Dream Log #928

Blacksmith, circa 1890, Harbor Springs

When I was a kid I feel off of the roof of the building pictured above and landed on my forehead. My father bought it to open a business with it, as it was just a few blocks away from our house, and had been grandfathered in by the city as a business structure, despite it being within a houses-only faction of the city. "Grandfathered" means that it had been a business before the no-businesses ordinance was passed, and as long as it remained a business, it was permitted by law to exist. The structure is almost identical now to what you see in the photograph, only there is a door where the window you see up front is, and the old sliding door has been replaced with a standard garage door. When we bought it back in 1986 it had been nearly abandoned for some time, barely maintaining business status with it’s tinkering owner (who left behind a number of curious tools and items), and every part of it seemed dark, wet, rotten, and overgrown. A stump from a tree that had been cut down to build the original structure had begun growing up through the floor, and the entire building was surrounded by thick shrubbery. My father commissioned me one day to crawl under the thing with a pair of pliers and close a water valve, as I was the only one small enough to fit, and the dark spider infested crawl space haunts me to this day…standing near the building, looking at the small black rectangle I’m about to crawl into, is where my dream starts..

I’m standing near the Shop with my dad and my brother. It’s getting close to dusk; the skies gray and clouded. It smells like history, wetness, and time travel, and the clothing on my body is unfamiliar. Between two trees near the side of the building is the missing panel I remember to be the entrance to the crawl space. I have a flashlight in my hand, and feel a sense of dread at the prospect of going back in there, but this time my brother is coming with me, and encourages me along. I crawl in first, and he follows. Once inside it becomes nothing like it actually is. The light is unusually bright, thanks to a dirty hanging overhead lamp with loose draping wires. As I crawl on my stomach with my brother I realize that the crawl space starts to descend downwards, like a cave, at an ever steepening pace. I crawl over old doors, boards, and other debris, and although it’s very dusty and dirty, it isn’t damp. My brother disappears while I’m not looking, and the incline steepens to the point of causing me to slide, face first, into the belly of the chamber…

After tumbling for a moment I open my eyes and stand up, finding myself now on the side of the road, at night, in a very small town that I have never been to. I’m standing on the right side of what looks like a main road. On my side of the road there is nothing but darkness and open space, but on the other side there are a few structures, one of which is a bar. All of this is on the side of a large hill, and is illuminated by several street lights. It has the feel of another childhood memory, but as the present also has that same dirty and depressed feel, and as I’m now with a few contemporary friends and am about to enter the bar, I can only assume it’s present times. Everything has that explicit sense of unnoticed detail; like if I were to break task and focus on things, there would be much to discover, but I don’t, and instead find that my ex-room mate, who owes me money, is in the far corner of the bar playing pool, and I suddenly know why I am there. I approach him where he is standing, with a rather menacing crowd of strangers, and he looks frightened to see me as he usually does when I stalk him out for cash. I tell him that a large check was delivered to the house, and that I’d like him to sign it over to me since he owes it to me….but much to my surprise, he refuses, and demands the check, saying that if I want a cut of it, it has to be divvied up between fourteen other people as well. Sensing an impending attack, I whirl around, and make a break for the door, with a mob of men nipping at my heels. I make it outside and trip in the road, falling on my face.

I wake up.