Dangerous Dreams: A Novel (33 page)

When Allie returned to her apartment, she found a note from her mother:
Out shopping, back around 12:30, quick lunch and visit before I go back to the ranch
. Allie was already depressed by Emily’s death and her abysmally awkward encounter with Dr. Dressler; and she had hoped to persuade her mother to stay another night, further console her, hopefully reveal her secrets about Great-Great-Grandma Ian. So her mother’s surprise departure delivered a third dose of depression.

She walked into the bedroom, sat down at the computer and reread the Roanoke write-up, scanning the page for related links, then clicked on one entitled “Names of the 1587 Virginia Colonists.” Oh my God, look at this. Wonder if Emily’s there. The listing wasn’t alphabetical, so she put the cursor on the top name and dragged it slowly down the list. Hmm, all men on this side. John White was first, then Roger Baylye. “Wow. Never heard either name before the dreams . . . how in the hell . . .” George Howe was next, followed by Thomas Colman, William Waters, and Hugh Tayler. Wow. She tingled with anticipation as she started down the list of women, saw Elyoner Dare at the top. Two-thirds of the way down the page her heart rippled; a chill enveloped her neck like a wet comforter on a subzero day. She saw
Colman
with no first name given. Has to be her; wonder why they didn’t have her first name on the manifest? Maybe it was smudged out . . . or the guy making the manifest screwed up. Who knows, but it has to be her . . . I’ll be damned. Emily’s real. Allie stared at the name, felt a swell of emotion in her breast, salty tears in her eyes. She recoiled instinctively from a sudden, unseen touch to her shoulder, inhaled a sharp yelp, and turned to find her mother standing behind her. “Jeez, Mom! Don’t do that. You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry, Hon. Didn’t mean to.” Nancy glanced at the monitor. “Is she there?”

Caught off guard, Allie glanced at the screen. “Oh. Yeah, Mom. She’s there. All the others, too.” She stood to face her mother, wrapped her arms around her, pulled her close, then soaked her shoulder with tears. “Mom, what am I gonna do? This whole thing sucks!”

“Did you talk to the dream guy?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled, “but I blew it.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “All my words came out wrong, couldn’t think, got ahead of myself, flustered, which I never do. Then I realized I was wearing these clothes.” She pulled away and motioned her hands up and down at herself. “Cool, huh? Tight cutoffs, thongs, no bra, bouncing boobs . . . look like a real erudite PhD candidate, don’t I?” She resumed sobbing as if on cue, pulled her mother close again.

“Allie O’Shay, what am I going to do with you? If anything, he probably thinks you’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol in a gunfight.” She chuckled to herself.

Allie pushed her mother to arms’ length, looked at her with a half smile. “ Mommm. Quit making fun of me. It wasn’t funny at all.” Her smile broadened to a full impish grin as she jiggled her breasts up and down. “Woo, woo.”

“Allie O’Shay, cut it out. So where do things stand with him? Did you tell him
anything
? Can he help?”

“Well, I’m probably being too hard on myself because he wants me to come to his office tomorrow afternoon, so we can talk more. I mean, there were like twenty impatient people waiting behind me to talk to him—not a great environment for discussing the weirdest dreams of the century. But I’ll tell you this, when I go see him tomorrow I’ll have my act together and my head screwed on because there ain’t gonna be another chance if I blow this one.”

“That’s my girl. Get ’er done.” Nancy nodded along with her words; prayed that the
dream guy
could understand Allie’s dreams, help her deal with their impact; feared for her future if he couldn’t. “So give me a call and let me know how it goes.”

At her desk, Allie drafted and printed a list of the dream characteristics she’d presented to Jackson. She then made a copy of her dream log and summarized what her mother had told her about Great-Great-Grandma Ian, emphasized the “true history” nature of her dreams but didn’t speculate as to how they’d been verified. Next she conceived her own theory, based on the limited reading she’d done, for why the dreams were happening and how. And last, integrating all of it together, she wrote a proposal on how she could use her unique gift and inherent capabilities to help Dr. Dressler discover and validate the governing science of human dreams. At the end of the proposal, she wrote:

Dr. Dressler
,

        
I couldn’t feel the way I do about Emily Colman unless I were experiencing a live, emotional connection with a real human being, somewhere in a genuine instance of human history. Therefore, I respectfully request you accept my unique capabilities as a subject of investigation in your endeavor. I will willingly and enthusiastically submit to any and all scientific experimentation and validation techniques at your disposal
.

