Krishnamurthy’s
bedroom was so crowded with furniture that it felt small, though it was
probably half the size of my entire flat. Most of it was electronic; computer
terminals perched on tables, a laptop balanced precariously on a small stool,
and something like an X ray unit hung low over the bed itself.
Krishnamurthy ignored the clutter, moving
his not inconsiderable bulk around it without effort. “You must be wondering
why I insisted you meet me tonight,” he said.
“That,” I agreed, “and why you summoned me
to your house. And why you said it was an emergency.”
“And why I brought you into my bedroom.”
Krishnamurthy settled himself on the bed and pointed at a small and
uncomfortable looking chair. “You know what my field of research is, I
presume?”
I blinked. “Dreams, I heard. But what does
that have to do with my being here? I don’t know anything about dream research.”
“I need you as a witness.” He glanced at
me. “And it’s because you don’t know anything about dreams that I want you here
as a witness. That’s apart from the fact that tomorrow being the start of the
weekend, you can stay up late tonight.”
“What do you want me to witness?” I watched
as he lay down and pulled the unit over the bed down towards his face. “What’s
that?”
“It’s a dream coordinate apparatus.
Normally, I use the one in the institute, but for particular personal projects
I use the one here at home.”
I didn’t ask what the personal projects
were. “You want me to witness what, exactly?” I repeated.
“I’ll tell you.” Krishnamurthy pointed at
something resembling like an old aviator’s helmet which hung from a hook on the
wall. “Give me that.”
I gave it to him. It was of heavy leather, had
oversized earphones, large goggles with opaque plates where the lenses should
be, and was attached to something that looked just like an oxygen mask. It was
studded about with sockets, and Krishnamurthy began to attach pipes and lines
that hung from the unit to it. Finally satisfied, he put it on his chest and
turned his head towards me.
“You do know what dreams are, I suppose.”
“No more than the average person.” I
shrugged. “And the more I read the more confused I get. Freud says they’re all
sexual metaphors, while others say they’re just the brain shuffling
information, and others...”
“Yes, well, if that was all dreams were we
wouldn’t have a research institute on them. We wouldn’t be spending taxpayers’
money on the subject.” He laughed, a short bark. “Not that we ever have enough.
We have to scrape and beg for every bit we get.”
“So what are dreams, then?” I asked, before he could get distracted.
Funding, or the lack thereof, was always a sore point with Krishnamurthy, like
every other science administrator I’d ever met.
“Yes, what are dreams? We could tell them,
but nobody would believe us. Dreams, my friend...dreams are nothing less than a
gateway into a parallel world from this one!”
I waited, saying nothing.
“I know you don’t believe me either,”
Krishnamurthy said, “but the research data is irrefutable. It’s hardly as
though it’s even a new idea; from very, very ancient times men and women have
realised this simple truth. Dreams are a gateway into a parallel world...and
now we have the means to prove it!”
I spoke at last. “How?”
“How? I’ll tell you.” Krishnamurthy fiddled
with the helmet a while. “Have you ever had a dream so vivid that you thought
it could never be anything but real? Even after you woke up, you could hardly
bring yourself to believe it was just a dream?”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean
anything.”
“You think so?” Krishnamurthy glanced at me
from the corner of a yellow eye. “What do you suppose all this equipment is
for, then? Why do you think dream research even exists...or governments spend
money on it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “All I know is
that you set up this institute almost single-handed, and that you’re probably
the most famous researcher on the topic in the world today.”
“Famous!” Krishnamurthy snorted “Fat lot of good that fame does. There are
far more important things than fame at stake here. Do you understand?”
“No,” I told him, truthfully. “I don’t.”
“That’s right, you don’t. But listen, and
perhaps you will.”
****************************************
I’ve
always had extremely vivid dreams (Krishnamurthy
said). From my childhood, I’ve realised that there was more to these than
what everyone else chose to imagine. And the more I read on dream research and
analysis, the more I became
convinced that I was right, and that
they were all on the wrong track altogether.
It was during those years, when I was a
student still trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, that I taught
myself lucid dreaming. But just training myself to dream of some particular
topic only went so far; all it proved was that dreams weren’t random nerve
impulses burst firing, or for that matter changing messages from the
subconscious mind, but could be formed and directed. It did not bring me any
closer to understanding what dreams were; what they were for.
So, for a while, I abandoned lucid
dreaming, and, instead, set my mind free to roam where it would while I slept.
Most of my dreams were bizarre and meaningless, but I knew that if I was to
achieve anything, then I’d have to persevere. And then, one night, for the
first time, I dreamt of the other world.
I still remember every little bit of that
dream. As it began, I found myself at the wheel of a car, driving across a flat
dark plain. The car was dark too; there were no headlights, no lights on the
dashboard, and the sky was black and starless. All along the horizon there was
a glow, though, a flickering of very pale violet, like lightning. In its glow,
I could just see that there was no road; I was driving over bare rock, and
apart from something in the far distance, the plain extended before me and to
the right and left as far as I could see.
