erman's Nightmare
by Albert Berg
Copyright 2012
I was the one who found David.
I can't say I was surprised. After his last message... But seeing it, really seeing it, that was another thing altogether.
Of course the police came. They asked all the questions you'd expect.
But even if I could have explained they couldn't really understand. Not like I did. I could have told them about the fisherman's nightmare, but what would it have meant to them? They would have thought David was crazy. And maybe he was. I hope he was.
It all started...I'd have to say it was about a year ago. That was when David's wife Celia was murdered in what the police thought was a purse snatching gone bad. And at first he reacted pretty much like you'd expect.
There were tears and memories spilled out and, you know, just the normal stuff that someone does when they lose someone they love. But later...later David started to act strange.
He'd never been much of a talker, pretty much kept to himself, but he called me about a month after Celia's death, and...well when I got that call, when I heard his voice on the other end...something just seemed off about the whole thing. Maybe something in his tone. When you grow up with someone you learn to pick up on things like that.
I asked him if he wanted to come over for dinner, but when he said yes I was genuinely surprised. And just a little nervous. I called out for pizza and for a long time we just sat there eating in silence. Only when the last slice was gone did he speak.
"I haven't been able to write since Celia died," he said. "It...it's funny, I can sit down at the keyboard, and I'll have the idea of a story in my head, but..."
"But what?"
"I've been having this dream," he said, staring off at nothing. "In the dream I'm a fisherman, and I'm pulling in nets and nets full of fish and they're all, you know, flopping on the deck and gasping for air and...it feels good you know? I feel like I'm really accomplishing something. But then...then there's this shadow, like a cloud over the sun or something, but I don't look up. For some reason I look down, over the side of the boat into the water, and then...I wake up."
"That's it? You wake up?"
"Yeah."
I didn't believe him. There was something else, something bigger that he wasn't saying, but I didn't want to push him. I thought if I gave him his space he'd work it out in his own time.
We talked about other stuff after that, but I can't remember much of it. And he genuinely seemed to loosen up a little after telling me about his dream. But there was still this look...this haunted look somewhere in deep his eyes. And that was when I really started to worry.
I called him up again a few days after that and checked on him.
"You doing any better?" I asked. "Doing any writing?" Not because I really cared about the writing you understand, but I thought if he could get past whatever his mental block was, maybe he could move on to the next step of the recovery.
"I've been keeping a journal," he said.
"Oh yeah? I didn't know you were into that kind of thing."
"I wasn't. I mean, it never seemed..." he trailed off.
"What are you writing in it?"
"Everything."
"What do you mean, everything?"
"Everything," he repeated. "What I have for breakfast, what emails I check, what random memory of Celia comes through my mind." He paused for a moment, and then said, "I'm recording this conversation."
"What? Why?"
"I need to have an accurate record. For my journal."
"David, this is...weird."
"I know."
I waited for a long time, thinking he would say something else, waiting for him to speak. But there was nothing, nothing but the sound of our breathing.
Finally I managed to ask, "Are you okay?"
He didn't answer, not for a long time. And when he did, he said, "I'm not sure." Another long pause. "I've been having that dream. I think I know what it means."
"What does it mean?"
"I can't tell you. Not now, not yet. You wouldn't understand."
I didn't talk to David again for another few weeks, maybe a month this time. But all that time I kept thinking about that journal. In some ways it made sense. David was, after all, a writer. He made his living with words, freelance at first, and then gradually more and more with fiction. I had known him to sit at his computer for hours at a time pounding at the keys, trying to get some story out of his head and onto the screen. But this felt different. It felt wrong.
There are a lot of blanks in that period, spaces of time when I didn't connect with David at all. You might think less of me because of that. I'm not sure I can blame you. All I know is that I was busy, so busy with keeping the restaurant afloat that it became difficult to give time for anything else. Even a brother who was hurtling over the edge of sanity.
Could I have saved him? If I had given more of that time that seemed so precious to me then, might he still be alive? I don't know. As God is my witness I just don't know.
What I do know is that he called me sometime in mid-May, and he sounded...better. Happier, at any rate.
We laughed we and talked, and it really seemed like things were finally good and right and normal. But in the back of my mind I wondered: was he still keeping that journal? Was he recording our conversation even now?
But I didn't ask; because maybe I thought the words might give true form to my latent fears. If I didn't ask, and he didn't tell, then that was one less burden on my conscience.
But it wasn't to be so easy. Because near the end of the conversation, when the conversation turned to our late father I said, almost without thinking, "Remember those fishing trips we used to go on with dad? We should do that again sometime."
David paused, and in that pause, brief though it was, all those hidden worries were confirmed. When he spoke his voice was strained, almost unrecognizable from the happier tones I had heard from him mere moments before. "I don't think that would be a good idea," he said. "Fish...you have to be careful around fish."
And then he hung up. Just like that. I looked at the phone, slack jawed, as if it had turned into a fistful of snakes.
And then I did what I should have done weeks before. I got in my car and drove over there. It was a good 45 minute drive over to his house, and all the way I had the feeling, the unswerving sense that something horrible might happen if I didn't get there in time. More than once I took out my cell phone and thought about calling him back, but I didn't.
I knocked on the door with my heart pounding. And when David opened it and I saw the dark circles under his eyes and the beard that bristled around his chin I knew I had been right to worry.
He looked at me with a wildness in his eyes, almost as if he didn't recognize me at first, but then he pulled the door open and motioned for me to come inside.
I stepped through, expecting to find the house in utter chaos, but instead I found that it had been surprisingly well kept. More than that really, because the house looked pristine, like something that might make the cover of a magazine.
But the notebooks told a different story. There was a stack of them, neat and straight like a column on the kitchen table. There must have been fifty there, maybe more.
"Is that...them?" I asked, pointing.
David nodded.
"You don't usually write with pen and paper," I said, mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to say.
David nodded again. "I need to feel it," he said. "The scratch of pencil against page. That way I can be sure. You know?"
This time it was me that nodded, but I'm not sure why. Because I didn't know, hadn't the foggiest idea what David was talking about.
> His face was pale, and he looked thinner somehow. But not really. Thinner from the inside. If that makes any sense.
"I know you're going through a lot with Celia's death-"
David brushed away the comment as if it didn't interest him. "This isn't about her," he said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I miss her. There's not a night that goes by that I don't think that having her here would maybe help somehow, you know? But this isn't part of the grieving process. This...this is something else."
"What is it?"
He didn't answer me right away. Looking back it is those pauses that seem to hold the most meaning for me. They say more than any words ever could. I try to remember those awkward gaps in our conversations, try to insert myself into his mind, to infer something of his thought process, knowing what I know now. And of course it's all guess work. But I think he wanted to tell me all along, wanted to unload this burden he was carrying all at once. But he couldn't do it. Because...because we weren't the same as we had been. As children we understood the world almost as one. But now we had grown slowly apart, David with his writing and then Celia and me with my business ventures. So he didn't say it all at once. Instead he said, "You know that dream? The one I told you about a few months back?"
And I said, "Sure I do," though in truth it was a little fuzzy in my mind right then.
"I didn't tell it right," he said, leaning in as if he was imparting some secret. "I left off the ending. Because the ending...you know, that's the most important part."
"Okay," I said. "So what's the ending?"
"I'm on the boat," he said. "I'm