The Ghostly Children of Prayer

I am sitting on the upper level of a double-decker train, headed home. As the train chugs along its tracks, there is no wind against my face, despite that the upper level is completely open and has no walls or ceiling. I am sitting with Fernanda and two nondescript girls. We must remain on this train to get home, or else we will forever be stuck in this strange dream world. Our fate rests in the functionality of this one-car train and its tracks being undamaged and clear of obstructions.

That is why I am greatly alarmed when off in the distance, a second train appears, headed towards us. I observe that there is only one set of tracks, so it is on the same track as our train. A head-on collision is imminent. The only way to survive this is by jumping off the train before the collision. I am hesitant to jump off the train, because it is my only hope for getting home. Just before the trains collide, I finally decide to jump off -- much too late.

Had the train been real, I would not have survived the impact (I had waited too long before deciding to jump). However, the train was but a hallucination. I run to catch up with our train again, jump up very high and land back in my original seat on the double-decker train, with Fernanda and the two other girls. I apologize to them and explain that I had suffered from a hallucination.

Over the course of the journey we encounter several close calls that are not hallucinations. Once, a truck was headed for us on the tracks but the driver kindly pushed it aside, off the tracks, allowing us to pass. Another time, there were cars and trucks parked across the train tracks, and we were just barely able to pass under them (they were very enormous cars and trucks, with big wheels and lots of space underneath). Multiple times, an obstruction that appeared unpassable was avoided by a fork in the railroad directing us in the other direction.

We finally reach our destination. This is not home, but simply a transfer station in which we have to wait for another train. The train station resembles one end of a ski lift, enclosed in a large stone building. All of a sudden the train has turned into a ski lift. Employees standing on the ground below us tell me to jump from the lift chair; it is the only way to exit the train. I jump on their command, falling 10 feet before hitting the ground. They help me to my feet and say "you now have all your possessions" (This is a standard protocol statement they are supposed to say when I have retrieved all my carry-on baggage. Since I didn't bring any carry-on baggage, I already had all of my possessions).

Everyone jumps from the ski lift in a similar manner and lands safely on the station. Then we all jump across a 10-foot long chasm, and slide down a couple of ramps before finally reaching the main hall of the station (a large empty hall made of stone). I am the last one to arrive at the main hall because I had to make sure Fernanda and the others could make the jump across the chasm (Fernanda did it in flip-flops but still bridged the gap because she is Fernanda).

On arriving at the main hall I discover that Fernanda and the two girls had either gone too far ahead of me or simply disappeared. Walking alone the stone hall are the Children of Prayer (about 50 of them), making eerie sounds together. It sounds like something played backwards. I remark to myself, "I've heard this somewhere before..." and realize that I once heard these ghostly voices while in a train, going through an empty tunnel.

I begin looking for Fernanda and the two girls, walking around and yelling, "Fernanda, Sarah, ___!" (I forget the third name) to no avail. I reach for my cellphone but discover that I have neither my cellphone nor my wallet; I only have my room keys. Had the employees stolen them, or did I simply forget to bring them? The Children of Prayer are completely devoid of emotion, indifferent to my situation. They continue to sing their eerie, ghostly sounds.

Among the Children of Prayer, I spot Valentina, Fernanda sister. She is about 12 years old (but not in real life). I ask her, "Do you know where your sister is?" Although she is an unemotional Child of Prayer, her eyes light up as she remembers, deep in her repressed memory, that she has a sister named Fernanda. Realizing that Fernanda is lost, she frantically runs up the stairs to look for her.

I too run up the stairs from the main hall (which is kind of like a basement), which lead to the outdoors. When I finally emerge in sunlight, I see the Children of Prayer playing in a large playground. One of the features of the playground is a large watchtower. I climb the watchtower and ask one of the boys if he's seen an older girl. He responds coldly, "I don't care." As he brushes my arm with his, I feel cold shivers. He asks for the name of the girl I'm looking for. I fear the boy's intentions so I give a fake name, "Vyys." I climb back down the watchtower.

The scary boy tosses me a basketball down from the tower. I catch the ball, dribble it, and try to shoot it in a nearby hoop (I miss). I throw the ball back up to him, and he catches it. The boy seems a lot nicer now than before, content with the mild entertainment of playing catch with basketball. We do this a couple more times. The end.

Evil Spirits in Stanford

This dream occurs on the same night as "deep-throating locker room girl" but much later.

