What Dreams May Come (15 page)

“Understand now,” he repeated, “lan’s prayer isn’t a direct channel to Ann. It only starts us on the path. Finding her will still be difficult.”

“But not impossible,” I said.

He nodded. “Not impossible.”

Ian’s prayer again, I thought, remembering how he’d helped me once before.

“It’s as though he knows,” Albert said. “Not consciously, perhaps, but somewhere deep inside himself. It’s what I was hoping for. When there were no prayers from any of your other children—not because they love their mother any less but because they believe that prayers are hypocritical—-I thought our cause was lost—and it would have been whatever your determination. But then I was in contact with your younger son’s mind and hope was revived.”

“How long will it take to find her?” I asked.

“You must understand,” he said. “We may never find her. We’re only in possession of a general bearing, not a step-by-step route.”

I resisted panic and nodded. “I understand,” I said. “Let’s hurry though.”

Albert stopped. We were walking by a large, attractive looking park with—the sight was anomalous—a tall, iron fence around it. “Chris, come in here with me,” Albert said. “I have something to say before we continue.”

I wanted to go on as fast as possible, not stop and listen. But the urgency in his voice permitted no other course so I walked beside him through a gateway to the park, past an ornamental pond. I noticed that it had no fish in it and that the soil around its bank looked somewhat drab.

I noticed, too, at that point, that the shrubbery and plants were limited and, while certainly not ugly, were, in no degree, as verdant as the other growth I’d seen in Summerland. The grass, too, had what looked like bare spots.

Across the park, I saw some people ambling slowly, others seated on benches. None wore robes but, instead, were dressed in fashionable earth clothes. They didn’t look very pleasant, their expressions those of false dignity. Those on the benches sat stiffly, faces set. Everyone I looked at had an air of postured nonchalance. None were speaking.

I was about to ask about them when we reached a bench which—oddly, I thought—looked somewhat in need of paint. Albert gestured toward it and asked me to sit.

I did so and he took his place beside me. “I’m walking you to the edge of Summerland for two reasons,” he began. “The first, as I’ve told you, is to let your system gradually adjust to rather unpleasant alterations in environment. The other is to get you used to walking again as a means of locomotion. Once we depart from Summerland, we’ll be subject to the grosser atmosphere of where we’ll be and unable to travel by thought.”

I looked at him curiously. IS that what he’d stopped to tell me?

“Most of all,” he continued, answering my question instantly, “I want to emphasize the profound danger you will be in when we’re traveling through the lower realm. You found our visit to your wife’s funeral disturbing. It was nothing compared to what you’ll soon be experiencing. While we were at the funeral, we maintained a distance from the influences of that level. In the lower realm, we will have to actually take on those influences in order to function. I can protect you to a certain degree but you must be prepared for the onset that will strike you—every dark emotion that you left behind on entering Summerland.

“You must, also, be prepared to see some terrible sights. As I’ve said, the way to Ann is not distinct. It may take us through some ghastly places. I want you to understand this now. If you feel you can’t face them—” “I don’t care what I have to face,” I said. He regarded me in silence, obviously wondering if I had the remotest concept of what he was telling me.

“Very well,” he finally said, “assuming that you have the strength to resist what you’ll have to face, I warn you, with the greatest emphasis, of the dangers which will threaten you if and when we actually find Ann.” I confess to startlement at that.

“The search for her will involve many frightening dangers,” he said, “but these are external dangers. If we find Ann and you try to help her, you’ll be subject to internal threat. Returning to a level of primitive development, you’ll be strongly influenced by it. Lowering your vibration to that of earth’s, you will no longer be able to think clearly but will be subject to the same confusion of thought with which your wife lives constantly. In this weakened state, you will not only risk losing your effort on her behalf, you could very easily be so affected that you’d become as much a prisoner of that level as she is.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gripped it tightly.

“You would, then, lose everything you’ve gained,” he said, “not only losing Ann but yourself as well.”

A current of uneasiness washed over me and I couldn’t respond.

