In a recurring dream, Mark David Chapman wakes in the middle of the night beside his sleeping wife. He is back in the bedroom of the high-rise Honolulu apartment building where he used to live.
Slipping quietly from bed, Chapman pauses for a moment beside the nightstand where he had once hidden a .38 caliber Charter Arms handgun. Briefly, he wonders if the gun is still there. He is afraid to slide open the drawer of the nightstand and look. Leaving the bedside, he tiptoes across the carpeted floor and closes the door gently behind him.
The living room is softly aglow from reflected city lights that filter through thin, white curtains covering a sliding glass door. The door leads to a balcony that hangs from the edge of the apartment, twenty-one floors above the earth. Chapman steps to the window and stares for a silent moment at vacant streets below. He has a momentary urge to slide open the door and step outside onto the balcony, but he’s afraid.
Turning back to the living room, he sits for a moment on the sofa. In shadows and silence, he recalls something horrible that almost happened a long time ago. To reassure himself, he turns his head and looks at a picture on the living-room wall. Mounted in a rectangular frame with a large white border, the picture hangs prominently above a mantel. It seems to glow with an inner light.
Getting up from the sofa, Chapman walks across the room to stand before the eerie luminescence of the picture frame. Resting his hands on the edge of the mantel, he studies the large, square print beneath the glass. He reads the words Double Fantasy.
In the soft light, he can barely see the signature scrawled in ink at the corner of the album cover. He knows the name is there and he wills it into focus:
John Lennon, December, 1980.
Suddenly, Chapman is seized with the urge to go back to bed. He wants to lie close to the soft, warm body of his sleeping wife. Before he turns around, he closes his eyes to say a brief, silent prayer.
In his dream, Chapman looks again at the album. He touches the edge of the frame. He whispers to himself:
“Thank God you’re still alive. Make us some more great music.”