Nightmares

The first nightmare I ever had, that I remember, is something that happened when I was very, very young, probably just old enough to walk, talk, and read a little. (Reading came on the heels of talking for me, in a house with a lot of books and no television or computer.) I remember, very, very vaguely, more as feelings and general tones than actual memories, being warned about electricity, and about lights, and bulbs, and sockets. My dad knew enough—knows enough, even—to know exactly how dangerous that kind of thing is. Most people do, but he also knows how to do things with electricity without ever being in danger, or how to deal with danger. But to me, at that age, electricity was just one of those things, like cars, or lightning, or fire, that just… Were. Were forces of danger, things my parents gave dire warnings against, enforced by spankings and more dire warnings of a general, and, in order for this nightmare to have occurred, specific nature, I suppose.


Our house was very old, for an American building—over a hundred years old, inherited from my great-grandparents, two stories plus a basement and an attic. My sister and I shared an upstairs bedroom, the one in the front of the house, with two windows looking onto the street, through the branches of two evergreen trees—I could never tell you what kind. Through the hallway was the staircase; above the staircase, in that hallway somewhere, was a narrow staircase that led to the attic. But past the main staircase was my parents’ room, the master bedroom, past that was… a closet, I believe, on one hand, and on the other, a bathroom which led into what would’ve been my brothers’ room, farther on. My brother may have been sleeping in it even then; I don’t remember. He was very young. Down the stairs, there was the living room under our bedroom, and in the back of the house, the kitchen, very dark, I remember, for some reason. I have a vague impression of tan floor tiles, but that may be wrong. There was a pantry, and somewhere there were stairs to the basement. Where, exactly, I don’t remember.


In this dream, I remember, my little brother, David—then, he was my only brother—and I were sitting on the floor, in the attic, which was bare and dusty and lit well. There were piles of Christmas-tree lights on either side of us, bundled and coiled, and we each had a strand. We were unscrewing the light bulbs, checking them for something, to see if they lit up or something like that, and then screwing them back in. (It occurs to me that one important thing about the trigger of this nightmare may have been my mother’s hatred of Christmas decorations.) Someone, either my older sister, Serenity, or one of my parents, called from downstairs about hot chocolate. I put the strand of lights down, eagerly, and told David to come on, and stood up. And he said, “Just this last one,” and unscrewed a light bulb, and it shocked him somehow, and he collapsed, dead.


And that was the most horrifying thing that I have ever dreamed, to this day. I have dreams of demons, and horrible nightmares, and vivid, lucid brawls, and chases where I can’t get away, and dreams of betrayal, and dreams of cannibalism and pain. But that was the worst dream I ever had.


There was one, a few years later, where I was tied to the little tree out behind the fence, at the corner of our fence and our next-door-neighbors (to the right, the Andersons), and a man drove up in a green Model-T Ford, a man with white hair and a white beard and a top hat (I think, I may be misremembering the top hat), and he took me by the wrist and tried to get me to get into his car. I remember being in the backyard with David and a bunch of shouting, screaming twenty-ish people drove through the yard in screaming red sports-cars, and we were scared. He dreamed the same dream, the same night, I think. Or maybe I imagined that.



But the scariest, worst, most nightmarish dream I have ever had, or probably ever will have, is remembering sitting there on the attic floor, screaming, and him dead on the floor next to me.