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RICHARD DEVIN
1966 Upstate New York
The dream occurred without notice. There was no precursor to it. Nothing like a heavy meal or a long day of play or an injury. It just happened and it didn’t happen every night or with any regularity. There was no predicting when it would seep into my thoughts or manipulate my mind. But when it did, it was the same. Image for image. Frame for frame, like a film played on an endless loop. It was there. It was terrifying and it felt so real.
I was eight when I first remember having the dream—that would have been the summer of 1965. The school year had ended and the warm summer days were spent working the fields of alfalfa that my family grew and cut and bailed for the stables just up the road, or palling around with the other kids in the neighborhood, playing games on the street or in the woods that surrounded the isolated neighborhood.
Midvale Drive was an early development, built in a valley, near the one-time trolley station for the Rochester to Fairport track. The station had long ago been demolished when we moved to Midvale Drive in the early sixties, and only a bit of the foundation remained, perched on a hill and overgrown with vegetation. The trolley and train tracks remained, so did the twenty or so houses built around the backward “P”-shaped street. Little auto traffic made the street the perfect playground for games of kick-the-can, hide-and-seek and dodgeball. It was the kind of place where keys were left in the ignitions of automobiles parked in dirt driveways, and doors were seldom locked. Street lights were nonexistent; porch lights adorned every house. Everyone knew everyone.
The sun was always setting in the dream, the filtered light of dusk lit the sky with colors of red, orange and peach.
It was always summer.
And I was always alone.
I awoke alone in my bed; my brother was in deep slumber in his own bed on the other side of the room. The dormer window was open, allowing a breeze to circulate throughout the room. Light gauze curtains billowed in, fluttered by the breeze.
I climbed out of my bed and headed down the stairs. The front door to our house was wide open. The windows facing the street, in both the living room to the left and the dining room to the right, were open. The same gauzy curtains flapped in the light breeze. I stepped out onto the front porch. Everything was silent. Not a sound from the birds that filled the woods behind the house, not a whisper from the breeze rustling through the trees, no cars, or trains or lawn mowers. Everything was muted.
I called out for my parents. No answer. In muffled slow-motion, like moving through Jell-O, I ran to the street. It was deserted. Calling out again for my parents, and not hearing them, I turned to run. Searching. Down the center of the street. Every house is quiet. No lights, no sound. Just a neighborhood of houses, trees, bicycles left on lawns and parked cars—a movie street scene.
It comes from behind me.
I don’t hear it. I feel it.
Turning around, I see it.
A tire—a huge tire, the kind found on construction equipment—is following me as I run. I pick up the pace, the tire rolls faster, chasing me, gaining on me. I again yell for my parents—for help from anyone. Then run, fast as I can. I run down the hill to the neighbors below. The tire follows. I reach the door to the Rogers’ house. I bang on the door and call out for help—my voice is a muted slur of sound. The tire reaches me, threatening to roll over me. I see the black wide treads only a few feet away.
It ends there. I don’t wake up like they do in the movies, with a jerk, sweating, breathing hard, lurching from my bed. It just ends and I just continue to sleep. It’s only in the morning that I recall the dream.
“Mom, where did you and Dad go last night?” I ask in between mouthfuls of Sugar Frosted Flakes.
“Where did we go?” she responds with a curious grin. “We didn’t go anywhere. Mommy and Dad wouldn’t leave you and your brother alone.”
“I came downstairs and looked for you last night. You weren’t here.”
“We were here all night, honey.” She kisses me on the top of my head, then wipes up the fallen Sugar Frosted Flakes and drops of milk from the table top.
The dream continued for days... maybe longer. Then it stopped. I don’t recall when. The dream was, and then was no more. It just wasn’t. The summer continued into the fall with school starting shortly thereafter. The dream didn’t follow the seasons or a schedule. It was a couple of years more before it came again.
1968
I was ten going on eleven. That’s the way kids express age. Always “going on” something. Kind of crazy when you think about it, that when we are young we always try to be older. That’s an idea that changes for all of us as the years go by. Ideas change. The dream... didn’t.
