Dream State

It was a really good dream. I was on the farm, I was a child again, we were in the field below the house and it was high summer. The grass was high and wildflowers were everywhere. I could hear insects buzzing. There was a dog playing, a young brown and white dog, leaping around in the grass. Thinking about it, I don’t know that dog. It wasn’t one of ours, but it seemed familiar in the dream. My grandmother was there, carrying a bowl of something. Feed for the hens, perhaps, I’m not sure. She was wearing a blue and white cotton dress, and had her stick. She had her hair up, as she used to sometimes. We were going down to the brook, the brook where Cleo used to drink and where she would stand in the shallow water in hot weather, in the dappled sunlight under the trees, flicking the flies away with her tail. I often saw dragonflies there.

Then I can’t remember what happened exactly, but I do remember we were back in the house, in the stone-flagged kitchen, with the big, solid dining table with the carved legs, and the faded wallpaper with the little blue flowers on the back wall behind the dresser. Grandma was at the stove, with her back to me, stirring something on the stove top. Then she turned and looked at me and said, “Things will be hard, you know, darling. Really hard. I’m so sorry. But be strong and remember these times. It will help you to remember.” I looked at her but I didn’t say anything. I looked at her wispy hair, her steady, calm blue eyes, her tanned arms, and the little gold heart-shaped locket that she always wore on a chain around her neck.

It’s not something she ever really said to me. But there is a sense that she could have done, I suppose. She must have understood what was coming. She was old, after all, and she’d lived through a lot. She’d been a refugee herself. She knew plenty about the unpredictability of life, and about forces bigger than us. How things can change so suddenly.

It was a good dream, but I’m trying to put it out of my mind. It’s probably too late, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. But I have to be disciplined and do what I can. I get up and put the kettle on, look out of the kitchen window at the rooftops and the road in the distance. I remember Grandma’s face and her voice, husky and always with her slight accent. I loved that as a child, that nobody I knew spoke in the same way as her. I’m glad she didn’t have to live to see all this. How we live now. I stop again, shake my head, direct my thoughts to breakfast. Cereal or eggs? I don’t feel hungry. I feel a bit nauseous actually, and my nerves are spiking. Hardly surprising. Just put it out of your mind. Dismiss it. I finger the locket around my neck and reach for the kettle.

Memory is so hard. I know I was a child, so of course I couldn’t understand then what I do now. I certainly had no idea what was coming. And childhood is such an innocent time that we always remember it as easy and happy, don’t we? Maybe in particular one like mine, in a peaceful rural home surrounded by a loving family. I know most people my age didn’t have that experience of childhood, and I think it’s been an easier adjustment for them, in many ways. Perhaps. But then no, how could it be? For anybody?

I sweep some crumbs off the sideboard into my hand and put them in the bin. I look out of the window again. I can see some of them off in the distance, on a street corner. A group of four.

It’s been a while since I’ve had any dreams at all. Certainly not any that I can report. That won’t be helping. Some of my friends dream every night. And have a lot of positive dreams that are verifiable and strong and that they can report. I do the visualisation exercises and I complete them. My focus is generally good. I try to do them every night before I go to sleep, but sometimes I’m just too tired after work. I don’t do the exercises then, because I tend to drift and lose focus, and then it takes me longer to get to sleep afterwards because I’m anxious about it.

I make myself some tea. The chances are it won’t get picked up anyway. It’s pretty random, I know that. But they know our dreaming is a threat to them. And it’s not as if they don’t understand it. They understand it only too well. They know its power. They’re streets ahead of us on that score. Imagine having that amount of control. To direct it all the time. To do it as a group, en masse, to harness it in that way. All that creative power, shared. I can’t imagine it, really I can’t. A hive mind, whether asleep or awake. A directed dreaming hive mind. Of course, that’s how they’ve got here, why they are where they are, how they’ve developed such abilities. We’re nowhere in comparison.

I must stop thinking this way. I’ve got to clear my head and calm down. Get rid of all this stuff. Face the day. I’d better meditate for a while.

I go through into the sitting room and throw a cushion from the sofa onto the floor. I sit down cross-legged, facing the window, and take some deep breaths, eyes closed. I straighten my spine and feel the knot of tension in my abdomen. That’s been growing since I woke up. Hardly surprising. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Watch each breath. The doorbell rings. I flinch.

Oh God, no.

Eyes wide, heart pumping, a sudden hit of adrenaline. I feel sick. I sit there.

The doorbell rings. No no no no no. Oh my God! What do I do?

I stand up. I want to think but I can’t. Breath doesn’t come. My chest won’t move. I must think what to say. I’m not ready. Why didn’t I plan this? I knew it could happen. I should have made a plan. Stupid stupid stupid. Oh no. Oh God.

I stare towards the corridor. They’re just waiting there. Outside the front door.

I start to move, slowly, out of the room and down the corridor towards the front room. I go in through the door, moving very quietly in my socks. Through the net curtain I can see the shape of one of them, waiting outside. The large and bulbous head, the slender neck, the pronounced curve of the spine. It is standing perfectly still. I know the look of its large black eyes, unblinking, just waiting.

Then I hear the voice, very clearly, but only in my head. It’s a voice I know well. A voice I miss desperately. Husky, and with a slight foreign accent.

“Maeve. Maeve. Please open the door for us. We just need to talk to you. We need to talk to you about your dreams.”