1.

“I love you too,” Roy quickly replied, still convinced he was in fact dreaming. “I always have.” Standing there in the middle of Shangri-la, telling the girl of his dreams, albeit twenty years older than she was earlier that evening, that he loved her just seemed too surreal to be true.

            “Who are you talking to, Roy boy?” she asked. The words seemed to fill the air, as if they were being pumped in from above.

            “You, silly—I said I love you too.”

            “Roy, snap out of it,” she said, shaking him by his shoulders.

            “Snap out of what?” He watched the peaceful grassy hills collapse around him with each waking shake. He stared dreamily into her gorgeous brown eyes as he watched years of maturity melt off her face, transforming her back in to the young, playful, carefree girl he knew.

            Roy quickly turned toward where the warm sun was shinning majestically on her face to see if it was now hiding behind a cloud casting shadows of illusion. It was gone, replaced by pure black sky speckled with flakes of snow, floating aimlessly toward the ground. The sweet sound of nature was transposed to the pulsing beat of Limp Bizkit, making him realize he was no longer in a distant dreamland, but back at Joe’s party.

            “Wow!” he stammered as he reoriented his mind and body to his new environment. “It was much easier coming than going.”

            “What are you talking about?” Gina asked.

            “Nothing, just had a bad trip. What was in that weed?”

            Gina just giggled and asked, “First time, Roy boy?”

            “Yeah, I guess the cat’s out of the bag. Was it that obvious?”

            “No.” She smiled. “Just thought I’d lost you for a moment.”

            “I guess I zoned.”

            “No, I mean, I really thought I lost you. When I came back from the little girl’s room, you weren’t here. So I looked around for a bit but couldn’t find you anywhere. I came back here to the fire, thinking that I’d scared you off with something I said or did.”

            “I don’t think that’s possible,” he interrupted. “Anyway, I didn’t go anywhere.”

            “That’s what’s so strange,” she said nervously. “I’ve been sitting in this exact spot for the past fifteen minutes. I haven’t budged an inch since I sat down. And you were not here a minute ago.”

            “Maybe I got up and went somewhere,” Roy said. “I mean, I was kind of spaced out, so I might have been doing some kind of sleepwalking or something.”

            “Well, that’s what’s even stranger. I heard you talking in the distance. Like you were in the woods over there.” She pointed to a spot about twenty feet behind the grill pit. “So I turned and called your name. And that’s when I realized…when I realized that you were sitting right here next to me, muttering something incoherently.”

            Roy’s face immediately turned bright red as it suddenly dawned on him what he was saying in his dream, right before he came to.

            “I was just muttering?” he asked coyly.

            “Yeah, at first.”

            “What did you hear me say?” he demanded, a little more harshly than he meant to.

            She just looked at him silently, and he couldn’t tell if she was choking back some words or fighting off the teardrops that were welling in her eyes.

            “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. I’m just not feeling myself right now. You know?”

            She broke a slight smile. “No need to apologize. It’s not you.”

            “Then what’s the matter?”

            “It’s just that I wanted to wait a bit longer to have this conversation. But I can’t deny the signs any longer. They’re too strong…. The energy is too strong…. And my grandfather told me don’t ever deny what your instincts are showing, no matter what your logic instructs. I’m just scared that if I go blurting it all out you’re going think I’m a loon and go running. I wanted you to get to know me first…but the feeling is just too strong.”

            Roy looked at her encouragingly, relieved that she not only had the same insecurities that plagued him, but she had the same warped view of life.

            “Gina, there is nothing you can tell me that I would think of as strange. If you only knew the thoughts that I keep under lock and key, you wouldn’t think twice about telling me whatever on your mind.”

            Her smile grew and he could feel the energy grow even stronger, as if he was puttering along in idle mode all these years and someone just flipped on the run switch. He focused on her eyes and could see she was feeling the same.

             “You feel it, don’t you!” she blurted, as if reading his mind.

            He just nodded, reveling in the preorgasmic tingle flowing freely through his veins.

            “Well, if I ever needed the sign of all signs to overcome my fears, here it is, so let’s just get to the point and work backward from there.”

            “Good idea, and once again, don’t worry about me, because, believe it or not, I am a strong believer in following intuition and higher energy levels, although I have to admit I have never felt anything like this before.” Roy tried to reassure her, and then thinking he might have revealed too much, added, “Unless, of course, I am still under the influence of a drug-enhanced experience.”

            She just laughed. “Of course not, silly. What you are feeling is what my grandfather calls Kwaka.”

            “Kwaka?”

            “Yes, Kwaka, the ultimate connection. Have your ever been faced with a life decision—you know, a direction to take or something that would ultimately change the course of your life, and all of a sudden it seems so clear, as if someone whispered what to do in your ear?”

            “Yeah.”

            “My grandfather says that is the spirits helping you out. You reach out and make a connection with them and they help guide you to the right answer.”

            With those words chills went up and down his spine and his energy state grew even higher, as he remembered some of the dream he’d just had with his father telling him the same thing.

            “My father once told me the same thing,” he said, adding, “He said that people exist on all different energy planes, and when you raise your energy level you are actually turning on your ability to connect with them, kind of like turning on the radio to receive a signal.”

            Gina smiled again, now fully understanding that he truly knew what she was talking about.

            “The thing is,” Roy added, “I have been raising my energy level since I was just a little kid. I sort of remember sitting in my room as a tot, looking around and noticing things in a different light, more colorful, brighter, and amazingly peaceful, almost as if I had been pulled into a Monet or Rembrandt painting. I would just sit there for hours, amazed at how beautiful things were.”

