declared war on Bolivia. England declared war on Ireland. Russia declared war on several western neighbors, and North Korea declared war on everyone. It’s only a matter of time before the U.S. declares war on Canada for God knows why.”
“Now wait a minute.” I said, bewildered. “When did this all happen? I think I would have known about some of this.”
“Have you been paying attention?”
“I don’t think I could miss something this big.”
“There are people in this country who don’t even know who the president is, or even what state they live in probably. If you stick your head in the sand the whole world passes without notice.”
I tried to think back but I really couldn’t remember ever hearing about any of this. “I did see something about a train derailment or something.”
Mr. Hankerson waved the remote around. “See there, it’s not just countries at war that’s causing problems. Trains have been derailing all over the world. Planes have been falling out of the sky. The scary thing is that the majority of these things have happened in the last few days. Now one country somewhere declaring war on another is one thing, but this many in such a short amount of time, and then all of these other accidents. I’m telling you there is something going on.”
“What then,” Valerie said, “some kind of secret government cover-up? Remember when you thought the government was hiding a lab under the house?”
“It’s nothing like that.” Mr. Hankerson stressed. “I think it’s bigger than all that.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, but I have a feeling that these dreams are part of it.”
I scoffed. “That doesn’t make any sense. How could dreams have anything to do with people dying all over?”
“I don’t know.” Mr. Hankerson said angrily. “That’s why I invited you here. I really want to talk to you right after your dream. I want to see how you react in your sleep. At first I wanted you to have a sleep test at a hospital, but I don’t trust those places.”
“Dad,” Valerie said, sitting down in a chair next to her father, “I want to find out what these dreams mean as well, but do you really think that they’re the key to all this?”
“I really do.”
Mr. Hankerson showed me to the room I would be staying in. He wanted me in his bed for the night. He pulled his big chair in from the living room and set it beside the bed. I knew it would be hard to get to sleep with him watching me.
7
After dinner, we had a frozen pizza; I sat in the living room watching the news for several hours trying to get sleepy. Every station had reporters someplace different watching from rooftops or fields as rockets flew by and bombs went off. The whole world was starting to look like one big mess and no one knew why.
It wasn’t making me tired, just stressed out. I went back and sat on Mr. Hankerson’s bed for a while until finally around eleven I felt tired enough to go to sleep. I got under the covers and the light was turned off. Valerie was in the other room and Mr. Hankerson was right next to me, a notebook in hand in case I said something or did something he needed to write down. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of everything I had heard on the news. It took quite a while. Sometime after midnight I finally dozed off.
I started to dream. The first thing I remember is being somewhere dark. It wasn’t the tunnel this time. I didn’t know where it was. I realized I was standing up and started for the only light I could find, a tiny pinpoint in the distance. When I got closer I noticed more light, coming from what looked like a window looking outside. It wasn’t a window, but a door. And then it dawned on me where I was. I was in Mr. Hankerson’s house. Was I even dreaming? It certainly seemed like a dream, but very real. I went back to where I started and now saw a chair beside a bed. Mr. Hankerson snored softly from the chair. There was something on the bed. I got close but couldn’t tell what it was. Faint breathing could be heard. I shrugged and went back toward the window. I was dreaming about the world as it was. That had never happened to me before. Usually my dreams were scrambled and didn’t make any sense, but this one wasn’t. It was as if I was really walking around the house.
To test out whether I was really dreaming I went up to the back door and put my hand up to it, and right through it. That was it then, I was definitely dreaming. I stepped through the closed door onto the patio where the only light was an electronic candle that flickered almost like the real thing. The large white cat I had seen earlier snoozed peacefully on the edge of the patio, where the light ended and the dark began. Only it wasn’t as dark as it should have been. If I was awake I wouldn’t have been able to see a thing, but I could somehow. I could make out the grass and the field leading away into the distance. I stepped out into the grass and looked up into the sky. It was the most glorious sight I ever witnessed. Every star was bright and the cloud like Milky Way was more prominent than I ever imagined. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the sky. Everywhere I looked I could see deeper and farther than ever before.
Something started to change. The stars directly above me began to go out. The darkness spread until the entire sky above me was black. And then I saw what was really happening. They weren’t going out, something was blocking them. Something that was also moving towards me. The air started to heat up. A pressure began to exert itself on me. The thing was moving quickly. Something wasn’t right. I looked down. The house was far below. I was ascending into the sky. The ground shrank and the world expanded under my feet. Tiny lights came into view of cities that were growing so small so fast that it looked like the night sky was below me. The continent came into view next. I was so far above the Earth that within a minute I could see the edges, and then the tiny ball grew smaller and smaller until I could barely see it at all.
I looked up. Directly before me was the dark cloud that stood out against the regular darkness. Its pressure was strong but not as strong as I felt it the night before. It was too far from my body to have the same effect. I was once again near the part I knew to be the mind. This time I felt something in my own mind, a passing emotion: fear. It was trying to communicate. The emotion passed and then another one came, very similar. I tried to speak but couldn’t. There didn’t seem to be a way I could understand it and I didn’t know how to make it understand me. But then I did. All of the sudden the emotion it was trying to convey was transformed into a noise that my mind heard. It was trying to form speech that I could understand, and before too long, the noise turned into a word.
. . . People. . .
It was trying to tell me about people, but who? I thought out a question. I was trying to ask it who the people were. It came back with another emotion. I waited patiently for the emotion to turn to noise, and that noise to take shape.
. . . Everyone . . .
I thought out another question. Evidently it could understand me better than I could it. I kept thinking about the word everyone, trying to figure out what it meant by it.
. . . Danger . . .
Everyone was in danger. It was a warning. This strange cloud creature with its pressure and heat was actually trying to warn me about something. It was amazing that I was communicating so well with it. I could feel that it was amazed as well. I don’t think even it thought this could ever happen.
I tried to think about danger and ask how everyone was in danger. I tried to imagine the Earth and the people. Another feeling came to me, and then the noise again, and lastly the word.
. . . Dead . . .
This struck me with a fear that the others did not. Dead was not meant to be just the word but something more. But what was more than death? That was the end of the danger, wasn’t it? Once someone died it was all over.
I tried for one more thought toward it. I wanted very much to know in what way it meant death. I strained to find the right emotion to convey my meaning that was similar to the one it sent over but I could not.
The fear and power of what it sent me was far more than anything I could muster. It must have been trying to convey something worse than death. At least something it thought was worse.
I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. It sent a wave of emotions my way. At first I tried to interpret it, but then it grew and continued to grow. It was more powerful than that even of death. It was so much more than I could handle. I tried to fight it but it kept coming. My head was screaming in pain. But it wasn’t my screams. It was the emotion turned to noise, and that noise was of thousands, maybe millions of screams all emanating at once. It was far too much. It was beyond the boundaries of my mind’s capacity and it left me with what little I could understand. It was no longer just a feeling or just a noise, it expanded exponentially until it was the very source of all loss and depression ever felt by beings who could understand such sensations.
All the light from the stars very suddenly disappeared and I was left in total darkness. And from that darkness came a very white point of light. The light grew and swallowed the darkness. I was floating without a body and without a soul in whiteness. I could just float. There was nothing, no thoughts, no mind, not a force at all. It was a very strange occurrence because I felt as though this was in some way a test.