The Night Companion
by Jeffrey Greene
Chapter 9: The Black Box
conclusion
In my precarious condition, I experienced Morhan’s ideas as bodily states, and the pendulum swing from high fever back to a bone-deep chill seemed to correspond to his “absolute zero.” I felt the darkness so directly that to argue the point was less a matter of rhetoric than survival. Shivering, I said: “Isn’t it just your darkness? You leap-frog from one man’s nothingness to all men’s. Speak for yourself.”
The professor clapped his hands and giggled breathlessly. “On the contrary, I’m the one person alive who can speak for others. I know their deep places better than they do. I know yours. Do you think I’m some Peeping Tom, gawking at your dreams like Roland and his television? Or a jealous father, revenging myself on my daughter’s lovers by giving them nightmares? You’ve heard these lies and more, I’m sure.
“Maybe you’d like to hear the truth: I’ve been exhausting myself these last four years trying to part the curtain of dreams and see what’s behind it, to confirm for my own satisfaction — if not peace of mind — the universal reason for dreaming. Nightmares are a regrettable by-product of my intrusion into the dreamer’s private space, a reaction on the psychic level not unlike the body’s rejection of a foreign particle. Over time the sleeper can become used to my presence, and I’ve learned to walk very softly, to disguise myself.
“But there is a tidal flow to dreams, a current of reverie to which one must submit. It’s a natural law of sleep, and no more breakable than any other physical law. What I look for are the gaps between dreams, which are not an unbroken stream of images but divided by almost durationless spaces, moments when the stage goes dark. Then, while the dreamer pauses, to draw a breath, so to speak, I try to suggest to him — and in this space all thoughts become things — the idea of darkness and silence, of the current arrested, turbid water becoming clear.
“But it’s very difficult. My strength there is tiny, infinitesimal; I have to be a kind of trickster figure, whose only power is in fooling God — the dreamer himself. I’ve had glimpses only, maddeningly brief, of a kind of black, protean flower, inwardly sensed rather than seen, but nothing conclusive.
“Most often the dreamer reacts with a primal nightmare that wakes him up as effectively as a throat obstruction. The perfect subject would be a willing participant, prepared to endure the nightmares in the interests of — if not Science, then his own Truth — but I’ve all but given up trying to find someone as curious as I am. Hettie has told me flatly that she’ll set fire to the bomb shelter if I ever ‘bother’ her again, and Cathy... well, the bowl may be broken there, too. My son would have helped me, but...” He left the sentence unfinished.
“But what?” I said, angrily. “Because he wanted a life of his own? Your son killed himself. To escape from you.”
“No!” he snapped. “Not to escape from me. To get away from himself — his own ‘black box.’ That’s why he swallowed speed until his heart gave out: he had taken the mushrooms, too. I didn’t ask him to; it was his idea. I was proud of him for that. But when he faced that dreamless place... he found that he...” The voice faltered.
“That he what? That he couldn’t go on tormenting other people to save his own sanity? That he wasn’t like you? That’s it, isn’t it? He was willing to die to avoid being like you.”
“Do you have a child?”
“No.”
“Until you do, don’t talk to me about my son. To lose a child... it’s unimaginable; you can’t get your mind around it. I had a hard time letting go, even when he was alive. I wanted to protect him from the brutality of the world, knowing he was weak. There was a conflict in me between keeping my family close and allowing them to grow up. Maybe I was overprotective. I was fighting for my sanity and, yes, I used their dreams as a lifeline, but my intention was never to torment them.
“It’s true that I rode Patrick harder than Cathy and Roland. He was our first-born, and I expected unrealistic things from him. But if he hated me he kept it to himself. For three years after his graduation he stayed here — I never insisted, it was of his own free will — and worked closely with me, aware of the importance of the work we were doing.
“Every morning we’d compare our experiences, the exhilarating sense of having shared the same dream space. It fascinated both of us, as it would any curious mind, to hear the forgotten details, inexpressible things beyond the symbol-system of language and communicable only by crude analogies. It was like discovering that a boulder in the back yard that you’d climbed on since childhood was the extruding spire of a buried city.
“The dreams were sometimes convoluted and painful, and many times I had the bizarre experience of seeing myself in my son’s dreams. Often that dream double was domineering, even cruel, and I would wake up in tears, having seen my own mistakes indelibly graven on his psyche. Recriminations weren’t limited to Patrick; the dreams of my wife and children were like a hall of mirrors, in which I saw myself reflected through their distorted perceptions of me. Is it any wonder that I chose the dreamworlds of strangers rather than face the nightly tribunal of my own family, to see my sins endlessly replayed?”
With a subtle, almost tender insistence, the light of dawn was penetrating the sealed darkness. I could see him now: an emaciated figure stretched full-length on a narrow bed with dirty, sweat-sodden sheets. He wore nothing but a pair of shorts, and his skin was a ghastly, translucent silver, the veins and arteries standing out blackly against the skin. He raised a pathetic, string-muscled arm and put on a pair of sunglasses.
