Stranger on the shore

It started out as a barely-remembered, hazy and confused dream about standing in front of a canvass, painting a seascape at night. The painting was very much a vague outline and I completely forgot about the dream as soon as I got up in the morning and drank my first cup of strong black coffee. It wasn't until about two weeks later that I had a second dream.

Wandering around a misty moor at night, my path lit by the bright but ghostly light of a full moon overhead, I wasn't at all scared. If anything it was calming, reassuring, to be walking free in the open, in the semi-darkness. And it wasn't just a visual dream. I could smell the sharp, herbal wetness of seaweed, a salty tang on the breeze that I could feel on my face. After a while, I could hear the gentle lap and lull of waves breaking on a sandy shore, which I felt was nearby, perhaps a few hundred yards away and just beyond the rise of a grassy hillock ahead. At length I stopped and found myself standing by the easel, overlooking a wide bay stretched far into the distance either side of me, with a vast expanse of sandy beach below. At this point I awoke, annoyed and trying to hold onto the dream.

Jenny returned to the bedroom with the two cups of tea she had got up to make just before I woke up. She must have seen the odd look on my face. I tried to explain the dream but as soon as I said "I had the strangest dream last night..." I could tell she was no longer listening. She had her nose glued to her iPhone as usual, catching up on whatever she liked to catch up on, first thing in the morning.

That night, I almost wished the dream would continue. The night-time scene was so beautiful that I wanted to paint it, even though it was only a dream. As I drifted off to sleep, Jenny beside me, I could start to detect the first tentative whiffs of kelp and salt water. I knew that I was dreaming as soon as I found myself again on the grassy rise overlooking the bay. I was also pleased to see the canvass propped on an easel, and I could see that there was the beginning of a landscape being painted. Vague background features had already been added. Feeling a paintbrush in my right hand and a palette in my left, I motioned toward the canvass but neither hand would move. I started to feel concern and wanted to continue the painting. It was as if there was an invisible barrier between me and the canvass preventing me from reaching it. I started to get anxious and then woke up, feeling hot and clammy in the warm bed, Jenny still fast asleep.

I forgot about the dream in the busy routine of the day. I had been given three separate commissions, each with a fast approaching deadline and the combined work would generate considerable fees. Once I had completed these three painting I would have earned more in a matter of weeks than I had the whole of the previous year. But it was putting considerable pressure on me which no doubt accounted for the broken sleep and restless dreams. Yet it didn't stop me wanting to continue the dream and somehow make sense of the canvass, perhaps completing the mysterious painting.

Falling asleep that night it seemed as if I couldn't wait to restart my night time painting dream. Sure enough the dream recommenced, this time with some shadowy foreground detail in the canvass that might have been a figure standing, overlooking bay. Again, though I held paintbrush and palette, I couldn't get any closer to the painting in progress before I awoke, even more jittery than the night before, almost angry that I could not continue the nocturnal painting.

The third night, I was sure that the foreground image was that of a man facing into the picture and away from me as I stood there. The main difference this time was that there was no restriction of my movements. I found I was able to approach the easel and use the brush. Daubing at the palette without seeing any colour, I tentatively applied paint to canvass and could see the image of the man's back become more clearly formed. It didn't really feel like I was painting however. It was as if someone else were controlling the brush and that I was just holding it for them as they moved my hand. Abruptly I awoke to find I had thrown all the covers off, the sheets were all crumpled up and Jenny was nowhere to be seen. It was 3.00 am.

I got up to get myself a warm drink and see where Jenny had gone. As I approached the spare room, the door slightly ajar, I could just hear the gentle breathing of my sleeping partner. Tiptoeing away to the kitchen, I made a small cup of milky decaffeinated coffee and drank it in bed, reading the remaining two thirds of a Raymond Chandler, as I tried in vain to make myself sleepy.

So it continued, night after night, every single night I had the same dream of painting on a grassy bank overlooking a sweeping bay in the misty half light. After a few more disturbed nights I said to Jenny that I would sleep in the spare room for a bit, so that she could get some rest. She didn't hesitate to agree.

As the dreams continued, so the painting progressed until it became clear that the image was that of a man wearing a suit standing overlooking the wide expanse of the bay in the misty moonlight. I (or whoever controlled the brush I held) had painted the land, sea and sky as it was in the dream. The fact that the man in the image was facing away meant there was very little detail but I still had a funny feeling that I knew who it was.

Then, on what turned out to be the final night of the dreams, I had the most detailed dreamy vision of them all. There, in front of me, was the canvass, with the completed painting still mounted on it. The scene was like a photograph of the surrounding grassy mound, wide open bay, sandy beach below, barely seen gently breaking waves and a cloudless sky, a myriad of stars like a diamond-encrusted canopy far above, reaching to infinity. The only difference was that this time, the foreground figure had changed. It was no longer just standing there facing away, it was standing in front of a canvass, holding the paintbrush and palette that I had been holding on each of the previous nights. Suddenly the figure in the painting turned around and looked directly at me.

I yelled at the top of my voice, finding myself sitting up in bed looking out of the window. Jenny came rushing into the room and stood at the door as if transfixed.

"What is it?" She gasped. I collected my wits immediately, glad to have woken up. It was already starting to get light.

"Sorry I woke you, darling, it was just one of those dreams again."

"You know you shouldn't take on so much work. The stress will kill you."

