Sketch № 7: The Spiral Rocks
One minute before the mainshock of a mysterious 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Applewood, Connecticut, seven weeks ago, family SUVs and outdoorsy pickup trucks drove in either lane of Beech Street, adhering to the posted speed limit of 30 mph. The sun peeked through clouds, and Samantha, a member of Roscoe Belesprit’s elite literary salon, sauntered along the sidewalk past Holy Cheeses deli and In Greeting, a card and stationary shop, on her way to Café Confictura for a coffee break. She stopped at one of the café’s flower boxes and bent her tall body to smell a freshly bloomed tulip, tucking her chin-length brown hair behind an ear as she did so.
Her hair shuddered under her fingertips; then she realized it wasn’t her hair shaking, but the ground.
One minute after the mainshock, shards of asphalt were pushed upward, sirens and alarms blared, and water surged from the fire hydrant outside Our Lord of the Ascension church, across the street from the café. The SUVs and trucks were on the sidewalk, or just on their sides. Samantha had sat on the ground, her back against the café’s exterior wall. She had no idea if that was the right thing to do, but the solid support held, and as she tried to catch her breath and calm down, she counted herself lucky.
Then she picked herself up, and driven by an intense need, she walked fifteen devastated blocks to Father Jack’s Table, a soup kitchen started by Father Jack that Samantha liked volunteering with each week. For the next five weeks and four days, Samantha, and the other thirty-six regular volunteers at Father Jack’s, went about their lives but would not sleep, sustained by the need to help those worse off than themselves.
Then, a week ago Friday, on May 10, they all fell asleep.
Father Jack’s volunteers finished their days, went to their homes, and slept for the first time in forty days . . . and slept . . . and slept. For nine days straight, they slept.
Yesterday, they woke up again.
In a town where strange illnesses and rumors of dark mysticism and ghosts and transcendent acts of kindness have become the norm, the Applewood Timber reporters now often shelve a weird article they start in the morning in favor of an even weirder one to file first. The newspaper has traded the flutter of its broadsheet for the clicks of a mouse by going entirely digital, and editors update the site as fast as they can to keep up. As a former newswoman myself, I’d like to make a personal note of concern here that with all the bizarre goings-on to report, the line between hard facts (“Father Jack’s volunteers awaken”) and unsubstantiated claims (“Pastor Sweeney says Lord came to him in a vision”) is becoming dangerously blurred.
I’ll give the Timber this, though — in their reporting on the volunteers, they managed to hit on one element that might end up being a big clue in the mystery of the Sleepless Crusaders.
During their nine-day nap, they all had the same dream.
Samantha and I met a few weeks ago at the literary salon’s weekly gathering. She’s in her early thirties, the oldest member of the group, and like her fellow writers, a fog settled over her mind with the Quake. She was a crack wordsmith, her poetry clever and evocative; now she struggles to keep her train of thought.
She sat down with me today in Confictura’s Riverfront Room over lattes and apple tarts — Samantha’s favorite treat — agreeing to talk about her Quake experience. “Maybe it will help us all out of this situation,” she said about going on the record. As I’m learning about Samantha, this is the kind of selfless thought that is her nature.
“After the Quake passed, as soon as I stood up from the café wall,” she told me, “I started getting these flashes of, I don’t know, like memory almost, only I couldn’t remember these memories, if that makes sense.” These flashes intensified each time Applewood got an aftershock, but then:
“They went away,” said Samantha. “About a week into LAQ” — Applewoodian speak for Life After Quake — “I didn’t have them at all anymore. Until they followed me into sleep.”
What Samantha describes starts like anyone’s common dream experience: a stew of disparate ingredients all thrown into the same pot and stirred together. But where any other dream morphs and eventually fades away, Samantha’s memories-cum-visions repeated countless times during those nine days.
“I can’t be sure how often I actually had the same dream,” she said. “Everyone says we were out for nine days. It just felt like one really good night’s sleep. And I remember seeing these images many times, but I don’t know exactly how many.”
Each time the dream started again, Samantha remembers walking down a steep, spiral staircase made of rocks. “Like it was some kind of natural rock formation,” she said. “And every time I started down them, I knew my life was going to change. I was at the mercy of some great, like, force. And not a force for good.”
“How did that make you feel in the dream?” I asked. “Scared?”
“More than that,” she said. “Scared, sad. But then ready to fight, because I could sense how this force felt.”
She stared out to the frothing Housatonic, and she breathed heavier then, as if this force itself were a boulder pressing down on her chest. “Evil. Gnashing. Relentless.”
I touched her hand lightly to bring her back, and she refocused her eyes on me. “Did you ever reach the bottom of the stairs?”
She nodded. “There was a cave. I think it was a cave. I’m not sure. I could never find the back of it no matter how long I walked.” With a smile, she added, “But it was peaceful there. Serene. Like a cozy warm bed you don’t want to leave.”
Her smile faded. “Then suddenly where the ceiling of the cave should be, there was the sky, and blue lightning flashed. No rain, no thunder, just this bright blue lightning. Then nothing. Until the whole dream would start over again.”
Samantha didn’t sleep last night. Nor did any of the other volunteers. The same voracious need to go back to Father Jack’s Table has gripped them all again, and so another round of insomnia seems to begin. None of the others has any deeper understanding than Samantha as to just what the dream could mean.
I was typing up this post a couple hours after my interview with Samantha, when she came back into the café. At this point I was back up in the front room. All the rooms in Confictura are delightful, but the front is my favorite because everything filters through it: people and conversations as varied as the different flavors of coffee Mrs. C has brewing at any given time.
Mrs. C was taking a break, sipping her fruit smoothie — 100 percent plant-based in keeping with the diet Doc Graham put her on. It’s been about six weeks since he diagnosed her with Syndrome 43, one of the mysterious illnesses that cropped up after the Quake, and whether or not the diet is what’s keeping her alive, it’s certainly not hurting her. She’s lost weight, and according to her she’s got “more energy than a jackrabbit in spring.”
Vi was with her behind the counter, and Roscoe was reading at the table next to me, so we were all within earshot when Samantha rushed over to my side. “I remember something else.” She sat down. “Actually, another volunteer remembered it, and when they said it — ”
“About your dream?” I asked.
She nodded. “He said after the lightning there was a man’s voice, sort of slowed down, that said, ‘Do not be afraid. You are doing God’s work. You will know how.’ Then there was one of those . . . fancy incense burners? Pastor Sweeney has one he swings around in front of his church before each mass.”
Roscoe supplied, “A thurible.”
“It was behind a pane of glass, and then the glass shattered,” she finished. “If I hear anything else that sparks a memory, I’ll let you know.”
She left again, and Roscoe stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “That’s what Sweeney said at that neighborhood meeting — ‘Don’t be afraid, God’s work, you’ll know how’ — verbatim.”
Violet said, “I have seen the ugly gold antique he swings and swings with the stinky smoke.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but what’s Sweeney doing in the collective dream of people who’ve had the worst sleep hygiene ever since the Quake?”
Mrs. C took another sip of her smoothie, then said, “Maybe we should ask him.”
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This and any related blog posts are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to living or dead public figures, entities, places, events, and the like, are of a fictional, opinioned, and/or parodic nature. No healthcare professionals have been consulted in writing this. Any advice given or inferred is anecdotal and used at your own risk. Consult your doctor in all healthcare matters.
Clarissa J. Markiewicz is the author of Christmas In Whimsy — a heartwarming, fun novel readers compare to Hallmark Christmas movies, and recipient of Readers’ Favorite 5-star Seal — and the genre-bending new-age mystery The Paramour Pawn.