In the years that occurred in between the dreams, I completely forget about it. It’s as though it hadn’t happened. As real as the dream is when it occurs, it simply fades from my memory after it stops.
But when the dream returns... all the memories, the emotions, and the terror, return with it.
I awoke to the pale peach-colored fog that always accompanied the onset of the dream.
But I wasn’t awake. Sleep had come easily, as it always did after a long summer’s day of play with my neighborhood friends, and stable chores at the barn where I kept my horse.
I’m lying on my back in bed; the window is open, gauzy curtains billow in from the warm summer breeze. I get up in silent motion, run to the stairs. Next, I’m walking out the front door to the street. The tire is behind me. I run. Down the hill toward the Rogers’ house as always. When I reach the house, I freeze.
The dream had changed. Every window in the Rogers’ house is open. The same gauzy curtains that hung from my own bedroom window also hung from the windows of the Rogers.’ The soft summer breeze pushed the curtains into the house. In the dream, only one house had windows with gauzy curtains blowing gently in the breeze. My house. But now... this house too.
I turn and look up the hill to my house. Every window there is also open, curtains fluttering in the breeze. I glance back and forth from the Rogers’ house to my own. The curtains are moving in perfect unison, as thought they were part of choreographed dance.
I turn to run. Every other house on the street is the same as they always have been, dark, with windows closed tight.
The tire follows me. The faster I run, the faster it moves, threatening to flatten me. I turn. It turns. I cannot escape it.
Until I wake.
1969
The dream had occurred nearly every night, the year before, then just stopped. I don’t remember them ending, but for the first time, I clearly remember when the dream came again. Now it came anytime I slipped into slumber. All it took was for me to close my eyes and slightly drift toward sleep.
The dream would invade.
At night it would come to me almost immediately. As though it had been waiting for me.
I was up, running. Down toward the Rogers’ house. I stop. The Rogers’ house is in front of me, windows open, curtains billowing out. The breeze that had once blew curtains into my room, was now blowing out from within. The energy was no longer outside the house trying to get in. It was inside.
I turn to run, as I do every time I have the dream. The giant tire appears, following me, chasing me, threatening me. As I run, I see something that causes me to stop dead in my tracks, forgetting completely about the giant thick treads of the tire that draw near to me. I look up the street in front of me, then slowly turn, looking at each of the twenty-some houses on Midvale Drive that are within my line of site.
Curtains billowing out.
From every window.
On every house.
And then.
I heard voices.
They were near, just out of my vision. I couldn’t hear words. Just sounds. I wasn’t even sure if it was a language.
I tried to raise my head; I couldn’t. The voices were just behind me, on the other side of the sofa where I had fallen to sleep. My back was pressed deeply into the backrest, my head resting on a small pillow. Not one part of my body would move.
The voices lingered. I strained to hear the words; I couldn’t. I only heard sound, but somehow I knew that they were talking about me... to me.
After that—the night dream ceased.
The day dream did not.
The voices followed me—wherever I went, they too would be. If I fell asleep during the day at my house, my relatives house, down by the creek, in my backyard, or at the stables, the voices would be there. I could never consciously understand the sounds—the words—if that’s what they were, but an odd feeling of comfort accompanied them, reassuring me, calming me... controlling me.
New York City
I fell asleep in the easy chair that occupied a corner in the small apartment on 57th street. I’d moved to New York City from upstate a month after graduating from high school. I had hoped that the new surroundings and my new goal of becoming an actor, would keep the voices at bay. But the voices that I had heard while growing up, living with my parents, had followed me to New York. I had hoped they wouldn’t. They did.
After the years spent with the voices filling my dreams, I had become so accustomed to the sound of them slipping into my sleep that I paid little attention. I didn’t fear them. They didn’t interfere with me. They were just there. Not obtrusive. Not demanding. Just there. Always slightly out of reach. And just beyond my understanding.