"I know what you mean but I hardly had any commissions last year and we need the money."

So the dreams ended, as abruptly as they had started, with life returning to normal. After a few dreamless nights I moved back into our shared bedroom. I completed the first painting, a portrait of a successful city financier, and made a good start on the second, which was a simple painting of a family's pet Labrador that had died a few weeks before. I didn't like working from photographs but it would only take a few days to complete. The third commission I decided I was not going to start until I had had what I considered a much deserved break.

I managed to persuade Jenny to come away with me and we ended up staying with her friend who lived on the north Cornish coast, in a little cottage not far from Port Isaac. The rugged coastline was perfect for long relaxing walks for the two of us, three when Jenny's friend Lucy joined us, and we both became as relaxed and mellow as could be. On the penultimate night of our stay Jenny and Lucy were having a good after-dinner chinwag over a bottle of Chardonnay and a box of After Eights. I retired to the kitchen to clear up before sleepily heading to the bedroom, knowing the two ladies would be chatting away for hours. I figured I would catch up on some reading.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, however, I fell asleep. That's when the dream returned. Standing on the grassy hillock, I could feel the soft turf beneath my bare feet. I could feel the gentle breeze ruffling the heavy cotton of my favorite pyjamas. The smell of the surf and the seaweed was as strong as ever and the full moon above lit up the scene perfectly. All around was the wide sweep of the bay with the lapping waves and the shifting sands, near invisible in the limited light cast by the moon alone. There before me was the canvass, though this time the figure of the man in the suit was no longer there. It looked like he had been erased from the painting altogether, leaving just the landscape, sea and sky in the picture.

I stood there frozen, trying to take it all in. What had happened to the man in the suit? And then I felt it. That strange force that made my hand move the paintbrush over the canvass now seemed to grip my right hand, tightly, pulling me forward toward the painting on the easel. I had the feeling of being led by the hand and could almost picture an invisible figure guiding me towards the canvass. Not just pulling me towards the canvass but drawing me into the painting itself. I could feel my whole body become weightless as I lifted my leg to step up to the level of the canvass on the easel. As I was about to step into the painting, a feeling of sublime wellbeing consuming me, I heard a loud noise from behind. What was it? Was it someone shouting?

Having disturbed my rapture, I felt my body regain its weight and sink back down to the ground, felt the dampness and softness of the grass between my toes, the breeze on my face and the flapping of my pyjama jacket around my waist. What was it? Who was shouting at me, disturbing my blissful dream. I did not want to be woken out of it.

"Vincent! Vincent! No! Vincent!"

It was Jenny's voice. What was up? Why was she shouting at me?

"Vincent! No! No! stand still a minute! Don't move! Stand still!"

What was Jenny doing in my dream and why was she shouting at me to stand still. I was laying in bed, wasn't I?

As I started to feel myself waking up, I felt myself shiver. I felt really cold and wet. I must have kicked the covers off but where was the water coming from? My legs felt wobbly. I was standing up? How could I be? I started to stagger forward a little.

"No! Don't move!" I could now hear Jenny getting closer and I could hear footsteps, as if running, two people running towards me.

Now I was scared.

Suddenly, I looked up and could no longer see the canvass and easel, only sky, dark sky full of clouds and it was raining. I could feel the rain on my back. Panicking I felt me knees collapse as I tottered..... before hands grabbed me from behind and pulled me backwards, causing me to fall back into the sopping grass.

"Thank God," said the other voice, which I now realized was Lucy's.

As I recovered my senses, shivering uncontrollably, I felt the grateful warmth of a raincoat being wrapped around me. I must have sleepwalked right out of the house and up the walking path to the hills overlooking the sea. Unlike the image of my dreams, there was no sweeping bay and wide expanse of sand, just a jagged outcrop with a stubbly grass on top and a sheer drop of 120 feet below.

"When I saw you standing there in your wet pyjamas I thought you were going to jump off the cliff," sobbed Jenny.

"You were standing right at the edge," said Lucy.

Once they had got me back to the cottage, pressed a brandy glass to my mouth, given me a hot bath (Lucy left this bit to Jenny) and wrapped me up in multiple blankets in front of the log fire, they explained what had happened.

After I had been in bed an hour or two the women, still talking together happily, had started to discuss my recent success as an artist. This made Lucy remember the story of a painter from the 1930s who had taken his life by jumping off the top of the cliff. It gave Jenny the shivers and, in a moment of irrational fear (it seemed at the time) came in to check on me, finding me gone. They first looked around the house, then the gardens, and then started to trace the path up to the clifftop, taking a torch with them, spurred on by a feeling of dreadful foreboding. When the saw me on the edge of the cliff they of course feared the worse.

"I thought I was in bed, dreaming," I said. "I have never sleepwalked before."

To date, it has never happened again, and that was a year ago.

When I told one of my friends, Brendon, about the incident, he looked at me quizzically.

"That's interesting," he said. "I mentioned that incident, of the artist who killed himself, to you a couple of years ago. Don't you remember?"

"No."

"Well, I did. I picked up one of his paintings in a clearance sale, signed and with some details written on the back. I looked him up and found out what happened to him. Got into a lot of debt, lost his wife and decided to end it all. You must remember, I showed you the painting."

"I remember you buying the painting, but I don't remember seeing it."

"Well you wait there and I'll get it for you."

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