            “Why did you stop doing it?”

            “My mother thought I had some type of autism. Made me see a child psychologist until I was about six, when my father finally convinced her to stop. I guess I related that feeling to being crazy, and I didn’t want to go crazy. So this is why you are probably the first person I ever told this to.”

            “It’s a shame people who don’t get this powerful tool to understanding and improving life make us feel like the crazy people,” Gina commiserated.

            This time Roy smiled. “So anyway, as I started to say, this feeling is a bit different than when I would get high, so to say, as a kid. I remember a peaceful feeling, but not this pleasant tingling sensation in every cell in my body.”

            “That’s because this is Kwaka, the ultimate connection.”          

“That’s what I’m asking. What causes this ultimate feeling?”

            She just looked at him and burst out in giggles. “Not ultimate feeling, silly, ultimate spiritual connection.”

            Now totally confused, Roy just smiled back and waited for her to continue.

            “Your father explained it to you similar to what my grandfather told me. Only when you raise your awareness to connect with the spirits, you are basically connecting to a group of spirits who are there to guide you. Imagine that you are a little kid on a neighborhood Easter egg hunt. You go around and find some eggs but then can’t find anything else, so you look into the crowd of spectators and spot your mother and father. Having been instructed that they cannot physically point out a particular egg to you, they guide you by saying ‘getting warmer,’ or ‘look over behind the flag pole,’ or something that will direct you to the eggs they can see.”

            “So the spirits that I am connecting to are basically spirits of my ancestors and family?”

            “For the most part.” She continued, “Every living soul comes from a spiritual group, each with a different mission or learning experience. Your ancestors, and especially your mother and father, have played an integral part in creating the setting that you chose by which to enter the physical world, but may not have been from your exact soul group, so to say. In fact there are so many soul groups, it would be very rare to meet up with another soul group on the exact same mission in the physical world. And if you did, your energy levels would be so in tune to each other, that—”

            “Kwaka!” he jumped in, suddenly understanding what she was getting at. “So you’re saying that the reason we are feeling this way is because we are soul mates.”

            “Bingo.” She paused to see if he agreed with her assessment.

            “I KNEW IT!” he exclaimed, watching as a pale fuchsia glow began to surround her energy field. “From the first time I laid eyes on you, I knew we were meant for each other. I could feel it, undeniably. Tried to chalk it up to a simple case of teenage lust, but I knew deep down inside it was love at first sight, or something even more.”

            Now she was blushing, just a few shades darker than her growing glowing aura. “Have you had the dreams?”

            Roy stopped for a moment, wondering how she knew about the dreams. Did she know about the dream painting and dream skipping? Was all of that real? He decided to play it coy and replied with a simple, “Dreams?”

            “Oh, never mind. It’s just that they seemed so real, I thought there was more to them,” she answered. “My grandfather is a firm believer that one can learn their goal or purpose in life from dreams. The master plan is laid out for them every night. The only thing one has to do is pay attention, remember, and recognize it when the situation presents itself. He says the problem that most people have is that they dismiss their dreams as just dreams, and don’t even pay attention to the life they are living. I have often heard him talk about the average person not being able to pick up a sign if it hit him square in the face.”

            Roy laughed and confided, “My father told me people are like a herd of cows, going through life doing the same old thing. You know, wake up, walk to field, eat grass, go home, go to sleep, and start all over again the next day.”

            “Sounds like your father and my grandfather would have a lot to talk about.”

            “Something tells me that on some level they already have. May have been responsible for us finding each other.”

            “I think you may be right.”

            Roy was about to ’fess up and tell her about the dream he’d just had when Bobby came up from behind him and almost knocked him over with a big drunken slap on the back.

            “Heey, duude! You gotta help me out. Shanice left me hanging. Told me no way she was going home with a big old beer-breathing, hippo-snoring, horn dog like me, snatched my keys, and took off. And if I don’t get home by the stroke of midnight, my ass is going to be rawer than a plate of sushi when my ol’ man gets through with it.”

            Roy turned to give him a How dare you interrupt the conversation of a lifetime! stare down, but one look at Bobby’s innocent dopey smile and he couldn’t help but fall prey to his How can you leave a puppy dog in distress? cry for help. He turned to see if Gina would agree to continue this conversation over a cup of hot joe at Johnny’s All Night, only to find her denial before he could ask.

            “I have to be going myself,” she said with a reassuring smile that seemed to say, A man has to take care of his best friend in time of need.

            “Well, let me take you home,” Roy insisted. “Bobby’s just right outside of town, and I thought we could—”

            “Sorry, Charlie. It’s late and I got my own wheels tonight. Plus I think we have a lot of time to continue this conversation, if you know what I mean.”

            “Yeah, I guess so. It’s just that…I wanted to tell you—”

            She broke his train of thought with the sweetest of kisses he ever did experience. Her lips seemed to melt with his as they pressed lightly for probably the longest second he’d ever tried to hold on to in his life. “ ’Night, sweetie,” she whispered, and turned away faster than he could protest.

            He stood, speechless, as he watched her blend into the night, finally gathering enough control to utter the words that were on his lips before being paralyzed by her sweet poison. “I had the dream too.”

2.

Royer jolted upright faster than a cow poked in the rear with a branding iron. He stopped to take a couple of deep calming breaths as the beads rolling off his sweat-soaked forehead were racing to outpace a few strangling tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes. He stared up at the starlit sky wondering what the hell he was doing, all alone, in the middle of the woods somewhere off of I-52 on a cold, cold November night.

