Megan walked back around to the side of the bed and pulled the blankets securely over Paula’s body. In return, Paula squeezed her aunt’s hand in reassurance, smiling to let her know that everything will be alright. “Don’t let it worry you. For the first time, I feel as if I am beginning to understand. I’m thinking about my problems differently than I have before.”
“Understand?” Megan asked inquisitively, failing to comprehend what her niece was trying to tell her. “Understand what?”
Paula tried hard to think about what Doctor Sanchez might say in response to her aunt’s query, though with Megan’s dislike of the man, speaking like him might not be the best idea. “That this could be a gift, not the curse that I’ve always thought it was. I walked out of that office and for once I could see the bigger picture.”
“I don’t know if I believe Doctor Sanchez is the right guy to help you or not. After all I’ve seen you go through with this, I’m going to have a tough time believing this is anything but a curse. I’m so glad that you’re learning to deal with it, but I’m only asking that you please be careful.”
Paula was already ahead of her aunt, nodding her head in agreement. This moment felt to Paula as if a wall had come tumbling down between them. Was her aunt actually giving her constructive advice? “Thanks for the advice, Aunt,” Paula offered her most sincere gratitude.
• • •
That night, Paula slept seemingly soundly. She did not toss and turn, but she did dream. She dreamt of a taxi that would have hit a bicyclist, but she made the bike levitate over the top of the taxi’s path, missing it as it screeched around a corner. The bicycle was placed gently down on the ground behind the taxi. The cheering throng of onlookers thought it was nothing short of a miracle.
The next dream Paula had was the same dream she had previously about the airplane crashing. She found she may perhaps slow the scene down in her dream, and even rewind and replay it as if she were watching a videotape on a VCR. She could walk down the aisle and see that it was indeed her that was sitting in the seat on the plane. Much to her astonishment, it was Jose who was sitting next to her. The two of them were holding hands, and they were praying silently amidst the cacophony erupting around them. But no matter how hard she had tried, she could not affect the outcome of this particular dream. They both seemed to be happy and completely at peace with one another and the situation around them. It always ended the same way, with the cabin erupting into flame and the scene faded into darkness. There was no pain felt or no point of view from innocent bystanders. If this was to be her fate, she had apparently accepted it at the point that it happened, and there would be no point in denying it on the day that it came.
As the dream ended and faded to black, Paula heard a voice in her mind. It was low-pitched, whispery, cold, and guttural, as it spoke directly to her. “Paula,” the voice hissed in hateful intensity, the last syllable dragged out. “Paula Lindsay.”
Paula felt paralyzed with fright and fear as if the voice had made her somehow unable to move. She felt icy claws upon her skin as the voice spoke again. “I am coming for you,” it said, and then she remembered nothing about it.
6.
Osprey Flight and Fleeting Victory
Paula spent the day at the office with a lot of anxiety and much on her mind. She knew that she would be seeing Doctor Sanchez after work, and she had much to ask him about. She needed answers, and she needed them soon.
When at last she walked out of Lindsay Company headquarters, Megan was already outside in the car. Paula was starting to enjoy the little chaperoning efforts of her aunt. They needed all the bonding time they could get, being the only family they each had left.
The two of them talked about their day; they’ve both had an uncomfortable day. When they arrived, Paula signed in for her appointment. When she was at the desk, she overheard Michelle on the phone talking about an upcoming meeting her boss would be having. She told the person on the other end that she couldn’t wait for him to get back to the office so she could discuss this new set of circumstances with him.
When the time came for her to be seen, Paula wasted no time at all getting to Doctor Sanchez’s office. He greeted her and took her right back to the room with the daybed in it, where Paula got herself comfortable, ready to discuss the events of the day with him. Paula began to recall her morning. She told him about her dreams and how she was still helpless in a lot of them.
A moment of silence passed between the two of them, Doctor Sanchez was lost deep inside his thoughts on the issue. Paula sat uncomfortably on the daybed, wondering what Doctor Sanchez’s thoughts on the matter would be. More than that though, she was thinking about her own consequences to these events.
Before she had learned some basic dream control techniques, her life had been completely unmanageable to the point where she couldn’t cope with her dreams or her reality. The last few days had brought her changes that she could have only hoped and dreamed for, and she didn’t want to let go of those things. But now an entirely new aspect to her problems had popped up and had created an entirely new set of circumstances. On the surface, this new reality seemed awesomely cool to her. Upon deeper examination, much of which she had spent the day focusing on, it wasn’t as much of a blessing as it had turned out to be.
The persistent thought rang out loudly in her mind that while she had saved that child from a killer, who would have caused unspeakable pain in many lives, a life was still taken. She wasn’t as settled with it as she anticipated she might have been. In her previous nightmares, the deaths of the victims were not of her own doing. She always been powerless to stop things from happening. This was a completely different animal to her. This was something to be cognizant of. Now that her own actions in her dreams would change the outcome, it weighed heavily on her in reality. An overwhelming sense of remorse had been on her mind all day.