I am biking with my family. The bikes have a motor with an adjustable speed, so the user can choose to use the motor, pedal with the feet, or both. I pass a building and hear a couple of little 8-year-olds exclaiming in awe, "Oh, look, Stanford!"

We approach the edge of a steep cliff. Below where we stand, there are buildings with roofs of varying height that just might allow for safe passage to the floor via ninja-jumping. Alternatively, we could simply enter a building at our level to our left, take the elevator downwards, and exit the building at the ground floor.

Remembering that there are "evil spirits" in this aforementioned building, I lift my heavy motor bike and consider ninja-jumping all the way down. Then I realize it's not feasible while holding a heavy bike, so I relent and enter the building.

Inside, we say hi to the "children" of the manager of this Stanford building. One of them looks like a little-kid version of my friend Kristen. They are baking deserts for the Amador Valley Marching Band. One of the deserts is a brownie with ice cream on top, and looks very yummy.

I feel the approach of the evil spirits. Come to think of it, this entire dream I've been feeling the approach of the evil spirits. Maybe even since the "deep-throat girl" scene. But now, they have finally caught up to me in this unholy Stanford building, which is their home.

A colorful man wearing a colorful exotic oriental hat strolls very slowly towards me from the adjacent room. He is one of them, I realize. "He's here, he's here!" I wail to no one in particular. Everyone in the room thinks I'm crazy, because only I can see the spirit. I try to explain that I am about to be killed, but that only confuses people further.

I quickly search for a weapon that might help me defeat the evil spirits. I quickly find one of these popsicle holders lying around (without the popsicle, so that the tip facing outwards is a popsicle stick) and attempt to slit the colorful man's throat with it.

It works. His eyes bulge. He gags, "We are trying to protect you!"

The actual evil spirit bursts from the adjacent room and runs towards me. It is skinny, has four legs, and is much more evil-looking. It looks somewhat like my friend Poom. As the evil spirit runs towards me, I attempt to slash it with my popsicle stick. It passes right through the monster. I yell to the Kristen kid in dismay, "My weapon works on my allies but passes right through the evil spirit!" The kid is bewildered by my apparent insanity, because she cannot see the spirits.

Fortunately, the monster is intercepted by another benevolent protector spirit, the son of the colorful man. At this point, name labels appear above the spirits' heads, much like in a computer game. I learn that the colorful man's actual name is "Innkeeper," and he has been keeping peace and order within this Stanford Inn for years, defending against every evil spirit that happened to wander here. The boy is the "son of the Innkeeper."

The boy and the monster are engaged in battle. He yells for assistance, but the Innkeeper is still recovering from a slit neck, due to my folly. Again, I try to slash the evil spirit with my popsicle stick while he is distracted by the boy. Again, the popsicle stick passes right through the monster. I become hysterical and beg to the normal humans around me to realize that I am about to die, but they have no idea what is going on.

Finally, the monster has killed both the Innkeeper and his son. The monster now turns towards me and pinches a tendon on my right shoulder. I am dying, but I also acknowledge the chance that this might be a dream and I might not die.

I feel my heart slow down dramatically.

I wake up.


Inspiration for the creature must have come from House of the Dead, the arcade game

Shooting vampires with lasers; Sighing Ghost

Dream 1: Being in Band

I had this wonderful ability to fly, that no one else in band had. We were on this band trip, you see, and somewhere along the way I learned that I could simply flap my arms and fly. It wouldn't work all the time; sometimes it would fail and I wouldn't fly at all. But it did work some of the time. No one else could do it, and some people were envious.

So when a bunch of evil people took me as a prisoner and thought they had me tied down as a hostage to ransom me and get money from the Amador band, I simply shot into the air. How wonderful it was! Two long spears were immediately launched at me from ballistas, but I evaded them smoothly. I flew higher than the evil people could shoot. How happy everyone was that I survived, and that we didn't have to pay the ransom.

[Some stuff happened here that I can't remember.]

Then a couple days later I was with the band again and we were exploring a cave. Then suddenly the floor crumbled beneath us and we fell into a lower level, consisting of a large room with an opening on one side, and on the other side, a corridor leading who knows where (all the walls are stone as we are still in a cave).

