Dream: The Fall of the House of the Usher Boys

Dream 20041021, 5:12 AM:
I’m in a big, older house, with Jason. He is talking about not being happy with some activity we’re doing – I don’t remember what the problem was. Then, we walk through a little flea-market like shop; I comment on the colors – it seems like everything is in these bright sherbet-like colors, limes and oranges and pinks. The staff are packing up the merchandise, as if the shop is closing; I feel a little hurried, like we can buy something if we are quick about it. I remember talking about the book we got, which has a silver figurine of a cat on the top, and is filled with beautiful line drawings that look like pencil originals. I either flip through the book itself, or my memories of the book.

Then, I’m in a house that is absolutely packed full of antique and neat stuff. Piles tower perilously close on all sides, and go up to the ceiling. There are a couple of middle-aged men here; they own the house, although I get the impression that the collection is something they inherited. I think it’s Chris who’s here with me now. There’s a weird battle scene, where a couple of the guys turn into these serpent-like creatures and attack us. We fight them off successfully, and one of them turns into a lantern, with four glowing globes inside a glassed frame. I ask him to make the light brighter, and he does. He starts talking to me, telling me which items I ought to salvage; he tells me about one painting that’s an Edith (although he says it like “E-dite”) and also about a sofa that’s worth a lot. The house is going to crumble soon, and their relatives will be arriving and will strip the good stuff.

I remember being outside, and looking at a convertible car with the top down. The windows are double pieces of sliding glass, and I slide a window back to pull out a set of ancient Chinese coins. I pocket them, and also pick up a camel-backed clock frame; it has no clockworks, but I examine the wood and the painting before putting it back. We walk through the house, looking at various pieces of furniture. I realize that we’ll never fit all this into the car, and I call my friend Joyce to see if she can come and bring her truck. I look up, and notice that water is dripping through the ceiling; our time is growing short. Members of the family arrive – they are snooty new-money prigs, but they know that the stuff is worth a lot, so they’re going to come and grab what they can. The guy who has turned into the lantern really dislikes them. Chris brings me what looks like a chair leg, remarking that it wouldn’t need anything but reupholsery – I tell him that it doesn’t need upholstery at all, it’s a table leg. We find the table it goes to, which is broken down into pieces but in perfect shape, and carry it outside. We take out several other pieces, before the walls start to come down.

The walls begin to shake, and then to crumble and roll down from the top. We move out of one section of the house to one that is more stable; we keep dragging out small pieces of furniture, until its walls start to crumble as well. I remember being in and out of the house several times during the process. *end*

I woke up from this dream, with a very strong sense of it still lingering. I stumbled into the other room (I switch beds, usually between four and five, because Chris gets up earlier than I do) and when I opened the door of the spare bedroom, I hear a little scuttling noise. I turned on the light – and saw a gray shadow slip off my desk. Dammit. Some kind of rodent. I started moving things around, trying to find it. At one point, I was standing at the doorway to the room, and diagonally across the room from me, an entire wall of shelves avalanched downward in a pile of books and other stuff. It was kind of surreal – I tried several times to discover that I was still dreaming, but unfortunately all the reality tests showed that I was wide awake, and just having a weird morning.

I managed to trap the StashRat, who was apparently eating my silkworm cocoons and living behind a box of yarn, and disposed of it. I’m sincerely hoping it was a single rat, without family or friends.