DAY ONE:
FIRST DREAM
IT WAS PITCH BLACK
AND HE WAS AFRAID. But it wasn't the blackness that frightened him or the
strange feeling called fear—something he'd only felt a few times in his life—that
worried him. It was the sensations he felt within the blackness; it was alive
and it was studying him.
He couldn't see where he ended and the blackness
began, but he knew he was naked and that he was lying in a vertical position.
He moved his arms and legs from side to side, testing to see if there was
anything in the darkness that might be holding him in place; he felt nothing
but empty space. Was he floating in midair? If he was, then what was holding
him up? Why wasn't he falling? And where was he?
He felt wind blowing through
his hair; a light rain caressed his naked skin. His entire body was alive with
the feel of Mother Nature’s touch. This is what it must be like when you're
inside your mother's womb, he thought; a sense of being alive without the
cognitive ability to understand what was transpiring.
Pearson knew he had to be dreaming, but this was
like no dream he'd ever had before. He knew the difference between fear based
on dreams and fear based on reality. But this was fear and terror beyond
anything he had ever experienced; whether dreaming
or awake. He felt a mixture of feelings, frightened but calm at the same time,
which confused him. Was it possible to feel emotions from opposite ends of the
spectrum at the same time?
He felt himself move
slightly—or did he? It hadn't felt as if he had actually moved from the
location he was floating in, but he felt something. Had he moved or had the
area he was floating in moved? Something was different. He sensed he wasn't in
the same place he had been just a few seconds ago. The wind must have jarred
me to one side, he thought. His body was sending him mixed messages, giving
him the pseudo-feeling that he had moved, yet he sensed he was still in the
same place. Confusion flooded his thoughts.
Suddenly, a streak of
lightning flashed across the darkness. For a few brief seconds, he saw that he
was floating above Earth. But he sensed that it wasn't the earth that he called
home. How had he known this? Where did this sense of knowing come from?
Another bolt of lightning
lit up the darkness, confirming he was naked and still floating above the
pseudo-earth. He estimated he was floating one thousand feet above the ground.
Down below were trees, huge, tall trees. The forest looked too thick for anyone
to walk through.
Darkness came again.
When the third flash of
lightning struck, he was surprised to see a paved road that hadn't been there
earlier, meandering through the thick forest. He was more surprised to find he
was now floating six hundred feet above the road. How had he moved to this
position, dropped this far and this fast without feeling any movement? He was
puzzled.
Darkness engulfed him once
more, and time seemed to drag on before his environment was once again
illuminated by another flash of lightning. Now he was floating one hundred
fifty feet above the road.
Darkness consumed the light
once again.
Another flash of lightning
dispersed the darkness. This time, he could see that there was a van travelling
on the road. He was now suspended at sixty feet.
Without warning, rain
erupted from above, pelting down on Pearson, soaking and blinding him. The
light faded. Darkness and fear engulfed him. The rain, like his fear, increased
in its intensity.
A flash of lightning lit up
the darkness once more. Pearson was surprised to find that he was floating
fifteen feet in the air, directly above the van, and was now following it,
still suspended in the air. His skin was drenched from the rain. He wondered
what all of this meant. Why was he having such a weird and vivid dream?
Darkness enshrouded his
vision once again.
Suddenly, a flash of bright
light lit up the sky, blinding Pearson. It was different than the other flashes
of lightning. This one was a bright sheet of white light that had completely
enveloped him, wrapping itself around his body and rolling him up like a body
being rolled up inside a carpet. When he regained his sight, he discovered he
was now inside the van. How had he gotten inside?
Pearson felt rainwater
dripping off his hair, running down his face and into his eyes and mouth. But
this didn’t make sense. You weren't supposed to feel things in a dream, let
alone taste them. He could taste the rainwater as it ran into his mouth, and he
could hear the heavy rainfall as it pelted off the van.
The van's wipers oscillated
at high speed. Visibility through the windows was close to zero. The rain and
wind made it difficult to navigate the road, forcing the driver to maintain a
two-handed death grip on the wheel.
Pearson slowly moved his
eyes to the left. He was afraid to move any other parts of his body. What if
the driver wasn’t aware Pearson was in the van? What if Pearson’s movement
startled the driver and caused him to swerve and crash? And what if, in the
crash, Pearson died while in this dream? Would he awaken in the real world, or
would he just never wake up at all?
The driver of the van wore a
leather cowboy hat and an oilskin jacket with its collar pulled up, obscuring
his face. There was something familiar about the way the driver was dressed. It
reminded him of someone, but whom?
The driver turned his head
in Pearson’s direction. Frightened, Pearson instinctively went for his gun that
should have been tucked under his left armpit, but it wasn't there. He had
forgotten he was naked and still dreaming. He stared straight ahead, trying to
calm his nervousness. Pearson wasn't sure if the driver was aware of his
presence, but nothing was said and no action was taken to alert Pearson to the
fact, if he was.
Pearson slowly glanced to
his left again. The driver was squinting while looking through the windshield,
straining to keep the van on the road. He was having a difficult time
maintaining a steady grip on the wheel. Pearson could feel the van swerving
left and right, from the gale force winds, as the driver jerked the van back
and forth on its course.
Pearson wasn't sure how long
he had been experiencing this bizarre dream. He had no means by which to judge
the passage of time. He assumed that a dream usually lasted only seconds;
although, it sometimes felt like minutes. And since he couldn't leave the
dream, he had no other choice but to go along for the ride: figuratively and literally. After all, it was only a dream. What could
possibly happen to him?
The rain and wind suddenly
stopped. There was no gradual decrease in the weather—it just stopped. Pearson
could see a town off in the distance. A sign up the road read: WELCOME TO—
Pearson jumped when the
van's horn beeped, causing him to miss the name of the town. He knew the noise
had come from within the van, but the driver gave no indication that he had
beeped the van's horn. Just past the sign, the paved road turned into
cobblestone. He could feel the vibrations coursing through the van. The sun was
beginning to rise.
The driver drove the van up
a small hill, turned left into a driveway, and parked the vehicle. The
driveway, too, was on a slight incline. As the driver exited the van, Pearson
felt he should also get out. He stepped out of the van and felt the coolness of
the cobblestone against his bare feet. Something wasn't right. Shouldn't the
ground be wet from the rain that had poured down on them only a few minutes
earlier? But the ground felt cool and dry against his feet. He moved off to one
side of the driveway and walked barefoot onto the grass; it too was dry. That
was very odd. But odd things have been known to happen in dreams.
Pearson glanced over and saw
the driver walking toward the front entrance to a house. He followed, but
stopped when the driver suddenly stopped.
"No!" the driver
said as he turned in Pearson’s direction. "This is as far as you are
allowed to go for now."
Pearson, finally staring
into the face of the driver, was surprised at who was looking back at him.
“What the…”