“You can return to where you were,” Albert said. “Frankly, I’d be much relieved if you did. That way, you’d only have to wait for her for twenty-four years which would quickly pass for you.

“By going on, you may lose her for a much longer time.”

I closed my eyes, feeling chilled and weak. I mustn’t leave her there, I thought. I have to help her. Still, I was afraid— and not unrealistically according to what Albert had told me. What if I wasn’t strong enough? Wasn’t it better to wait those twenty-four years, knowing, for certain, that we’d be together again? Wasn’t that infinitely preferable to trying to help her now and possibly running the risk of losing Ann forever?

Inside the lower realm

“GENTLEMEN?”

AT THE sound of the man’s voice, I opened my eyes. He stood before the bench, addressing us. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,” he said. “This is a private park.”

I stared at him. A private park in Summerland? I began to speak but Albert cut me off. “Of course,” he said. “We didn’t realize.”

“That’s quite all right,” the man replied. He was middle-aged, distinguished looking, dressed with care. “If you’ll leave immediately,” he told us, “no more need be said.”

“Right away,” Albert agreed, rising from the bench. I looked at him, not understanding. It seemed unlike him to allow this man to exclude us from a park in Summerland without a word of reaction. I stood and began to speak again but Albert took my arm and whispered, “Never mind.”

The man observed us with polite remoteness as we started toward the gateway.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It wouldn’t help to challenge him,” Albert told me. “He wouldn’t understand. These people here are in a strange condition. In life, they never did actual harm to anyone and are causing no harm here—hence the relative graciousness of their surroundings.

“On the other hand, there is no way to pierce their shell of affectation. They live a limited existence which they, nonetheless, believe to be completely appropriate to their class.

“They think they’re in a ’smart’ location, you see, a spot restricted to those of their social standing. They have no conception of the fact that, in Summerland, there are no sets or cliques. They are living a delusion of group superiority which words cannot affect.”

I shook my head as we left the park. “Grotesque,” I said.

“It’s nothing compared to what you face if we continue on.”

We walked in silence for a while. Somehow, I sensed that we were not continuing toward the edge of Summerland but circling where we were, Albert giving me time to make up my mind.

At last, I did.

“Since the risk is mine, not Ann’s,” I said, “I want to continue. She can only be helped.”

“Except,” he reminded me, “in the sense that, if you become imprisoned in the etheric world, your reunion could be delayed—” He stopped and I knew he’d been about to tell me how long our reunion might be delayed. A hundred years? A thousand? Fear took hold of me again. Was I foolish to attempt this? Wasn’t twenty-four years preferable to—?

The decision came at that: the thought of Ann alone in God only knew what dreadful place for nearly a quarter of a century. I couldn’t let that happen without trying to help.

I wouldn’t.

“All right,” Albert said, knowing my decision as I made it. “We’ll go on then. And I admire your devotion, Chris. You may not realize it yet but what you’re about to do is very courageous.”

I didn’t reply but, as we walked on, realized that, subtly, we had altered our direction and were, once more, moving toward the edge of Summerland.

Ahead, I saw a small church. Like the park, it was not unattractive yet lacked that perfection which marked everything I’d seen before in Summerland. Its color was a dingy brown, its brickwork chipped and faded. As we drew closer to it, I began to hear a congregation singing. “Weary of earth and laden with my sins. I gaze at heaven and long to enter in.”

I looked at Albert, startled. “But they’re here,” I said.

“They don’t know it,” he replied. “So they spend their time singing dreary hymns and listening to dreary sermons.”

I felt a sense of anxiety pervading me again. If it could be like this in Summerland itself, what would it be like when we’d left this realm entirely?

Albert stopped.

We faced a stretch of flinty ground with patches of grass that looked dry and wasted.

“We’d better change our clothing now,” he said. “Wear shoes.”

I was about to ask him why, then knew he wouldn’t have suggested it if it weren’t a necessity. I concentrated on the change. The fluttering sensation on the surface of my skin seemed slower here, as though it labored. I looked down, seeing, with a start, that, once more, I was wearing the outfit I’d had on the night of the accident.

