Spider Lake (6 page)

“So doctor Levine thinks that if you write down your dream you will remember something that you have been missing?”

“Yes, that’s what he thinks.”

Ben was tired of talking. He wanted badly to take a break, but he knew Jill was not nearly finished with the conversation.

“What does he think you are missing?”

“How should he know Jill? I am the one who is doing the dreaming.”

“I know, but did he say anything about what you do remember?”

“No.”

“He didn’t ask you about the horseback riders or the bus accident?”

“Jill, I only had a half hour or so after coming-to in the office after the fall.”

“You were unconscious!?”

He had avoided mentioning when he was out cold on the floor, and then coming to in the office.

“Did they send you to a doctor to get looked at? Did you get an M.R.I.? You didn’t say you were knocked unconscious—”

“Jill, it was the doctor’s opinion that I was okay. He thought about sending me down the hall, but I answered the questions right, and he---”

“You should go to the hospital and get an M.R.I.”

Ben had heard enough. He was not going anywhere much less a hospital. He was done talking about the doctor and the dream and the fall and he decided that he better stop the MRI ball from rolling any further. “Jill the doctor thinks I am okay, just tired and over stressed. I don’t need to go the hospital and get an MRI so can we please just drop the whole subject for now? Tomorrow morning or tonight if and when I have the dream, I will write it down. Maybe I will remember something.”

The days and nights passed until the Wednesday of Ben’s appointment. Each time he was awakened by the dream, he dutifully wrote down all he could remember. He knew, however that what he was writing produced no new revelations. He was continuing to have the dream, which meant Ben’s unconscious mind had not made any “connection” with his conscious one. Ben felt the same incomplete feeling each day as he finished writing. He was feeling discouraged and he hoped that the doctor would have some new ideas.

“Good morning Ben. How is your head?”

Ben thought about the question. He knew the doctor was enquiring about the bump and the cut from the fall, but coming from a shrink it sounded kind of funny. After all, he knew he was here for his head in the first place. “I hope you are talking about my bruised skull and not my brain.”

“Yes, Ben I was. So, did your writing reveal anything new to you?”

“I did what you asked, and wrote down all I could remember, but nothing is really new.”

“May I see what you wrote down?”

Ben handed the doctor his note pad. The doctor rifled through Ben’s notes and then wrote in his own pad, and then he said, “Let’s talk about the different elements of the dream that you do remember, and see if they mean anything to you. Try to think about what you feel about each element as we go through them in chronological order. Let’s begin with the tourist town. Why do you think the town you are in is a tourist town?”

“Well, I guess because we are waiting for a tour bus, and the town is very picturesque with all the beautiful mansions and the rolling hills.”

“Can you tell me anything about the people who are waiting with you to catch the tour bus?”

“They look like ordinary, everyday people.”

“Can you remember anything more? For instance, are they well dressed? Do they seem educated? Are they healthy, that is to say, do they look fit? If you were to put them into a social status, which would you choose?”

Ben could see where the doctor was going with his questioning.

“Well, doctor, I would say that they look more like the kind of folks that do their shopping at Walmart rather than Saks Fifth Avenue.”

“Ben, I ask this question because of the context of the location of your dream. Seemingly, you are standing in line with ordinary, everyday people waiting for a tour bus to show you more of a town full of mansions in a beautiful setting. Do you think that you may be having thoughts about your lot in life? That maybe the mansions signify some sort of covetousness or possibly envy of wealth?”

Ben thought about the question. He understood the doctor’s point. He had often thought that the mansions and the horseback riders signified wealth. He was never outwardly jealous of the rich, and he seen himself as a man with modest needs, but deep down inside he always wondered what it would be like to not worry about money.

“Yes Doctor Levine, I am pretty sure that this is all about money. As you know I have very little of it these days.”

“Okay Ben, we can assume that your financial difficulties are the impetus which is driving your unconscious to the recurring dream. Now let’s examine the bus crash and the cocktail party and see how you feel about them.”

As Ben recalled this segment of his dream it seemed to him that the bus crash into the old woman’s living room, and the walk next door was just random, a sort of segue from one part of his dream to another. Maybe the old woman sipping her tea might have suggested refinement, or a waspish stereotype of what the rich may be doing in their mansions behind closed doors. The cocktail party also seemed random to him. It was the hug with the organ-grinder which seemed important not only to Ben, but also to Doctor Levine.

“Ben, tell me about the organ-grinder.”

pon his return to the resort that morning Ben expected to see old man McCann waiting for him there. He was surprised to find out that there was nothing at all out of the ordinary.
 
He had scratches and bruises all over from the run through the forest. He had wet himself with the scare of the dog. He had a bad chill, and he didn’t think he had the strength to do his morning chores. He wondered how he could explain his bruised appearance to his Mom.

As he was walking up the hill from the bank to the house his mother was coming towards him in the clearing. He thought, “She must have seen me through the screen porch windows.” Maybe old man McCann had called after all, and that he was in big trouble, but the look on his mother’s face did not reveal anger, but rather shock.

“Ben! Are you okay? Oh my God, you are white as a ghost!”

As she reached him, Ben felt his legs begin to give way, and his surroundings begin to spin. “I’m sorry Mom.” was all he could say, and then he lost conciousness.