            He found himself armed with nothing but a backpack of camping supplies, the guilt of leaving his mother with a lame “don’t worry about me” note, and the anxiety of getting to his final destination and realizing the dream was just a dream. That there was no Poppy, and Gina was still back in Westview, worrying with his mother about why a semi-normal honor student and star athlete would just pack his bags and run away during Thanksgiving week.

            But the dream was not just a dream. It was one of those signs Gina had alluded to a few days ago. A premonition. A warning. He felt like Ebenezer Scrooge on the morning after his frightful night, wondering if what he saw in these dreams were things that would be, or if they were just things that might be. And if they were just might bes, did he have the power to change them, or was it his mission to change them? And if he didn’t, would it be his fault for not trying? Was the fate of the world resting on his shoulders because he was chosen to see its ending well in advance?

             As he contemplated these gnawing questions, a cold chill pricked its way down his spinal cord, tingling every nerve it passed by. He picked up his poking stick and stirred the embers in the dying fire until the flames became lively again, and his body soaked in the much needed warmth.

            Roy looked back at the sky and judged it to be around 4 am, from where the moon hovered just above the trees. Just as well, he figured. If he was to make it to Gina’s by Thanksgiving Day, he would have to make up a good fifteen to twenty hours.

            After warming up for a few minutes and downing a PowerBar and juice box from his dwindling stash, Roy packed his bags and headed back out through the clearing in the woods that would bring him to the main road. He hoped to catch an early morning truck that would take him most of the way. Not only was he getting hungry for something more substantial, but the anxiety of meeting Poppy was becoming as annoying as it was nerve racking.

            In his dream, Poppy is shoveling snow off his front porch, dressed in a big parka and hunting cap with the flaps that cover the ears. Roy walks up from behind him and stands there not saying a word. Without looking up, the old man says in a deep stern voice, “You’re late.”

            Confused, Roy mutters an apology and asks him who he is. The man quickly turns around and looks at Roy with coal black lifeless eyes and growls, “I’m Poppy.” He then places his cold, shriveled, calloused hand on Roy’s forehead and whispers, “Save her soul—save their souls.”

             Instantly, everything goes black and Roy is alone, scared and confused, floating aimlessly, looking for someone—anyone. He can feel Gina’s presence near him as well as billions of others, but cannot see, touch, feel, or communicate with them. There is no stimulation, no sensation, just emptiness.

            That’s when it hits him, that this must be HELL. That there is no devil. No destruction, evil, fire, or brimstone. True Hell is a place totally void of senses. Void of energy. Void of love. Just an eternity of emptiness, where the mind and soul are sentenced to slowly rot from lack of use or purpose.

            Although Roy is never told any of this in his dream, the concept is crystal clear, and it frightens him more than any of his deepest of fears. For what makes flesh-eating monster, psycho-killer horror movies or horrific accidents scary to begin with? It is not the horrific act itself—because that only lasts for a few seconds or minutes at the most. The fear is death itself. That once the monster eats you, you will be dead. And the fear mostly is what happens when you are dead. What if life after death is nothing at all? That once you are gone there is nothing. Well, that wouldn’t be good, because there would be nothing to look forward to after you die. But likewise, nothing to fear, because you would know that once your time is up, it’s up. But what if you knew that once you died, you would be trapped in an eternal holding tank of nothingness? Then you would know that all you have, enjoy, strive for, and need would be stripped away, leaving you with nothing but boredom and loneliness.

            The mere thought of this scared him so bad the first night he had the dream that he stayed awake all night, afraid to go back to sleep and face it again. His rational mind deduced that it was just a nightmare, probably caused by the combination of the new drugs he had taken that night, but something deep down told him it was more. That it was true and it was happening, now. That the sequence of dreams that followed the horror of Hell was not dreams but actual harbingers of actual events soon to be.

            The past three days had convinced him of this fact. For each night the dream starts the same, with Poppy on the porch and the trip through Hell. But it always winds up with two or three follow-up dreams that all are connected with the same characters but different situations and outcomes. What convinced him that they might be omens of future events was that the two main characters were the older Gina and what he assumes is an older him. Probably about 15 years or so from now and most definitely off his current workout schedule, judging from the thirty or so pounds he managed to put on.

            Each dream starts off the same, with Gina and Roy talking to a large group of people about a major change or shift in everything they know. They divide the group into several subgroups and spend some time with each of them teaching them how to pool their energy together to create a new imaginary world to live in. That’s where the dreams differ. Each dream appeared to be a recap of what happened with each subgroup after they went to their newly created world. And unfortunately, all the dreams wound up the same, with the sky in their world tearing apart in a scene that was both amazingly captivating and terrifying at the same time. And climaxing with pure blackness pouring in through the newly created orifice, flooding the world with cold, numbing emptiness, ending the dream and thus ending the life of those involved in the dream.

            Each of these subdreams seemed to have a couple of main characters who Gina and Roy spent most of the dream corresponding with. And it was for this fact that Roy was sitting out on a cold November morning, just before sunrise, with his thumb out and tummy rumbling. He needed to see Gina and see whether she was having the same dreams, and whether they needed to spend the next couple of years searching for these people to warn them that shortly their lives were going to melt away to eternal nothingness.

3.

“You’re late,” he said in a deep, stern voice that immediately unleashed a rash of fresh goose bumps all over Roy’s already half-frozen skin.

            Roy stood there, mouth wide open, as those two simple words validated the reality of his recurring nightmare, frantic that if he played his role and asked the man what he was doing there and who man was that the man would instantly reach over, touch his forehead, and send him into oblivion. Roy mustered up all his nerve, took a deep breath, and in his best Johnny “too cool to be anything but in control” Walker impression, said:

            “Sorry, Poppy, there was a delay in Air Hitchhike,” and braced himself as he turned around, expecting to see the wrinkled stare of death itself.

