“Holy shit!” The sentiment screamed out of my mouth and I immediately regretted its abruptness. And yet I continued, “What the hell is that about? When did you hear that tune, George?”
The tremble in his face provided the response I most feared. He was terrified by the unnatural truth that had been revealed. He’d absently whistled a children’s tune that he’d dreamed the night before, yet he’d done so because he thought only he had dreamed it and that it was nothing more than a weird nightmare. Why would he possibly think otherwise?
But then I added the words no one should hear, the words most threatening, the words chanted by children whose voices stab at the very heart of humanity. How I wished I could take them back, deny this thing that was happening, un-ask the questions I’d asked.
“I done dreamed it, Davey.” His voice betrayed his horror as though he’d done something so wrong as to be unforgivable. I was certain it was fear of the unknown, fear of the unexplainable, fear of what simply should not be true. But it was real fear, and it swept around the room in waves that none of us could have denied.
I stepped to where Mom stood in disbelief, and I grabbed a few napkins from the tray. She was barely aware she’d dropped her glass and was standing over shards of it that listed in a pool of tea. She looked down as I knelt in front of her to clean up the mess.
“Don’t worry about it, Mom. Really. Why don’t you sit down.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie…” she barely whispered through her blank stare.
“Seriously, Mom, please sit down. Don’t worry about this.”
At the same time, Margaret dashed to the kitchen and returned with a towel to help soak up the remaining beverage as I picked up the broken glass and placed it in a napkin.
“Thanks, Margaret.”
She nodded but did not speak. When I looked at her face and studied it for a moment, the same terror I saw in George became evident there as well. She was overwhelmed with fear that stemmed from the impossible. She knew the pat-a-cake song too; she knew it because she dreamed it like the rest of us.
How far has this gone? I wondered. How far…
While my mother stepped over the mess and took a seat next to my father who’d already taken a spot on the couch, Helene remained standing in the doorway to the hall with a blank stare on her face. I glanced toward Dad who was comforting Mom as she stared into space in bewilderment. He was whispering to her what I assumed to be reassurances, words of safety and security he undoubtedly knew he could no longer guarantee. We already knew our world had indeed changed.
“Did all of you dream it last night?” I asked.
George shook his head as though to wake himself from his own nightmare. “Yep,” he said. “Mayhap last night or this mornin’. I ain’t rememberin’ right.”
“It’s okay, George.” I turned my attention to Margaret who still knelt beside me sopping up tea with the towel. “And you?” I asked softly.
She returned an empty gaze that quickly filled anew with disbelieving shock. “Yes, Mr. Lloyd, it was last night. The dream scared the devil right outta me.”
I reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks. And thanks for your help with this.” I nodded toward the mess that was almost gone. All of the glass was in my hands and the towel would make short work of the small amount of tea that remained pooled on the hardwood floor.
I turned my attention to Dad and Mom who both stared back. He had his arms around her and hugged her closely. Her arms were crossed in front of her as she leaned against him, eyes wide and frightened.
He nodded and said, “Last night.”
Mom silently agreed with a nod while she closed her eyes. I suspected she was attempting to understand what was happening and was regrettably coming up short on explanations. If the dream for each of them contained the same inherent terror it had for me, remembering it was reason enough to cower in a corner.
I looked at Helene who had not moved from her position in the doorway with shock painting her features. A young mind has less experience from which to draw when it comes to events that stand outside normalcy. This one definitely fit that explanation. Poor Helene was ill equipped to apply any of her life to these events.
We’re in the same boat here, Helene, I thought of saying, and you’re not alone in being confused. Rather than draw on the negative emotions I knew she felt by pointing out her inability to categorize the situation into the neat little mental folders we humans use to define existence, I chose what I thought would be the less confrontational yet necessary path.
“Helene, honey, did you dream it last night?” I was gentle in my question to her. I feared she was on the verge of cracking under the pressure. While the event itself was certainly incomprehensible in any human terms, and I had those same feelings just this morning before I brushed them off as post-sleep confusion from a nightmare, I couldn’t fault her for not knowing how to deal with this. I also suspected that, like everyone else, the sudden rush of memories caused by the music and words had brought back the overwhelming terror that defined the dream.
