Tape 1

"I want you to start by going to a place where you and N— enjoyed being together."

"I don't know if there was any place we really enjoyed together. We didn't really have a strong emotional bond. Our relationship was mostly based on sex. In the places we hung out a lot, she always seemed to have her eye on other guys. Which of course made me jealous. She liked the crowd and the music at First Avenue. That's where we first met."

"Then I'd like you to remember what it was like when you first met her at First Avenue. Before the jealousy started. When you first saw something attractive in her. Go back in time. See if you can find her at First Avenue then.

"What do you see?"

"It's dark. Cigarette smoke. It's hot and humid in here. The music is loud. The dance floor is packed. It must be Friday."

"Who's here?"

"Nobody I recognize.

"No, wait. Is that . . . ?"

"Who is it?"

"In the corner, at the table across from the bar. That's N—'s friend Susan, and Susan's boyfriend Edward. Susan's wearing one of those hot, shiny, black vinyl numbers, with knee-high gogo boots. Edward looks cross as usual. They're always on the verge of breaking up."

"Do you see N—?"

"No."

"Why isn't she here?"

"I don't know. She always insisted on coming here Fridays."

"Why wouldn't she be here then?"

"Because she's dead."

"We're trying to give you a chance to tell N— what you needed to tell her before she died. We've gone back to a time before she was dead. Now focus. Where is she? If she's not here, let's go where she is."

"I don't know!"

"Susan is N—'s friend. Maybe she can help. Ask Susan."

"All right."

"Have you asked her?

"What did she say?"

"She said, ‘Try Lakewood Cemetery.'"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this session. On the count of three, I want you to wake up. I want you not to remember any of this. I'm starting the count. One . . . Two . . ."

"Wait. Maybe N— is at the cemetery visiting her family's plot. She liked to visit her grandfather's grave."

"Are you sure? I don't know if you're ready to go to Lakewood Cemetery."

"I'm OK. I think we should go there."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"OK. Lakewood Cemetery."

"The last time I was here I had trouble finding her family's plot."

"I thought you said she came here often to visit her grandfather's grave."

"She did. But she never took me with her."

"I'm still doubtful about this. Perhaps you should meet her someplace both of you went often."

"I don't think we're going to find her in any of those places."

"All right. Lakewood Cemetery.

"What do you see?"

"Whoa."

"What is it?"

"This is weird. The whole cemetery looks abandoned. The front gate was chained up, but somebody has broken the chains. The lawn is weedy. The windows in the office building by the main entrance are broken. Some of these grave sites have been vandalized. Jesus. Dug up. Some of the grave markers have been broken or knocked over."

"That is odd."

"I'm walking down the main road, toward the section of the cemetery where her family plot is. I think. I hope I don't get lost.

"Have you ever seen a thunderstorm from a distance? When you see the rain coming down, like rivers in the sky? That's what I see — but it's not rain, it's like . . . fire and smoke.

"And . . . I thought I was seeing open graves, but the holes are much, much deeper than graves. They are more like wells or pits, all over the cemetery. I . . . I'm looking down into one. Too dark to see the bottom. They are everywhere here. I could fall into one if I'm not careful."

"Very interesting."

"I think I remember the way to her family plot, but the cemetery has changed so much, I'm not sure I can find it.

"There's a naked man, or a boy. A young man. He's spattered with mud and he's digging. He's talking to himself."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. I've never seen him before."

"Do you see N—?"

"I don't.

"But I think I know where she is.

"I think she's under the earth, down one of these holes. But I don't want to go. I think we should leave."

"I think we should leave too. On the count of three."

Tape 2

"We're going to return to your dreams. The dreams you said you can't remember, the ones that are keeping you from sleeping at night. Let's start with the dream you had last night. We're not actually there, we're just going to try to remember better. Where were you?"

"The cemetery. It looked strange, wild. Most of the sod had been torn up, especially toward the center of the cemetery. It was all mud."

"What else did you see there?"

"There was a naked boy, or a young man, half covered with mud, kneeling in a puddle. From a distance it looked like he was fashioning a man out of clay, but up close it looked more like he was cleaning a corpse he had unearthed from one of the open graves.

"He was singing a song to himself, a hymn maybe. I made some of the words out, something like ‘The Spirit of God purifies like a flame, the dead coming forth from the grave.'"

"Who is he? Is he the same person we saw in the cemetery our last session?"

"Yes, he is. He told me he was the cemetery custodian, and he didn't know if I belonged here. He was kind of jumpy. I told him I was looking for N—'s family plot, and asked if he knew how to get there. He said he wasn't sure he had the authority to tell me, I would have to ask the brother missionaries.