            Instead, he was greeted with the warm gentle smile of a sweet old man. His eyes were not coal black but a very inviting, stunning deep forest green, unlike any Roy had ever seen. He seemed to be a good four to six inches shorter than he appeared in Roy’s dream, but seemed to maintain a tall stature for a man not quite five foot six.

            “So the Dream Painter does exist, and he has a sense of humor too,” he said in a friendly but serious voice.

            Roy extended his hand and answered, “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

            “Likewise,” he replied. “I have been waiting to meet you since your dad was just a wee bit younger than you.” He took Roy’s hand in a firm, strong grip that sent warm pulses of energy up his arm. Roy giggled loudly as the sensation settled beneath his armpit.

“I did not mean that as just an expression.”

            Roy stopped smiling and stared at the man like a foreigner in his first English class. Finally he offered, “What do you mean?”

            “Well, you see R. B., although I never met your Dad, we experienced a shared vision about thirty years or so ago. I was a young father myself at the time and plagued by endless nights of disturbing dreams about the Gnab Gib.”

            “Gnab Gib?”

            “Yes. The shift, the apocalypse, the end of the world, whatever you want to call it,” he replied. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we will spend enough time talking about that this weekend. Anyway, I came out to this cabin alone for a weekend of soul searching to try to figure out why I was having these dreams. On the second night, I met your father in a dream. He was scared and confused. Told me he was having the same visions of a world of darkness, and the only hope to save life as we knew it was to open the portal for two souls to enter the world on the same day and make sure they connect before the turn of the millennium.”

            “You mean me and Gina?” Roy asked.

            “Yeah. Your father had it easy. Just had to wait until he felt deep in his soul that the time was right and then go for it. I had to train and prepare my daughter, Shania, for the blessed event, and then pray everything would work out all right.”

            “Well I’m here, aren’t I, and with a month to spare.”

            “Yes, and it’s a relief. Gina had been talking about you since you moved to Westview last year, but she wasn’t even sure it was you until last week. I told her I would believe it if you showed up.”

            “Well, it might have been easier if you gave me a formal invitation instead of relying on my ability to read the dreams.”

            “Oh boy, the great dream painter is not only humorous, but a lazy boy to boot. Didn’t like the challenge, or the gratification, of passing the first test.”

            “No, now that we’re talking, I’m glad I did what I did. Just had me worried the whole time I was traveling out this way.”

            “I’m glad you did it too, and to tell you the truth, I did think about calling your mother and inviting you both up for the weekend, but had a strong premonition that scenario would inhibit your initial understanding of the situation, and could cause you to run off in the wrong direction.”

            “How so?” Roy asked.

            “Patience, boy. We have a lot to go over, and I think Gina would want to know you’re here. She’s been waiting up each night until near sunrise, convinced each night would be the night you walked through the door. Had to stop her a few times from calling your house to see if you’d even left. So why don’t you go in and wake her and I’ll start breakfast. You’re probably starving.”

            “I’ll say, I could eat a cow.”

            “OK, steak and eggs it is—just stay away from Ol’ Bessy in the meantime, I still need her for milk,” he said with a smile as he scurried off through the kitchen.

            Roy followed him in, hoping he would escort him to Gina’s room, but when he stepped into the kitchen Poppy was nowhere to be found.

            He looked around, admiring the size of the old-fashioned county kitchen, the kind with cast-iron pans hanging from the ceiling over the jumbo butcher-block counter, to see if he missed him hiding around the corner or something.

            “Oh well, came this far by myself, I guess another couple of yards isn’t gonna hurt,” he muttered as he walked down the hallway toward the back bedroom door. He never even stopped to think if this was her room, or if she was dressing or anything. He just opened the door and barged in like it was his own room. And there she was like a sleeping angel, cuddled on a half-sized canopy bed.

            The early morning sun, radiating through the side window, seemed to focus a soft spotlight over her face, creating the illusion a halo.

            Kneeling down beside her for a few moments, he regenerated his aching bones, just staring and soaking in her tranquil beauty.

            “You made it, sweetie,” he heard her say, and looked back into her radiant eyes to find she was staring at him. “I knew you would. How long have you been here?”

            “Just a few minutes. You looked so peaceful, I couldn’t bring myself to wake you.”

            “You’re so kind. Does Poppy know you’re here?”

            “Yeah, supposedly he’s making breakfast. Just not in the kitchen.”

            “Oh, he never uses the kitchen; he cooks everything in the living room. Besides, you proved me right, so now he needs to prepare for the…” She paused when she saw the utter look of confusion on his face. “Come, I’ll show you.”

            She then proceeded to flip off her covers and hop out of bed, in one quick playful motion, just like a young tot bouncing off the bed one last time when her mother tells her to stop. However, when she stood and reached back to pull her long, dark ponytail out of her hair band and shake it free, Roy noticed for the first time what a beautiful young woman she truly was. He watched her night shirt cling tightly to her perfectly smooth, round breasts, giving him his first glimpse at her perfect-ten Playmate nipples.

            A new desire for her grew deep in the pit of his gut. She was no longer just the sweet-sixteen, homecoming beauty queen. She was now his Venus, a goddess of love, to unleash all his desires. To make him a man, with the will to survive a long bloody battle, knowing she is waiting at home for him when he returned.

            Noticing the new sense of desire burning in Roy’s eyes, Gina blushed ever so slightly and said, “Soon, sweetie, soon, but first things first.”