You know how, sometimes in dreams, you have
an overwhelming desire to do something, which should be simple, but no matter
how hard you try, you can’t? Just then I had a sudden, overwhelming need to
look over my shoulder at what was behind the car. I couldn’t. Rear view
mirrors? There were none.
And it was then that I felt the first cold
chill of fear. Because, right then, I knew that I wasn’t driving across that plain; I was fleeing, from something that was chasing me, something that, if it
caught me, would do something much worse than merely kill me. I had a sense of
something huge, high as a cliff, that yet rushed along fast as the wind;
something that merged fully with the darkness, except for vast, dim-glowing eyes.
I knew, of course, that it was a dream. By
then I knew enough about dreams to be able to tell what was real from what
wasn’t. But I knew, with absolute and total certainty, that it wasn’t just a
dream either. The unseen thing behind me was real, and it wanted me.
By now my foot was pressing the accelerator
pedal to the floor, and the light on the horizon was growing appreciably
brighter. I could make out dim shapes now in the distance, low humps and hillocks
rising out of the rock. Almost by instinct, I began steering the car towards
them. Among them, I might be able to shake the thing chasing me. On the open
plain, no matter how fast I went, I hadn’t a chance.
And then, far out beyond them, I saw
something on the plain. It was so far away that I only just glimpsed it,
although it was enormous: a shadowy
arch, rising out of the plain and curving down to it again. And the flickering
glow through it was different from the rest, the violet shot through with
brilliant white like frozen lightning. It looked as though the horizon was
closer – much closer – through that
arch.
Right then I decided that it was where I
needed to be, and that the thing chasing me had only one purpose, to stop me
from reaching it. At the same time I knew I could never make it, not as long as
I was still being chased. I’d have to throw off that thing first. And a moment
after that, I was among the first of the hillocks, and doing my best to steer
between them. The hills rose all around me, so steep that they were almost
vertical, and so close that their sides scraped the car as I drove.
And still that thing I could not make
myself turn to face was behind me, still following. The hills had slowed it,
but they’d slowed me, too, almost to a crawl. When I came out on the plain, as
eventually I must, it would be there to pick up the chase again.
It was then that I saw...something. I
didn’t know then what it was, though later I saw it more clearly. It was a
white glow, floating in mid-air; just as though one of the frozen flashes from
the other side of the arch had appeared between the hillocks in front of me. I
saw it just as it moved past a slope and was lost to view, but for long enough
to know which way to follow. The further I drove, the rougher the ground got,
and the slower I could go, until I turned into what was little more than a
narrow canyon. For a moment more I caught a glimpse of the white glow, and then
it disappeared. Out in front of me was only the bare, open plain.
After that I woke up.
Of course, the first thing I did was write
down every little detail of that dream. The more I went over it, the more I was
convinced that there wasn’t any other explanation but that it was a quite
genuine breakthrough. There was something I’d caught a glimpse of, something
that I could get to through that arch...and there was something that was trying
to stop me from reaching it.
That was what, to tell the truth, convinced
me that it was real – that unseen thing that I’d known was chasing me. And, of
course, I would have to face it again. A dream like that doesn’t let you go;
once you have a taste of it, you know that you’ve got to go through it again,
over and over, until you’ve seen it through.
It was a long time, though, until I dreamt
of that arch again, a year or more. In between I’d plenty of other dreams, some
of them quite interesting, but I couldn’t get myself to dream again of the
plain and the arch, try as I might. If I hadn’t written it down, I’d almost
have thought I’d imagined it. And then, one night, after I’d already fixed on
dream research as my path in life, it came again.
I knew it instantly, though I wasn’t on a
plain this time. I was in a boat. It was a motor boat of some kind, rushing
through a sea. There were great rough waves that rose on all sides of me, but
the waves seemed frozen in place; either they were motionless, or moving so
slowly that I could detect nothing. And in the glow of light from the horizon,
I could see the arch again; this time it was a little closer, and perhaps was
on an island, although from where I was it seemed to be growing out of the sea
and plunging down into it again.
And still it was chasing me. I could no more turn my head to look than I
could the previous time, but I knew it was there, cutting through the water
behind me; something with fins as broad as wings and teeth as black as the
ink-black water through which it swam.
That time I managed to evade it in a snarl
of reefs that rose from out of the ocean. And as I was beginning to lose my way
among the razor sharp rock ridges that rose from the water, that light came
again, a frozen glow that I almost, but never quite, saw full on, appearing and
vanishing from among the rocks. It led me to where I could see the open water
again, and disappeared, just as before; and, as before, I woke up.
