A Dream of Reincarnation
It was in Laguna, that city of mystery on the French-Italian border, that I met the man. The grimy, back-alley tavern, never full, was slowly emptying for the night. The table in front of me was vacated, and there he sat, across the room in the corner. What held my gaze, I suppose, was no one peculiarity of his in particular, but rather the totality, the sum.
Even at a distance, it was arresting. Bloodshot eyes, still alert in their infinite weariness. The shine of a nervous perspiration upon the forehead and unshaven cheeks. A movement, an unnatural twitch of the lips. Hands which could not disguise a slight quivering as they clutched, in a white-knuckled grasp, the long-since emptied glass of ale. Whatever inner demons plagued his tortured psyche had transformed his once-handsome visage into the gray, grizzled countenance of one twice his senior.
And yet, I was inexplicably drawn to him. How I came to be seated at his table, I don't recall. But he showed no surprise, no reaction of any kind, almost as though it were expected.
Yet I could formulate no words, nor even ideas. We simply watched each other, he more intensely than I, until, at last, he spoke. "Do you often dream, stranger?" It was a hoarse and barely-perceptible susurration.
I responded in the affirmative, to which he continued, as though to himself, "Most people do. But some dreams, some dreams, they are much more, no? Perhaps some dreams, some special ones, perhaps they are, they could be a reflection, an echo, of… reality." He lifted his glass, only realizing it was empty when it was halfway to his lips.
Not sure what to make of this, my response consisted of only a slight raise of the eyebrows, but it was enough to prod him further in his quivering, stuttering speech.
"There are some things we shouldn't know, I can tell you truly. I know, for I have seen, yes seen them. For years, stranger, I meditated on the metaphysical." At this, he absent-mindedly fingered a dirty talisman around his neck. "You have meditated, perhaps? But I don't mean in the traditional way, no. In my sojourns, I sought to penetrate the deepest meanings, sought to comprehend the fundamental nature of reality itself… oh! Oh God!"
He laid his head face-down on the stained tabletop, his body wracked with silent spasms. After a moment, I gingerly grasped his shoulder, halfheartedly mumbling something polite about not taking dreams seriously. At this, he shot a hand across the table to clutch my wrist, whilst bringing his face to within a thumb's length of my own. I could clearly see the tiny, blood-red vessels which webbed the whites of his intense eyes; they almost seemed to pulsate.
"No! They can be real! I know…. I, I, I think I delved too deep one day. In my meditations, my mind cleared like never before, and understanding seemed to flow effortlessly. But something else happened, too. At night, the dreams, they began. Oh, always the same, night after night, and then by day, but clearer and clearer. A maddening cacophony of images and sounds, each indistinguishable from the others… and always in the background, an indistinct sense of familiarity, and fear. This went on, I don't know how many months. Dreams, meditations, memories, I could no longer tell the difference! I scarcely knew, knew who I even was anymore!"
He contracted into his chair whilst covering his face with both forearms, quietly sobbing for a time. And I, at a loss, could only say, "But then…?"
He straightened, staring at me through wet, crimson eyes. "But then… but then… It came. It…." The man shut his eyes, and his posture seemed to straighten. For several minutes, he was absolutely still. His eyes blinked open. They seemed altered somehow, as if viewing an object in the far distance. And when he now spoke, his voice had no stutter, no hoarseness. It was ethereal, and lucid, almost preternaturally so.
"It came. At a time, during these dreams, piercing through the surreal cascade of visions, came to me one strikingly clear image, whereupon all else faded into a scarcely perceptible background static. How can it be described? It was as if all sound instantly contracted to the Source, from whence the image subsequently sprung, carried forth on tumescent rays of light through the formless sea of darkness.
"There was a shadowy land of antiquity, passing by at great speed, an immeasurable distance beneath me. And I, a dimensionless mote of consciousness in that sunless world under the star-decked sky, possessing only the sense of sight, and that coming to me but gradually.
"Over endless dark oceans of unfathomable depths I passed, and ranges of nameless mountains whose peaks stretched to bitter, unearthly heights. Then came primeval forests, and eternally shadowed plains. How long this voyage lasted, the blink of an eye or millennia uncountable, I could not speculate. Time as we comprehend it held no meaning in that oneiric dreamscape.
And though I had not dreamt of this place before, that vague familiarity ever lurked in my subconscious, just out of reach.
"Yet at some point, I beheld a great, desolate city, unlike to any ever conceived. Impossibly vast, with thousands upon thousands of towering onyx edifices that clawed the upper reaches of the opaque sky. The architecture, the geometry—I couldn't begin to describe it. Among this jungle of arcologies were great, empty plazas—inland seas of themselves—dotted with bone-dry fountains and fantastically eerie sculptures.
"And silence. Silence so utterly complete that its essence was a positive quality in itself, rather than a lack of one.
"What was this vision—this elder city of darkness, which must have existed vigintillions of centuries before the first progenitors of terrestrial life blindly slithered their way out of the primordial ooze?
"All at once, before my eyeless vision, I was descending, no, plunging, through the canyons of the cyclopean monoliths. Plummeting with ever greater acceleration, I saw the ground open before me, prepared for the impact—but no! I passed through, continuing downwards, and here I saw that the city indeed extended beneath the surface, sublevel upon sublevel without end, so that I realized the upper part to have been the mere tip, the crown of a gargantuan urban iceberg.
"Through awesome subterranean cityscapes I passed on that interminable descent. Great industrial chasms, honeycombed vaults, bulkheads of solid rock, yawning cathedrals, labyrinths of twisting passages. As I went deeper, the vision became darker, the silence more profound, my speed slower, and my disquietude greater. And at the last, at the very foundation of foundations, I advanced through a straight, narrow passage of indeterminate length and minimal luminosity, until I came to a metal door, passed through, and found myself in a small, square room.
"And in this deepest of vaults, what do you suppose I beheld? What was there? Well, the answer to that is… nothing. Absolutely nothing. The chamber was completely empty. As confusion engulfed me, a throbbing seemed to build within my mind, slowly at first, and then stronger and stronger, until it snapped. In an instant, something in my genetic memory unlocked, and all was horribly clear.
"This room was mine. I knew it without the slightest shadow of a doubt. I had dwelt here, in some far-off age. Like the surreal, eldritch world to which it belonged, it was coeval with me, and I with it. But no sooner had this epiphany struck home than it was practically buried by a surging, unblockable avalanche of associated memories and experiences, my mind a bin filled to the brim, to excess, overflowing, floundering helplessly in the torrential current…."
The man's voice died away, and as he again lowered his head to the tabletop in anguish, it seemed he was reverted to his previous, wretched self. The lights in the tavern were dying. And I, scarcely able to fathom the enormity of his narrative's implications, ventured merely to inquire, "And this… vision. This world, did it come to you again in dreams?"
"Nooooo!" he moaned piteously. "No! Not that one!" And here, he actually clutched and yanked the hair on both sides of his head in utter agony, as if trying to remove it from his skull. His raw, maddened eyes fixed on me just once more.
"You see, It, It… It was only the first…!"