             She grabbed Roy’s hand and led him to the living room, where he could smell the sweet aroma of sizzling bacon emanating like strong incense.

            “So sleeping beauty awakes,” her grandfather said as they walked into a room that would have the editors at Better Homes & Gardens both marveling at its simplistic complexity and shunning the interior decorator for breaking all the rules of style and fashion.

            This was no ordinary living room, it was an ancient cave. The walls were made of rock, not the fake kind you would see in a museum exhibition, but actually on a continuous slab of some kind of shale. A series of ancient drawings depicting man, nature, and several types of wild animals wrapped around the center of the wall like a ritualistic nursery border.

            The floor was even more amazing. About 1500 hundred square feet in area, it too was made of smooth shale-like rock. But what set this room apart from your typical living room turned adobe cave was that the center of the pentagon-shaped room stepped down about four feet to a five-hundred-square-foot octagonal sunken living room.

That’s where Poppy was, cooking on a huge open barbecue pit. Royer marveled at how the smoke from the frying bacon streamlined to the center of the ceiling, painted pure black, and just seemed to dissipate as it reached its pinnacle.

            “How do you like you eggs, Roy?” Poppy asked.

            Royer continued to focus on the disappearing smoke, unintentionally ignoring Poppy’s question. It was not only intriguing but also had some kind of message he could feel deep in his gut. He wondered what it could be. Fire? Smoke? Disappearing blackness? That’s when it dawned on him. Poppy had a black ceiling. He looked around and noticed that the black from the ceiling was oozing in big blobs all around the room, as if it was slowly engulfing it. Royer turned his attention to the paintings one more time and noticed the expression of fear and panic on both the people and animals etched in the wall. They were running. Running from the darkness.

            “OK, scrambled it is,” Poppy said answering his own question.

            “This room is a shrine to the Gnab Gib,” Gina said, answering Royer's thoughts.

            “Gnab Gib?” he asked.

            “Yes, the end of the world, the apocalypse, the rip in the life force energy field, whatever you want to call it.”

            “The bad dream,” Roy answered.

            “OK, the bad dream it is,” Gina smiled wearily, “but as long as you realize it is not just a dream but a foretelling of an actuality.”

            “What do you mean? Are you telling me that these dreams are some kind of psychic vision of what is going to happen? Are you having the same dreams I am having?”

            “Yes, no, maybe—we’re not really sure. Poppy and I think that the dreams may be a vision of a past or parallel life, and yes, we are all having the same dream, since we are all connected to it.”

            “You, me, and Poppy?”

            “And John Bramson, Hector Rodriguez, Patti McKenna, Julia Chen. Probably more, but those are the names that stand out as most relevant to us.”

            The mere mention of those names abruptly blew away any doubt Roy had about the significance of the dreams. Hearing their names come from Gina’s mouth and not just the little voice in his head suddenly breathed life into the dream people he had been observing every night for the past week. Which in turn breathed life into the theory? For if they were real, the story was real too. This newfound closure to a concept too complex for Roy’s young naive mind to accept, suddenly sent his head swimming in a pool of anxiety.

            He stumbled back and plopped rear first on the hard but amazingly warm rock floor. Sticking his head between his knees, Roy guzzled in huge gulps of air, trying to suppress the cry for air now emanating from his suffocating lungs.

            Gina approached and comforted him for a long moment.

            “I know the sheer thought of what these dreams are about is horrifying enough. And to know for certain is inconsolable,” she said. “But you have to know that there is hope. And hope’s chance is just as good, if not better, than the other outcome.“

            She paused, collecting her thoughts, and continued, “Just the simple fact that you are here and we are ready is enough of a sign for us to believe in,  The outcome is not inevitable, its just a warning of a what might be if we don’t act. We’ll find out in a short while if you altered the dreams in any way by showing up here today. If so, we can finally rest at ease each night knowing we are on the right track to change it. If the signs don’t change, we can only hope to eventually find one. In which case it will be out of our hands and chalked up as a matter of fate. But you know, if that was the case, I don’t think we would be here together having this conversation right now.”

            “No, I guess we would be like everyone else right now, clueless to life’s grand finale.” Royer felt slightly better, at least able to breathe and cope.

            “You’ve got a point,” Gina said.

            “By the way, what do you mean we will find out in a short while? Will the dreams change tonight if we altered them?”

            “Well, hopefully sooner, but no guarantees. Poppy will explain after breakfast. But you must try to eat first; you’ll need the strength, both physically and mentally.”

4.

John W. Bramson zipped his duffel bag and made his break for freedom. Home for the past three weeks had been a self-contained prison suitably named Dantes Inn, just outside Richmond.

            He had allowed himself the proper three meals a day, consisting of the four main food groups—bourbon, rye, scotch, and whisky—and every now and then he would even crack open a bottle of tequila, just to keep his taste buds alive. His daily routine remained constant as he tried to numb the deep underlining panic attacks that spiced up the dull drums of his newly acquired depression. He would spend most of the morning, or what remained of it by the time he rolled out of bed, cursing the God he had diligently praised for the past thirty or so years, followed by two to three hours of woeful pitying to his once perfectly glorious but now eternally damned life and soul. He would wind up the day in a drunken stupor that intertwined memories of both his childhood and adult life, with the daunting dreams, or worse yet, premonitions of what was to come.

            Yes, it was these premonitions that first appeared in his dreams six weeks ago that led him to this living Hell. Like clockwork they would invade his dreams every night, leading them to the same final doom.

            No matter what he did, he could not shake them—until this morning, that is. And there was no way he was going to dismiss today’s dream as a mere fluke. It was a sign. A sign to jump on, to take heed in, and do everything that was in his powers to make come true, or forever suffer the consequence.

