The Dream Catcher
When Peter Addison turned the key in the lock of the front door of his new townhouse and stepped inside, he was relieved to see that the interior decorator had made the place livable and that the movers had unpacked his belongings. Although the luxury townhouse was a magnificent dwelling, he felt no pride of ownership. It was a mere residence, not a home, not like the three-story colonial he had recently vacated in Rockport.
Damn my ex-wife!
The shrew had hired a private investigator to follow him on his book-signing tour of Great Britain. Had he known she was so devious, he certainly would not have had that brief fling with his press agent's assistant. It was not that the little dalliance had cost him his fourth marriage that bothered him. It was the fact that his actions violated the terms of their prenuptial agreement, thus allowing his wife to get his two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old home in the divorce settlement.
Peter took off his jacket and tossed it over the arm of the overstuffed, pillow-laden sofa his decorator had selected. Although the man was the most sought-after interior designer in Boston, Peter didn't particularly appreciate the décor of his new living room. He was more of an eighteenth-century antiques man and not fond of the chrome and glass that seemed to permeate the first floor of his townhouse.
"At least it's not art deco," he said with a sigh as he examined the dining room and kitchen before heading upstairs to see what had been done to the second-floor rooms.
The master bedroom, much to his dismay, was also dominated by chrome and glass, with a king-size bed covered with a faux leopard fur bedspread taking center stage.
"I suppose I'll get used to all of this," he declared with little conviction, already missing his old four-poster and the heirloom quilt he had shared with his last two wives.
Still, he was nothing if not adaptable—just as long as the overpriced decorator had not extended his personal tastes to Peter's den, the only room in the house where the writer would spend a significant amount of time.
He held his breath and pushed open the door. The familiar Chippendale wing chairs, Queen Anne desk and mahogany bookcases were a welcome sight. His computer, although not yet connected, was set up on the desk, and the printer, fax machine, photocopier and filing cabinet were all within easy reach. The only artistic adornments the decorator had added were framed enlargements of the artwork from Peter's four bestselling novels.
Having examined his new home, he rolled up his sleeves, figuratively speaking, sat down at his desk and began setting up his work area.
* * *
The following evening Peter was sitting down to a plate of leftover Chinese take-out when a knock on the door interrupted his meal. He put down the David Baldacci paperback he had been reading as he ate and opened the front door.
"Hi. I'm Leia. I live on the other side of the wall from you."
The sight of his neighbor left him momentarily speechless. The statuesque young woman went beyond every definition of the word beautiful Peter had ever learned. Her face, for want of a better word, was exotic: high, sculptured cheekbones; lush, full lips; almond-shaped green eyes that tilted slightly at the corners. With her long, lustrous black hair, she looked like she had Polynesian or Oriental blood in her family line.
Leia waited patiently for Peter to recover. She had long gotten used to the strange, captivating effect she had on men.
"I'm sorry," he apologized when he finally came to his senses. "Won't you come in?"
"I should have brought you a casserole or a cake to welcome you to the development," she said, "but I can't cook or bake worth a damn, so why bother?"
Without waiting for an invitation, she sat down on the couch, crossed her long, shapely legs and made herself at home. Peter watched, enthralled, as her raven hair shimmered against the metallic silver throw pillows on the sofa.
"So, who are you and what do you do?" she asked and then quickly added, "And don't bother telling me your sign because I'm not into astrology."
"My name is Peter Addison, and I'm a writer. I've had four novels published, all of which made it to the bestseller list."
He might just as well have told her he was an insurance salesman or tax auditor for all the reaction he received. Peter liked that. He had had his fill of literature groupies.
Leia casually looked around the living room and immediately came to the conclusion that the writer lived alone.
"And what are you," she asked, "single, separated or gay?"
"Excuse me?" he replied with amusement.
"This place looks like it was decorated by a professional, and not with a woman in mind."
Peter laughed.
"Don't all these pillows count as feminine frippery?"
"Are you avoiding my question?"
"I'm single—divorced actually. On the chance that you're curious as to my orientation, I'm heterosexual. And even though you're not interested, my astrological sign is Scorpio. Now, to quote Hannibal Lecter, 'Quid pro quo, Clarice.'"
"I've already told you. My name is Leia, and I live on the other side of the wall. That's all you need to know—for now."
She rose, walked toward him, kissed him briefly on the lips and headed toward the door, calling over her shoulder, "I'll bring you a housewarming present tomorrow. That will give you the opportunity to take me to dinner."
After Leia left, Peter returned to his leftover General Tso's chicken, but he could no longer concentrate on his book because he couldn't get his new neighbor out of his mind.
