Face the day

Having only recently written the words “Don’t fear the dead”, I awoke in my own private catacomb.  Everything was still and silent in the impenetrable darkness.  The only thing telling me I was alive was the ringing in my ears.

I had watched as a boat became engulfed in flames, its only remaining occupant clinging to a mast and looking on as the sea burned around him.  The flames, though, were patchy and it was just possible to swim through them with care and luck in your favour.

Someone on a small inflatable dinghy urged him to jump.  After an age, he did.

He made it through the flames and reached the dinghy, intentionally upturning it with a great effort and tipping its occupant into the water.  I watched all this.

It was, of course, a dream.

This is where the unconscious, from its dungeon, detects vulnerability.

I found myself pushing the dinghy on a small trailer along the main street heading from my mother’s house.  There’s a row of shops just before the end of the street – on the left.  Just before the first of these – a fish and chip shop – is the local police house and attached station.

Hidden inside the dinghy was a body.  My brother’s.

It had lain hidden along the Ings – the edge of the river – for some time.  My story was that I’d just discovered it there. 

I agonised before entering the police station and waiting in the short queue to report that I had the body.  I knew most of the people in there.

This is just a new theme on a recurring dream that haunts me periodically.

The police went outside to see the body for themselves.  My mother was sent for from down the street.

She arrived saddened but resigned.  He’d been missing for some time. 

As key witness, I became the key suspect.  If things went against me, I’d go to prison for the murder or manslaughter of my brother.  A double-blow for my mother.

I was free to leave the police station for now and called to the almost empty house where I'd been living.

In there, I found my ex-wife with friends.  They were all making Christmas presents to give to the kids and something for me and my brother, which they tried to hide from view – telling me not to look.

I walked out on my wife and kids on 23 December 1991.

When I woke, everything was silent.  I was alone in the room.  I checked the time – 0530 and still pitch-black.  I knew that if I went straight back to sleep I would continue the dream, so vivid was it in my mind.

Instead, I lay thinking about what sits quietly and malevolently inside us – guilt? – to bring such fears to life in our “other” world.

Time to get up and face the day.