When I was a little girl, I was tormented by terrible nightmares, always the same: hands ripped me from my mother’s arms and carried me away, a flash of bright light, then darkness. I was lost in impenetrable darkness, like being at the bottom of a well, but I couldn’t see the sliver of light from above or find the sides to pull myself out. I was lost and alone.
I barely slept in early grade school. It certainly didn’t help my short fuse with the other kids. I probably wouldn’t have slept for years if Magda hadn’t stepped in when I was seven.
I woke up sobbing one night, sweating in a web of tangled bedsheets. Mary, five years old, sat up in her bed beside me. She regarded me in the glow of the night-light that did little to keep the terrors away.
Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Mary tried to comfort me in her still-baby voice. “It’s okay, Lisbett. It was just a dream.”
I sat shivering in my own bed, gulping for air, trying to shake off the remnants of the dream world. Those hands snatching at me. A voice in my ear that I couldn’t quite make out.
At the time, this was a nearly nightly occurrence. Mary, immune to the drama, snuggled under her covers and drifted back to sleep. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, until the first light of morning through the curtains brought me back to awareness. I was so groggy it was hard to tell if I had slept at all.
Our bedroom door opened a crack. Magda’s voice cut through the darkness. “Lisbett, come.”
Too tired to object, I got out of bed and followed Magda. She led me in my pajamas straight into the waiting station wagon, and we drove the nearly three hours to Minneapolis to see Magda’s friend, the Ojibwe healer Peter Omiimii, to whom I would forever be indebted.
Because of my sleep-deprived state, that visit was always hazy in my mind. We returned that evening with a beautiful dreamcatcher that would always hang above my bed after that, its powerful magic an extra safeguard against the nightmares that had haunted me.
But that night, after the visit with Grandpa and Grandma Ridder, I was revisited by my old nightmare for the first time in many years, the long-forgotten details coming back to me in startling clarity.
Unseen hands snatched me backward.
My mother was there, reaching for me, as I was torn away from her.
I kicked my legs in the air, flailing wildly for purchase.
The night was dark and heavy; the thick shroud of the paranormal around me obscured my sight.
I was alone at the bottom of that deep well.
I couldn’t see the top, the hands gone, nothing but darkness.
A voice, familiar but far enough away that I couldn’t make out the words, whispered into dread-choked air.
A flash of light blinded me, and the words hung overhead and all around and rained down over me.
The voice, the words, were so close but so far over my head as I reached, reached, reached for those unfamiliar hands, grasping for anything to pull me out of the darkness.
Where was my mother?
Take her, then. She’s yours.
My mother’s voice, small and resigned, receded into the darkness.
I jolted awake, burning hot all over. I had kicked all the covers off, and I shivered as the night air chilled the sweat on my back and arms. I thought my gasping for breath would’ve been loud enough to raise the dead, but when I glanced over, Mary slept on peacefully beside me.
It was nearly three AM. The witching hour, I thought, panic rising in my chest.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had never remembered that last part. Was Mom there when I had the dream before? It was definitely my mother’s voice, but not as I knew her. Did she always say that? I couldn’t remember, but somehow it felt right. It fit.
I lay perfectly still, afraid to move. The feeling of those hands snatching me up, carrying me away, was fresh on my skin.
Was it real? I wondered for the first time since I was a little girl.
My heart pounded in my chest. I focused on the rise and fall of my breath, and minutes passed into hours as I stared at the ceiling. When I closed my eyes, that voice, those hands, haunted me.
In that delirious place between sleep and wake, another voice called to me. I awoke suddenly, not aware that I had been sleeping, with the words of protection in my ear.
Bisch wiff. Bisch wusle. Bisch gliebt.
I blinked hard to let my eyes adjust to the predawn light filtering in through our cotton curtains. The words came through again. But who spoke them? I heard them as if from far away.
Bisch wiff. Bisch wusle. Bisch gliebt.
It was a woman’s voice with the elegant gravel of Magda’s, but it wasn’t familiar to me, just a voice calling to me from the dream world. But I knew better than to think it was just a dream.