Visions in the Dark

(Sorry for the length)

I am in a valley that is damp and fog-laden. It looks to me like the highlands of Scotland or something. I appear in this dream as my dream incarnate Kalima (image), but wearing a plain grey Victorian dress and white apron. The hills surrounding the valley are covered in ancient, crumbling castles and decaying ramparts while the valley floor is a huge never ending hedge-maze.

I am desperately lost in the maze and I am in a panic because I can feel not one, but two, dark presences nearby and I can sense that they are hunting me. I run through the maze as fast as I can but because of its enormity and the fact that it never ends I don't really get much farther ahead of the pursuers. I am not try to memorize or mentally map out the hedge maze and just run hoping I will get lucky and either find my way out or find the middle (where I instictively know I will be safe).

No matter how far I run I can still hear the creepy snuffling of my dark pursuers, like they have giant nostils and are sniffing me out. I find myself in a dead end and can hear the sniffing sound of one of the pursuers just on the otherside of the hedge. I know it can smell me because it stops to hover around the other side of the hedge where I am leaning in fright to sniff, before it lets out a terrible high pictched shriek to inform the other dark presence that it has found me and start running through the maze to find the fastest way to get to me.

I am so terrified that I fall to my knees and forward onto my stomach, because my legs have gone numb with fear. This allows me to see the smallest of spaces between one hedge and the ground. It looks as if a small pit was dug by a fox or ground hog or something to get under the hedge. I scramble to deepen the hole as quickly as I can and am able to squeeze through and start running again, long before the two dark pursuers find the dead end I was trapped in. They are much to large to fit through the hole (I'm not sure they even noticed it actually) and have to turn around and find their way back through the maze.

I suddenly feel two things simutaneously. First, a heavy object in the front pocket of my apron, which turns out to be a large cast iron key. The blade of the key is plain but the bow part of it is intricate in detail and had a peice of dark red glass set in the middle of it. Secondly, I feel someone close by who is watching me, but their presence is not threatening, though I cannot see them because they are invisible. The being feels warm and radiates love and kindness and for some reason I believe it is a guardian angel, even though I don't believe in angels in waking life.

The being starts to move through the maze and I am able to follow it by moving in the direction of where I feel the warmest air. After a long while I am led to what looks like another dead end somewhere near the middle of the valley and the warm presence suddenly disappears. I know there is something about this part of the hedge maze that I am supposed to discover but I can only pace back and forth in frustration for a long while because I cannot figure it out and I can hear the snuffling of the two dark pursuers getting closer again.

I pull out the key that appeared in my apron pocket a while ago and assume that I am supposed to find a door, but none can be seen with the naked eye. I feel around inside some of hedge wall where there are little openings in the heavy brush, but all I encounter is thorny branches and after several times I have sore and bleeding fingers. I feel like I have been misled by the thing I thought was a guardian angel, as well as abandoned, and I am angry and frustrated and I remember thinking to myself "this is why I don't believe in angels!"

The blood on my hands makes me think about the dark red glass set into the bow of the key and I look through it like one would a spyglass, mostly out of bordem rather than thinking anything would happen, but as it turned out I could see a glowing red outline of a door at the very end of the dead end, where the hedge appears the thickest. Upon investigation the thick hedge is even thornier and more difficult to get my hand through than the ones before, but I can feel a metal door on the other side.

I fumble around with the key, trying to find the lock, all the while the two dark presences are getting closer. So close in fact that I can here them on the other side of the hedge and I start to panic because I cannot find the hole for the key. Almost at the last second the key finally slips into a hole in the door and the door opens, but I have to force by entire body through the thick wall of thorns and it is terribly painful and unpleasant.

I get through and am able to slam the door shut and lock out the pursuers just in time because they were so close that one was able make a swipe at me and catch the end of my grey dress and rip a peice off. The creatures looked like tank sized crosses of a pot-bellied pig and a bulldog. They had rough black skin, large snouts and glowing red eyes. There bodies were covered in scars like they had been badly beaten and tortured. I had been terrified of them the whole time I could not see them but as soon as I caught that short glimpse of their battered and beaten bodies, as I slammed the door shut, I felt kind of sorry for them because they made me think of domestic dogs that become ferocious and violent after being mistreated and abused. I wanted to open the door again and have another look at them, even try to pet them and be nice to them, but I realize just then that when I slammed the door shut I left the key in the lock and since the door has no handle on this side, I was essentially locked in (and unless the pig/dog creatures suddenly grew fingers, they were esentially locked out).

I take a moment to catch my breath and have a look at my surroundings. I am in a large open area that has rows and rows of plots for planting, but the whole garden is dead. The small trees and bushes around the perimeter are barren of leaves and many have broken branches. The few plants, and what looks like stalks, that can be found in the plots are whithered and dried. The grass is brown, the air smells of earthy decay, the few marble staues around the garden are weather worn or crumbling to peices and it looks as if the garden has not been tended to for hundreds of years.

In the center of the dead garden is a a small stone fountain at the base of a huge oak tree. The fountain only contains some dried and decaying leaves from the oak tree that has mighty, thick branches that reach eagerly upwards, but it looks pretty pathetic without its leaves. I feel sad and wish there was something I could do to revive the garden but all I can do is sit on edge of the fountain and sulk.

My eye catches something white sticking out of the ground in a growing plot not far away. At first I though it was just like one of the many dead and dried out flower stalks found throughout the garden but when I get closer I can see that it is actually human finger bones sticking out of the ground, which sends a chill down my spine. Now that I am aware of it, an awful lot of the stalks sticking out of the ground look like skeletal fingers, and I even notice the old sun bleached bone hidden under the bushes and trees.

I suddenly want to leave very badly but don't know how because I've locked myself in the garden when I left the key in the otherside of the door. I briefly think that I will became another skeleton in the garden when I suddenly feel the warm angelic presence nearby again. I follow it to the locked door which suddenly unlocks and swings open. The pigdogs are gone but I am able to retrieve the key. The warm presence complels me to return to the fountain where I suddenly notice a keyhole in the bottom of it. I stick the key in and when I turn it, fresh clean water starts to flow out of the key hole and fill the fountain.

I am all excited and happy and stuff, because I think that the garden will now suddenly recover, but the dream ends there because I wake up.