* * *
As he gazed at the monitor of his computer, Peter tried to concentrate on his fifth novel, but he was unable to think about the fantastical world of the lost kingdom of Merramonda. Warrior kings, invading troll armies and kidnapped princesses were far from his thoughts, as his eyes kept wandering to the clock on the wall, wondering what time Leia would arrive. On several occasions, he went back and deleted the pages he had written. Finally, he shut down his computer altogether.
Peter knew his inability to write was not all Leia's fault. He was a gifted author, and his first novel had been an overnight success. The next three were not as well received as the first, however, and it destroyed his confidence. He feared the fifth would be mediocre at best.
"I'll buckle down and finish this chapter tomorrow," he swore to himself.
As the afternoon passed and evening arrived, the writer found himself pacing the floor like an expectant father. Finally, at six o'clock, there was a knock on the front door. Peter used considerable willpower to prevent wolf whistling like a construction worker when he saw Leia on his doorstep.
"Quick, blink!" she teased as he stared at her, open-mouthed. "I'd hate to see your eyes pop out of your head and fall onto this ugly carpet."
She was dressed in a provocative red silk dress that, although it had a modestly high collar, was slit up each side almost to her waist. The only jewelry she wore was a pair of dangling gold earrings that brushed her shoulders. Her long hair was pulled back in a single plait that hung down her back.
"I like the braid," Peter commented. "Is it a sign of Chinese ancestry?"
"Native American, but I left my feathered headdress back at the teepee."
"That would explain your fine bone structure."
"Here," she said, handing him a round package sloppily covered in Hallmark all-occasion gift wrap. "As you can plainly see, I'm not any better at wrapping presents than I am at cooking."
"What are you good at?" Peter joked.
A sultry look was her only response.
I feel like a lovesick adolescent, he thought as he stood gaping at her, his palms sweating and his heart racing.
"Well, aren't you going to open it?"
Peter nodded and tore the paper off his housewarming gift.
"Is this macramé?" he asked, examining the intricate webbing inside a large, thin copper ring.
"They're Celtic knots."
"Really? I've never seen such elaborate work. Where did you get it, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I made it myself. That's one of the few things I can do."
"You're quite an artist. Thank you."
He looked around the modern living room, frowning at the mirrors and chrome artwork covering the walls.
"Where should I put it?" he asked.
"Don't hang it down here," Leia suggested. "Put it upstairs on the wall above your bed. Then you'll think about me every morning and dream about me at night."
Peter chuckled.
"I see you don't suffer from low self-esteem."
She looked him in the eye, reducing him to a speechless, mindless hulk.
"False modesty is something else I can't do."
* * *
That night the dreams began, vivid, chimerical dreams populated with a bizarre assortment of mythical creatures born in his writer's imagination: fire-breathing three-headed dragons, an axe-wielding Cyclops, immortal sorcerers, talking horses and invisible archers.
When he woke the following morning, Peter stumbled down to the kitchen, in desperate need of caffeine. He had not one or two but three cups of strong coffee. Only then did he find the strength to return upstairs and get dressed. As his neighbor had predicted, seeing the Celtic artwork above his bed immediately brought Leia's features to mind, although they had never been far from his thoughts since he met her.
After putting on a pair of well-worn, faded jeans and a Red Sox jersey, he grabbed a can of Coke—another quick fix of caffeine—and headed toward his den. Once he was in front of his computer, the sluggishness passed, and his mind was able to focus on his writing. He typed furiously throughout the morning, drafting not one but two entire chapters. Peter was so "in the zone"—as athletes say—that he worked through lunch, and only the hunger pains in his stomach forced him to quit late that evening.
As he ate his frozen pizza, he read a printout of what he had written earlier that day. He was pleased with his effort.
"Not bad, even if I do say so myself."
To his disappointment, he did not see Leia that evening or the next either. In fact, it would be close to two weeks before he got more than a passing glimpse of his beautiful neighbor.
"Is it possible, or do you look even lovelier than I remembered?" Peter asked when he ran into her outside the townhouse one afternoon. "You absolutely glow!"
It was no idle compliment. Leia's skin was radiant, and her eyes sparkling.
"I suppose it's because I've been working out. Must be all those endorphins."
"If you're not busy tonight, why don't we ...?"
"Sorry, I've got plans," she said, giving him no chance to finish his sentence.
"Maybe tomorrow."
The beautiful neighbor looked at her watch.
"Busy tomorrow. Look, I've got to go. I'll see you around."
Peter went into his house, mystified by Leia's behavior. He was sure that the previous times he encountered the young woman she had come on to him. Had it all been nothing more than harmless flirtation?
