Dream: Magical Battle with the Dark Dog

COOL dream, 4:45 AM –
Magical Battle with the Dark Dog

I’m in some place that reminds me of a library. There are a bunch of other people here with me; we’re doing some sort of scavenger hunt or race. I have a set of instructions on a piece of paper. I leave the room, and the people are all starting to head out. I remember that I was supposed to make a photocopy of the instructions for someone else, but I forgot, and it’s too late now to go back and do it.

I travel along, and am in another library-like place now. Following the instructions on my sheet, I have been looking for a glider; I find a wooden kit for an airplane on one of the shelves; it’s shrink-wrapped in plastic, and it looks like it would be far too heavy to fly. It looks like the shape of a jet plane, but made of solid wood. It’s the color of red oak. I slit the shrink wrap and start to try to figure out the pieces. There are several other people here now, and there are a whole bunch of the glider kits in a huge pile on one of the shelves.

I fly to Mom and Dad’s house in Kingwood. It seems like there is a blank spot in the dream between the point where I was assembling the model, and when I was flying to land on the roof of the Kingwood house. I fly over the back porch roof, and there is a turtle up there; he looks different than the ones I have here, but definitely a box turtle. I pick him up, and take him to the place beside the wall of the back porch where the others are all piled up. I count them; there are six, which seems like more than ought to be there, but I’m glad.

The porch has been washed out somehow; it looks like someone dug a huge excavation all along the back wall of the house. The hole is deep, like six to eight feet, and there is water at the bottom of it. Parts of the back wall of the house are missing. I remember Mom saying something about how she wanted some plastic to put on the back of the house, for Mother’s Day. I go inside, and I’m in the kitchen now. Sharyl F. is here, from the soapmaking group; she and several other people are in the kitchen eating, but the kitchen is right at the back of the house, where the utility room is. There is a shower in the kitchen, and for some reason I get in and draw the curtain and start to take a shower. I notice that there is a puddle growing by the sink, which is right beside the shower, and I reach up and trace where the water from the showerhead is spraying over onto the cabinet. I try to push on it so that it will stop leaking like that.

I decide that I want to eat something. After I get out of the shower, I find a loaf of cheese; that sounds good, so I start to cut off some, but then I notice that the other end is sliced into thick slices, like bread. I take a couple of slices and put them into the microwave to melt them. I notice that some of the slices are moldy.

A woman comes up to me, and shows me a piece of woven rainbow ribbon, like the Iris, but it’s supposed to be for the Laurel. It has silver in place of the yellow, though, which makes it look odd. She lays the ribbon out against the back of a padded chair. She asks me if I would do her the honor of pinning it on for her. I am flabbergasted – I don’t know why she wants me to do this, because I don’t feel like I’ve been active enough to be in a position to perform this kind of ceremony. She shows me the pin that she wants me to use – she had it custom made, and it is shaped like a slender silver shield about an inch tall, per bend sinister a playing-card Queen in the top left, and a star or a cross in the bottom right. The Queen is full-color, red, yellow, and blue, looks like champ-leve enamel, while the star is only embossed, engraved into the metal.

I tell her that I will have to say a few words, and I need to prepare. I remember donning some sort of robes; they look like vestments. There is a distinct feeling of pulling something over my head. Then, we are sitting by the back door, and preparing to pin on her ribbon. It’s an important ceremony. Through some slits in the back door, I can see a mop-headed black dog; it reminds me of Mona Pearl’s hair, but it’s more shaggy all over. I am talking to the girl, and she mentions the spot where she was hurt; I can see it, it’s a little mark on her hand, but seems to also simultaneously be on the floor (she’s leaning on that hand, sitting on the floor). It’s a circular mark, looks like a wood knot or a nail head, freckle-brown against her pale skin.

I make some sort of warding gesture toward the door and the dog outside, and then I open the door and hold the dog’s front paws in my hand, and tell him that he can come in, but must be good. I tell the girl that he can’t harm her now, because I have protected her. We continue with the ribbon-pinning ceremony.

Then, somehow we are in a different space. It seems like a magical otherworld. I am wearing a much more complicated set of robes and vestments than what I was wearing before; it’s as if the ones I was really wearing were just a symbolic representation, and these are the real thing. The girl is here, but she’s speaking with a dark, cruel voice – I realize that somehow the dark force has entered her and is taking her over. It has something to do with the dog. She is struggling with me, trying to kill me, I think. I have a knife, and I cut her fingertip with it. There is a sensation of something green on her finger, like an emerald ring; perhaps it was a jewel she was holding in her hand.

We fall back to real space. The girl is lying on the floor; I think she’s dead. I don’t know whether it was cutting her finger that did it, or if it was the dark force I was fighting with. We are tangled in our robes, and I struggle to stand up. There is an altar here now, looks like a setup for complicated ceremonial magic. There is a foam head wig stand with a moppy black wig on it, and I realize that it’s the dark evil character that was the dog earlier; it speaks to me, saying that we’re bound together now. There is something pinkish and round, looks like an emptied eggshell, sitting on the altar. I take it in my hand, and crush it against the forehead of the wig head; it doesn’t seem to have any visible effect.