles.

This is a great tell at poker. Watch their other smiles. When they’ve got cards they wanted, those other smiles will creep up, unless they are really good. Non-professionals can be read by someone watching closely. If I believed in “auras” I would put smile levels there too.

I moved into irrational musings at this point. I realized that I was near to falling asleep. So I got up and got undressed, turned out the light and got in bed.

That did the trick. Now I was awake.

Terry Mahoney’s face kept floating across my mind.

Now sleep had made up its mind to evade me.

This was not new, I don’t seem to sleep easily or long these days, and the excitement of a new adventure didn’t help or hurt noticeably.

I felt the shiver slip up and down my body that always precedes sleep, followed by the nonsense thoughts that always seem to make sense just before dropping off, and then I was gone.

Finally.

If I had known what was coming I might have gotten myself a hunk of caffeine and injected it, for all the rest I was going to get this night.

This multi-feature dream festival started in Japan. I was right in the middle of a Giant Monster movie. None that I knew, but they were certainly big. They also seemed to have the qualities more of children than creatures of hell (though it might be argued that that was a differentiation without a distinction). They were very curious about the people in the buildings they were about to flatten, but only slightly so.

Then the flames and destruction gave way to the most painful world.

Rachel.

She stood there, smiling, and I could not touch her. She reached out to me, as she did late at night as we lay in bed, but my hand passed right through hers. I felt a chill as I knew she wasn’t coming back.

Then I relived moments. Not great, ground-breaking moments, but the tiny, silver ones that make up a love. Her laugh, her smile, the way she stood as she talked to me in the other room. The bad way she drove, the lovely way her tiny voice sang. A thousand memories flooded the world around me. They filled the air with flowers.

Then we were all together. Hugo, Rayleen, Rachel and I. Working, sharing, giving and laughing.

Change is such an unforgiving bitch. We all know people hate to see change, but when it comes to us personally, it becomes a theft. The world has stolen our small, comfortable place from us.

But, if it had to wait for us to be ready we would never let it come on board. I certainly wouldn’t have changed the presence of my loved ones. Ever.

Suddenly I was in a small room. I was there with a heavy-set man in a long woolen coat and a hat. He was carrying a bunch of packages and was smiling the smile we get from people intent on selling us something. When I was a kid we called it the “Last Day of the Sale Smile.”

He looked over at me and didn’t even mention the fact I was naked. I thought this showed great poise on his part. But, it is the kind of thing a salesman must deal with when he has property to unload.

Then came the sound.

It was like a mewling of a colossal metallic cat whose guts are being pulled out through his ears. The room (I was now sure it was an elevator) jumped from side to side in the impossibly wide shaft. I pictured someone with a hacksaw slicing through the cables floors above us.

But I didn’t have to worry about falling. I was now at the bottom of the shaft, but with a crack the elevator came smashing down towards me.

Suddenly a toy airplane was flying around my head and somehow I jumped into it.

We were in open air and free of the shaft.

But I was alone in the craft. No one was at the controls.

I turned and saw a woman’s body lying on the deck and a man parachuting out of the plane.

Then I rushed to the cockpit area and watched the ground racing up at me. We were spinning and the roar of the air racing past us was deafening. If Banshees screamed like this, it is a wonder there aren’t more legends about them.

I was suddenly glad I went to the bathroom before I went to bed.

Bed? Sleep?

I jumped up.

The bed was a swamp.

I was suddenly very thirsty.

Back to the Beginning

Continue on to Chapter 9