The Ghost in the Machine
Chapter Five
Lucid Dreams
One of us is waiting
Out of body" experiences (OBEs) are personal experiences during which people feel as if they are perceiving the physical world from a location outside of their physical bodies. At least 5 and perhaps as many as 35 of every 100 people have had an OBE at least once in their lives. (Levitan and LaBerge)
Menacing gray clouds gathered as the afternoon wore on. Rain threatened and the occasional rumble of thunder pushed its way down through the amassing cumulonimbi. Kai pulled the warped green door shut behind her and stopped on the stoop to put on her headphones and dark sunglasses. Deliberately, she stepped on to a sidewalk covered in crime scene outlines and pictures of UFOs—the neighbor's imaginative children were on the rampage with chalks again. After adjusting the weight of her satchel, she headed towards the subway station.
Dressed in somber colors, Kai blended in and became indistinguishable in the crowd of people waiting on the platform. In the five o'clock rush, she was no more than just one of millions—a number, a warm body. The train came to a screeching halt assailing the crowd with a searing artificial wind. Its doors opened and a small number escaped as the larger crowd pushed its way in mindlessly.
Dutifully, Kai assumed a place between the other bodies and took the handgrip. Her individuality vanished as she was subsumed into the barely sentient mass of humanity trapped inside the pulsating metal tube roaring down the tracks. The emotionless men and women in dark suits stared inertly ahead or focused mechanically on newspapers. The train's hypnotic vibration weakened as the next station approached. People began to shift and brace themselves for the abrupt halt and the onslaught of another faceless crowd.
Subways made Kai terribly claustrophobic.
A tall healthy looking man in a black suit entered and the crowd parted wordlessly. Kai moved as well to give him some space and quickly glanced up into his clear blue eyes. "Father," she nodded to the priest and turned her music down a bit. The rugged looking man returned her nod and she disappeared back into the collective unconscious of the rush hour not noticing his continuing attention.
At the Giger Street station Kai pushed her way to the exit and up the crowded stairs to the street level. Emerging from the electric rumble and heat, the petite woman with flaming red hair stood out boldly against the backdrop of the crowds marching downwards. An ominous sky loomed above, now darker and threatening a downpour, and Kai vehemently cursed her perpetually forgotten umbrella. It was the greatest of ironies. She had a photographic memory of the darkest and most disturbing moment she had ever witnessed and yet forgot her umbrella on a daily basis. A smirk snaked across her lips at her own idiosyncrasies and she marched across the street.
"Hi Kathleen," a young man with acne smiled and lowered his eyes nervously as Kai took off her coat. Pathetically, he ducked his head and stepped backwards from the refreshments table. Monty's social skills had not been up to par since his alien abduction.
"Monty," Kai acknowledged him and filled a restaurant-service-style cup with restaurant-service-style coffee and made a straight line for the coveted 'comfy-chair.' It seemed that either the group was increasing or the meeting room was shrinking. Kai had adjusted her normally laconic schedule to compensate for the dearth of comfortable chairs after the time she was ten minutes late had to sit on the floor for two and half hours.
"Hello Kai," an older woman wearing an exquisite red sari sat down next to her. "How are you doing?"
"Fair enough," Kai began to fight with the Heart O' the City lighter. "Yourself, Mira?" After three tries she got her cigarette lit.
"As well as ever," she folded her sienna colored arms and surveyed the people shuffling into the room. She brought her attention back to Kai, "You're holding out, what's up?"
"You really want to know? Michael's back," she waited for the surprise to register. "He's back. Found him on a park bench with his head bloodied and he can't remember a fooking thing." She avoided Mira's look. "He's sleeping on the couch."
"Shit, I thought he went off that greasy bastard Howie? What's with the memory thing, sounds like a Michael put-on, if you ask me." Mira glanced at her watch as a tall man entered the room leading a small child.
"I thought it was too, but he got hit quite squarely and got one hell of a concussion. It's not a put on," Kai raised her eyebrows. "I've been testing him. He couldn't get in the front door, didn't know this was his," she held up the lighter. "And it's just not him." She lowered her voice. "It's like there's a stranger in my house."
"You'll think stranger when the bastard hits you," Mira shook her head.
