Prologue

In the Heart of Summer

The dreamscapes had been coming back for a while now, and Jannus Rubens knew it was time to suffer torment again. He woke up in the middle of the dark night, shaking with revulsion and sweating profusely, as he usually did after one of his ventures in the shaded purple and black dreamscape.

With rueful vexation he sat upright in bed, throwing the soaked night-blankets aside. The bedroom was dark and quiet with the exception of som video playing on his personal computer; it displayed a black screen with the sound of a brook or a stream, but with no images accompanying it. The recording was to provide comfort and relation, and Jannus experienced great difficulty resting or falling asleep without such methods.

While still sitting on the edge of his double bed (in which he always slept alone), Jannus reflected on this latest dreamscape. He had dreamt of a small stretch of land near some large body of water, maybe a fjord, covered in late summer snows. It had been night-time and dark, in his dream, though the scene had been lit up by houselights, making the spectacle a weird blend of purple shadow and tawny gold. In his vision, he had looked up at the starless sky, and seen only interminable dark and shadow above him, finding no comfort in the night sky. And then the whispers had started to emanate from the houses, and the lights went out, one by one. And he knew, with the wisdom granted to him by the dreamworld, that he had to enter the red and white house at the end of the small village.

A pulsating ache in his right hand caught his attention; there was no blood, and no cuts, yet the back of his hand was partly black and purple, as if he had hit something hard. Or the other way around, Jannus thought with dismay, while the fading memory of the dreamscape echoed in his hand. He had been defending himself from some unknown assailant, stepping in and out of shadows, evading every countermove Jannus had had to offer. And after what had seemed like an endless battle, his opponent had retreated into the dark again, beyond sight, while Jannus had stood alone before the red and white house, door slightly ajar as if inviting him inside.

He had never had an effervescent personality by any means. 'A man of many opinions', 'quarrelsome to a fault' had been the usual descriptors by friends and family, and acquaintances. Admittedly, he had only a few of the former. Jannus knew that the latter was mostly beyond conjecture, considering him somewhat lacking in substance. Jannus knew differently, of course. He did admit to a certain degree of complacency, and he did have a certain tendency to casuistry, to his acquaintances' vast dismay.

After one of his nightly terrors, it was different though. It was as if he had suffered something traumatic, or some similar experience, that had changed him as a person. He knew, of course, due to his profession, that a personality change like that would be extremely rare, and not likely in his face. Jannus had been a therapist, yet only of middling quality in his own view; a nose-to-the-grindstone kind of worker, to be sure, yet always struggling and never excelling. He recalled a few of the positive recognitions he had achieved from co-workers and clients alike. He even believed most of them had been well-intentioned, if not exactly honest.

Jannus turned on the lamp on his nightstand, and sheltered his face with both hands until his eyes had adjusted to the sudden change. The much-too commodious bedroom was a mess, yet he did not pay it much attention. He opened the top drawer of the nightstand, and quickly found his medicine - his 'tranquilizers', as he caleld them, though the former therapist knew well enough that this was not their purpose, technically. A half-full glass of lukewarm water stood on the nightstand from the day before (or maybe the day previous to that), which he used to swallow today's medicine. Jannus hesitated a moment, and then gulped down tomorrow's tranquilizers as well. The dreamscape had been horrible after all.

Leaving the bedroom, absently kicking aside any clothes that might be in his way, he walked to the bathroom. The light flickered a few times when he turned it on, until it settled into a dull, yellow-orange glow. Jannus washed his face superficially, filling his left hand with water, and splashing his face a couple of times. He kept his right hand at his side. Using a towel that was still warm from lying folded on the top of the radiator, Jannus dried his face.

He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was not an easy task; the mirror had not been cleaned for at least a fortnight, and besides that it had been cracked a few times from past occasions when he had lost his temper. Jannus had never bothered to replace it. The result was that he found his own reflection looking back at him, broken in three, his emerald eyes full of sorrow caught in their own segment of the mirror. Other than that, he pretty much looked his age; a man almost in the middle of his forties, with burnt-umber, brown-coloured hair, turing to grey at the sides, and a dark stubble covering his neck and the lower half of his face. Well, exactly my age, he thought wryly. My age if someone had taken really bad care of themselves. 

Almost recoiling from his own reflection, Jannus returned to the bedroom. After one of his dreams, he shifted from his complacent and casuistic self to a man humbler, and doubtful, and even fearful. As he waited for the medicine to gain momentum, he reflected on of his favourite lines of poetry: he wanted again to 'see the stars, and to course over better waters'. Jannus could not remember the origin of the words, though they had remained at his side, even after his downfall. He knew not their exact importance, though he clung to them like a babe to his mother.

Jannus returned to sitting on his side of the bed, picking up some of the clothes that seemed least worn. He was not sure what usually prompted or elicited the dreamscapes. Jannus knew he had suffered from them almost all of his life, though he had never divined their starting point; though, admittedly, he had never truly tried. This time Jannus had an inkling of what had been the instigator. As he felt a certain calmness come over him, he stood up, and kicking aside three days' worth of unclean clothes, walked to the pinewood dresser. The middle drawer was half open, and one sock threatened to join its partner on the carpeted floor. The object of his interest, however, lay on top of the drawer. An envelope he had procured from his mailbox, only two days ago. There had been a four-page letter inside. Jannus had read through only the first half-page before he realised what it was about, and he had left the envelope on the dresser, with two pages still sticking out.

Jannus looked around the dishevelled bedroom: used clothes spread all around, a double bed with the right half of it being neatly pressed linen, unlike its left counterpart. The sight made him both sad and angry.

He had read enough of the letter to suspect it might be from an old client of his; the former therapist had identified the probable sender quickly, since the letter began by replicating one of the specific exercises they had worked on together. Jannus remembered the client and their sessions well. Too well, in fact. In Jannus' view, that time had been the beginning of his fall and his demise.

As he stood there, by his pinewood dresser, envelope in hand, wondering if he should read the rest of the letter inside, Jannus felt a strange sense of foreboding. It was as if his dreamscape had now entered his reality, whereas before, he never had any trouble distinguishing the two. He looked at his right hand, still purple and black, and thought back to his ventures in the latest dreamscape. It was the heart of summer, and he was terribly afraid.

Copyright 2024

Benny Jensen