She looked at me and nodded, then said, “Yes, Mr. Lloyd, dreamed it last night. I’m scared…” She began crying.
Old George immediately went and embraced her and let her weep against him. Her body shook with it. She rested her head against his massive frame. I thought she took some level of comfort from his body wrapped around her.
Margaret finished wiping up the tea, placed the wet towel on the drink tray, and joined her husband and daughter. I looked at them holding each other and wondered how frightening all of this must be to them. I looked back at my own parents and wondered the same thing. I already knew it was confusing to me, and to say I was scared was to understate the matter.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” I shook my head in disbelief. “People don’t have the same dream. They certainly don’t have the same dream at the same time.” I pondered the reality of it all and secretly pinched myself on the arm as I knelt next to the cocktail table. I had to be certain I wasn’t still dreaming. The pain I felt was no guarantee but it was certainly convincing.
I stood up, placed the broken glass on the tray next to the soiled towel, and said, “Okay, let’s think about this because I dreamed it and thought it was just a nightmare. In my dream, Beth talked to me. She told me to run. She told me I was in danger and needed to get away even though there was no safe place to go. Did Beth talk to each of you?”
“No,” my father replied without hesitation. I looked at him as he cleared his throat in that way that meant he was trying to discuss something that bothered him. We waited as he sat in momentary silence. I knew he was collecting his thoughts. And then he added, “It was my brother Gary.”
“He died last year, didn’t he?” I already knew the answer but asked the question anyway.
“Yes. He told me I had to go, but he also said there was no safe place to go. He said I had to leave. I should get out of here now…” His voice trailed off again. His eyes twitched. I knew he was trying to organize his thoughts. He was trying to wrap his mind around what was happening in the hope of making sense of it. He was trying to find the pieces of the dream that could mean something without having to face the heartrending fear it caused.
“And there were the eyes,” Mom added. Her voice startled me for I was so transfixed on watching my dad that I’d almost forgotten others were in the room. My gaze snapped to her as she spoke. “For me, it was my father who died twelve years ago, and he said the same thing. But it was the eyes that really frightened me. They were everywhere. They surrounded me and floated like they weren’t attached to anything. They stared right through me. I felt like they were hungry for me.” She shivered and my dad held her tighter. She found her composure in the strength of their bond. “I somehow knew they wanted to get to me like I was the answer to their hunger,” she finished.
Helene burst into uncontrolled tears at the sound of my parents’ descriptions of the dream. I looked at her and George and Margaret, but I didn’t need to ask them for the details of their experiences. I already knew. Someone dead from their past told them they were in danger. That voice told them to run even though there was nowhere to run. They were surrounded by eyes in the darkness. Those eyes seemed to peer right into their very souls and communicate to them that they were now prey being watched by a new chief predator.
Yes, I suspected I knew the details of their dreams just as if they’d already told me. I didn’t have to ask, and I didn’t need Helene to suffer through more explanations of what undoubtedly assaulted her sense of reality. It assaults ours too, I thought of saying to her before thinking better of it.
George and Margaret looked at me for a moment. “The same?” I asked. They nodded.
I had no explanations for what this meant. It couldn’t be good, that much I knew, but I didn’t know anything else. It scared the hell out of me, this fundamental and sudden change in the world.
These things don’t happen. Reality doesn’t work that way. The fabric of the universe doesn’t get bent out of shape in such a manner. It just doesn’t happen.
And yet there we stood in the middle of a new reality. The dead coming to us in dreams to warn of hopelessness and the need to escape something that was inescapable. The presence of something in the darkness that made us feel like food. The knowledge somehow inserted into our beings that we were no longer top predators on our own planet. These things had happened, sure, but these things were well outside the realm of human experience.
Only then did my mental gibbering bring to mind a previous thought: How big might this thing actually be? “The news…” I mumbled it as an afterthought as I stood and grabbed the remote from the fireplace hearth. I switched on the television in the corner of the room and turned on the satellite receiver. It was still on CNN from a few nights previous.
I turned the volume up as the picture formed on the flat-panel display. There was a female news anchor who I’d never seen before (mainly because I don’t watch much television). She shuffled some papers on the desk in front of her—I always thought that was a cheap maneuver to make the audience believe they were not actually reading from a teleprompter when in fact that’s precisely what they were doing—and she looked directly into the camera as she spoke.