            As he slowly walked backward up Route 156, duffel bag swung over his left shoulder and right arm extended with thumb out, he figured he had plenty of time to evaluate the meaning of this new dream. To find out if it was truly the vision from God, like dreams he’d had twenty years ago that first changed his life. Oh, if he were just twenty-five again, with his whole life ahead of him. No regrets and best of all no worries, at least none of the proportion that were currently corroding what he had held on to so dearly for the past two decades.

            It was the summer of 1981 that he first had the vision. A young man with a degree in civil engineering, he had taken a job right out of college, with S, K & B consultants as a land surveyor on the Central Coast of California. Even as a senior at Virginia Tech, he knew engineering was not his life’s calling. Sure he was good at it, even aced most of his classes without tremendous study, but he never reveled in it. Never had the gut feeling that this is what his life was all about, like most of his peers, who had big plans for what they were going to do, what they were going to design, what they were going to be.

            To him it was just something to do. Something he knew how to do, but most importantly something that would give him the opportunity to work outdoors and do what he loved to do best—soak in the sun on a warm summer’s day and daydream.

            So when his career counselor told him about the opening at S, K & B, he bought a one-way ticket to California, without any second thoughts about traveling across country to a job he wasn’t even sure he would get, in a career he wasn’t even sure he wanted. Because he knew, deep down inside, that things would work out. They always did. As long as he kept his mind free of fears, enjoyed which way life lead him, and most of all stayed happy, he would soon discover his destiny.

            So it came as no surprise to him that summer, after the first dream, what he must do. He would head back home and start there, talk to Father Jerry, and ask for guidance.

            “Father John?” A voice called from behind. He turned around and walked toward the minivan he didn’t even see pull over while he was daydreaming. “Father John, that is you. What’s happened? You look terrible. Is everything O.K.”

            It was Jessica Simmons, from his parish in Highland Springs.

            “Yes Jessica, I think everything is fine,” he said, more to himself than to Jessica.

            “Haven’t seen you in Mass the past couple weeks, not since that interesting sermon last month. Where have you been?” she prodded.

            “On sabbatical.”

            “To find God again?”

            “Yes, Jessica. To find God.”    

“Well, hop in,” she finally offered. “You can tell me all about it in the car.”

            He hesitated for a moment. The last thing he wanted to do at this particular moment was to sit in a car with Jessica Simmons and be subjected to her third-degree grilling, but he knew deep down that repentance was the way back into God’s good graces, and what better way to atone than to put up with Jessica.

            “So where are you heading, Father?” she asked as he closed the door.

            Really not sure, he answered with a single word.

            “West.”

5.

“I want to once again thank you for meeting with me, Mrs. Chen,” Jack Barrett said as he entered Robert and Sunny Chen’s modest four-bedroom ranch in Culver City.

            “Just please remember we need to keep this very discreet. If my husband finds out I have betrayed his wishes once again, he will never forgive me,” she replied as she led him into the kitchen. “Can I get you some coffee or tea?”

            “Coffee would be great if it’s made, otherwise water would be fine.”

            “You see, my husband means very well. He is just looking out for Julia’s best interests, and he feels she should focus on her academic studies before entertaining her musical desires.”

            “Does he know how gifted she truly is?” he asked cautiously, trying not to sound insulting.

            “Of course he does. I don’t know how anyone who hears her sing can argue otherwise. He just believes that music comes second to academics. I think he feels that if she does both she will lose focus on her studies. I think deep down he believes he is doing what is best for her. Trying not to set false expectations for a musical career and giving her the background that she can use throughout her life. Cream and sugar?”

            “Just cream please. Is he a religious man?” he asked.

            “For the most part,” she answered adding. “Why do you ask?”

            “Because I honestly believe that Julia’s talent is not a just a God-given gift, but some kind of spiritual phenomenon, a miracle, bestowed upon her to share with the world.”

            “Mr. Barrett, you don’t have to convince me. It is the main reason I got Mr. Cochran at Julliard involved two years ago. I truly needed to know if I was just being the proud mother or if the experts saw what I saw.”

            “And when Alex told you and your husband that Julliard could not accept Julia because there is no teacher or professional singer in the world he has ever heard who could do anything but ruin the perfection that comes from her mouth. That did not convince you or your husband that she needs to share her talents with the world?”

             “The only reason my husband is still speaking to me after that fiasco is because I convinced him that I was just asking for an opinion, that I was not going against his wishes but taking a look at future possibilities when she got older. It is what happend afterward that has convinced him to do quite the opposite and prevent her from doing any public singing. She was only a child, for Christ’s sake!” She sipped her tea and paused while she collected her composure.

            “Mrs. Chen, I know the whole situation got out of hand with the press and all. Alex Cochran did not mean to make Julia a twelve-year-old Ripley’s Believe It or Not freak. He was just so enthralled with her talents that he shared her audition tape with his friend at the TV station, to show what he was talking about. Not to get air coverage. He never thought it would turn into a national media parade of reporters looking for the best angle on a ‘twenty-first-century Mozart’ expose. How can we convince him that we can handle it better this time around?”

            “You can’t.”

            “Then why did you call me here today?”           

“Because of the dreams,” she replied. “Robert thinks the nightmares are still remnants of the psychological trauma I put her through, but I have a deep, dark feeling that they are a sign from God. That we are interfering and need to back off or suffer the consequences.”

            “What dreams?” Jack asked. This might be the break he had been looking for to finally grab the prize every major label had been desperately pursuing for the past twenty-four months.

