sleep. You have to come down and see what we recorded. You have to get here!” The usually imperturbable professor so rushed his Indian bass-baritone that Bryan couldn’t make out many of the words. And he had no time then to replay it. His editors were determined to print a special edition by noon, and it was proving damn near impossible to reach anyone by landline.
The phenomenon started in the Americas, and news of it traveled the world with the dawn. It wasn’t until a few days later that sufficient information pooled to show the Blessings truly began everywhere on the planet at once.
In San Francisco at 2 AM, a security guard woke from a forbidden nap and raised his red, glistening hands to the light above his desk. His befuddled mind gradually registered that his entire uniform had soaked dark.
In Brasília at 8 AM, a boy who had spent the night sleeping beneath cardboard under a bridge scrambled out of his refuge, holding out his blood-covered arms and crying “Murdu! Murdu!”
In Kabul at 2:30 PM, a young mother singing a lullaby over her baby’s crib stopped with a shriek of horror, as red beads welled from every pore of her sleeping daughter’s skin.
Five days later, in Sukhraj Patel’s office, Bryan watched a video on the professor’s paper-flat computer monitor. The footage was of himself, lying face up in a laboratory bed, electrodes pasted to his shaved scalp. He watched himself drift off to sleep. Watched the blood well up. Watched as he endured what everyone endured every time they slept.
Because the Blessings didn’t stop with that first day. They never stopped.
* * *
Bryan and Patel met over their common interest in dreams. For Patel, they were a subject of research; for Bryan, a lifelong battleground.
Cursed since infancy with an overactive imagination, Bryan’s dreams spiraled into terror in the wake of a handful of Poe stories read aloud by his third-grade teacher. None of his classmates seemed fazed by “The Black Cat” or “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but the stories left Bryan deeply disturbed, unlocked nightmares, even night terrors: mist leaking from the light fixture above his bed that gelled into an eyeless old man; spidery legs long as tree branches that groped from closet shadows; dark dream-alleys where he ran from people tugged by puppet strings formed from their own arteries and veins.
His ordeals didn’t end for years. A night-light did no good. Some nights he became so terrified he’d pee into his Smokey Bear sheets rather than risk the walk to the bathroom. With escalating impatience, his parents told him to keep focusing his mind on Jesus. At first he lied and claimed it worked, but after yet another bed-wetting episode his enraged father shook the truth out of him.
What finally saved him at the not-so-tender age of fourteen was a book about lucid dreams he found at the community college library. He followed the recommended exercise out of desperation, repeating until he fell asleep: “I will know when I am dreaming. I will remember what I dream.”
Just as his first encounters with the morbid plunged him into nightmare, his first attempt at lucid dreaming introduced him to unlimited power. He again found himself in the City of Mazes, pursued by a crowd pulled on fleshy strings. You are all inside my head , he thought, and knew they were. He commanded, Stop , and they did, collapsing to the ground as their severed strings thrashed like loose hoses.
From then on he reigned, wizard-tyrant in the kingdom of his own skull.
At fourteen, Bryan had other dreams, much more mundane. Win fame and fortune as a freelance writer. Marry a saucy redhead from Ireland, and build her a mansion with his riches. When he met Patel, he had inched toward the first of those goals.
The university in the next county had called for volunteers to participate in an experiment meant to test a therapeutic cure for recurring nightmares. On learning of this, Bryan begged the higher-education reporter to let
The phenomenon started in the Americas, and news of it traveled the world with the dawn. It wasn’t until a few days later that sufficient information pooled to show the Blessings truly began everywhere on the planet at once.
In San Francisco at 2 AM, a security guard woke from a forbidden nap and raised his red, glistening hands to the light above his desk. His befuddled mind gradually registered that his entire uniform had soaked dark.
In Brasília at 8 AM, a boy who had spent the night sleeping beneath cardboard under a bridge scrambled out of his refuge, holding out his blood-covered arms and crying “Murdu! Murdu!”
In Kabul at 2:30 PM, a young mother singing a lullaby over her baby’s crib stopped with a shriek of horror, as red beads welled from every pore of her sleeping daughter’s skin.
Five days later, in Sukhraj Patel’s office, Bryan watched a video on the professor’s paper-flat computer monitor. The footage was of himself, lying face up in a laboratory bed, electrodes pasted to his shaved scalp. He watched himself drift off to sleep. Watched the blood well up. Watched as he endured what everyone endured every time they slept.
Because the Blessings didn’t stop with that first day. They never stopped.
* * *
Bryan and Patel met over their common interest in dreams. For Patel, they were a subject of research; for Bryan, a lifelong battleground.
Cursed since infancy with an overactive imagination, Bryan’s dreams spiraled into terror in the wake of a handful of Poe stories read aloud by his third-grade teacher. None of his classmates seemed fazed by “The Black Cat” or “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but the stories left Bryan deeply disturbed, unlocked nightmares, even night terrors: mist leaking from the light fixture above his bed that gelled into an eyeless old man; spidery legs long as tree branches that groped from closet shadows; dark dream-alleys where he ran from people tugged by puppet strings formed from their own arteries and veins.
His ordeals didn’t end for years. A night-light did no good. Some nights he became so terrified he’d pee into his Smokey Bear sheets rather than risk the walk to the bathroom. With escalating impatience, his parents told him to keep focusing his mind on Jesus. At first he lied and claimed it worked, but after yet another bed-wetting episode his enraged father shook the truth out of him.
What finally saved him at the not-so-tender age of fourteen was a book about lucid dreams he found at the community college library. He followed the recommended exercise out of desperation, repeating until he fell asleep: “I will know when I am dreaming. I will remember what I dream.”
Just as his first encounters with the morbid plunged him into nightmare, his first attempt at lucid dreaming introduced him to unlimited power. He again found himself in the City of Mazes, pursued by a crowd pulled on fleshy strings. You are all inside my head , he thought, and knew they were. He commanded, Stop , and they did, collapsing to the ground as their severed strings thrashed like loose hoses.
From then on he reigned, wizard-tyrant in the kingdom of his own skull.
At fourteen, Bryan had other dreams, much more mundane. Win fame and fortune as a freelance writer. Marry a saucy redhead from Ireland, and build her a mansion with his riches. When he met Patel, he had inched toward the first of those goals.
The university in the next county had called for volunteers to participate in an experiment meant to test a therapeutic cure for recurring nightmares. On learning of this, Bryan begged the higher-education reporter to let
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