Very respectfully yours
,

Allie O’Shay

Allie placed the proposal on top, put tabs on each of the individual documents in the package, and typed and printed a cover letter that included a tab index. After she proofread the entire package, she tweaked a few statements, signed her name, and slid the papers into a large envelope with Dressler’s name on it. She set the package on her dresser then suddenly hesitated as an unsettling thought parked in her mind. Too much detail for a meeting, need to summarize it in a point paper, maybe even a PowerPoint presentation. Yeah. Good idea!

An hour later, Allie printed two copies of her presentation, laid them on top of the package. She walked into the bathroom, took the bottle of sleeping pills from her drawer, then debated taking one or two. After thirty
seconds of deliberation, she put the bottle back in the drawer. Maybe another night. I’m not going to like what I dream tonight.

She prepared for bed, returned to the bedroom. Rubbing her birthmark, she turned out the light, then slid under the sheets and closed her eyes.

At first there was total blackness, as black as the inside of a womb, followed after a time by gray until the black returned. The cycle repeated itself until an hour into the fifth gray period, when a faint haze appeared then slowly yielded to a fragile light; and out of the hazy light appeared a sleek, graceful ship, a fierce dragon head atop its tall prow, a single square sail pushing it nimbly through rhythmic ocean swells. As the ship drew closer, a row of colorful shields became visible on each side above lines of stowed oars that protruded from her sides. Rugged-looking, bearded men—some sitting, some standing, some wearing metal helmets—talked to one another or looked silently out at the gray sea. At the prow of the ship stood a sturdy, determined-looking man about twenty-five, his long, light brown hair flowing behind him with the wind. His blue eyes had a strong set but also a touch of sadness that hovered quietly behind the resolve. After a while, he turned toward the men behind him, looked at one who sat in the second row, and motioned him to come forward. “Bjarni, let us talk.”

Bjarni rose and walked toward him. “What would it be, Tryggvi?”

Allie rolled to her side, squinted at the bright sunlight pouring through the window; she sank immediately into a melancholy disposition, began analyzing what she’d seen. Black and gray, black and gray, black and gray, five times, for different lengths of time, then . . .

She refused to acknowledge the new dream, blanked it from her mind, resolved not to let it replace Emily, then focused on the black and gray
scenes, ransacked her mind for a thread of explanation. “Okay, let’s start at the beginning. What’s black?”

“Nothingness is black,” she replied to herself.

“And when do you see nothingness?”

“When you’re not dreaming.”

“But when you don’t dream, you’re not conscious of not dreaming. The only time you’re conscious of
anything
is when you dream.”

But when you dream successive dreams, Allie continued in her mind, you know there was something in between them. And since I’m a lucid dreamer and often
know
when I’m dreaming, by inverse logic, I should also know when I’m
not
dreaming, like during NREM sleep. And since black is nothingness, it must be what I see in NREM sleep—sorta like looking at a TV screen when the TV’s turned off. “Humph! Never noticed that before . . . but the NREM connection
is
there because of the five regular patterns and black being nothingness.”

“So what was the gray, Allie?”

“Well, if the
pattern
theory is correct, then the gray
has
to be REM sleep.”

“But why gray?”

“Don’t know. It was like a TV that’s on, but with no programming on the selected channel.”

“Why no programming?”

Allie’s face lit up like Hollywood lights. “Maybe it was a different kind of dream, an
almost
dream, a dream that was trying to happen but couldn’t get the scheduled program to play . . . like a TV channel having technical difficulties.”

“But why, Allie? Your REMs
always
have
live
dreams.”

Her look saddened again. “Because . . . because maybe I wasn’t dreaming my own dream. Maybe I was dreaming what was in someone else’s mind . . . or maybe what they were
trying
to dream . . . but couldn’t . . .”

“Come on, Allie. This is like pulling teeth. You know where this has to go, so go there!”

“Okay. If Emily’s my conduit to the Roanoke dreams, maybe I dreamed what was in
Emily’s
mind, which was nothing, because she’s . . .”

“Come on, Allie, say it. Because she’s
what
?”

Her heart raced; her spirits abruptly rose like a helium balloon. “Because . . . because maybe Emily’s in a coma, a coma so deep her unconscious is dormant, and she
can’t
dream. That’s it! Gotta be it! She’s alive, somewhere—maybe out there in the forest, maybe in her house . . . maybe with . . . oh shit! The Panther. Oh my God. Please let her be alive. Please, God.”

“Bravo! But keep going, Allie. One more step.”

A shadow of doubt swept her face like a dark cloud drifting over the moon. If the gray in my dream was what Emily’s unconscious saw in her coma, then the Viking ship was
my
dream switching channels to one
without
technical difficulties—a new dream—which means . . . which means Emily died at that moment.