When he finally opened his eyes, he looked around and realized he was not in his own room. On his left, his mother looked as if she was sleeping with her head in her folded arms at the edge of the bed he was laying in. The room was dimly lit, and Ben noticed from looking out the window that it was night. He had a clear tube stuck in his arm. His throat was dry and sore and he felt very weak. There were flowers and cards and —presents— on the bedside table and on the window sill. He reached over and touched his Mom’s arm.

“Mom?” he croaked.

His mother lifted her head at the sound of his voice. She looked different. Her eyes were red and swollen. She had been crying.

“Oh my God Ben! You are awake!”

She stood up quickly. She walked around almost comically in a couple of small semi-circles. Ben noticed tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. She wiped her red eyes with the backs of her hands. She looked confused, one minute looking like she would run out of the room, and the next minute she was back in the bed-side chair and hugging him.

“Oh Benny, I was so scared!” she cried as she hugged him tightly.

A minute later she was back on her feet again. She almost ran out of the room through the open door, and she called out very loudly this time: “Nurse, my son is awake!”

Ben learned later that after he had passed out in the clearing. His mother had called an ambulance, and he had been asleep in the hospital for three and a half days. He had caught pneumonia and the doctors feared he might die. Matt had gotten sick as well, and the story he had told his parents had involved a black bear, rather than the Hell-hound, so the incident at the mansion had never been revealed.

Ben’s own parents had not questioned him at all about Matt’s story. It was not extraordinary to them that the boys would run into a black bear in the early morning hours in the north woods. His mother doted on Ben, hugging him and telling him how much she loved him and lavishing him with gifts each new day that he spent at the hospital, which spanned the length of nine days. When Ben finally returned home, he was under strict orders to rest for another week. The time passed by for him very slowly.

When things were finally getting back to normal and Matt was allowed to come by, the boys avoided talking about their misadventure. They both wanted to put the incident far behind them. Later, when they rowed for the first time on the lake, they made a conscious effort to avoid the west side where the mansion property was located. They had no wish to even catch a glimpse of the place, and they avoided it at all costs. The discomfort they felt on the water was palpable, and as the days and weeks went by, they spent more and more time on their bikes than on the water.

One day, the boys decided they would hunt for pop bottles that they could find along the gravel roads which led to Nerroth’s store. They would trade them in for the refund money. The empties were worth two cents apiece, and a day’s work of finding them could sometimes amount to as much as two dollars. They walked their bikes, each one taking turns pulling a wagon load full of noisy bottles tethered to a bike by a rope.

“What is that Matt?”

“What?”

“Down the road, on the other side of the ditch.”

Matt looked way down the road at the object. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a deer or a small black bear that’s been hit.”

The boys kept moving steadily in the direction of the dark shape, each on his own side of the road, occasionally picking up bottles as they went. As they drew closer to the dark object, it looked to them like a man laying down. They also had seen something small move from the woods to the man, and then back into the woods.

“Matt, did you see that?”

“Yeah. What the heck was it?”

“I can’t tell. It was too fast and too far away, but it looked like—”

“Is that a —?”

“It’s a man lying there Matt. I wonder why a man would be laying down in the middle of nowhere? What was that other thing we saw, a raccoon?”

The boy’s pace slowed as it became clear to them that it was indeed a man lying ahead of them on the roadside. Ben crossed to the side where Matt was walking, opposite the stranger. They cautiously moved forward.

“Ben?”

“What?”

“Do you think he is okay, I mean do you think he might be dead?”

“I was thinking the same thing myself.”

They stopped their bikes.

“Should we get a closer look at him Matt?”

“I don’t want to. I think we should turn around.”

“What if he’s sick or something and he needs help?”

“You can go if you want to, but I am staying right here where I am.”

“Well, I will, but if he grabs me you ride like hell and get some help.”

The man rolled from his side and lifted himself to a half-sitting position on his elbows.

“What on earth are you boys carrying on about? A free man has a right to take a rest now and then doesn’t he? It’s one thing tryin to sleep with all those bottles rattling, but being called a dead man now, that’s another. Come to think of it, I do sleep like I was de-ceesed now and then.” He let out a laugh.

“Sorry mister, we didn’t see you move once from a quarter mile down the road.” Matt said.

The old man sat upright and it looked to the boys that he was literally swimming in his dusty clothes. He had long white hair which fell almost to his shoulders from under a wrinkled fedora hat. His face was covered with a shortly cropped white beard. The lines on his face had the look of a road map, and when he smiled the boys noticed he was missing some of his teeth. He wore a grayish-green pair of chinos with a black tee and a gray sport coat. His shoes revealed his socks in some places, and on one foot, the socks revealed one ancient big toe. It was clear to the boys that they were talking to a real honest to goodness hobo. They couldn’t believe their good fortune and then Ben said, “You better be careful where you sleep mister, we saw an animal eyeing you up close a couple of minutes ago. My mom says lots of animals in the north woods can give you rabies and then you need to get thirteen shots in your stomach if they can’t find the animal and cut its head off.”

“Is that so young man? And what kind of critter did you see?”

“We couldn’t tell, it was too fast and we were too far away.”

The old man had a wry smile on his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rather large harmonica. “Well, sonny, tell me more about this awful woodland creature. Was it biggish or smallish?” He licked his lips, seemingly preparing himself to play the harp.

“It was small, about the size of a raccoon or maybe a porcupine.”

“What’s your name young man?”

“Ben.”

“And who might I ask is this other toe-headed character?”

“My name’s Matt.”