“The Iranian state news agency reports it as an American psychological warfare attack and warns of impending reprisals against the U.S. North Korea reports its military is on top alert and warns it too plans to retaliate against the West for what it calls an “unprovoked attack utilizing a new kind of weapon intended to demoralize and confuse the people of North Korea in preparation for an American invasion.” International tensions are rapidly escalating in response to this event.
“Again, to repeat our top story: For approximately the last 18 hours, an event has been occurring that psychologists call a ‘highly unusual manifestation of mass-delusional hysteria and collective hallucinations.’ Reports indicate people around the globe are experiencing a similar dream during sleep. This event remains ongoing. While we can’t positively identify the source of the phenomenon, we can briefly explain what we know to be occurring.
“All reports indicate the event has been uncannily similar around the globe with minor individual qualifiers that are personal in nature.”
She seemed nervous. I focused on her face as she talked, but even that could not hide her trembling hands. She tried to conceal it and control it as best as possible. She was failing miserably.
“It seems each individual sees the same thing in their dream: all-encompassing darkness filled with eyes that move around yet never look away. The feeling that accompanies the visual is one of hopelessness and utter terror. The eyes form a shifting and moving mass surrounding us—rather, surrounding each individual, and these eyes watch from the darkness. This ‘hallucination’ is further supplemented by a voice warning of impending danger and the need to run. Most have associated the voice with a deceased loved one from each individual’s past. These voices warn of the need to escape while also saying that there is no escape. At the end of the experience, reports indicate the same children’s rhyme repeats—sung, actually, like a pat-a-cake song. The rhyme is about a menacing darkness. You can find the text of that song on our web site.
“The event has spawned global riots as panic and fear grip the population. While many U.S. cities are experiencing mass demonstrations in response, government officials are asking—Wait a minute.”
She halted her report and placed her hand next to her head. We watched as she pushed her earpiece tighter into her ear so she might better hear the information coming to her from various sources.
I looked around my living room and noticed everyone was entranced by these unfolding events. It was surreal. It was like we’d climbed out of bed this morning only to find ourselves on a different planet or, worse yet, in a different universe.
I looked back at the pretty young woman on the television as she tried to remain calm while communicating the impossible to people overwhelmed with fear. I didn’t envy her that job. She shuffled the papers yet again while still holding her hand to her ear. Finally, she continued.
“I apologize, ladies and gentlemen. We have new information pouring in and it’s sometimes difficult to sort it all out. Right now, we want to turn to our chief meteorologist, Craig Woods, who needs to share some critical information coming from the Weather Service.”
That’s odd, I thought. Unless a massive series of tornadoes or a giant hurricane snuck up on us, why would they interrupt the bizarre with the mundane? Little did I realize as those thoughts ran through my head that the bizarre was rapidly spiraling into something unimaginable.
Some suit-clad stiff appeared in front of a map of the United States completely shaded in red. Red? I didn’t think the entire country could be under some kind of weather-associated warning. Perhaps the other event kept them from providing the normal appropriately colored map.
“I beg your pardon for the interruption, ladies and gentlemen, but the National Weather Service has just issued a… Well, it’s a significant warning.”
He held some papers in his hand that he shuffled back and forth while trying to consume the information handed to him without delaying long enough to cause people to change the channel.
“Since I’m not sure how to put this in normal weather terms, let me just read the notice we received.”
That got my attention. I couldn’t imagine any meteorologist worth his title who would be unable to communicate with clarity information sent from the feds. It was unheard of. What kind of idiot does CNN have working for them? I wondered. He should be fired.
He turned to someone off-camera and shook his head as though uncertain about this new reality. Only much later did I realize he probably thought someone was playing a joke on him by feeding him bogus releases from NOAA that would make him look ignorant on the air.
Back to the camera he continued, “Alright. Let me read it to you. ‘The National Weather Service has issued a Hazardous Weather Warning for the entire United States and its outlying areas. This notice includes updated spotter activation info. National Weather Service satellite imaging has detected a complex of storm systems developing across the United States with focal points over all…’”
He trailed off in apparent disbelief. Although his head was down while he read the papers in his hands, I saw a moment of shock as his mind raced ahead of his voice and realized what he was about to read.