I got to my feet with some difficulty, crossed the room and stood over the bed. “You don’t look well at all,” said the professor, taking off his sunglasses. He squinted painfully, but I could see the dilated pupils, which added a depthless quality to his calm green eyes, their expression as cold and untroubled by feeling as a reptile’s. It was the face seen in a dozen dreams: thin, sharp and calculating, the eyes ringed with bony sockets, the upper lip pulled back from discolored teeth in a grimacing smile, the tip of his tongue moving slowly over the dry, cracked lips.
“No doubt my appearance makes you even sicker,” he said, putting on his sunglasses. “Once I stood in your shoes, looking down at the shaman I mentioned before, his body so rotten with oneirocine that he glowed in the dark. A blind white skeleton of forty or so years, surrounded by adoring attendants, the most revered — and feared — holy man for miles around, not only for his ability to enter the dreamworlds of his people, but because he’d chosen wisdom at the price of an early death.
“He told me that the tradition of ‘dream-seeing’ went back thousands of years, and the shamans in generations past had never lacked for apprentices. But he himself was the last of his line, because none of the young men of his dwindling tribe had come forward. He told me his people deserved to die out. They had degenerated into cowardly beasts squatting in their own filth, forsaken by the gods. Mistaking mere existence for life, they had forgotten that ‘seeing’ was the only difference between a human animal and all the other creatures.
“I agreed with him and, maybe because he despaired of finding an apprentice among his own people, he gave me several of the mushrooms as a parting gift. I cultivated them, experimenting with various soils and climates until I approximated their native conditions. Looking at you now, I feel what he must have felt looking at me: a faint hope that a young man with that rare combination of courage and curiosity has separated himself from the herd, willing to sacrifice a few years of existing, as Odin sacrificed an eye, for the privilege of seeing farther and deeper than others.”
I laughed, though the dizziness was returning, and was encouraged to see the thin lips whiten and pull down at the corners. “Not bad,” I said. “If you’d have made that speech ten years ago, you could have had your pick of volunteers. Shamans were hot in those days. Even if you’d asked me at the beginning... But you went ahead and broke in like any other thief. I don’t believe you, Professor. I think you’re a liar.”
Morhan’s frown became a snarl.
“You know what else I think? You’re desperate. The ‘black box’ is oneirocine withdrawal, and you’ll say anything to avoid it, because you know that when I walk out that door you’ll be a tick without a dog. You don’t want to die, you want to stop using it, but you can’t, so there has to be somebody around to fasten onto. But there won’t be anybody now, will there? No more specimens; Catherine just told me she’s through with you.” I turned and tottered toward the door.
Morhan rose to a sitting position. “Wait a minute. You’re at loose ends, aren’t you? I’ll pay you to live here. You can be the gardener, at three times his salary. More if you need it. Or don’t work; just screw my daughter all day long. Hell, you can marry her, with my blessing. Have babies, settle down. She’s ready, believe me. She told me tonight she’s in love with you.” He swung his spindly legs out of bed and stood up, wobbled, sat back down. “Hanauer, you sonuvabitch! Come back here!”
I shut the door behind me. Hettie was in the kitchen, pouring a cup of tea. In a bowl on a tray was a steaming pile of black shiny things that I first mistook for olives, until I smelled the odor of fungus, earthy and unpleasant, and saw the tiny caps with their wilted frills. I was heading for it already, and that smell pushed me over the brink: I rushed past her to the sink and threw up. I heard her go into his room and shut the door. She hadn’t come out when I left.
The sight of dawn improved my spirits, if not my health. I leaned against the wall, basking in the presence of the huge oak, its brawny, moss-laden branches spread protectively over the house like a serene and ancient sentinel, tirelessly guarding its charges from outward harm but powerless to protect them from themselves.
I heard voices from the living room and made my way toward them. When I appeared at the glass door, the voices ceased. Catherine came to the door and stepped outside, her face in its frame of hair looking pasty and careworn in the quiet light. Her eyes sought and avoided mine, and she held her head in a way suggesting both penitence and defiance.
Even in the throes of fever, I was charged by her nearness. We stood facing each other for an uncertain moment, then she turned her back and walked away.
“Tom?” It was Carla, beckoning to me from her chair beside the chessboard.
“I’m trespassing. Sorry.”
She shook her head and smiled, looking exhausted but genuinely glad to see me. Pointing to the chessboard, she said, “It’s a bore by myself. I’ve missed our games.”
“Can’t say I’ve missed losing, but the company... yes, very much.”
“You’ve seen him?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then you know he’s dying. What can I do, Tom? I’ve got to do something.”
“Take him to the hospital. They’ll put feeding tubes in him, get him off the drug. He’s got a chance. Call an ambulance.”
She looked aghast, as if I’d suggested murder. “No,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “I can’t do that. He’d rather die than let me help him.”
“Well, get him some heroin, then. I can’t tell you what to do, Carla. Look, I’m going to pass out if I don’t get off my feet. So...” I turned and walked to the door. Looking back, I saw her sitting with her hands clasped in front of her, staring blankly into space. She didn’t look up when I closed the door.
Patrick Morhan died in January of the following year, a month short of his own prediction.
Copyright © 2021 by Jeffrey Greene