I stirred in my sleep turning and repositioning myself so that my back was not pushed up tightly to the backrest. A voice. This time it seemed so close. I drifted back to sleep. The voice again. Now closer—behind me. I opened my eyes. Nothing. I blinked away the sleep. Still nothing. No sound, no one or no thing was there.
I let my eyelids ease down, before my eyes had fully closed signaling my brain to sleep, the voices slipped in. I opened my eyes and as I sat up I caught the shadow of movement.
Jumping up, I glanced hurriedly around the family room of the apartment. The open kitchen was set up against one wall, a short hallway of less than ten feet led to the bathroom and single bedroom. The whole apartment could be seen from where I stood. Nothing. My heart was beating and I realized that I wasn’t breathing. I sat down into the comforting fabric of the chair, taking in a long breath then letting it out. Calming down, I leaned my head against the backrest, unconsciously closing my eyes. Immediately, the voices surrounded me.
My eyes popped open.
A shadow again.
Movement. And this time I catch just a glimpse...
...of the hand that was covering my face.
Near panic, I leapt up from the couch, flung myself against the wall, pressing my back into it as hard as I could. Sweat ran down my back. I concentrated on my breathing. In and out, slow breaths in, slow breaths out. I heard sounds coming up the hall outside of the apartment and then the familiar laugh of my neighbor and her boyfriend. The ding of the elevator let me know that they were heading down from the 34th floor of our apartment building.
Silence filled the apartment—funny how the sound of nothing can be so loud. Napping—not an option any longer. I picked up the remote control box that was tethered to the TV, hit the “on” button and watched the TV screen power up to the station it was set to last: CNN. The all-news station had just come into being, and the talking news-head droned on about some non-newsworthy event, just to fill the airtime. I relaxed a bit; my breathing had once again returned to normal.
I stepped to the refrigerator, pulled out a wine cooler, unscrewed the cap...
...and heard the TV behind me switching stations. I spun around, nearly dropping the bottle. I watched as the TV slowly switched from one station to another, pausing slightly between each new station, as though someone was looking for just the right station to lock onto. Then, with increasing speed, the stations flipped by, faster and faster, until there was no discerning one station from another. The image was a blur of static.
Then it stopped.
The screen went black.
I hesitated a moment, picked up the remote and hit the “off” button. Nothing happened. I pressed more firmly on the “off” button. Nothing. Moving closer to the TV, I reached out to turn it off by using the small button on the side of the screen. I pressed it. Nothing, just static sound with a black screen. I tried it again.
Suddenly, the TV popped with a spark of electricity and the acrid smell of burning plastic. A wispy stream of smoke lofted up from the vents in the back of the TV box.
I jumped back—and hit a body.
Spinning around quickly, I turned to face what my mind saw as, an angel... Or a demon. I didn’t know which.
“No fear.” The being said... or thought? I heard it nonetheless. “No fear.” It repeated.
Too late. I was petrified. Panic threatened to take over. I attempted to route an escape plan in my mind. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t move.
“No fear.” It thought—spoke—again.
I felt my knees weakening, threating to buckle under me. Instinctively, I reached out to steady myself, taking hold of the being’s arms.
It looked at me, cocking its head from one side to the other. “This is why we come to you in dreams.”
“In my dreams?” I asked, finding my voice.
“In all of your dreams.” He... She... It... said... thought. “Dreams are the connection with all.”
I looked into the being’s large black eyes. They were soft, not threatening, and as much as I had wanted to run... I now wanted to stay. A sense of calmness overtook the panic still trying to creep in at the edges of thought. “Connection?”
“To understand.”
I realized that my hands were still gripping its arms. “Us? To understand us?” I loosened my grip but let my hands linger on its arms.
“Yes.”
“Why hide then?”
The being seemed to ponder this for a moment and did not respond immediately. “So that you will understand.”
“Through dreams?”
“Yes.” The being hesitated, then added, “Dreams are the portal. We created them when we created you.”