"Oh, well," he said with a sigh. "I'm a big boy. I can handle rejection. I've lived through four failed marriages and half a dozen ill-fated affairs. I'll live through this."
Despite his bravado, however, he couldn't get the exotic-looking young woman out of his mind.
* * *
The phone on his desk rang, and Peter answered it without taking his eyes off the computer screen.
"Hello, there."
It was Consuela Tinsley, his editor from Burgess Press.
"I've read through the first eight chapters you sent me."
"What do you think?" the writer inquired.
There was a brief pause.
"It's a bit different from your usual style," the editor replied cryptically.
"Does that mean you don't like it?"
"No, not at all. On the contrary, I think it's a fine start. It's just a lot more lavish than your last book. When do you want to get together and discuss my suggested revisions?"
It was the part of the writing process Peter liked least, having a former high school English teacher/ frustrated aspiring writer tell him what to do with his own stories. Not that he minded the advice on grammar and mechanics, but he hated when editors told him to further develop characters, delete scenes or sometimes even rewrite whole chapters.
By the time Consuela arrived at his house the following day, however, Peter had accepted the fact that a book is a collaborative effort, and as editors went she was one of the better ones.
When he opened the door, he noted a look of surprise on Consuela's face.
"I see you've lost some weight," she noted.
"Yes, I have," the writer muttered.
His weight loss hadn't been uppermost on his mind. Had his pants not become noticeably looser the past week, it's doubtful he would have been aware of it.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Peter offered. "Coke? iced tea?"
"Water will be fine."
Peter took a bottle of Dasani from the refrigerator and handed it to her. The editor then followed him upstairs to the den, passing the open door to his bedroom along the way.
"Where did you get that?" Consuela asked, pointing to Leia's artwork above his bed.
"My neighbor made it."
Consuela, who had a fondness for Native American art and culture, declared, "It looks like a dream catcher."
"What's that?"
"Originally, dream catchers were charms that were supposed to protect sleeping children from nightmares. The legend is that bad dreams will get caught in the web. I've seen quite a few in various gift shops in and around Boston, but I've never seen one with a Celtic knot pattern."
"Do you like it?" the writer asked.
"Yes, it's beautiful."
Peter reached up, took the dream catcher off the wall and handed it to the editor. Since his friendship with Leia had cooled, he saw no reason to keep her housewarming gift.
"Here, take it"
"Are you sure?" Consuela asked.
"Positive," he replied. "I never really liked the damned thing anyway."
* * *
That night, for the first time in several weeks, Peter slept the sleep of the dead. There were no dreams—good or bad—and he woke up refreshed and rejuvenated the next morning. As he stood in front of his bathroom mirror with his razor in hand, he got a good look at his reflection in the mirror. He almost didn't recognize his own features staring back at him. The gray at his temples was more pronounced, his complexion was unhealthily pale and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes.
"I look like shit," he said, realizing why Consuela had scrutinized his face when she had visited him.
For the next several days he religiously adhered to good eating and sleeping habits and got plenty of exercise. By the end of the following week, he felt and looked years younger. Unfortunately, with the return of good health came the recurrence of his writer's block. Every day he forced himself to sit at his computer keyboard, but he usually wound up playing online Scrabble or solitaire. Try as he might, the ideas just wouldn't come to him.
When Saturday morning arrived, he was spared having to endure another day of self-imposed torture by a persisting knocking on his door. If it had not been for the long hair, Peter wouldn't have known his neighbor, for beneath the long locks was the face of a crone.
"What have you done with it?" Leia demanded to know.
"With what?" he asked, alarmed at the sight of her deeply lined, leather-like skin.
Leia ignored him and raced up the stairs to his bedroom.
"It's gone!" she shrieked.
"Oh, that," Peter said nonchalantly. "I gave it to a friend of mine."
Leia's face twisted with rage.
"You fool!" she screamed. "Can't you see what your thoughtless action has done to me? You've got to get it back."
"Why is it so important? And what's happened to you?"
At first, Leia would not answer his questions, but when he stubbornly refused to budge without an explanation, she had no choice but to comply.
"Sit down," she requested. "It is a long story and one you might find hard to believe."
"I'll try to keep an open mind," the writer promised.
"Nearly a century before Columbus made his historic voyage to the New World, a ship of Celts ventured across the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the shores of what is now Massachusetts. They came bearing gifts, and the native people welcomed them. At first, the Celts lived peaceably with their new neighbors, but subsequently, the indigenous people began to fear the Celts' magic."
"What magic?" Peter asked.
"The Celts could read minds, and the natives were afraid their souls were at peril."
Peter interrupted, "I'm not in the mood to hear about some folk legend. I want to know ...."