“Uh, I apologize, folks. Uh… Let me continue: ‘National Weather Service satellite imaging has detected a complex of storm systems developing across the United States with focal points over all major cities.’
“That’s just unbelievable. Um, I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen, but this is unheard of. Let me see… ‘The storms are expanding in all directions from their central locations and appear capable of moving against existing weather patterns.’
“Uh, okay… Wow… I guess I won’t list the cities they show here. I suggest you go to our web site to get that information. Um, basically all major cities are impacted by this. But let me read this for you. Um… ‘Storm spotters report these weather events are forming in the high atmosphere and rapidly expanding to ground level. No lightning or precipitation has been reported. Despite this, electromagnetic discharges from the stor—”
His recital was interrupted when the television went to static. I stared at it as though it was another rung in an impossible ladder of insanity. A simple piece of electronic gadgetry had suddenly offended me. I wanted to pick it up and throw it out the window. As we watched, the static was replaced by the typical colored bars and tone, but even that lasted only a few seconds before going back to static.
“Vey, the remote,” my mother whispered. It rested forgotten in my hand.
But before I could change the channel thinking CNN suffered from technical difficulties, a blue screen appeared with a red line through it about a third of the way down from the top. Through that line ran white text that said “EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM” that scrolled repeatedly across the screen. Below it, again in white text, a message stated, “Authorities have activated the EBS. Please stand by for further information.”
And so we stood, all of us staring blankly at the screen. It was as though we were witnessing some horrible event as told through the feeble mouth of crippled technology. I began to think I still needed to change the channel. As I raised the remote in my hand and aimed it at the satellite receiver, I was halted by the static-wrapped male voice that suddenly augmented the primitive message shown on the screen.
“This is an activation of the Emergency Broadcast System. Authorities in your area have activated this system to bring you important news. The National Weather Service has identified a massive storm complex forming around the globe. This system is expanding rapidly. Reports from those cities already impacted indicate the storms produce electromagnetic discharges that can disable power supplies and broadcast and communication facilities. When entering your area, the storms will cause a significant blockage of sunlight. These storms are not harmful but are disruptive. Residents are urged to stay indoors as this weather system develops. Please stay tu—”
A pop in the audio marked the screen returning to static and the voice and tone disappearing. We stood in utter disbelief. I was waiting for some other interrupting signal to bring the television to life. As I thought about it, I realized satellite was terribly unreliable during storms.
“The weather radio!” I shouted.
I ran from the living room down the hall and retrieved the little device from my office. I understood satellite television going out during a storm, but the weather radio most certainly would be our lifeline to the outside world. It had never failed me before.
I retrieved the small square box and carried it back to the living room. Before turning it on, I glanced around at their faces and realized each of us felt terrorized by these events. It may have started with the dreams but it had grown into much more than that.
In my case at least, it was as much the threat of what might be happening as it was the absence of information to keep me abreast of developments. There was no way to make the most informed decision about how to proceed if I had no information with which to work.
After taking special note that the sun still shined outside, I turned the radio on and set it on the cocktail table. We listened intently to the tinny voice that echoed throughout the lower floor of Carr Beholden.
“—of storm systems impacting all major metropolitan areas throughout the United States. These storm complexes are rapidly expanding from their focal points above major cities and are not subject to existing weather patterns. They are expanding outward at 20 miles per hour. National Weather Service satellite imaging indicates one such storm forming over the city of Shreveport. Spotter reports indicate these storms form in the upper atmosphere and expand quickly to the ground. Satellite images show the storm complex is global in nature. Those areas impacted by the storms will suffer electrical, communication, and broadcast outages. They will be subjected to a complete lack of sunlight. Residents are urged to stay inside as this system develops and passes.
“Again, the National Weather Service has issued a Hazardous Weather Warning for the United States and all outlying areas. National Weather Service satellite imaging shows a massive storm complex forming around the globe, including over the entire United States. These storms are taking shape above all metropolitan areas an—”
There was a crackle of static before the radio fell silent. I looked at it to ensure the power light remained lit. It was. The radio simply received no signal. It was then I realized it would probably be silent for some time to come.
[Introduction | Part 4 | Part 6]