When I first dreamed of her, I thought nothing of it. Dreams, as a general
rule, do not have to make sense, and therefore, it seemed perfectly logical
that I should be living in California, and working in a high school
library. It was more detailed than most dreams, but I suspected nothing
out of the ordinary. My life was the antithesis of extraordinary, and I
had no reason to believe that dreams of a blonde girl across the pond would
have any effect on my day-to-day existence.
It was strange, I knew, that the dreams kept coming, kept playing like a movie behind my eyelids. I watched this girl grow to womanhood. I saw her pain and her joy, and I saw her death. For months after, there were no dreams, and then, suddenly, they started again. I saw my wife live and die in yet another world. I saw Buffy fall in love with my son. At times, I enjoyed the fantasy more than I enjoyed my own world.
Still, I didn't imagine that Buffy was more than a figment of my imagination.
What are dreams? Manifestations of latent desires? Stories made up by the subconscious to amuse itself? Signals of things to come? I never thought about it. I never considered that my dreams were keyholes into separate lives.
Since my wife died, William and I had led a quiet and uneventful life. I did my best for him; I loved my son a great deal. I knew he thought me stuffy and old-fashioned, that my ways were best suited for life in an earlier era. They were my ways, though, and I wasn't about to give them up. At times, I would look at William, and wonder how such a man had been created by myself. We got along well enough, but we were never friends. I sometimes felt guilty that I acted more paternal in my dreams, and to someone other than him.
I wasn't fully asleep when she called. It was mere hours after the last dream, the dream of rain and blood, and her death. I'd woken up from that dream drenched in sweat, and for a few fevered seconds, I'd thought it was rain.
William was to visit that afternoon; he wanted to check up on me. Not that he'd said so expressly. There was always some pretense, but I knew he worried I was getting senile. When he'd arrived, he took one look at my face, told me I looked peaked, and ushered me into my room.
"Lie down," he said, "I'll make you some tea."
It angered me that he'd begun to treat me like I was incapable of looking after myself. At thirty-five, my son fancied himself more knowledgeable about my well-being than I, a feeble seventy, was.
I'd never spoken to William about my dreams. I wasn't about to start now, when he already imagined me two centimeters away from dementia.
"I'm fine," I told him. "Just had a bit of a rough night's sleep."
"Which is why you should nap." He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed gently, indicating I should sit down on the bed.
"William, I am not so old that I need to be told when to go to sleep like a ruddy kindergartener."
He would have protested more, but the phone rang. He walked out of the room, and I realized that, despite my protests, a nap sounded like a lovely idea. I hadn't fully recovered from my last foray into Buffy's world. I was a bit frightened that as soon as I drifted off I'd be plunged into a nightmare of death and despair, but the weariness won over, and I slept while William talked to Buffy.
I didn't sleep long, but I woke feeling more rested than I had in a long time. I walked into the family room to find William reading the newspaper and looking cross. He didn't look up, but nodded to acknowledge my presence.
"You shouldn't frown like that," I said to him, "It makes you look slightly vampiric."
"You'd be upset if you'd had the day I have." He didn't stop frowning.
"What kind of day could you have had? You've been here messing in my day for hours." He was taking a well deserved vacation from the paper, so I know he hadn't been to work before he'd come to see me.
"Yes, and while you slept, I took a call from some insane little tart. Gave her name as 'Buffy'. She was a rude little thing." He put the paper down and grimaced.
I just stared at him. Buffy had called? Was I still dreaming? I pinched myself. It hurt. I was awake.
"William," I said, "What did this woman have to say?"
"Not much. She wanted to talk to you. Swore at me when I told her you were sleeping. You don't actually know this bint, do you?"
"I may," I said, not sure how much to reveal to him. He already thought I was going round the bend. Telling him my dreams were calling on the telephone wouldn't do any good.
The look on his face was quite priceless. It would have made a wonderful picture. "How, exactly, do you know her?"
"Never mind that. You say you hung up on her? Why didn't you just come get me? You knew I wasn't sleeping yet. We were talking when the phone rang. I may be getting up in years, William, but I'm still your father, and this is my flat, and I deserve to receive my own calls." The more I thought about it, the more upset I was. I needed to talk to this woman.
William didn't say anything more, but intensified his glare. I had the urge to take him over my knee, and might have acted on it if he weren't so much more muscular than I was.
"I'm calling her back," I said.
"Are you having an affair? At your age?" I thought his eyes would fall out of his head, they were open so wide.
