A reoccurring dream I had between about 6-1/2 to 8 years old.  By this time I was used to Boy in Darknightmares.  I knew nothing else – no wish fulfillment dreams, no happy party dreams, or any of those types of dreams I learned later most folks have.  They didn’t, as a child, suffer from dreams of loss, war, horror, guts, you name it.  Not too many monsters or all that – just war, and loss – and this one which has nagged at me for the past few months.  I don’t know why so I am writing it down.  Maybe that’ll shake the demon loose.)

The Dream

You are standing in a white corridor about 50 feet long and it is about 10, maybe 12 foot wide.  Interspersed down both walls of the corridor are door with small windows; all of them are painted white as well. The doorknobs glow silver from the only light which emanates from a large but basic wood framed window.  (I know the type – its just like the windows used in the old wooden World War II barracks the Army used to use on its bases.)

The floor is tiled with what appear to be large white linoleum squares, and the ceiling is pretty plain – or else I’m not too concerned with it – because I am staring at the tiles while voices and hands from behind urge me forward.

“Take your time,” they are saying, “But step carefully.  Some of those tiles are booby-trapped.”

The voices, I know, belong to short dark haired guys in lab coats, and they are behind me urging to go on.

I take a step, fighting between the sense of urgency those coaxing voices give and hesitation, having had this dream before, knowing that there are traps that lay within the floor, pausing, examining the tiles for some clues. There are none, so I make my way as best I can – by hunch and intuition – trying to avoid the tiles that ‘feel wrong’.  I just want to get to the end where the window is.  If only I could look get there . . . perhaps I’d know something, what this was for.

Inevitably it happens.  As time progresses and I have the dream again and again I know it will, but I keep on trying not to step on that treacherous tile that will send me down to “them“.

But inevitably catches up with me, always.  Somewhere between 1/4 to 2/3rds of the way down the hall I step on a and it gives way below me, the hinge behind, and drop me on a curved half-pipe stainless steel or chromed slide with black stained sides, as if a thick lacquer, though I think it was mold, had been spilled along its edges.

The transition from the white airy hallway into dark, damp, dank, humid darkness was extreme, and abrupt.  I’d see the square of light above me shrink as I slide down the slide’s spiral, then it would snap shut as I slid to the end – a straighter section about six to eight feet long, and it ended at, or near a table.

The room – how can I describe it?  Murky, dark, it felt like an earthen cave.  To this day I still can kind of sense how rough and tumble were the walls.

And there were witches there, or at least that’s how I understood, or perceived them – shadowy figures dressed on cowled cloaks, faces hidden in the darkness under their hoods.  Most of the conversation I couldn’t follow – it was in whispers – but they’d remove me from the slide – usually three on a side – and lay me on the table.  Then they’d undress me.

I know I was a bit frightened and scared, especially when they’d start laying food on and all around me on the table.  I figured I was the main course, and I didn’t relish being eaten.  The light was dim, diffuse, mostly around the table, but I don’t know where it came from.  The atmosphere was cold, clammy, damp, almost fetid, and I’d hear the rustling and the feet – on dirt, it sounded like – as they’d go about their business of setting up this ‘feast’ of theirs.  And then they’d start eating – not as a group, but each one coming forth from the dark corners of the room-seeming-cave, selecting just a few items, and retreating back into the dark to eat them.  Then another one or two would come forward.

Sometimes they touched me, and through the fear there was something inherently sexual about it – but mostly fear sometimes, especially when they’d start to nibble on me – mostly my feet, it seemed, but I’ve got some nightmares I’ve blocked out that features me being much more giving, and them demanding.

And then it would black out.
And I’d awake to my normal childhood.

 

 

 

I can not positively attribute the above dream to my mother, who was a practicing witch.   However, I cannot see where she would have had the resources to do this at that place and time.  We were right next to a major Army base; I know I often went there.  She wasn’t Wicca nor, to the best of my knowledge, practiced the dark arts or rituals in a classic sense of potions and formulas, or cauldrons and dancing in the woods naked.  However, there were many who swore she had “powers” (other than power over her children), and she did teach us kids quite a few things such as “throwing hexes” (which actually seemed to work a couple of times!), how to make voodoo dolls, and the like.  Indeed, I wonder if she actually believed in magic, though she claimed to be able to see auras around trees, bushes, animals, and persons.

“It’s not a matter of whether YOU believe it or not,” she told us.  “What matters is that THEY believe it – and that you can do it.”  And she explained that if we wanted to be the male version of witches – warlocks – all we had to do was “claim it” – that is, when something happens for good or bad, set things up or at least make a statement that you “willed” it to being.

As far as potions and words – she believes in some of the herbal remedies, but ritual and words are, in her words, “to help you focus intent!”.  And given the results of the two times I made a curse – “threw a hex” – the first as a child of 7 – the guy’s car gave him bad trouble when it came back from what he was doing.

The 2nd time, not so many years ago – about a decade – the man’s otherwise healthy mother died in his arms 2 hours later.

He blamed me for that one.

hex