"Robert F. Young - Darkspace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

upon her, and scream. She would see me, too, but I always assumed she merely believed she dreamed
me. She would scramble to her feet and begin running again, still screaming. She would always awaken,
of course, before the wave reached her. Then she would lie huddled in bed beside me, whimpering for a
long while before she fell back to sleep.
Another dream she dreamed over and over was what I thought of as a childhood dream. It cannot be
referred to as a recurrent dream in the usual sense of the term, because it did her no psychological harm.
Actually, before I began entering it, it helped her.
The dream was about her teddy bear. She would be 9, little girl and she would walk into a nursery
wallpapered with pictures of toys and sandboxes and swings and teeter-totters, and look for her teddy
bear. When she failed to find it she would become frightened. She would search for it everywhere. Under
the bed, behind the bureau, in the closet, behind the window curtains. Then at last she would find it under
the pillow of her little bed, and she would pick it up and hug it and then lie down on the bed holding it to
her, and when she fell asleep she would go right on sleeping in her real bed beside me. In the morning she
would awake bright and happy, and hum one of her favorite songs while she dressed.
The first few times I entered the dream I stayed out of her center of observation and she did not
know I was there. Then one night I followed her into the little room, and after she found the bear I tore it
out of her arms and plucked its eyes out. Then I handed it back, and she lay down on the bed with it,
sobbing. When the dream ended I could hear her crying beside me in the darkness.
I plucked the little bear's eyes out in several successive dreams, then I changed my tactics. Now,
when I took the bear from her, I held it by the hind legs and began swinging it so its head kept banging
against the wall. Each time I did this, Cheryl would wake up, screaming. I did it again and again and
again. In all of the teddy-bear dreams I transformed myself into an old man with a crooked nose and
mean little eyes, and I was certain she thought the old man was merely an added dream-element. But I
had betrayed myself in the water dreams by entering them as myself. Mornings after the teddy-bear
dreams she would wake up with a haggard face and swollen eyes. She would have nothing for breakfast
except coffee. I do not believe she ate all day. She grew thinner and thinner. She caved deeper and
deeper into herself. I was certain she would kill herself. But she did not. She killed me.

It seems I have slept for an eternity before she dreams the cave dream again. But there is no way for
me to know. She climbs the bank to the cave and we look at each other, and then she runs screaming
down the slope and into the woods. And even though I am aware by now that I will never catch her
before she reaches the stream and disappears, I still pursue her. She has incorporated the instinct to do
so in my dream-self, and I am helpless against it.
If a long time truly passed between this dream and its predecessor, perhaps she is undergoing a cure.
But I do not think soтАФnot only because I have seen no sign of an endo-analyst but because I do not
believe she would seek help, since this would necessitate her having to tell the analystтАФecto or
endoтАФthat she killed me. But recurrent dreams sometimes fade out of their own accord if the malaise
that causes them loosens its hold. If such is the case with this dream, I shall soon be dead.
I am already dead, of course, but only in proper time. In the timelessness of the thing-in-itself I am
both alive and dead. Cuiran theorized that the dreamed-of in recurrent dreams, if dreamed of often
enough, could acquire awareness independent of that of the dreamer's, whether the dreamed-of were
alive or dead in proper time. I have borne his theory out.
How did Cheryl kill me?
I find that I cannot think clearly any longer. I have again remained awake for a long time, but I cannot
even begin to remain awake for the entire periods that separate her dreams. I am about to fall asleep
again. I try to fight back the dimness that crowds in around me. It is no use. My awareness fades away.

We went hunting that day. Yes. Cheryl and I. Hunting deer We used old-fashioned 16-gauge
shotguns with slugs. Rifles are still taboo in hunting deer. It was in November. Late November. I
am-remembering very well as I sit here in my cave after returning front my futile chase. It was in late