"If I am," I said, "It's none of your sodding business. Go away, I have a call to make."
After I'd gotten through to her, and talked to her, I knew that I had to see her. She was in trouble, and I had to help her, even if I wasn't the same man I was in the dreamworld. She'd lost her entire world, and if I could provide a thread of connection, I was bloody well going to do it, and my son was not going to get in my way.
We had a terrible row, and he insisted on coming with me. He was probably afraid Buffy was a gold digging murderous tramp, and that they'd find my body in a dumpster in several weeks if he wasn't there to protect me. Fine, he could come along; I wasn't going to stop him.
When I saw her, I felt a love so strong rise in my heart that I knew she'd never been just a dream. I knew that I was meant to help her, and that's what I intended to do.
* * *
After we got to the hotel, I had to tell William everything that was going on. He'd convinced himself that Buffy was my lover, and that Dawn was either our secret love child, or an alien clone. He was none too satisfied with the real answer, but he seemed relieved that I hadn't been shagging a much younger woman behind his back.
"Dad," he said, "You know you're talking nonsense, don't you?"
"Okay, William, you win." Arguing with him took so much energy, and I was already jetlagged and irritable. "I've made this all up, and that woman is just an actress I've paid to play the part of Buffy. My life was getting boring, and I thought it would spice it up a bit to drag you across two continents and playact a bit."
"That's very funny. I hope you amused yourself." He stormed out of the room like he'd done so many times as a teenager. It was reassuring, in a way, to be back in the role of the father.
Pleased with myself for upsetting my son, I set about unpacking my suitcases. I hadn't brought that much, but I liked to make sure I knew where everything was. I hated digging through suitcases in the morning, in desperate need of toothpaste. I was putting undershirts in a drawer when I heard a loud crash, and then something that sounded very much like a scream.
I hurried to the room the girls were staying in, though, admittedly, at my age, it wasn't very fast. By the time I got there, Dawn and Buffy were engaged in some sort of an argument involving an orb. Buffy sounded very maternal.
The gist of the conversation, I gleaned, was a dissection of the events leading to Buffy's awakening. From what she'd told me, I knew that Buffy and Dawn had left the mental institution she'd been in in rather a hurry; in fact, she was presumed to have been taken against her will.
Dawn was telling Buffy about an orb, and a flash of light.
"Giles," Buffy turned to me and said, "I saw a flash of light when I was driving. And Dawn says there was a flash of light here when I woke up."
She spoke as though she expected me to make something of that. I knew that if I were her Giles, her Watcher, I would have been able to. I would have had some brilliant idea and gone to look for some musty book. As it were, the only book I had with me was an ancient copy of Great Expectations, and I didn't think I'd find any answers in there.
"Buffy," I said, hesitantly. I wasn't sure how to tell her, and not upset her too greatly. "I'm certain that whatever happened to you must be in some way supernatural, but I think you're overestimating my expertise on the subject. I think you're on the right track, but I dare say I'm as lost as you are at the moment."
That wasn't the answer she wanted. She seemed confused, and upset with me. She simply said, "Oh," and then ignored me in favor of Dawn.
It seemed Buffy was convinced that we all needed to go back to the hospital and get that orb. It was ridiculous, dangerous, and illegal, but I'd gotten to know Buffy well enough over the course of all my years dreaming of her that I knew that she wouldn't listen to me if I told her she shouldn't go. I made a cursory protest anyway, but was quickly overruled.
Once she made the decision, she was the dictator. She gave each of us jobs and outlined what we were to do. I think William was a bit in awe of her. He took direction without complaining. Dawn was excited about the prospect of doing something so far out of her normal range of activities. I just wanted to make sure Buffy was safe. Her blackouts were very troubling.
William was to drive. Dawn and Buffy were going in alone. I wasn't sure why I was needed in this excursion, but I was glad that I hadn't been excluded. Though, on second thought, it would have been nice to have a safety, in case the rest of them needed to be bailed out of jail.
When we got to the hospital, Buffy and Dawn scrambled out of the car. Buffy then leaned in the window and kissed me on the cheek. "Thanks," she said. "You're more like him than you think." Then they were off, legs pumping and hair bouncing.
We waited. William turned some god awful thing on that I supposed he thought passed for music. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. I shot him a scathing look, which he ignored.