We had flashlights so we could still see. We saw some vampires coming out of the opening into the large stone room that we were in. They walked slowly, and they looked like bored kids with large fangs. Fortunately, they were relatively weak and we were able to zap them with our green wrist lasers before they got close enough to bite us (plus, they were walking slowly).

But we had to get out, of course. There were more coming, and we couldn't keep up with this. The only other opening was the corridor leading out of the cave. We hussled over to the mouth of the corridor, started down... but about 50 feet in front of us, some large scary brown mass of writhing monster with no defined limbs suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

We turned back, and ran the other way, back into the cave. But now, as we tried to zap the vampires with our lasers, they were unaffected. The brown monster had some sort of aura that imbued the vampires with invincibility! Oh noes. We were screwed. Yeah. We were definitely screwed. No other way out. The band... was doomed.

Execpt me. I could fly. I looked up, and high above in the roof, there was a semi-opening that no one could reach except for me (because I could fly). The vampires were already uncomfortably close; I debated not more than a second before making my decision and shooting up and flying into the opening and ditching all my band friends.

I weaved and wandered, flying through a maze of narrow tunneled rock. This was obviously a man-made (or vampire-made) escape route. At one point I realized that a vampire had followed me and was only 2 feet behind me! But then he was like "whatever, you can go on, i don't care. Just remember to lock the door behind you when you exit the maze." "ok, thanks."

So after a bit more weaving through the maze I found a trap door and I undid the trapdoor, dropping down into a goblin library inside a goblin city. It was nighttime and most people were asleep but there was a goblin librarian working nightshift. I thought if i stood completely still she might not see me, but she did. "Can I help you?" she asked. "Uh... not really, thanks." "Well, take care," she said as I exited the library.

I walked past some goblin houses and came to a large door, the exit of goblin city. I exited, and walked back into normal human civilization. Passing by a shell gas station, I met up with Kevin Sprague and Chris Bowman, in band. I was confused. "How'd you guys get out alive?" I asked.

Kevin said, "It was only a story, remember?"

Oh... it all came back to me... this whole thing was actually a story Mr. Grantham had been reading to us, and I was simply living through it. Outside of this fantasy I had been living, walking and flying through, there was "reality." My ability to fly, those vampires, that brown monster -- that was all just a story. My band friends were still alive; only in the story do they die.

Kevin said, "Yeah, that Max character should've stayed and fought, not ditched and flown away... what a pussy." And I realized that it was indeed selfish of me to ditch my band friends and let them die, instead of fighting those vampires alongside them (even though the vampires were invincible and we were indeed screwed).

The moral of the story: don't ditch your friends, even in the most dire of circumstances.



Dream 2: Sleep Terror

I ran through what seemed like a scene from Spirited Away: Random Japanese shops on the side of a small street. People stood on the sidewalk, yelling, "Watashi wa!" which actually means "my name is" in Japanese. But I didn't know that because I don't take Japanese, so in my dream, it meant "The Sighing Ghost!"

I became frightened with the knowledge that a ghost was roaming the village. But I knew this was a dream. I asked my brain if this dream was a real nightmare, and the brain responded, "no" (usually, I can tell if a sleep terror climax is imminent). So I was safe, for the moment. I could wake up easily, right? Turns out my brain was lying to me.

Opening my eyes was easy. But, like in every other case of sleep terror I have had, waking up was far from easy. I could see my room, my real room in real-life, dimly lit by the faint glow of the nightlight in the hallway. I could see my room, but try as I might, I could not move any part of my body.

To make matters worse, the black chair in my room had morphed into the "Sighing Ghost" -- a shapeless mass of black with two limbs -- and was caressing me, sending cold shivers and spasmic convulsions throughout my spine, neck, and shoulders. My breath became short and quick, and I felt my heartbeat rise... how fast was it now? 3 times a second... 180 beats per minute.

As always, I put faith in my own mental willpower to wake up. But it was taking me such a long time! In most of my "sleep-terror" experiences, it only takes 10 or so seconds to break through the barrier of the dream-state and enter the real world. This time, already 20 seconds had passed, and still my heartrate was rising. And the sighing ghost persisted in its wavelike motions and cold touches, and it would not disappear.

I concentrated on moving... just one tiny muscle movement would do the trick. If I didn't surface soon, I might get a heart attack... or worse, slip back into the dream state. In this limbo between dream and waking, I dwelled for a full 30 seconds... before finally bursting into full consciousness with a deep breath. My chair went back to being a chair.