Dreamers
But lately they’d been getting worse, more vivid, more powerful. This dream was perhaps the worst he’d ever had. He’d been running through a city he’d never seen, heading for some unknown destination that drew him inexplicably onward. He’d felt a desperation, a visceral need to find out what it was that pulled him, barely able to run fast enough to satisfy the urge. He’d been about to round a corner, convinced that we would immediately come into view of the source of his desperation when he had been grabbed and thrown to the ground. In that moment he was jerked awake, reaching towards his destination…
And Rhianna…
Another facet of his nocturnal adventures was his constant companion, Rhianna. As long as he could remember she’d been in every one of his dreams. She was his closest friend, and she wasn’t even real. She was always there, every night. She was Spanish, and slightly older than him. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was in her dreams, because they’d be in places he didn’t recognize with people he didn’t know, but she did. His parents had been astonished when he could speak fluent Castilian Spanish as a young child, and when he tried to explain that he learned it from Rhianna and those dreams where he was in Spain with Spanish-speaking people, their jaws dropped farther. They’d taken him to psychiatrists and he had realized that he was different and that no one really believed him. They couldn’t deny the evidences, but the still didn’t believe him. He’d eventually stopped talking about his dreams with other people.
But now he and Rhianna were in a city neither of them knew, and they’d been there for months, every night. Before now, he’d never had any recurring themes to his dreams outside of Rhianna’s presence. Now, they’d been exploring this city and its streets, following clues that he didn’t understand while awake, searching for something they couldn’t name. Every night, they’d been making progress, getting closer to whatever it was around that corner. She’d been a half-step behind him, hand in his when he’d been hurled to the ground and awakened.
He found himself in his usual dichotomy of feelings, hoping she was ok while chiding himself for caring so much about someone who didn’t exist outside of his REM cycles. Glancing at his clock, he noted that it was nearly time to get up. He stretched, yawned, and rolled out of bed. After getting a drink and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he grabbed a pen and his dream journal and began to record the dream. He’d been doing this for years, ever since his last psychiatrist had suggested it as a way to make sense of his dreams, search for patterns and meanings and messages. While he’d stopped seeing the shrink, he’d found the dream journal to be fantastically therapeutic , especially through the last few months.
He finished up the journal entry and began to sketch a few of the things he’d seen. He was a decent artist and his journal was full of sketches of places and people. Most of the drawings were of Rhianna, though, as she was the one constant he had. He drew her now as he had last seen her: terrified for him, looking over his shoulder at whoever or whatever had grabbed him. Her dark eyes were wide, her long black hair tousled from running pell-mell through the streets of the foreign city, her mouth open in the start of a scream. She was beautiful, in a way that he had never seen in anyone else, and he felt a familiar twinge of pain and regret as he gazed on the face he only saw while unconscious.
He’d dated other girls, had had some steady relationships, but that twinge he felt stopped him from ever fully opening up to any of them. He hadn’t spoken of Rhianna to anyone since he was about 10, so he’d never been able to give a good explanation for ending those relationships. He was 21 years old and his parents were still trying to encourage him to date and find someone, telling him that there were plenty of great girls out there that would be good for him if he’d just give them a chance. He didn’t know how to give anyone that chance. He tried, he really did, but every night when he saw Rhianna it would call to his mind how no one ever measured up, and he would give up.
He shook his head at those thoughts and got up to start his day. He was used to this, resigned to his lot in life. Even so, nagging away at him was the worrisome question, why? Why was he in that city? Why had he started to dream of it every night? And why was he drawn to that location, even now, while awake?
A few days and several returns to the unfamiliar city later, he found himself with a close friend who had just returned from a two-year trip to Italy. They spent some time catching up, swapping stories of their separate lives during the time they’d been apart. Then his friend pulled out a photo album. Aaron listened as his friend described the places he’d been and the people he’d met, wondering at the experience. As he gazed on the photos of ancient ruins and verdant countrysides, he saw an image that nearly stopped his heart mid-beat. Barely able to breathe, he pointed, finger shaking, at the print.
“Where is that?” He asked.
“It’s a city called Cagliari, on the island of Sardegna. Why? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” his friend laughed.
“I’ve seen in before,” Aaron replied absently, “in a dream…”
“Yeah? That’s pretty crazy. Maybe you saw it in a movie r something first and then it showed up in your dream?”
“Could be,” Aaron replied. He didn’t really believe it, though. This was the city he’d been seeing eery night for months. This was the source of the pull. Now that he’d seen it, now that he knew that it actually existed, he had to go there.
Remembering something, he turned to his friend. “You said you were going back soon, right?”
“Yeah,” his friend replied, “I’m going back in a coupla weeks with my folks.”
“Will you be going to this place, what’d you say, Cagliari?”
“Yeah, we’re planning on it, why?”
“I’m coming with you.” Aaron’s tone was firm and decided, and took his friend by surprise.
“What? I mean, yeah, sure you can come, but are you sure you want to?”
“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything. I have to see this city.”
He could tell his friend wasn’t quite sure about this sudden interest, so he continued, “I can’t really explain, I just really want to go.”
It took his parents by surprise when he asked if he could go on a month trip to Italy, but he had the money and he had the time, and in the end he wasn’t asking their permission. They were equally intrigued and confused by his spontaneous desire to travel, but he was adamant about it and they finally wished him well.
The next few weeks dragged on as he waited to go, to find out what lay around that corner in Cagliari. He packed and repacked his bags, read his dream journal entries over and over, turning into a nervous wreck. Finally the day came to leave, and while he knew that he would have to wait a few days more before they got to Sardegna, since they were going to visit some locations in mainland Italy first, his excitement could barely be contained.
He passed those days in a blur, barely noticing what was around them. They visited Rome, Venice, and Sicily, but he wasn’t in the frame of mind necessary to enjoy or even notice the wonders of his surroundings. The pull overwhelmed him, drew his gaze ever to the west.
Finally the day came. Together with the family of his friend, he boarded the boat that would take them to the island of Sardegna. When he first set foot in Cagliari, he was flooded by feelings of déjà vu. This was exactly what he’d been seeing in his dreams for all these months. He began to run, following the path that he knew would lead him to that corner he’d never been able to round. Something was wrong, though, nagging in the back of his mind as he ran. He realized that he was holding his hand out and slightly behind him like he had every night in his dreams, but this time there was no hand clasped in his. Feeling foolish he dropped his hand and continued running on.
He finally found himself in the courtyard where he’d always ended up, where’d he’d been grabbed and thrown every night since that first night he’d found the corner. There, ahead of him was the formation of bricks that marked the turn from the courtyard into what looked to be a small alley. He stopped, overwhelmed by the full significance of what was happening to him.
Taking a deep breath, he started forward, gaze focused on the corner that had haunted his nights. His footing faltered as he felt a twinge of fear from some unknown source. He took another deep breath, squared his shoulders and continued forward.
In retrospect, the hand on his shoulder shouldn’t have come as such a shock, but as he was grabbed he yelped and whirled around, terrified by the though that his dream was coming true.
When he turned around, he found himself staring at the face he knew better than his own. This time, his heart did stop as her mouth opened to form his name.
“Aaron?”
It had never occurred to him that if the city from his dreams existed that the girl from those same dreams could be equally real.
“Rhianna…”
