Chapter 12: What My Soul Does When I Am Asleep by Stephen Simpson

Carol walks to our table again, and then smiles at Laurie. “Time for you to get back, Laurie.”

Laurie pushes her chair back and stands up. “You can stay a bit longer if you want to.” She glances down at her wristwatch. “There’s still a few minutes left before your parents will want to leave.”

“I think I’ll stay for just a little. It’s peaceful here.” Even with the banging of plates against plates, and the scraping of knives and forks against porcelain, the view of the little garden on the other side of the large ceiling to floor, double-story window seems to absorb the noise. The sun filters through the leaves and I can see beams of sunlight hop light-footed from one green leaf to another in a playful dance. It looks like a scene from a dream.

“See you upstairs,” Laurie says as she walks away from the table with Carol.

As I stare out of the window, I realise, at times, I cannot tell anymore where wakefulness stops and my dreaming begins, and this scares me. There are thousands of people in mental institutions across the world who have just this problem. I am so sure my dreams are not me half-awake in daydreams or hallucinations. I know I am asleep when I dream these dreams where I feel as if I am living it. It feels so real to me, but as my mum said, dreams are just what they are. Maybe she is right, and I just have a very imaginative brain, which just makes me feel as if I am experiencing the things in my dreams.

Have I been chosen for some kind of purpose? Is this magic or even a gift? What if my soul really did leave, and what if everybody’s souls did leave when they were asleep, and I just had a more profound awareness of it actually happening? What if my brain does have a glitch and I am not even supposed to know I can do this? Surely some scientist somewhere must have figured this out by now. I must, must, must go to the Dreamcatcher Institute when we get home. Somehow, I must convince my mum to take me there.

I could pretend this does not happen to me, but I am not sure I can. There is no doubt in my mind, I am deeply afraid. I am afraid my soul does leave my body at night, I fear the possibility it might not come back, but most of all I am petrified of being possessed by some evil spirit. When I am in these deep dreams, even though I cannot remember much of the details, I do remember the feelings it invokes in me. Sometimes there is a deep fear as if a dark menace awaits me, but then other times I wake up and am filled with a happy, blissful feeling. As if everything is all right in the world.

I really do not want to worry my mum with this now. She needs to focus on my grandma and my grandma’s medical care. If I insisted there is something wrong with me, she would then have an even greater burden on her shoulders and be concerned about my well-being, as well as my mental state. So, for the time being, I have nobody to talk to about it.

I must admit I am also a little intrigued by the idea of my soul leaving my body when I go to sleep, when it leaves to wander wherever it wanders, so I am a little reluctant to let the idea go. The mystery of it all makes me curious.

As a family, we are not deeply religious. We do not go to church other than on Easter and Christmas, skip a few years here and there. My mum says her body is ‘the house of God’ and she does not have to go to a building of brick, metal, and steel to know this. All they want at church is for her to pay her tithe, and she would rather donate money to charity. I am not old enough yet to decide if she is right or wrong, but she always tells me I can attend church services whenever I want to or not, she will never stand in my way of finding my own path. We always say grace before we start a meal, and at night before I fall asleep, I do pray and thank God for everything I have. It is not as if we are totally heathen. I know most of the stories from the Bible and I know about good and evil.

If this experience is a gift, would it be a good gift, like from God or is it an evil gift and the workings of the Devil? Or even worse, am I already possessed by an evil spirit who has me locked away in a little corner of my brain, and at night when it leaves to go and do things evil spirits do, do I then dream of how my life is supposed to be like?

I jump a little when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I look down as I pull it out of my pocket and glance at the time. Time to go back upstairs. As I push away from the chair, I open the text message from my mum: ‘Where are you?'

As I walk along the wide corridor with gleaming white tiles under my feet, and the bright glaring lights above making it difficult for me to see the screen of my phone, I quickly send my mum a reply text: ‘On my way. Be there now'.

As I reach the area where three elevators stand in a row against one wall, I see one has arrived and the doors are sliding open slowly. I wait for an elderly man with a walker to walk in ahead of me, while I hold my hand against the rubber trim of the door, so it does not close on to the man as he meanders into the lift.

The old man shuffles to the back of the lift, and I slide into the empty space next to the panel with the numbered buttons.

I look at the man and ask him, “Floor?”

His voice shakes a little with the loose skin under his chin. “Second, please.” He smiles, and his mouth is too big for his teeth.

I smile back at him as I press the number two button, and then the number four button for my own destination. I hold my thumb on the button to close the doors until they are shut.

The lift eases upwards and then shake a little when it stops on the second floor. The red number two above the doors fades to black with a soft ping noise.

Once again, I hold my hand over the rubber trimming on the metal sliding doors, and the old man glides-slides his walker forward and then shuffles behind for a step or two, and then glide-slides the walker again. It is like a weird, macabre dance he is performing with a short metal object.

As his foot touches the white tiles in the corridor, he looks back at me and again he smiles. There is too much gap between his teeth and his cheeks, and I can even see the top of his pink plastic denture gums. “Thank you.” His eyes are the same see-through blue as my grandma’s.

I only smile in return and then push my finger on the button to close the doors again.

When the doors slide open on the fourth floor, I rush out and hurry along the corridor to the ward where my parents are waiting for me.

As I push through the double blue swinging doors, Laurie is walking in my direction. “Nice down there, isn’t it?”

“Very. I even lost track of time.”

“There’s still a couple of seconds.” She smiles widely before she disappears into a room to the left of me. I glance in and see the same two beds, the same two metal cabinets on the side of the beds, the same dividing curtain, the same trolley table at the foot-end of each bed and the same wooden benches beside each bed, as in my grandma’s room.

I can hear Isaac’s voice, “Bye, grandma. See you tomorrow.” He is speaking louder than usual, not as if his tone of voice is ever much softer. He thinks because she is old and frail, she is deaf as well.

I round the corner into the room, brushing my shoulder against the door frame. “Here I am. Sorry, but I was in the cafeteria, and…”

“It’s okay, Gaby,” my dad says as he walks to me. “Say goodbye to your grandma.”

I hurry past my grandma’s bed and lift the book I left on the trolley at the foot-end of the bed in one smooth action. I bump into the corner of the bed, and the mattress pushes into my stomach, expelling a gush of breath from my lungs.

I look up and rays of sun beam through the glass window and onto his face. It highlights his auburn hair, the shape of his eyebrows, the way his eyelashes rest on his cheeks, his lips, and the shape of his jaw.

It is as if a veil is lifted in front of me. A gauzy film is pulled up and away from my eyes.

I remember.

I stop in my tracks and grab a fistful of the blanket on his bed to steady me.

What’s happening to me?

It’s Barclay.

The boy I meet under the lemon tree every now and again.

In my dreams.

Not for real.

It cannot be real.

He should not even exist. He is only a figment of my imagination.

The coincidence is overwhelming. I force my gaze away from his face and look across his bed and his body. My parents are already standing between the door and my grandma’s bed, waiting for me. My dad says with an impatient tone in his voice, “We have to get going, Gaby. Soon the roads will be jammed with everyone trying to get home.”

Continue reading Chapter 13/19

Copyright © Stephen Simpson. All Rights Reserved.
All work created and posted on this blog is the intellectual property of Stephen Simpson.