6.

“Mr. Evans, as we have already been over a thousand times, I am not a dot-comer or a psychic scammer looking to make a quick buck. I am simply an Intuitive, looking to connect to others who are having the same visions and feelings I am having. The reason I have presented it as a business model is upon a suggestion from Mr. Murrow, who has already informed me that this institution has declined my request for a personal loan because I am already overextended. He felt that there was enough substance to what I wanted to do that we may be able to get a business loan or something along those lines. Again, I am not asking for twenty million dollars, just enough to get the site designed and hosted and get some minimal advertising. The others will find it on their own.” Patti was exasperated as she explained her plans to start TheConnectionGroup.com to the fusty fiftyish silver-haired branch manager at First Mutual for the fifth time that day.

            “You mean through their own psychic connection.” He smirked.

            “Yes, through their intuition. That is the number one requirement for the members I will be recruiting.”

            “Ms. McKenna, I appreciate your honesty and I wish you best of luck in your endeavors, but this bank is not in the business of loaning money to cult groups and hobbyists,” he finally confirmed, looking her straight in the eyes to see if he could spot a tear or two. This was the part of his job he enjoyed the most. The one rush that made coming to this dreadful nine-to-five job every day almost worth it. The one thing, quickly becoming obsolete, in this day of online transactions and applications. So when the opportunity arose that someone would come in person to apply for a loan, he savored the moment, stringing them along and then crushing them like a used soda can. Just like those college recruiters who would lure him in with a vision of greatness, only to snap it away in one quick swoop, and almost always with the same line. “Evans, your background and academics are respectable but just not up to Ivy League standards, and certainly not scholarship material, wouldn’t you agree?” Leaving him to work his way through the county junior college, finally settling on the job at the bank when he could no longer afford to fund an enhanced education.

            Patti, sensing his sick enthusiasm, didn’t give him the satisfaction. She just slowly stood up, shook his hand, and calmly said, “I didn’t think you would. But thank you for your time, Mr. Evans. You were very kind to at least meet with me and entertain the idea.”

            She walked through the door and across the street to Kim’s luncheonette to grab a cup of coffee and mull over her options. Of course she really didn’t need a loan. She could just set up the site on one of those public servers and entertain those who happened across it. After all, that was the main idea. But something was telling her she needed to do it bigger. Connect to more people. And if those dreams she was having were any indication, she needed to reach out in a huge way.

            She had estimated that if they were true visions, she had few years to recruit, because she didn’t seem to be as young or naïve to the world in the dreams, but what bothered her most was that she didn’t seem to be as prepared as she ought to be. In fact, preparation was the one personal quality she feared most.

            How could she abide by the personal philosophy that had gotten her everything she’d ever wanted, if she was to do what everybody else in the world had done so differently? To think with their head and not just go with the flow. Wasn’t that what preparation was all about? To plan out what you think might happen instead of just trusting that when the time was right, your gut instinct would tell you what to do, if you stayed connected and just waited to see when it would pop up. She found that those who lived the opposite way would have signs for life decisions basically smack them in the face, but since they didn’t concur with the basic plan that was part of their preconceived preparation, they ignored them, passing them off as a fluke or second-guessing themselves.

            She never wanted to let that happen. Especially with something this big and drastic about to happen some time in the near future. And maybe that’s what this whole big bank loan fiasco was all about. She never felt deep down it was something she had to do. In fact, now that she had time to think about it, the bank loan idea was probably just based on her fear to prepare for future, to overcompensate for her lack of preparation in the dreams.

            Maybe that was what the new dream was about. Not simply getting more people to partake in her life philosophy, but meeting that couple earlier. The man with the microphone and his wife who would change the  lives of all those she was gathering. Yes, that was it, the teenage couple in her dream last night must have been them, which meant she had or would meet them much earlier. So that was what she was supposed to do now.

            Put the website on hold for a little bit, pack up, and head west.

7.

Roy quickly turned around and looked at the wall directly behind him. The vision there still hadn’t changed, remaining just like the one in his dreams.

            He is sitting on a big log near a fire they had made, talking to Hector. Actually more like arguing with the man. Hector doesn’t like what Roy is telling him and gets up and walks away briskly. Gina comes over to Roy with panic in her eyes, so he gets up to console her with a big hug. That’s when he notices the hundred or so people who had followed them to that dream, scurrying around like freshly exposed ants after you lift up a rock.

            Only they are all staring up at the sky, all with the same expression of fear, curiosity, and amazement rolled into one wide-eyed jaw dropper. Roy looks up to see what’s happening and notices the tear in the sky rapidly getting larger, filling with black emptiness. Gina shivers, squeezing Roy tight, and demands that he doesn’t let go.

            “Don’t let it separate us, Roy. Hold me, and don’t let go. I don’t want to lose you forever.”

            But Roy feels he has to try to stop it. So he breaks away from her grip and puts his hand up toward the sky as if he is covering the hole to prevent it from leaking any more of the oozing darkness. With his mind he tries with all his might to sew the ripping sky back up the way it was before. At first it seems to be working, as he slowly replaces black sky with blue and white fluffy cloud-laced images. But he quickly notices that with each patch he replaces, two or three new holes appear faster than he can mend them. He calls out to the crowd and demands they help him.

            They just look at him, panicked and confused, as if Roy is an orchestra conductor pulling people out of the audience to play the instruments.

            He quickly yells back to Gina, “They’re not ready. It’s happening too fast. Not enough time. Please help, before it’s too late.”