This was not a sentiment she was ready to share with Doctor Sanchez, as she didn’t know how much personal information to give him on matters such as these. She was going to have to put it to the test, to see if she could create an outcome where everybody involved would live to tell the tale. If she couldn’t, she would know for sure that it was the curse that she had always suspected it was.
Paula’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Doctor Sanchez, who broke the silence with a new line of questioning. “Do you remember when I told you that everybody has the ability to tap into their dreams?” Doctor Sanchez asked, prompting her to remember what he had taught her.
“Yes,” Paula replied, quietly and reverently. “I remember.”
“Excellent, Miss Lindsay,” Doctor Sanchez continued, looking through his notes as he was speaking. “And you remember that your brain automatically decodes signs for you?”
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that,” Paula replied, nodding her head to the affirmative.
“This has taught us that no matter what you dream, no matter how you change it, your dreams still become the future,” Doctor Sanchez conceded, astonished by the reality of the words he had just spoken.
“Does that mean that I can control the future then?” Paula asked, her breath baited with anticipation for the answer to come.
“No, but it appears that it affects you physically,” Doctor Sanchez admitted, hopeful of experimenting further with this newfound revelation. “Would you like to continue?”
Another brief silence momentarily shot up a wall between them. Paula desperately wanted to further explore something she had only touched the surface of, but not at the cost of her physical wellbeing. She thought that she probably should break that barrier as it was causing her some apprehension in working toward the progression of her wellness.
“Yes,” Paula said warily. “But I need to discuss something first.”
“What is it, Miss Lindsay?” asked Doctor Sanchez, his curiosity piqued.
“I’ve been thinking about this all m
orning. When I used to have my nightmares, and people died, all I wanted to do was to save their lives. Now I’ve discovered that power, and I did save a life. But it was at the cost of another. Before today, I didn’t feel like I’d ever taken a life. I’ve seen many people die, but it was beyond my control. The child killer died as a result of my actions. I realize that when I dreamed the death of the child killer, I thought I was only changing my dream, but it is affecting me in reality.”
Doctor Sanchez scribbled down notes as she spoke, nodding his head slightly, and going back and forth between eye contact, and the legal pad on the clipboard on his lap. “You’re telling me that you’re feeling some guilt over the death of the child killer in your dream?”
“Yes, sir,” Paula replied quietly, her head looking down at the floor.
“I honestly don’t think either of us could have predicted this would be the case,” Doctor Sanchez stated, trying to console his patient’s feelings of guilt. “This is a wholly unprecedented standard in the field of dream therapy. My hypothesis concluded that if you changed your dream, you wouldn’t have the same dream as the subsequent events, and you would be free of your nightmares. I never expected that changing your dreams would affect you physically.”
“I didn’t either,” Paula confessed, rolling the possibilities around in her mind. “I mean, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“Apparently, it isn’t.”
Doctor Sanchez marveled at their content and maturity of their discussion. Here was a patient who had extreme nightmares with some psychosis attached to them. While it was a case that was one in ten million, recent events had even elevated it to a case of one in seven billion. It was a possibility none the less. He explained the probabilities to his patient, adding that she was that one in seven billion. Paula seemed unimpressed by this or simply didn’t understand the numbers that were in her favor. Either way, she wanted to state her position on the subject.
“I want to see where we can go with this, but I need to be more careful,” she said confidently. “I can’t and won’t be the cause of anybody’s death; real or otherwise.”
“That is ethically the precise way to proceed, Miss Lindsay. Now, are you ready to continue your journey? To open your eyes and see things that you’ve never seen before?”
Doctor Sanchez’s words were intoxicating, drawing her in and building anticipation for the next lesson. She wondered, only for a second, if this was how addiction had felt for her aunt. “Yes, show me more!”
The procedure for getting Paula back into hypnosis was much smoother than the previous time, mostly because her anxieties regarding the process weren’t as intense as they had been before. In fact, it didn’t take much effort at all on the part of Doctor Sanchez to get her into that state, and soon she was under the power of his suggestion.
When Paula awoke in her dream, she found herself in a trashy and dirty alley downtown in Hell’s Kitchen. The tightly enclosed space smelled of refuse and rotted leftovers having been thrown into the dumpsters that lined the backstreet. Sleeping under the protection of cardboard boxes and newspapers, were some of the local transients trying to find shelter from the incessant drizzle. Empty bottles of cheap wine littered in a random fashion around them, with only the rats as a witness to the squalor they lived in.
Ascending the backs of the buildings were several wrought iron fire escapes, many of them set into old brickwork that had fallen into dilapidation and looked as if they could not support the weight of more than a person or two at a time. Paula shuddered to think what would happen if there had been a fire in one of those buildings and many people needed to get out of the structure urgently. The overcast, late afternoon light dimly lit the alley, and the wet pavement glistened in what little light there was.