I did want to talk to him. I wasn't quite sure how to begin though, or even what I should say. He must believe me about Buffy now that he'd seen and heard more. "William," I said finally, "I guess I probably should have mentioned something about this before…"
"Who's Spike?" he asked, completely ignoring what I'd just said.
"Well," I began, "From what I've seen in dreams, he's a vampire. And he's Buffy's lover."
"He's apparently my twin, too."
"I suppose you could say that," I said, wary of the tone in his voice. "Your hair is different, and you don't carry yourself the way he does, but there is a striking similarity, yes."
"And you know this all because you've seen it while you were asleep." He was getting snottier by the minute.
I sighed. "William, I already told you that. If you're going to ask questions about this, the least you can do is be open to the answers you're going to get."
He skulked, and said nothing more. I sighed again. I took off my glasses and rubbed them clean on my shirt. I probably smeared them a lot more than they were before, but it was a nervous habit, and I hardly realized I was doing it anymore.
I heard a noise then. I looked up, and saw Buffy and Dawn running back to the car. Buffy didn't look very good. She was sweating, and she'd gone very pale. Dawn looked frightened.
Buffy opened the back door, and they both got in.
"Go, now," she said.
William started the car, and tore out of the parking lot at a speed that had me clutching the sides of my seat.
"Giles, there's something really weird about that orb. And I mean weirder than we thought before." That was Dawn. She was buckling herself in and leaning over the seat to talk to me at the same time.
"Buffy?" I asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "Got the orb. I think I should not be holding it anymore, though. I'm not even touching it, but I feel like it's burning me."
I turned around. She was holding the orb in her shirt. It was glowing.
"I should say you shouldn't be holding it anymore! Put it down."
She laughed, and I realized I sounded quite ridiculous. But at least she did get the orb away from herself. She set it on the seat beside her, and foolishly, I reached back to touch it myself.
It was warm to the touch; I could feel that before my fingers even made contact. When they did touch, there was a sharp shock. Instead of letting go, as I probably should have, I held it a while longer.
Then I was seeing double. I knew I was still in the car, beside William, but I could also see myself sitting at a table, in a dark room, a glass of brandy in my hand. There was a flash of light, and I dropped the glass. At the same time, I must have dropped the orb.
"Giles?!" Buffy sounded panicked.
"I think," I said, "That this orb is most certainly the reason you're here. And no one should touch it."
"Well, duh," said Dawn. "We figured that out in the hospital."
"Oh," I said. "I don't suppose the next time you make that kind of discovery, you could tell me before I touch the bloody thing?"
It was strange, I knew, that the dreams kept coming, kept playing like a movie behind my eyelids. I watched this girl grow to womanhood. I saw her pain and her joy, and I saw her death. For months after, there were no dreams, and then, suddenly, they started again. I saw my wife live and die in yet another world. I saw Buffy fall in love with my son. At times, I enjoyed the fantasy more than I enjoyed my own world.
Still, I didn't imagine that Buffy was more than a figment of my imagination.
What are dreams? Manifestations of latent desires? Stories made up by the subconscious to amuse itself? Signals of things to come? I never thought about it. I never considered that my dreams were keyholes into separate lives.
Since my wife died, William and I had led a quiet and uneventful life. I did my best for him; I loved my son a great deal. I knew he thought me stuffy and old-fashioned, that my ways were best suited for life in an earlier era. They were my ways, though, and I wasn't about to give them up. At times, I would look at William, and wonder how such a man had been created by myself. We got along well enough, but we were never friends. I sometimes felt guilty that I acted more paternal in my dreams, and to someone other than him.
I wasn't fully asleep when she called. It was mere hours after the last dream, the dream of rain and blood, and her death. I'd woken up from that dream drenched in sweat, and for a few fevered seconds, I'd thought it was rain.
William was to visit that afternoon; he wanted to check up on me. Not that he'd said so expressly. There was always some pretense, but I knew he worried I was getting senile. When he'd arrived, he took one look at my face, told me I looked peaked, and ushered me into my room.
"Lie down," he said, "I'll make you some tea."
It angered me that he'd begun to treat me like I was incapable of looking after myself. At thirty-five, my son fancied himself more knowledgeable about my well-being than I, a feeble seventy, was.
I'd never spoken to William about my dreams. I wasn't about to start now, when he already imagined me two centimeters away from dementia.
"I'm fine," I told him. "Just had a bit of a rough night's sleep."
"Which is why you should nap." He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed gently, indicating I should sit down on the bed.
"William, I am not so old that I need to be told when to go to sleep like a ruddy kindergartener."
