wolfhound dreams
��������� �����a horrifying dream.it begins - to the best of my recollection - in my house, the house where i grew up, in a strange room i've never seen before. i am there with two friends - (i remember something about an airplane) from maine. (lots of airplanes, ones stationary, others moving - like birds) and also present is meg stanton, an old friend who was very talented, and very wonderful to me - doing a contortionist move on a chair. behind me is the bed, two people are laying on it. and my fifth grade teacher, mrs. saunders, is also there. i come into the room and expect great big hellos and how are yous, but there's nothing - i don't even notice meg until a few minutes pass.
finally, i get the feeling i'm not wanted, and cautiously begin to back out - "well, we were headed shore-wards, just stopping by on the way ... thought i'd say hi." at which point, a blond guy gets up from the side of gerry shannon, who is apparently laying down on the bed, and asks "did you want to go with them, or stay with me?" and gerry stays with him. i depart, with the two anonymous friends-from-maine, where i meet mr. hebert, going down the hallway. he was a severe-looking and acting man from my highschool past, and he says "why shouldn't i be? you don't live here anymore." i try to protest, but he cuts me off.
so i wander into the kitchen, quite alone, and open the fridge. on the top shelf is two containers of apples, neatly sliced, and bags of grapes, and a dented can of pepsi - among other things. never have i seen this so filled. i start getting angry, and say "well, why shouldn't i, it's my damn house - " which is when mr. hebert comes down the hall and yells at me, and i begin to freak out, and take the two from maine and go out onto the back deck, through the sliding glass door.
the sky is sere, and is getting darker, the wind is continuing to blow, harder - i suddenly notice i'm in jean shorts and mark's shoes. i wonder why, and one of the friends - i think now it's rachel - asks me what i'm doing with them, and i can't answer - i look up, and past the clothesline where sheets are hung, i notice a guy sauntering out from the back door of the house, in workboots and a tired old white shirt and baseball cap. someone asks him .. and i yell "hey, davey, still in school?" this is david adamcik, who i also went to school with. his picture was in my yearbook, but he didn't graduate with me. we were never on good terms. he smiles and waves to me, comes over to the deck, and slaps me five - as if we're best buds. i barely knew him. his hand is very callused. he has one silver earring in his left ear. "yeah, man, only six months left, thank god," he says. "still farming?" i ask him. "oh, yeah, but things aren't the same without you around, man ..." and i get confused. "hey, you wanna go grab a beer sometime, man?" he asks me. "I hear you dropped outta school too, where'd you end up?"
i shrug, because i have no idea if he's right or wrong. the state i'm in, the ground i'm on, suddenly feels very shaky - i open my mouth and no words come out, and he laughs, and suddenly i'm on his level - he's a short guy, too, about 5'5, and he pats my shoulder. "i alwus knew you were my kinda guy - this proves it, don't it?" what? i'm even more confused - he laughs at me, and turns away, to walk off. i have a beer in my hand. i drink it, spit it to one side, and
suddenly am on the back porch, minus the two friends-from-maine. here i am crouched down, my self again, with a small black boy named artie, and a bigger one - i don't know his name. artie is handcuffed to the backporch, and police cars keep zooming by on a rhythm - we keep ducking, trying to get his hand off ... finally i double the cuffs up and jam his hand through, and a policecar stops. close-up on artie's hand as it slides through, the metal grazes him, and a small flap of skin peels back, a little blood seeping through. he doesn't cry out, though, as if he's used to it, and runs as fast as he can, leaping over the porch-rail, and his brother, running. i do the same, but for some reason am wearing very baggy nylon-clothing, like windpants, and a windbreaker-type-shirt, a pullover, and a backward baseball cap. it slows my running, and i sit on the porch-rail instead. the policeman yells out "FREEZE!" and i put my hands up in the air, and sit down by the driveway, in the small flowerbed we have there. he begins to cuff me, to write on the back of my hand something, when the two black boys show up again, with guns, pointing them at the policeman, who does the same to them, and i yell "DON'T SHOOT, RUN RUN AWAY!" and they do.
the scene shifts, then, to artie running down a dark alley, encrusted and water-dripping everywhere. there is a great black pit in the ground, where the sidewalk simply isn't, going down quite a way. artie hides in a corner near to it, huddling, in fear of the police, and then sees something in the pit - someone calling to him. thinking it's his brother, he moves toward it. a flash of lightning proves him wrong.
the mangiest, most bloody dog ever, a wolfhound of some sort, is laying in the pit, being petted by another little black boy, who is similarily bloody. this thing is caked in blood, from tip of snout to tip of tail, matted, and ripped apart in a million different ways. it rotates its head in a way that it shouldn't be able to, and grins at artie in the most ghastly way : blood and dead flies cake each fang, and the right eye lolls from the socket, by the optic nerve - it is getting up, slowly, shambling, and abruptly springs out of the pit at artie's face. he flinches, but the dread thing has its awful, awful fangs on artie's left hand. and it speaks to him in an english accent, a rough and horrible one - taunting him, increasing pressure bit by bit, but never enough to break his skin. artie continually tries to shake him off, horrified, and at one point the dog-thing's eye explodes, creating a bloodier scenario - this happens quite a bit over and over, artie getting free and the dog gaining control again, over and over, until i realise i'm in the pit as well, staring up at this scene, because the boy who is down there turns his ghastly head to me and says
"welcome to the party," and giggles very quietly.
i get an image of a door slowly shutting in blackness, with a mirror of the back of it, reflecting my backyard, a scene of idyllic happiness, sunshine and green grass and a picnic - my sister, younger, frolicking - and abruptly that scene passes -
i am staring directly into the eye(s) of the bloody wolfthing. it slowly, inexorably grins, mouth and jaw creaking wide -
i do not scream. but i wake up.