            But it is too late. Before he even can look back at Gina for one last time, he is engulfed in a murky abyss of nothingness. Nothing to see, nothing to touch, nothing to hear, nothing to smell. Void of all physical senses. He tries to communicate to other souls through a spiritual connection, but realizes the channel is empty. Not even static. Roy is left alone, with no sense of life except one singular emotion that quickly consumes his entire existence. Left with nothing. Nothing, but the sense of FEAR, to live with and by for eternity.

            He just sat there staring, eyes frozen to the still black wall. Finally, Roy mustered up enough emotional strength and raise his hand in front of his face and with arm outstretched slowly move it to the right, then to the left, and back right again, as if he were erasing chalk off a blackboard.

            With each slow swoop, the smoke projecting this murky image lifted off the wall and dissipated as fast as it filled the room less than an hour ago. Until finally it was all gone, leaving the room like it was before Poppy poured the bacon grease on the open pit, creating this Smoke and Mirror Theater of the Mind.

            “He seems to be better prepared than I originally thought,” Poppy admitted to Gina.

            “I told you he could,” she replied excitedly. “And he does it just like I told you in my dream.”

            “Does what?” Roy asked.

            “Paint with your hand,” she replied.

            “Huh?”

            “You use your hand to help you dream paint,” She replied. “Just like someone who uses his finger to read, only more symbolic and poetic, I think. How long have you been doing it?”

            “Huh?” Roy asked dumbly once again, trying to follow what she was talking about. Then it hit him that he had just made the smoke disappear like he sometimes did with the clouds. He had never done that in front of anyone before, and was not even sure that it actually worked in reality. He thought maybe he was doing something psychological, like mentally blocking the image from his mind, so he could no longer see it but others could.

            “Dunno,” Royer continued, dumbfounded. “My father actually showed me about ten years ago. I would practice every now and then and eventually was able to make clouds disappear, but I haven’t been able to paint, as you call it, just erase.”

            Then all of a sudden Roy was overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu. It was the dream he’d had the other night. There Gina was the one who showed him how to actually paint the world and not just mind erase, as his father had called it.

            “Can you teach me to actually paint like that?” he eagerly asked Gina.

            She just laughed. “That’s what your job is, silly. We were hoping you could show us.”

            “What do you mean my job?”

            Poppy stepped into the conversation and pointed toward the center wall, which a few minutes before was projecting Royer on a hill talking to a few thousand peaceful listeners, but now was simply a rock wall with an icon of an ancient man painting on a cave wall.

            “Because you are the Dream Painter. As shown on the wall and shown in the images before, you represent intellect. The centerpiece that connects all the other phases to the individual being.”

            “What?” Royer blurted out in a frustrated rage of total confusion.

            “There are five phases of being,” Poppy continued. “Physical, intellectual, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual. Nirvana is achieved when all five states are brought forward in perfect harmony. Gnab Gib, as we mentioned before, is the complete separation of all five states, leaving a being with nothing. Every eon or so, there is a transformation that leads all living beings to one side or the other. This room, as Gina said, is a presage to the events that will happen during this transformation.”

            “Will happen, or can happen?” Roy asked nervously.

            “Good question, Roy. I always thought my visions were things that did happen, only in the future. But four of the five visions here have changed. So if they did happen already, when I first viewed them and we first dreamed of them, then somehow they have happened again, only differently.”

            “OK, you lost me again,” Roy said.

            “Me too,” Gina added.

            “I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the five states. As discussed, whether you realize it or not Roy, you are the being, volunteered or picked, to represent life as the Intellectual state.” Poppy looked at Royer for acknowledgment. Roy nodded to confirm he understood what Poppy was saying, not to volunteer for said duty. Poppy continued, “Your job is to teach all how to use your mental abilities to blend the other states together. Now for the most part, people have a good understanding that emotion, intuition, and spiritual presence are already connected or blended somehow with intellect. But the two states that remain the furthest apart are the mental state and physical state. So it is my assumption that you chose to teach the world how to blend all five states by blending the two that do not blend.”

            “By dream painting,” Royer confirmed.

            “Exactly.”

            “Then, I guess these people in my visions are the people who represent the four other states,” Royer added.

            “Right again.”

            “Well, I guess it’s obvious that John represents the spirituality and Patti represents intuition, from the new visions we saw today, but what about Julia and Hector? A singer and a…I don’t even know what Hector does for a living.”

            “Julia, from what I can tell, will teach the world how powerful emotions are to our existence, through the gift of her voice. Hector, who is a quantum physicist, by the way, is the one who is confusing me. He represents the body and physical world. But for some reason, he was the one who did not listen to you on the beach. And he is the one whose vision has not changed.”

            “Meaning that if I can’t even convince my partner that physical and mental states can coexist on the same wave, how can we convince the world? It’s like Yin without Yang.”

            “You are a very perceptive young man,” Poppy replied.

            “Thank you, but I still don’t fully grasp what you meant by these dreams having happened already. Aren’t they premonitions of what might happen?”

            “I have always felt that they are memories of events that will happen. Meaning that these events have happened, only we have not caught up with them yet, since we are experiencing our life on a physical plane, which goes through time periods. Make any sense?”

            “A little. I guess you are saying that I have already lived my full life, I just haven’t caught up to the older me yet, because the younger me is still in a different time zone.”

            “But if the events have already happened, then how come they are different than when we saw them the first time?” Gina asked.

            “I have a theory, but I am not quite sure at this point,” Poppy answered. “I think that somehow we are living this over again, and that is why the visions are so strong. They are not only future memories, but also past memories. Since I am not in these visions, I need to know if they are the only ones that you two are having or if you have been have other similar visions or dreams.”

            Gina and Roy just looked at each other.