What Dreams May Come Read Online Free PDF

was a private re-enactment, a judgment rendered by my own conscience. Moreover, I felt sure that somehow, every act and thought relived was being printed on my consciousness indelibly for future reference. Why this was so, I had no notion. I only knew it was.
    Then something strange began to happen. I was in a cottage somewhere, looking at an old man lying on a bed. Two people sat nearby, a white-haired woman and a middle-aged man. Their dress was foreign to me and the woman’s accent sounded strange as she spoke to say, “I think he’s gone.” “Chris!”
    Ann’s tortured crying of my name ripped me from sleep. I looked around to find myself in swirling fog, lying on the ground. Standing slowly, every muscle aching, I tried to walk but couldn’t. I was on the bottom of a murky lake whose currents swelled against me.
    Inanely, I felt hungry. No, that’s not the proper word. In need of sustenance. No, more than that. In need of something to add to myself, to help me re-assemble. That was it. I was incomplete; part of me was gone. I tried to think but found it beyond my capacity. Thoughts trickled in my brain like glue. Let go, was all I could think. Let go.
    I saw a pale white column of light take form in front of me, a figure inside it. “You wish my help?” it asked. My mind was not perceptive enough to tell if it was male or female.
    I tried to speak, then, from a distance, heard Ann call my name again and looked around.
    “You could be here for a long time,” said the figure. “Take my hand.”
    I looked back at it. “Do I know you?” I asked. I could hardly speak, my voice sounding lifeless.
    “That’s not important now,” the figure said. “Just take my hand.”
    I stared at it with vacant eyes. Ann called my name again, and I shook my head. The figure was trying to take me from her. I wouldn’t let it do that. “Get away,” I said. “I’m going to my wife.”
    I was alone in fog once more. “Ann?” I called. I felt cold and fearful. “Ann, where are you?” My voice was dead. “I can’t see you.”
    Something began to draw me through the mist. Something else attempted to restrain me but I willed it off; it wasn’t Ann, I knew that, and I had to be with Ann. She was all that mattered to me.
    The fog began to thin and I found myself able to advance. There was something familiar about the landscape in front of me: broad, green lawns with rows of metal plaques flush with the surface, bouquets of flowers here and there, some dead, some dying, some fresh. I had been here before.
    I walked toward a distant figure sitting on the grass. Where had I seen this place? I wondered, trying hard to recollect. At last, like a bubble forced up through a sea of ooze, memory rose. Vaughn. Somebody’s son. We’d known him. He was buried here. How long ago? the question came. I couldn’t answer it. Time seemed an enigma beyond solution.
    I saw, now, that the figure was Ann and moved toward her as quickly as I could, my feelings a blend of joy and sorrow; I didn’t know why.
    Reaching her, I spoke her name. She made no sign that she had seen or heard me and, for some inexplicable reason, I now found myself unsurprised by that. I sat beside her on the grass and put my arm around her. I felt nothing and she did not respond in any way, staring at the ground. I tried to understand what was happening but there was no way I could. “Ann, I love you,” I murmured. It was all my mind could summon. “I’ll always love you, Ann.” Despair began to blanket me. I gazed at the ground where she was looking. There were flowers and a metal plaque.
    Christopher Nielsen/1927-1974. I stared at the plaque, too shocked to react. Vaguely, I recalled some man addressing me, trying to convince me that I’d died. Had it been a dream? Was this a dream? I shook my head. For some reason I could not fathom, the concept that this was a dream was unacceptable. Which meant that I was dead. Dead.
    How could such a shattering revelation