I'll start with the shoulder. I took a long, HOT bath last night to relax before bed. Why? Simply because I can! It felt great and I let myself slip to the cloudy edge of sleep before getting out and going to bed. However, this morning my right shoulder... which has been trouble-free for SO long... is definitely getting my attention. I think I must have relaxed it in the tub and then perhaps slept innapropriately on it when I went to bed. Now I'm paying the price. I'll see if some light stretching will aide in getting it back to normal.
The dream! I believe it was a continuation from a prior dream. I will attempt to give as much of the plot as possible. I really don't remember the first one, unfortunately, just the image of who the characters are and that they were familiar to me. In any case, I was either just a do-gooder or someone of some note in the field of the paranormal. I felt like a detective solving a case. The setting is a large seemingly abandoned building. Reminiscent perhaps of McAuliffe Hall's basement in that it was dark, run down, the halls are narrow and you have a general 'feeling' of foreboding. There have been problems here, people have been killed... viciously. They think there is a murderer at first, but certain things they cannot explain and the rumor of a dark spirit or ghost is spawned. As I investigate, I too become skiddish at being inside this dwelling. At one point I am chased down a hallway by something I cannot see.... only feel. If not for doors slamming and the screaming noise chasing me, I would say it was my own fear that propelled me hence. I ran into a room and was cornered. From the floor I looked back towards the door, but nothing ever came in. After a time I feel comfortable again and begin exploring the room. In time I deduce a pattern to the deaths. It is an odd pattern... whoever (whatever) the killer is, is seeking someone clean and pure of spirit. Phew! That's not me! I may feel very pure and of firm morals, but I would never consider myself innocent. But I realize who the next target is and race to find/protect this boy. He is somewhat of a Christ figure... that is, he's not Christ... no powers... but he has a deep calm and conducts himself as an old soul, very wise. Surely he must be what the dark spirit is looking for. I just know it. So we try to get free of the building, but the boy is weak. He cannot run long enough and we end up seeking refuge in a room that still had a non-rotted mattress in a corner. I barricade the door, making barriers out of a desk and a bureau then settle down on the floor next to the mattress where the kid is resting, but not sleeping. We have a conversation and while I don't right now remember what it was we spoke of, it was meaningful. Suddenly he went quiet, he was nearly inaudible when he said, "she's here!". I did a double-take, looking to the door. Nothing there. Now I am scanning the whole room, having armed myself with a broomstick for all the good it would do against an ethereal attacker. The boy can't move from his position. I look back to him and now he tells me not worry, she's coming for him and he will go and then make sure I am safe. I thought I was the one supposed to be protecting the child, not the other way around. At this moment a dark figure partially emerges from the wall... just a head, not a human head buth a kthulu-esque devil skull. The elongated face extended down to a nearly circular mouth set in an eveil grin and rimmed with hundreds of very long close-set fangs. There was a black mist weaving around it in the air and the beast itself was a combination of rotten green and black accents. It's teeth settled down on the boy's skull, but no physical damage could be discerned. I swung the broomstick through it's head, my own paralyzing fear now being overcome by my fury at this thing. My emotions, not my voice, were screaming I WILL KILL YOU. Now I ran forward and went to hit it. This time I did not sail through like the broomstick, I made a sort of connection. It felt like punching sand. I didn't make full contact with it, just partial. But it surprised the beast and it shifted it's black eyes to me now from the boy... still sinking his teeth into the boy's skull. It shifted part of it's body through the wall and a massive arm several lengths larger than a human's swiped at me... making the same partial connection, but with enough inertia to knock me across the room into the desk by the door. I was badly hurt in my back, but struggled to get up. Not feeling the pain so much as heeding my inner voice which told me not to stop, to kill the beast at ANY price and save the child. I gathered myself for what I felt would be my last charge.. especially now that the devil had positioned it's body... or what I recognized as being the rest of its structure... between myself and the boy. The black eyes were still tracking me through the black mists, which were flailing violently now. I began to flex forward, but the boy raised his left arm from the bed and he yelled NO! GO BACK! I TOLD YOU I WILL BE FINE! YOU PROMISED! I struggled in my mind and dodged back as one of the vapor trails pressed closer to me, its wild path expanding. The creature seemed to be in a state of euphoria, mocking me. And in that instant the boy's body was limp. The soul departed. Just as quickly, the black vapors disintegrated into the air as they swirled before my face. Left lying in the bed was the child's corpse. I took a stuttering step forward. After several more, I was beside the bed. Questions rang through my head... why did he let it take him? Why did he save me? Why couldn't I save him? What WAS that thing and how was I able to attack it? But before my mind could truly wind itself up with the thoughts the body began to wither, rotting away into nothing before my eyes, just as the evil spirit, but leaving only the macabre sight of his skeleton laying in the bed. Somehow, it didn't really seem so forboding... the remains actually looked peaceful somehow. At this point the experience flooded me as being too much and I buried my face in the mattress, sobbing heavily.
Still inside the dream, I woke up on what must have been the next morning. The room, which had no windows, was no longer dark. It appeared to have been recently coated in fresh paint and stenciling along the ceiling border. The furniture I had moved which had been ancient and debilitated last night, was shiny and new now. The floors were clean polished hardwood and no cobwebs existed anywhere. Not a spec of dirt could be found... and there was a noise outside. I quickly pulled the comforter (which had not been there last night) up and over the bones. Outside, coming down the hall... I saw... housekeepers?! WTF? WOw, reality had really shifted here. I go out and tell them not to go into that room. To cordon it off. For some reason, I felt like I was their boss or at least that I was an authority figure. As I moved down this hall... which I have now realized is MASSIVE in scope... I run into Leslie Robinson, my boss from Collington. It seems that she is in charge of finding this boy, so I tell her where he can be found and what happened. For whatever reason, everyone seems very happy. Elated, in fact. I tend to think it is because the darkness has left this place we were all in. In the end, I am in a room with Leslie and she is talking to me, trying to get the whole story from me... which I will not divulge, because for some reason the way it turned out was correct, but the powers that be had wanted to preserve the boy's life for their own purposes. So she is trying to seduce the info out of me. Massaging my shoulders, rubbing her legs against me, doing and saying things which DID turn me on, but I told her I wasn't going to give her what she wanted... information or otherwise. I thought she would be angry over this, but instead she was very happy... as though I had passed some test. With questions still in my mind over what had happened, I walked out of the building...and right out of the dream.
Kind of freaky, huh? That dark creature had me BEAT! Cool how I was able to make contact with it though. I wonder how that worked, since it was spiritual and not physical. And the child martyr, wow. I would have readily sacrificed myself in his place, but he accepted this odd sort of fate. And given the WEIRD setting, what did Leslie have to do with it? LOL Weird. But at the same time, the whole dream was pretty cool. Maybe there will be another sequel.