I will not bore you with details of
how many times I’ve seen that dream over the years, ever since that night. At
first it was at long intervals, but later I began to see it more and more
often. Each time the circumstances would change; sometimes, I’d be on a narrow,
twisting mountain road, or flying through the air in a light plane or a glider;
or perhaps I’d be running through a huge building, through hall after hall
where the ceiling rose till it was lost in darkness; but there would be the
arch, each time infinitesimally closer. And, behind me, it would be there, on
leathery wings or scuttling along on claws ragged and sharp as splintered
stones.
I said at first it was at long
intervals. Once I got the department set up, though, things became far less
hit-and-miss. The biggest step forward was the invention of the dream coordinate
apparatus. What does it do? It measures and preserves the location of dreams.
I see you don’t understand. I’ll
explain it this way. Dreams are in the brain, aren’t they? They’re completely
subjective, as far as the outer world is concerned, and can’t be recorded like
movies. But what we can record is
the brain wave activity at the time of the dream. And if, later, we can replicate that exact brain wave activity, we
should be able to induce the same dream.
Of course, it’s a lot less simple
than it sounds. Brains are awfully complex things, and each individual’s brain
waves vary so much that the results can’t be duplicated between people. If one
person’s dream waves are fed into another person’s brain, we discovered, the
second subject doesn’t have remotely the same dreams as the first. But if one
person’s recorded waves are replayed to that same brain, it will roughly create the same dream. Not exactly – because the brain will have other
waves as well, and there will be interference – but roughly. With practice, and
I have had lots of practice, the interference can be minimised. But it can’t be
totally eliminated, not a hundred percent.
It didn’t matter, though. Once the
apparatus had given me a rough map of the dream, I could induce it whenever I wanted,
and I did so about once a week. After each dream, I’d give my brain several
days of rest so it would not have the hangover of the last time’s impressions
as it went into the next cycle. That way I’d be sure I was getting fresh, new
material.
And that’s the way it’s gone these
last years. Each time the arch is closer, and, each time, the thing behind is
closer, too. It’s a race between us, me and the thing – one which, without the
help of that glowing light, I’d have lost long ago.
Yes, each time I have to seek refuge
in a cloud or a tunnel or a heap of crumbled wall, that glow appears to me, to
guide my way. And lately it’s been growing clearer, so that within it I’m
beginning to see things. Things I can’t name or even begin to describe, but
which I know I’ll see more clearly and understand better – as soon as I get to
the gate.
For, you see, it is a gate; it’s a
gate to that other world, and the thing that chases me is desperate to prevent
me from going to that other world. How desperate, I didn’t know until last night.
Last night, you see, I had the dream
again, and this time it came by itself. I was here, at home, not at the
institute. I didn’t programme it, and I wasn’t prepared for it. It was only
three days since I’d induced it the last time.
It began in the usual way. I was on
a motorcycle this time, driving down a dark highway between high ridges whose
upper margins were lost in the night sky. The dim violet glow was, as ever, on
the distant horizon, but this time it was almost drowned in the light from the
Gate.
It was right ahead. It towered over
the highway, as though a river of stone had hurled itself out of the ground,
and, unable to break away, had at last fallen back again. The lights inside
were no longer frozen; the white and violet melted and merged, flickered and
separated, and in between I could see more of the things I’d only glimpsed
before; things like machines and things like buildings, and things that are
utterly indescribable by any words known to me.
And it was right behind me. I could all
but feel its breath on the back of my neck, and I could imagine it racing along
just behind, reaching out, beyond desperate now, knowing that it was its last
chance to stop me. And I knew that it would not, and that I was going to win.
And then I woke up, here in this bed.
But I did not wake alone.
The room was not dark. The dream’s
familiar white and violet light, which seemed to be coming through the walls
and the roof, filled it with a twilight glow. And there was something crouching
on the bed beside me; something that I would have screamed to see, if only I
had been able to scream.
Think of something conical, balanced
on spindly limbs that hold it up to the sides. Cover it in silver-grey skin,
indistinct at the edges, so that it merges with the glow that fills the room.
Give it a tapered, flattened beak, above which is a pair of tiny, slit-like
eyes; and you will have some idea of the beast that was looking down at me.
And then its head darted down, that
beak struck my head, and it started to feed.
I was surrounded by white. All
around me, was nothing but utter white blankness, not even the slightest smudge
of grey or tiniest speck, to show any contrast. All I could feel was a
tremendous pulling, as though I was being sucked further and further into that
white, and when I looked down I saw my legs were disappearing into it, and the
rest of me was following.
I can’t explain to you how I clawed
my way back. It was part of my rigid dream training over the years, something
that every dream researcher devises for himself; something we have to know how
o do because of how dangerous dreams are.
But at last I did it. I felt the bed
under me, felt the pillow beneath my head. And when I opened my eyes, it was in
the cool darkness; the light and the beast were gone.