He would have protested more, but the phone rang. He walked out of the room, and I realized that, despite my protests, a nap sounded like a lovely idea. I hadn't fully recovered from my last foray into Buffy's world. I was a bit frightened that as soon as I drifted off I'd be plunged into a nightmare of death and despair, but the weariness won over, and I slept while William talked to Buffy.
I didn't sleep long, but I woke feeling more rested than I had in a long time. I walked into the family room to find William reading the newspaper and looking cross. He didn't look up, but nodded to acknowledge my presence.
"You shouldn't frown like that," I said to him, "It makes you look slightly vampiric."
"You'd be upset if you'd had the day I have." He didn't stop frowning.
"What kind of day could you have had? You've been here messing in my day for hours." He was taking a well deserved vacation from the paper, so I know he hadn't been to work before he'd come to see me.
"Yes, and while you slept, I took a call from some insane little tart. Gave her name as 'Buffy'. She was a rude little thing." He put the paper down and grimaced.
I just stared at him. Buffy had called? Was I still dreaming? I pinched myself. It hurt. I was awake.
"William," I said, "What did this woman have to say?"
"Not much. She wanted to talk to you. Swore at me when I told her you were sleeping. You don't actually know this bint, do you?"
"I may," I said, not sure how much to reveal to him. He already thought I was going round the bend. Telling him my dreams were calling on the telephone wouldn't do any good.
The look on his face was quite priceless. It would have made a wonderful picture. "How, exactly, do you know her?"
"Never mind that. You say you hung up on her? Why didn't you just come get me? You knew I wasn't sleeping yet. We were talking when the phone rang. I may be getting up in years, William, but I'm still your father, and this is my flat, and I deserve to receive my own calls." The more I thought about it, the more upset I was. I needed to talk to this woman.
William didn't say anything more, but intensified his glare. I had the urge to take him over my knee, and might have acted on it if he weren't so much more muscular than I was.
"I'm calling her back," I said.
"Are you having an affair? At your age?" I thought his eyes would fall out of his head, they were open so wide.
"If I am," I said, "It's none of your sodding business. Go away, I have a call to make."
After I'd gotten through to her, and talked to her, I knew that I had to see her. She was in trouble, and I had to help her, even if I wasn't the same man I was in the dreamworld. She'd lost her entire world, and if I could provide a thread of connection, I was bloody well going to do it, and my son was not going to get in my way.
We had a terrible row, and he insisted on coming with me. He was probably afraid Buffy was a gold digging murderous tramp, and that they'd find my body in a dumpster in several weeks if he wasn't there to protect me. Fine, he could come along; I wasn't going to stop him.
When I saw her, I felt a love so strong rise in my heart that I knew she'd never been just a dream. I knew that I was meant to help her, and that's what I intended to do.
* * *
After we got to the hotel, I had to tell William everything that was going on. He'd convinced himself that Buffy was my lover, and that Dawn was either our secret love child, or an alien clone. He was none too satisfied with the real answer, but he seemed relieved that I hadn't been shagging a much younger woman behind his back.
"Dad," he said, "You know you're talking nonsense, don't you?"
"Okay, William, you win." Arguing with him took so much energy, and I was already jetlagged and irritable. "I've made this all up, and that woman is just an actress I've paid to play the part of Buffy. My life was getting boring, and I thought it would spice it up a bit to drag you across two continents and playact a bit."
"That's very funny. I hope you amused yourself." He stormed out of the room like he'd done so many times as a teenager. It was reassuring, in a way, to be back in the role of the father.
Pleased with myself for upsetting my son, I set about unpacking my suitcases. I hadn't brought that much, but I liked to make sure I knew where everything was. I hated digging through suitcases in the morning, in desperate need of toothpaste. I was putting undershirts in a drawer when I heard a loud crash, and then something that sounded very much like a scream.
I hurried to the room the girls were staying in, though, admittedly, at my age, it wasn't very fast. By the time I got there, Dawn and Buffy were engaged in some sort of an argument involving an orb. Buffy sounded very maternal.
The gist of the conversation, I gleaned, was a dissection of the events leading to Buffy's awakening. From what she'd told me, I knew that Buffy and Dawn had left the mental institution she'd been in in rather a hurry; in fact, she was presumed to have been taken against her will.
Dawn was telling Buffy about an orb, and a flash of light.
"Giles," Buffy turned to me and said, "I saw a flash of light when I was driving. And Dawn says there was a flash of light here when I woke up."