"I didn't know that the cemetery was church owned. I asked him where I could talk to one of these brother missionaries. He said I couldn't talk to just one, they always moved in pairs, and there was an oak next to a mausoleum further down the road where I wouldn't find them, but they might likely find me.

"The air was humid and the wind was gusting oddly, first in one direction, then another. The sky was electrically charged. It was like on my last trip to the north shore, when I saw the aurora borealis. Waves of iridescence flashed mysteriously, shimmering from one end of the sky to the other, like giant echoes of light. Except that in the cemetery, it was day, not night. And the sky was covered with thick clouds; I'm sure we couldn't have seen real aurora borealis, but there was this strange flashing above us in the air, all around us. Every time there was a flash near by, the custodian flinched, and whispered something to himself, and then looked down at the corpse he was working on and started cleaning it more quickly.

"He said, ‘You better go now.'

"I looked toward the center of the cemetery and saw a large, barren oak tree. As I approached it, the sudden gusts of wind gained intensity and the flashes of light brightened, blinding me. I winced and flinched from the fierceness of the flares. Suddenly the wind was knocked out of me, and my whole body was violently jolted. Then I was flying through grey light, in intense pain. My arms were dislocated . . ."

"You felt this in your dream?"

"I felt it vividly, and a pain in my chest. I was choking. The air was frigid. On either side of me something clutched my arms tightly, cutting into my flesh like broken glass. I turned my head stiffly to look down. My clothes had been torn off. My skin was ruddied by blood, blood spurting from my arms, sucked up by violent eddies of wind, and spattering all over my naked body. And on either side of me, creatures bright like the sun, tearing apart the fabric of sound with their shrill screams and the roar of their wings, gnashing their teeth like lightning, piercing the flesh of my arms with crystalline claws.

"I was in pain, but I was also aroused. The flood of sensations and my awareness that I was completely exposed excited me against my will. I wanted to be back in the cemetery, calm and securely clothed, and thought if I were back, knowing of this danger of being swept away, I would have fled. But I was here now, terrified and expecting to die and yet insatiably curious.

"I realized only slowly that there were actually words in the screaming of the creatures as we hurtled ahead through clouds and sky and light. They were chanting, the same words repeatedly, but stretched out, like a record playing too slow. But as I listened I thought I could make out the word ‘flesh' and then the word ‘prison.' And eventually I thought I pulled out the phrases ‘rescued from the prison of your flesh' and ‘put on new incorruptible flesh.'

"Then a dizzying lunge and we were engulfed in black, the thunder in my ears suddenly swallowed up by silence, and the creatures carrying me instantly drained of light, translucent like prisms, stars shining through them. Pain, like stabbing knives, cut into my chest, and I coughed once, and then my breathing ceased. My chest strained, but my lungs were crushed under an enormous weight. I fell into emptiness. Peripherally I saw the vast blue horizon of earth shrinking, vanishing away, and the sun, a blinding, yellow island in an ocean of black, receding. I thought, ‘That is everything, my whole life is there in that blue and white sphere disappearing from view. And this is the end of me.'"

"Was that the end? Of your dream?"

"No. I was trapped somewhere. I was still conscious though my body was leathery and lifeless. I wasn't breathing. But I remember peering through frozen eyes at an icy desert enveloped in shadows, nothing stirring, no light but the stars. And hanging above, an immense, lightless, moon, a rock ten times as large as the moon. Cimmerian."

"Cimmerian?"

"That is what they called us. Cimmerians."

"Us?"

"I was in a vast enclosure, with others. Like dogs, racing around after each other on all fours, tearing at each other with their teeth, rolling on their backs, copulating with each other. I lied there, trying desperately to move. One of them was sniffing me, nosing my genitals, licking me, nipping at me with his teeth. I could barely move my lips. I tried to form the words, ‘Leave me alone.'

"I knew that they had told me something, but I couldn't remember what. He pushed my legs apart and straddled me and bit me on the cheek, and then he licked the inside of my ear and whispered, ‘Of the forty-six thousand six hundred fifty-six celestial principles, learn but six and you can be free.' Then I remembered that was what they had told us."

"They?"

"The brother missionaries.

"When I had the strength to lift my arm, I held it above my face in the dim starlight and instead of fingers I saw sinewy, gray claws. I looked down at my body and saw an animal body, like a dog's body."

"Did you see N— anywhere in your dream?"

"No. But I did ask the brother missionaries where I might find her."