I turned my gaze to Albert. He was wearing a blue shirt and trousers, a beige jacket.

“The clothes I was wearing when they took me to the hospital,” he said.

I felt myself grimace as he spoke. “Is it going to be like this from now on?” I asked. The air felt liquid and granular in my throat.

“We’ll have to start adjusting to the changes in environment,” he told me. “Visualize yourself as you’d have to be to exist here without discomfort.”

I tried and, gradually, began to have the impression of feeling myself thicken. The feeling was subtle, but distinct. The texture of my flesh took on a certain density and now the air was breathable. How different in my lungs though, no longer crystal clear and invigorating. This air was heavy. It supported my existence, nothing more.

I looked around the countryside as we walked on—if countryside is the word for what I saw. No fruitful landscape here; only barren ground, dying grass, stunted, virtually defoliated trees, no sign of water. And no houses which came as little surprise. Who would, willingly, reside here? was my thought.

“You’ll see those who—willingly—reside in places which are so appalling that, by comparison, this is a place of beauty,” Albert said.

I tried not to shudder. “Are you trying to dissuade me?” I asked.

“Prepare you,” he said. “Even so, no matter what I say, you cannot possibly envision what you may be forced to see.”

Again, I was about to question him, again decided not to do it. He knew; I didn’t. I had better not waste energy contesting anything he told me. I needed my resources for whatever lay ahead.

What lay immediately ahead was a desolate prairie-like expanse. As we walked across it, the turf grew less and less resilient and I noted the beginning of jagged cracks in the ground. There were no breezes now. The air lay still and weighted, getting cooler as we progressed. Or was it retrogressed?

“Am I imagining the light fading again?” I asked.

“No,” he answered quietly. His tone of voice seemed, to me, to be declining with the look of the terrain, growing more withdrawn as moments passed. “Except it isn’t fading to help you rest. It’s fading because we’re almost to the lower realm—which is, also, called the darker realm.”

There was a man ahead. He stood impassive, watching our approach. I thought that he was someone who, for some unknowable reason, chose to live there.

I was wrong.

“This is where the lower realm begins,” he told us. “It’s no place for the curious.”

“I’m here to help someone,” I said.

The man looked at Albert who nodded and said, “That’s right.”

“You aren’t entering just to look,” the man said warningly.

“No,” Albert told him. “We’re searching for this man’s wife to try and help her.”

The man nodded and put his hand on our shoulders. “Go with God then,” he said. “And be alert at all times. Be aware.”

Albert nodded again and the man removed his hands from our shoulders.

The very second we crossed the border I was uncomfortable, oppressed, filled with an almost overwhelming desire to turn and flee back to that safer place. I had to will myself from retreating.

“Tell me if you want to go back,” Albert said. Had he gotten my thought or was it obvious what I’d be thinking at that moment?

“All right,” I said.

“No matter when you feel it,” he added.

I knew, then, that he couldn’t reach my mind anymore. “We have to speak aloud now, don’t we?” I said.

“Yes,” he answered. It was disconcerting to see his lips move again. Somehow, that sight did more to convince me we were in the lower realm than anything I felt or saw.

What did I see? Almost nothing, Robert. We walked through a colorless vista, the dull sky blending with the ground until it seemed as though we trudged across a gray continuum.

“Is there no scenery here at all?” I asked.

“Nothing permanent,” he said. “Whatever you may see—a tree, a bush, a rock—will only be a thought form created by some person on this level. The overall appearance represents the composite mental image of its inhabitants.”

“This is their composite mental image?” I asked. Soundless; hueless; lifeless.

“It is,” he said.

“And you work here?” I felt stunned that anyone who had the choice would elect to work in this forbidding place.

“This is nothing,” was all he said.

I was not mistaken in my observation. His voice was less than it had been in Summerland. Clearly, the inertness of this place affected even speech. What did / sound like, I wondered?

“It’s getting cold,” I noticed then.

“Conceive of warmth around you,” Albert said.