Dream: Granddad and the Snake

Dream 20040210, 7:00 AM:

I didn’t have time to record this dream this morning, so some of the details have become blurry. It was exceptionally emotionally intense when I woke up.

I’m with a small group of people. I don’t recall who precisely, but it seems like a family group, or a group of friends. We are on an expedition, and walking through an area that reminds me of a cave, with stalactites and other rock formations. It seems to be above ground, though, and not dark. I am having to climb upward a little bit, and I put my hand up and feel something soft and cool and a little yielding; I pull my hand back, and tell the others that I put my hand on a snake. Someone asks how I know it was a snake, and I explain that it just felt like one. I see the small snake, patterned like a rattlesnake but small like a garter, slither down off the rock above me. It coils back, and strikes at my face, hitting me right below the eye. It draws back again and strikes above the opposite eye. The snake bites are not exceptionally painful, more like bee stings, but I’m concerned that it may be poisonous. Granddad, who is with us, grabs the snake (which has now become much bigger, more like a 4 or 5 foot boa constrictor) by the tail, and slams its head against a tree, killing it. I look back, and see that there is something written on the tree in the snake’s blood, but I can’t recall now what it said. Three or four words, and a number.

Then, after some other dream stuff that I don’t remember, I am in a house – I think it’s the Kingwood house – and the phone rings. I pick it up, and it’s a woman’s voice; I’m not sure if it’s Aunt Marilyn, or Deborah, or who – but a woman that I know. She tells me, in a very grave voice, that my Grandmother and Granddad have been found murdered. I think to myself that I had just dreamed about them… and it really hits me hard, and I start screaming, “No, no, no… ” over and over. I fall to the ground as if struck, and curl into a ball, still holding the phone, still screaming. I wake up, and can still feel the muscles in my sides flexing from the screams. *end*