"What did the brother missionaries tell you?"

"They said that ‘Satan was loosed out of prison' and ‘the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.'"

"What do you think that means?"

"I think it means N— isn't dead. She's alive."

"N— is not alive."

"Yes she is."

Tape 3

"You said you had another dream about the cemetery last night. Can you remember it now?"

"Yes."

"Describe it to me."

"I was talking to the custodian."

"Is this the custodian you met in your other dream?"

"Yes. He was washing a corpse in the mud. He was removing its clothes and rinsing it with water from the ground. The water was muddy, but it also had blood in it, probably from the other corpses. The other corpses were laid out on the ground, lined up behind him. Some of them were barely more than bones and sinews and desiccated flesh, but some of them were puffy and swollen and were . . . leaking. Some were fresher than others. He had removed all their clothes and cleaned them as best he could, male and female corpses, some old when they had died, some young, different races (though with most it was hard to tell what race, the skin was so discolored).

"I asked him what he was doing, and he replied that he was ‘rescuing the dead.' I told him I thought these were past rescuing, and he retorted that, ‘for man, perhaps, but with God all things are possible.'

"‘You need to be rescued too,' he said.

"He approached me and then removed my jacket, pulled my shirt off. He kissed the tips of his right index and middle fingers, and touched them to my left shoulder.

"‘What's this?' he asked me.

"I said, ‘It's a birthmark. In school, my friend Jake used to tell me I should get a tattoo over it. He thought it looked like a dragon. See the wings?'

"The custodian replied, ‘To me it looks like an angel.'

"He continued to undress me, unbuttoning my trousers and pulling them down with my underwear. Then he knelt in front of me, untied my shoes and, lifting each foot one at a time, pulled off each shoe, each sock and then each pant leg. After piling all my clothes in a heap, he stood up and removed my watch and my small gold necklace. He put his arms around me and kissed me on the cheek, and whispered, ‘Earthly possessions are for those who won't be rescued.' Then he bent over, snatched up my clothes and unceremoniously tossed everything, watch and all, into one of the many open pits around us.

"I sat down in the mud and leaned my back against a large headstone, and pulled myself into a ball. I shivered a bit and watched him intently splash reddish mud onto the corpse and gently massage its skin. It was marred with black, green, and white blots, which I realized were mold.

"One of the corpses behind him suddenly sat up. It just popped, like the jaws of a spring-loaded trap flying shut, and then leaned forward on two bony, rail-thin arms. It seemed to be looking around, its head lolling from side to side on a gangly, withered neck, though its leathery eyelids were fused shut like they had been sewn together.

"I breathed in quickly, and started to say something, but the custodian glared at me, shushing me with the words, ‘Now is the time to keep silence in the gate.'

"The corpse heaved itself to its feet, took two wide steps forward, and before I could say anything more, raised its left knee high, almost to its chest, and, like a striking rattlesnake, kicked the custodian on the back of the head, smashing the heel of its foot against the base of his skull. He groaned and sprawled forward, landing on top of the corpse he had been cleaning. Two more cadavers behind him rose to their feet, a bloated, large-bodied woman, with long, streaming, gray hair, and the skeleton of a child.

"The large one barreled toward me. I flinched, expecting it to attack me. Instead it grabbed me by the arm and yanked me to my feet. It lifted me off the ground, cradled me tight against its breasts with powerful arms, bounded to the edge of a large pit, and then jumped. We were suddenly engulfed in darkness. I was having the breath squeezed out of me, my captor hugged me so tightly, and I was being bounced and jostled as it bolted down a long subterranean corridor that sloped steeply downward. Its cold, miry skin was sloughy and pockmarked, and as it ran, its chest rattled, like air squishing out of a balloon.

"Eventually we arrived in a cavern lit by a large fire roaring in an open pit. The air was hot and stifling, stinging my naked skin. My abductor dumped me onto the floor of the cavern and moved away, seeming to lose interest in me. I scuttled back as far as I could, pushing myself against the stony, muddy wall.

"The smoke from the fire choked me, burning my throat and my lungs. My eyes were watering and involuntarily squinting, and I was paralyzed with coughing. Through half-closed eyes I could make out perhaps a dozen beings moving about in the dense, murky air, silhouetted by the blaze. It was hard to tell for sure, but the others seemed unclothed like me. Unlike me, they didn't seem bothered by the oven-like conditions of the cavern. A few of them were squatting around the fire, laboring over a blackened carcass, pulling meaty bones off of it with a wet ripping sound and passing them around to others who chewed noisily on them.

