Stephen Lawhead: Dream thief

Ordinarily the green and quiet soothed Spence's troubled mind, but not today. He lay back and tried to close his eyes, but they would not remain closed. He shifted position several times in an effort to get comfortable. Nothing he did seemed to make any difference. He felt ill at ease and jittery – as if someone very close by was watching him.

As he thought about those unseen eyes on him, he grew more certain that he was being watched. He got up and left the shaded nook, glancing all around to see if he could catch a glimpse of his spy.

He struck along the path once more and, seeing no one, became more uneasy. He told himself that he was acting silly, that he was becoming a prime candidate for that room with the rubber wallpaper. As he scolded himself he quickened his pace so that by the time he reached the garden level concourse he was almost running. He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see if he was being followed; for some reason he half-expected Hocking's egg-shaped chair to come bobbing into view from behind a shrub.

Still looking over his shoulder he dashed through the entrance and tumbled full-force into a body entering the garden. The unlucky bystander was thrown to the floor and lay sprawling at his feet while Spence stood blinking, not quite comprehending what had just happened.

"Sorry!" he burst out finally, as if prodded by electric shock. The green-and-white rumpled jumpsuit of a cadet flailed its arms in an effort to rise. Spence latched onto a swinging arm and hoisted the suit to its feet. Only then did he glimpse the bewildered face which scanned him with quick, apprehensive eyes. "I'm Dr. Reston. BioPsych. Are you hurt?" he volunteered.

"No, sir. I didn't see you coming. It was my fault."

"No, I'm sorry. Really. I thought…" he turned and looked over his shoulder again. "I thought someone might be following me."

"Don't see anybody," the cadet said, peering past Spence into the garden. There was nothing to be seen except the green curtain of vegetation, unbroken but for the careless splashes of white and yellow flowers blooming at random throughout the garden. "I'm Kurt. And I'm BioPsych, first year. I thought I'd met most of the faculty in my department."

"Well, I'm not an instructor. I'm research."

"Oh," Kurt said absently. "Well, I've got to get back to work." The cadet started off. "Glad to meet you, Dr. Reston. See you around."

On the overgrown donut of the space station the cadets always said, "See you around." Spence appreciated the pun.

…

THE UNBROKEN HORIZON OF gently rolling hills stretched out as far as Spence could see. The same horizon, the same hills as in previous dreams. In the distance he saw people moving among the hills with heavy burdens. Closer, he recognized these as the peasants who labored in rags to rid the arid hills of stones, which they tumbled into their rough twig baskets with their skinny hands. All was familiar, painfully so, to Spence who had lived the dream often.

He watched as the barefoot peasants shifted the weight of the baskets upon their bony shoulders and shuffled single file along the road. Others around him still strained to lift the stones, white as mushrooms and big as loaves of bread, from the soil. He knew he was powerless to help them in any way; his words and actions were ignored. He was invisible to them.

Spence again sat down, brooding over his ineffectiveness. Again the air was deathly silent; the peasants were gone. He felt the earth tremble at his feet as a round, white stone surfaced from beneath the ground. He looked around him and other stones were erupting from the soil like miniature volcanoes.

When he stood he found himself once again atop the high bank of a river. The dark, muddy water swirled in rolling eddies below. The last peasant dumped his basket into the water and Spence heard a voice call his name. He turned and saw a dozen huge, black birds wheeling in the air. He followed them and realized he was standing on an immense plain which stretched limitless into the distance. Rising in front of him on that flat, grass-covered plain stood an ancient, crumbling castle.

He lifted his foot, the landscape blurred, and then he stood within the courtyard of the castle before a scarred wooden door which he tried and found open. An empty marble corridor of stairs spiraled down away from him. He followed it. Deeper it wound, eventually arriving at the entrance to a small chamber, dimly lit.

Spence rubbed his eyes and stepped forward into the room. The light of the room seemed to emanate from a single source-an incredibly large egg floating in the center of the chamber. He to watched, horrified, as the egg began bobbing slightly and rose up higher into the air. As it rose it revolved and he then saw what he feared-the egg was the back of Hocking's chair. But it was upside down. As it slowly revolved, he saw Hocking sitting serenely in his chair, laughing. The chair floated closer. Hocking threw him a toothy grimace and became a leering, malevolent death's-head.

Spence turned and fled; the egg-chair-death's-head pursued him. He raced for the door at the end of the corridor and burst through to discover an inky black night scattered with a thousand stars. Over his shoulder Earth, a serene blue globe, rose in the sky as he stumbled bleeding across a rocky, alien landscape… …

SPENCE WATCHED THE SHUTTLE pull away from the huge arcing flank of the space station. He stood on a small observation platform overlooking the staging area watching the routine arrival of supplies and the departure of personnel going down, or rather back, to Earth on furlough. He wished he was going with them.

He had never felt more like giving up than he did right now. His life had settled into a dull aching throb between depression and loneliness. He did not know which was worse: the black haze through which he seemed to view life around him, or the sharp pangs which arrowed through his chest whenever he immersed himself in the stream of people moving along the trafficways and realized that he did not really know a single other soul.

But underlying both of these unpleasant realities was, he knew, the very thing which he dreaded most: the dreams.

Since that afternoon in Central Park nearly two weeks before, he had begun to feel those invisible eyes on him every waking moment. He fancied they watched him while he slept. He felt his sanity slowly slipping away.

He gazed up through the giant observation bubble into the velvet black void of space burning with a billion pinpoint flares of nameless stars. He was gazing at the rim of the Milky Way but remained oblivious to the sight. "What am I going to do?" he whispered aloud to himself.

He turned away as the shuttle's white bulk dropped slowly from view below him. There was a whir as the docking net was withdrawn and a faint whispered hiss as the inner airlocks equalized. Spence yawned and thought again, for the billionth time,how tired he was. He had not closed his eyes to speak of in the last three days-quick catnaps, a few minutes here and there was all.

He had been avoiding sleep like a youngster avoids the dentist when the tooth throbs and pain numbs the jaw. He hoped that by some miracle the pain, the dreams, would just go away. At the same time, he knew that hope was futile.

He would have to have some real sleep soon if he was to remain even partially upright and coherent. He had the odd apprehension that he was turning into a zombie, one of those pathetic creatures of myth destined to roam the twilight regions neither completely dead nor fully alive. No thoughts, no feelings. Just an ambulatory carcass directed by some demon will beyond itself.

But the idea of sleep had become repugnant to him. Becoming a zombie was less frightening than the thought of the nightmare which waited for him to drift into blissful peace before unfolding him in its awful insanity.