Paula didn’t particularly care for Hell’s Kitchen as it had a reputation for violence, theft, and drugs. She knew only a little about the place. She had heard the drug business in Hell’s Kitchen was very big – heroin, opium and marijuana. She suspected that at one point her aunt knew much more about those operations than a lot of people did.
Paula wasn’t entirely sure why her subconscious had placed her here, but whatever the reason was, she was sure that she would need Doctor Sanchez’s guidance through this encounter. She took a moment to survey her surroundings, opening herself up to the environment around her and allowing it to become familiar. For being such a dingy location, she felt as if there was peacefulness to it, save the sound of homeless people having a brash conversation about adult subjects that she didn’t want to hear about.
When Paula felt as if she had seen all there was to see, she knew that it was time to bring in the doctor.
“Doctor Sanchez, you’re invited in,” Paula called out.
The moment she had spoken the words, the image of Doctor Sanchez appeared right next to her. He looked around; though he could not actually see the environment he was in. He could only ascertain what was going on through her description of the environment, which she took a moment to fill him in on.
“It is very important that you explain the details of your surroundings to me, as I cannot actually see what you are seeing Miss Lindsay,” Doctor Sanchez said somberly. “I appear in your dream so that your mind actually understands that I am communicating with you, even though I am speaking to you in the natural world.”
Paula nodded her head in acknowledgment.
“To control your surroundings, you must completely get to know it,” Doctor Sanchez tutored her, attempting to make the process feel more natural. “You must become intimate with your environment, to feel that its existence is more than just a part of a system. You must feel as if you’re an artist, painting every element in your world to your liking. Reach out and feel every stick and stone around you, and if you listen closely, you will hear the thoughts of the people there. If you empathize, you will feel and understand each emotion, which is why you feel the pain or joy these people experience. If you open your senses, they will overwhelm you and you can smell, taste, hear, touch and as you have already learned, see what others in your dream can sense. You must feel as if you are a god, and you are recreating this world the way you want it to be.”
“How do I do that?” Paula looked at Doctor Sanchez, crinkling her nose. “I’m not exactly sure how I did it last time.”
“Do not think about your environment,” Doctor Sanchez stated, the confidence of leadership ringing in his voice. “Feel your environment and you will soon master it.”
A light visibly came on inside Paula’s mind as she seemed to grasp the concept of what Doctor Sanchez was saying. She shook her head slowly, continuing to listen to what he had to say on the subject.
“The reason your nightmares have all been so intense is because you’re emotionally connected to them,” Doctor Sanchez continued, speaking slowly and deliberately trying to ensure that he would not be misunderstood, “You feel the pain that the people in your dreams feel, you feel all of their emotions, their joy, their hate, their anxiety, and most of all their physical pain. This is what you will use to fuel your own power.”
“So, it works more on an emotional level than an intellectual one? Feel it, don’t think it?”
“Yes, Exactly!” Doctor Sanchez replied, overjoyed at the thought that she might have just connected with her ability. “But you must still be diligent about what you are doing in the dream world, especially now that you know that your actions have consequences in the real world as well.”
The thought was sobering to Paula. She wasn’t certain that she wanted that kind of power, and knew that if she were pushed, she could very well alter the fabric of reality. But she decided to shelve the thought to save for their inevitable discussion later.
She returned her attention to Doctor Sanchez and listened to what he had to say next. “Do you see that fire escape up there?” Doctor Sanchez asked, gesturing up to the back of the building, hi
gh above the street.
Paula tilted her head back and looked up at it, inspecting the height of the building above her. “Yes, of course.”
“Feel and imagine yourself up on that fire escape,” Doctor Sanchez instructed, coming across as some sort of real-world Yoda. “Feel that you are looking down on this very spot from that point of view.”
Paula had begun to wonder what she had gotten herself into. Was she seeing a therapist, or was she attending some sort of mysticism seminar? The only way she would find the answers was to follow Doctor Sanchez’s guidance, wherever it might lead her. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and reached deep inside of herself, hoping to understand what it was that Doctor Sanchez was trying to teach her. She worked to tap into the emotions that he had told her about and tried to think what it would feel like to be up on that fire escape, looking down at where he was standing. She tried to imagine the way the light angled down into the alley, the way the shadows married it and settled in its patterns. She tried to feel every single puddle in the alley, every piece of trash, every dumpster, every door, every nook and every cranny.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself looking down at the very sight that she had imagined.
“I did it!” Paula squealed with excitement, having accomplished something new. “Did I fly up here?”
“No, you didn’t fly,” Doctor Sanchez explained, choosing his words very carefully. “It was more like you teleported yourself up there. You were down here; you disappeared, and then reappeared up there.”
“Well, do you think I could fly?” Paula asked, the excitement in her voice reaching fever pitch, as she looked up to the clouds and off to the horizon. “I’ve always wanted to fly. Sometimes I sit awake at night and wish that I had wings to fly myself far away from everything going on in the world.”
“You seem emotionally attached enough to the notion,” Doctor Sanchez coached, chuckling to himself. “If this is what your heart truly desires, why not give it a try?”
The Family Secret Page 7