"He's not going to get away with any of that ever again. I know Michael. There's something different in his eyes." Kai looked at her watch and out the window, the periodic ritual of lucid dreamers, and the tall man clapped his hands softly. The private conversations stopped.
"You are not dreaming," his melodious voice intoned. "It is 5:45 pm and there are clouds in the sky. Welcome," he breathed. Paternally, he patted the child's shoulder. "Survivors, this is Adam and he wants to share a story with us." Kindly, he pushed the small child with large eyes forward and the room grew deathly still. "Adam, tell us what happened to you."
"Charlie, our cat, climbed the tree at Mrs. Hemple's house and my sister was crying. So," he turned and looked for reassurance from the tall man. "I climbed the tree, but he was too high up and I got scared cause the wind was blowing. I tried to get down, but I slipped and fell out of the tree." He looked around the room and shrugged his shoulders. "And I hit my head," he touched the back of his skull for emphasis. "Everything went real dark and I thought I was dead. I opened my eyes, but couldn't see at first. It was like I was under water, but the water was all heavy and warm. It got up my nose. I tried to open my eyes again, because I thought I was choking on something. Then I did and all I could see was red light—like when you put your hand over a flashlight," He spoke with a disturbing matter-of-factness. "Then I heard a humming noise like my dad's lawnmower and felt like I was floating. I tried to move my hand, but there was something like a snake biting it. Everything got dark again and I woke up under the tree." He met the room's silence with defensiveness. "A fireman was there and they took me to the hospital. I tried to tell my parents what I saw, but they said it wasn't real. They got mad cause I kept talking about it at school and made me go to a doctor." His forehead wrinkled and a stoniness settled on his features. "It was real. I saw it. It even smelled—like the beach." The tall man rose and put his hands protectively on the boy's shoulders.
A patient smile.
"There's no one in this room who doesn't believe you, Adam. We have all had the same OBE after a similar injury, although not all of us were climbing trees," He motioned for the boy to take a seat and addressed the room. "Each of us has seen the red room, heard the hum, felt the warm heavy water and smelled saline." He looked slowly meeting the eyes of each of the group's twenty-three members, before resting his eyes on Adam. "We don't know what it was that you saw, Adam. Was it a dream? Is this the dream?" The members of the group involved in lucid dreaming exercises instinctively glanced at their watches. "Were we taken away?" Monty shifted uncomfortably. "Was it heaven? Was it hell?" His eyes grew distant. "We don't know, Adam, but I can promise you that you'll never be the same again."
Kai watched despondently as the rain pounded against window drinking her coffee and avoiding Monty's adolescent flirtations. She wished she had her umbrella. The session was dragging and she turned her thoughts homeward and wondered how her houseguest was amusing himself. When she left he was sitting in the living room reading, she could not remember ever seeing Michael read anything. A soft hand touched her shoulder and directed her thoughts back to the meeting.
"Kai, I was hoping that you'd share tonight. Some of the new members have expressed an interest in the more…umm, interesting details of your experience." The tall bald man with distant eyes coaxed.
"Alsace, we're already running over," Kai looked in her coffee cup for excuses. "Come on, there's got to—" she broke off and acquiesced.
"You can do this," he clapped his hand and motioned for all to sit. "I feel that you need to do this right now." He took her hand and led her back to her seat. "Survivors of the Red Room, you are not dreaming. It is 7:20 pm and it is raining." The double-checking of watches took place. "We have one last experience to hear of tonight. Kathleen Thoreau, who joined our group years ago from one of my lucidity studies, has agreed to share her story once more for the benefit of those of you who have not heard it." Twenty-four pairs of eyes looked intently at Kai as she stood up, took a deep breath and tried to summon her thick wall of defenses. She did not like to share with the group, despite how well she thought she knew them. Since she joined the group she had been apprehensive of sharing. A nagging feeling of suspicion resided in the back of her mind. Something was not right.