****************************************
“And that’s why I asked you
to be here tonight.” Krishnamurthy’s fingers prodded at a touchscreen on the
apparatus hanging over the bed. “I’m as certain as I can be that the next time
I have the dream, I’ll go through the gateway. I can’t rely on that not
happening before I go back to the institute on Monday, not after last night.
Therefore I’m going to induce the dream, now, tonight, and I want you to be
here to watch.”
“Watch for what?” I asked.
“Anything.” Krishnamurthy began to
put on the helmet. “You may know nothing about dreams, which means you’ll be a
neutral witness. At the same time, you’re a trained observer. So just observe,
and if you see anything unusual, just note it down.”
“Unusual – in what way?”
“Oh, hell. Unusual! You’ve seen
sleeping people, haven’t you? If I make any sudden movements, or say anything,
note it down.”
“All right.” I took a deep breath.
“You’re really sure this gateway leads to another world?”
“Yes. Why else would that thing be
so desperate to stop me?”
“What do you expect to find there?”
“How should I know?” He shrugged.
“Whatever there is, it’ll be worth the effort.” He reached for a small silver
cylinder I hadn’t noticed before, by the side of the bed, and connected a hose
from it to the gas mask. “This is a gas to induce sleep, and the helmet, apart
from being fitted with electrodes to recreate the dream map...” He pointed at
shining metal inserts in the leather. “It also blocks out external sensory
input. No sound or light to change the dream experience.”
“Wait,” I said, as he started
drawing the helmet on. “How long do you expect this dream to go on? All night?”
“Hardly. An hour’s sleep from
beginning to end at the most. I’ll wake up at the end of that.”
“And this...beast...you saw on your
bed? Is it what was chasing you?”
He shook his head impatiently. “I
haven’t any idea, and I don’t think it matters. It isn’t going to stop me now.”
He paused in the act of pulling on the helmet. “Make a note of the time. And one
thing more.” He pointed up at a panel on the unit. “See those lights? Only the
green should light up. If the red comes on, that means there’s an equipment
malfunction of some kind. If that happens, pull off my helmet. I’ll wake up at
once.”
I nodded, watching him pull on the
helmet. The green light came on, a tiny glowing square. I fixed my attention on
it. The room was silent but for the sound of Krishnamurthy’s breathing and an
almost inaudible hum from the machine.
Sitting there, watching the green
light, I began thinking over what Krishnamurthy had told me. If it had been
anyone else, I’d probably have put it down to an overactive imagination; but
Krishnamurthy only had dedication, not imagination. Still, I wondered from what
depth of his subconscious mind he’d dredged up these dreams. And I wondered
what he’d do when tonight’s dream failed to get him through this gate. What
would he do when confronted with the fact that all his induced dreams added up
to nothing more than random flickering of the subconscious mind, at best?
Taking my eyes off the light, which
glowed a steady green, I glanced at Krishnamurthy’s helmeted face. The goggles
and mask completely concealed his features, but his chest rose and fell
steadily, while the hiss of his breath, emerging from a valve on the mask, was
reassuringly regular. I wondered what was going on behind the blank opaque
goggles, under that helmet, and suppressed a shudder. Under no circumstances
did I ever want my mind and dreams to be measured, and controlled, like that.
What would all this dream research
mean anyway? What would the government expect out of it? What use could it
possibly make of it? Was it remotely possible that anyone in power actually
believed that this other world even existed, and that anyone could make use of
it or anything in it at all?
I must have been thinking these
things for some time, and my attention had gone wandering a little. All of a
sudden I realised I hadn’t looked at the square of light for a while. It would
be green, of course, each time so far it had been green, but...I turned towards
it guiltily.
It wasn’t green. It was a sullen,
angry red.
I don’t even remember jumping out of
the chair and rushing to Krishnamurthy’s bedside. I remember my hands fumbling
at the helmet, trying to drag it off his head.
The lights in the room faded and
died.
It wasn’t all dark, though. I could
see a very faint glow, as though from infinitely far away, that seemed to come
through the walls and ceiling. And there was something else, something I felt
rather than saw; something that squatted on the bed on spindly legs, and
watched me with eyes like slits above a beak like a sword. Those eyes were as
cold and blank as the gulfs of space at the edge of the universe.
And then the lights were back, and
the helmet in my hands; and Krishnamurthy was blinking himself awake.
“Are you all right?” I asked, the
words spilling stupidly from my mouth. “I saw it. It was right here!”
He stared up at me. “What was right
here?”
“What? The thing you told me about.
The beast!”
“Beast? What are you talking about?”
He shook his head in annoyance, and poked at the apparatus. “What’s this?” His
bleary eyes turned towards me. “And, anyway, who the hell are you?”
****************************************
I went home, but I did not go to bed. I
don’t want to sleep again.
I’m afraid of the dreams.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2017