She spoke as though she expected me to make something of that. I knew that if I were her Giles, her Watcher, I would have been able to. I would have had some brilliant idea and gone to look for some musty book. As it were, the only book I had with me was an ancient copy of Great Expectations, and I didn't think I'd find any answers in there.
"Buffy," I said, hesitantly. I wasn't sure how to tell her, and not upset her too greatly. "I'm certain that whatever happened to you must be in some way supernatural, but I think you're overestimating my expertise on the subject. I think you're on the right track, but I dare say I'm as lost as you are at the moment."
That wasn't the answer she wanted. She seemed confused, and upset with me. She simply said, "Oh," and then ignored me in favor of Dawn.
It seemed Buffy was convinced that we all needed to go back to the hospital and get that orb. It was ridiculous, dangerous, and illegal, but I'd gotten to know Buffy well enough over the course of all my years dreaming of her that I knew that she wouldn't listen to me if I told her she shouldn't go. I made a cursory protest anyway, but was quickly overruled.
Once she made the decision, she was the dictator. She gave each of us jobs and outlined what we were to do. I think William was a bit in awe of her. He took direction without complaining. Dawn was excited about the prospect of doing something so far out of her normal range of activities. I just wanted to make sure Buffy was safe. Her blackouts were very troubling.
William was to drive. Dawn and Buffy were going in alone. I wasn't sure why I was needed in this excursion, but I was glad that I hadn't been excluded. Though, on second thought, it would have been nice to have a safety, in case the rest of them needed to be bailed out of jail.
When we got to the hospital, Buffy and Dawn scrambled out of the car. Buffy then leaned in the window and kissed me on the cheek. "Thanks," she said. "You're more like him than you think." Then they were off, legs pumping and hair bouncing.
We waited. William turned some god awful thing on that I supposed he thought passed for music. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. I shot him a scathing look, which he ignored.
I did want to talk to him. I wasn't quite sure how to begin though, or even what I should say. He must believe me about Buffy now that he'd seen and heard more. "William," I said finally, "I guess I probably should have mentioned something about this before…"
"Who's Spike?" he asked, completely ignoring what I'd just said.
"Well," I began, "From what I've seen in dreams, he's a vampire. And he's Buffy's lover."
"He's apparently my twin, too."
"I suppose you could say that," I said, wary of the tone in his voice. "Your hair is different, and you don't carry yourself the way he does, but there is a striking similarity, yes."
"And you know this all because you've seen it while you were asleep." He was getting snottier by the minute.
I sighed. "William, I already told you that. If you're going to ask questions about this, the least you can do is be open to the answers you're going to get."
He skulked, and said nothing more. I sighed again. I took off my glasses and rubbed them clean on my shirt. I probably smeared them a lot more than they were before, but it was a nervous habit, and I hardly realized I was doing it anymore.
I heard a noise then. I looked up, and saw Buffy and Dawn running back to the car. Buffy didn't look very good. She was sweating, and she'd gone very pale. Dawn looked frightened.
Buffy opened the back door, and they both got in.
"Go, now," she said.
William started the car, and tore out of the parking lot at a speed that had me clutching the sides of my seat.
"Giles, there's something really weird about that orb. And I mean weirder than we thought before." That was Dawn. She was buckling herself in and leaning over the seat to talk to me at the same time.
"Buffy?" I asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "Got the orb. I think I should not be holding it anymore, though. I'm not even touching it, but I feel like it's burning me."
I turned around. She was holding the orb in her shirt. It was glowing.
"I should say you shouldn't be holding it anymore! Put it down."
She laughed, and I realized I sounded quite ridiculous. But at least she did get the orb away from herself. She set it on the seat beside her, and foolishly, I reached back to touch it myself.
It was warm to the touch; I could feel that before my fingers even made contact. When they did touch, there was a sharp shock. Instead of letting go, as I probably should have, I held it a while longer.
Then I was seeing double. I knew I was still in the car, beside William, but I could also see myself sitting at a table, in a dark room, a glass of brandy in my hand. There was a flash of light, and I dropped the glass. At the same time, I must have dropped the orb.
"Giles?!" Buffy sounded panicked.
"I think," I said, "That this orb is most certainly the reason you're here. And no one should touch it."
"Well, duh," said Dawn. "We figured that out in the hospital."
"Oh," I said. "I don't suppose the next time you make that kind of discovery, you could tell me before I touch the bloody thing?"