"The room filled with sparks from the fire, sky blue, violet, and coral pink sparks. The shadows shimmered and heaved, swallowing up some of the silhouettes dancing around me and spitting out others, sometimes swallowing up my dim view of the cavern completely. The multi-colored sparks spun and grew, assuming eerie forms until they were like violet, indigo, and maroon spark bodies dancing in and out of the silhouettes. I retched, losing any sense of up and down, slipping, sinking, consumed one last time by the darkness.

"In the dark I slowly became aware of severe discomfort in my extremities, grating, penetrating pain. There was a grinding ache radiating from my chest through to my back, and in my vitals. I tried to move, to find a position that might offer relief, but there was no motion. No arms flailing out for support, no legs writhing, no abdomen tightening, no neck arching, no breath, no voice, not a whisper. Only added agony and panic. If only I could open my eyes, I thought. I concentrated on that thought, and then, suddenly, my eyes opened.

"Extending in front of me, just underneath my chin, was the surface of a stone table filled with carnage. A dismembered torso opened down the middle; a bloody liver, intestines, and other dark red organs I barely recognized; a foot cut off above the calf. I wondered whose body this was, but I could not see the head. I could not move my own head, could not turn it away from the butcher's table stretched out before my face. And then out of the corner of my right eye I saw an arm severed just above the shoulder, and on the shoulder, barely visible through the blood stains, a small dark birthmark with wings like a dragon.

"I was in a different, larger, fire-lit subterranean cavern. The table was surrounded by the same sort of ghouls who had kidnaped me in the cemetery. They looked down at me, some with eyeless sockets, some with swollen faces, most covered with filth. These wore a strange assortment of clothing. A bald, mottled old man wore a faded green dress with shoulder straps, and a bony, bloodless woman whose skin hung loose and rubbery had wrapped herself in a frayed gray pin-striped suit coat several sizes too large for her. Some wore dingy underwear, and some nothing at all. They were gathered around the table to feed. They were ravenously tearing scraps from the split torso, biting at cut off members as though they were eating chicken legs, foraging through the scattered vitals, and drinking dark drafts from pitchers and goblets arranged around the gruesome remains. Sometimes one of them reached down to grasp me by the ears and assault me with a horrible scratching, or more like scraping, on the crown of my head, making my ears ring, my eyes water and my nose run.

"A hand reached down, in front of my face, and I recognized my watch, the one the cemetery custodian had carelessly cast into a pit saying that ‘earthly possessions are for those who won't be rescued.' The one wearing the watch moved further away, toward the other end of the table. I couldn't see her face, but I recognized her short blue dress, the gold pendant she always wore on a thin chain, her long blond hair, the way she held herself, but most of all her laugh. It was N—."

"You saw N—? What did you say to her?"

"Nothing at all.

"She was embracing a young male, lean, broad shouldered, dark straight hair tumbling over his ears and covering his brows, cauliflower pale skin. He wore a threadbare white dress shirt and a loose black tie, but he was nude from the waist down. She held him by the buttocks, pulling him tight against her and kissing his clammy, grey lips. Between kissing him she fed on morsels from the table. She shared nibbles with him and drank from a goblet, thick scarlet drops trickling from the edge of the glass down her chin as she gulped. He helped himself to a cut of intestine and drank from her cup."

"What would you have said to her if you could? Say it to me, as if you were speaking to her!"

"There was nothing coherent. Nothing to say."

"Not even now?"

"No."

"Was that the end of your dream?"

"The end."

"I'm going to bring you back to wakefulness. I want you to forget everything we've discussed. Forget the nightmares. Just let your dreams lie in that dark, subconscious place they emerge from while you sleep and disappear to when you wake. Just wake up feeling refreshed.

"Now.

"How do you feel?"

"Uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable? How?"

"My back hurts, my lower back. I can't get comfortable. Some kind of muscle spasm maybe. No, deeper than that. My kidneys."

"You've been under a lot of stress."

"What happened? Where did you take me?"

"We explored another of your dreams."

"Did I talk to N—?"

"You're making progress."

"I don't think so. This can't help me. I'm losing time. She's already killed four people. It's only a matter of time before she kills me. She's just biding her time. She wants to drive me insane first, then kill me. I'm not insane. I know you think I am, but I'm not. I need to find someone who believes me, who can help me stop her, before it's too late!"

"You must have patience if I am going to help you."

"You can't help me."

"Remember what we said about trust?"

"What if she comes back? What if she kills someone else? This isn't going to help me."

"Of course it is. Good therapy takes time. That's all."