"I'm telling you about my family history. My mother was Celtic and my father was Native American. Like my mother's ancestors, I have the gift of telepathy. Unfortunately, I also inherited the curse that went along with it."
"What curse?"
"One of the native warriors hoped to protect his people by barricading the Celts in their fort and thereby starving them. But even after the meager food supply vanished, the Celts did not die."
"How did they live without food? Did they resort to cannibalism?"
"Not in the true sense of the word since they didn't partake of human flesh. Instead, they lived on the energy of the natives' thoughts and later on their dreams."
A shiver ran down Peter's spine, and his eyes went to the empty wall above his bed.
"And where does this curse fit in?"
"The Celts found that living on other people's dreams was as addictive as a narcotic. Their need to feed intensified with time, and because the natives were simple people, their dreams were not enough to sustain the Celts. Soon they began dying off. My mother, an exceptionally beautiful woman, married the chief and bore me before she died."
"Wait! Are you trying to tell me you were born before the discovery of America?"
"I am. My mother and all her people died off. I was raised by my father's tribe, and later I made my life among the colonists that settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The early British settlers to the New World brought with them a wealth of dreams. The American colonies further to the south were ripe with people from other lands as well: the Dutch, the Spanish, the French, and more. Over the ensuing centuries, waves of immigrants came to these shores. I feasted and was able to sustain myself."
"What happened? Why have you suddenly aged?"
"Because the world has changed," she said sadly. "Most people now go through their mundane existence on autopilot. They wake in the morning, go to work and then come home and watch television until they go to bed at night. They're like mindless robots with no imagination and no dreams. Of course, I have encountered a few like you who are different."
"That's why you gave me that dream-catching thing, isn't it? So that you could feed off my mind like some kind of psychic vampire."
"Yes," she admitted, not making any attempt to hide the truth from him. "But it has been a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one, has it not? Haven't you benefited from it?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"You've written some very good material since I began harvesting your dreams."
Peter wanted to deny her claims, to insist the temporary surge of creativity he experienced had nothing to do with her, but he couldn't.
"Surely you could find someone else to feed on."
Leia stifled a sob.
"It took me years to find you."
"What makes me so special?"
"Your vivid imagination feeds your dreams and your dreams, in turn, feed your imagination. With the use of my unique magic—part Celtic and part Native American—I can harness the energy your mind creates. I can channel it and amplify it so that we both benefit from it."
When Leia finally concluded her strange tale, she was overcome by exhaustion. She could not stand and could barely remain in an upright sitting position. Peter carried her upstairs and put her on his bed so that she could get some rest. Moments after her head hit the pillow, Leia fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
Like Leia, Consuela Tinsley had aged but not as drastically. Since she had hung the dream catcher in her apartment, her life force was continually being drained from her body. When Peter visited her later that afternoon, he saw proof of the tremendous power of the artifact.
"It's slowly killing me. Take it away, please," Consuela cried, loath to touch the dream catcher herself.
Peter nodded and removed it from her living room wall.
"Destroy it," Consuela urged. "Take it outside and set it on fire. That would be the quickest way."
Peter tried to comfort her.
"Shhh. Once I get it out of your apartment, you'll begin to feel better. Just get some rest and take care of yourself."
"But you? If you don't destroy it, it will surely destroy you."
"I'll get rid of it while you sleep."
On the drive back to his townhouse, Peter could feel the magnetic lure of the dream catcher. Plots began forming in his mind, characters took life in his imagination, and alien worlds unfolded in his brain. Without Leia and her magic, he doubted he would ever be able to write again.
Yet despite his neighbor's assurance that her bond with him was not a harmful one and that the effects were benign and beneficial, Peter knew the relationship was not without risk. He had only to remember his recent weight loss, his new gray hairs and the shadows underneath his eyes to realize that Leia's hunger might someday kill him.
He pulled into his driveway, turned off the engine and took the dream catcher out of the car. He kept a Sawzall in his garage. Its blade would easily pass through the circle and the intricate Celtic knots, and he would be free of its influence.
But what of Leia? She probably would never wake from her sleep. And what about his own life? Perhaps he could live off his royalties or get a job teaching creative writing at the local university. Who knows what the future holds for anyone? All Peter knew for sure was that if he destroyed the dream catcher, he would eventually become one of those robot-like individuals who go through their mundane existence on autopilot.
With a sigh of resignation, Peter carried the Celtic/Native American dream catcher into his house and up the stairs to his bedroom where he placed it on the wall above his bed. Beneath it, lying on the faux leopard fur bedspread, Leia opened her eyes and smiled.
Looks like this dream catcher works: it captured my nightmare!