"I'm Kathleen Thoreau, but everyone I know calls me Kai. They've always called me Kai." She smiled at Mira and wished she could trade places with her. "When I was about twenty-five years old I fell off a ladder and started having recurring nightmares, shortly thereafter, the kind that just loop—like a record skipping." She focused on the tall windows across the room. "They were very frightening chase scenarios and I couldn't go to sleep. I finally started seeing a doctor for sleep disorders and he sent me to a memory specialist who tried to figure out where the dreams were coming from." She did not talk about these things with anyone. "Anyhow, the specialist did some tests and put me under hypnosis, which really fucked everything up—oh, sorry about that," she blushed and lost her resolve. "Under hypnosis, and I've viewed the tapes, I remembered the red room and the doctors thought it was weird and dismissed it. I went to other therapy groups and eventually I got in to lucid dream therapy and met Alasce." Kai started to sit down.
The tall man sighed and gestured for her to continue, "Kai, slow down and tell us about what you saw."
"Right," she stood back up and breathed. "I saw two places," the room grew smaller and she wanted to bolt. "I remember a loud place that was dark with a green glow about it. There were a lot of people there, because I heard voices. No one spoke directly to me. It was like hearing the sound of a baseball game from a block away. The green went away, everything went black and then I had the stock experience that everyone talks about, except I remember being very scared." She exhaled a deep breath.
***
Smith stood in front of the bathroom mirror and raised his middle finger defiantly, "…I give you the finger and you give me my phone call." There was something graceless about the gesture. Despite the fact he had no memory, he knew this was not something he would do. It felt wrong. Additionally, the words did not sound right with Smith's characteristically slow articulation and habit of stressing pronouns. Yet, he could clearly remember sitting at the table surrounded by three men and directing the obscene gesture at the agent across from him. He tried it again with his left hand. "…and you give me my phone call. Damnit," he rolled his eyes and looked at his extended middle finger as if it were a separate entity.
Kai had mentioned that he was dressed differently and alluded to his looking like a character from the film Reservoir Dogs. Smith smirked at the thought. He liked the way he looked with the exception of the bruise. It was possible, he conceded, that his appearance might have a bearing on the plausibility of the finger issue. A frown surfaced. He ran his hands through his hair and unbuttoned the second button of the denim shirt he was wearing. He raised his right hand, "…I give you the finger—That's great. Now, I look like an middle-aged frat boy with an attitude," he growled and smoothed his hair back into place. A third of Kai's closet consisted of his clothing—Michael's clothing—and Smith was beginning to question the rebelliousness of a person who shopped almost exclusively at the Gap.
Smith dismissed the finger memory as false lead for the time being. He was running out of time on two fronts. Throughout the day he continued to hear the voices and feel the unnamed presence. It took focus, but Smith managed to suppress the distant voices and push the others to the back of his mind. However, the feeling of the radiant presence coupled with an unusual awareness of his surroundings increased throughout the day and eluded his control. Lines grew sharper, lighting became more consistent and his perspective began to change, it was like the world was fading into a three-dimensional blueprint cast in a disturbing green glow.
On the other front there was the virus eating away at his patience. Kai. She mentioned a meeting and vanished around 5:00 promising to return by 9:00. Already, it was 7:30 and Smith had not found what he was looking for. He paused outside her bedroom door and the thought hit him. How could he be certain that it was 7:30 when he was not wearing a watch?
Kai owned ninety-two different self-help books and Smith was not surprised. Most of the titles dealt with dreams, posttraumatic stress syndrome, bad relationships or some combination of the three. On the nightstand was a journaling book entitled Listmaking as a Way to Self-Discovery. Smith picked it up and sat down on the edge of Kai's bed, justifying himself with the logic that if the journal was secret then Kai should have hidden it better. Unfortunately, he had been correct in his assumption that she was not the type of person to keep a diary. The pages were blank. Irritably, he snapped the book closed and shoved it back on the nightstand knocking a postcard to the floor. He stooped down and picked it up. The postcard had never been mailed.
Michael, thanks for a fantastic last evening. You're so irresistible—it must be those gorgeous green eyes of yours—so unforgettable. By the way, a pair of government boys dropped by wanting to know if I'd seen you. I recognized the gents from Assholes Incorporated, as they're my superiors. YOU STUPID SON-OF-A-BITCH! I don't know what you're into, but cost me my job and I'll rip those twinkling green orbs from your head with a pair of ice tongs.
Smith turned the card over in his hands, "My eyes are blue."
With eyes sewn shut I still can see all that is surrounding me.
I end up somewhere, somewhere between...
Between a dream and motionless reality, will I forever lie?
From Dream of Waking (AFI, The Art of Drowning EP)