I am afraid I grimaced in return. I wondered where Nicola fitted into the scene.
We decided on coffee rather than having anything alcoholic (it’s too early, and it will go straight to my head! More giggles from Nicola.) Julian had disappeared inside to place the order, leaving us sitting outside together. Nicola asked almost immediately;
“So, what do you think about all this then, Michael?”
The question had been quite unexpected, “Pardon?” I responded rather lamely, and then I felt somewhat foolish, as I appeared to have lost the thread of the conversation somewhere. Julian fortunately came to the rescue by returning with a sour faced waitress in tow who took our order and departed with sagging shoulders as if the entire third world’s debt sat upon them. Nicola’s question, for the moment, had remained unanswered.
As Julian sipped his coffee, he at last started to put me in the picture. Nicola, he explained was a friend of Roberta. She had finished University two years previously having majored in psychology. Roberta had apparently introduced her to Julian because she wanted a professional opinion about Julian’s nightmares. I now understood Nicola’s early question which I had fortunately not answered (the term ‘bunk’ might not have been appreciated). For now, at least, I was more interested in what Nicola thought had disturbed Julian. I listened as Julian and Nicola described their story.
Julian had apparently been having the same recurring dream, which had interested Nicola. Coincidentally she was writing her thesis on ‘Human memory and the subconscious brain’. Nicola explained that the subconscious memory was useless in everyday life because we are not able to use it at will. Instead, current theory indicated dreams to be no more than disjointed memories that are a deep-seated jumble of many memories being ‘fired’ off by the brain when in a period of rest. In her thesis, Nicola said she hoped to challenge this belief by researching cases of where subconscious memories appeared to hold intelligence or a ‘message’. Rather than being random, she felt it was possible that the dream is encoded within our very DNA, and therefore very personal and relevant to the individual. During her research Nicola hoped to discover what these dreams meant to the individuals themselves; she enthused,
“These books on dreams where they try to describe in general terms what your dream means are, I believe so totally wrong! The Dream State is small glimpses into an individual’s own personal subconscious, and therefore is only relevant in the context of that person. For instance, a dream about an aircraft may mean a ‘holiday’ to you, but ‘work’ to a pilot! I want to know how we can learn to decode its meaning.”
“You mean it carries a message?” I ventured.
“Possibly, or it may simply be a type of protective mechanism. For an individual to learn to understand the subconscious would be to further our understanding.”
“You mean to learn to control it?” I enquired.
“Not control, just be more in tune with your inner thoughts. This is practised in some religions such as Buddhism, where adepts attempt to harmonise with their inner self. Control as such may be dangerous.”
“Some people purport to control their autonomic brain activity. You know, slow their heartbeat, breathing etc.” interjected Julian. “That’s control isn’t it?”
“Yes, in a fashion, but controlling your body with your brain, although remarkable, has little to do with subconscious thoughts. These emanate from the brain rather than conscious control asserted by the brain on behalf of the individual.”
“Maybe it was not intended by nature that we have access to it” I suggested.
“Maybe not”, agreed Nicola, “but nature is not perfect, and when we do see a recurring dream that is apparently revolving around an individual’s subconscious, an opportunity exists to ‘crack the code’ so to speak. Thus, my interest in Julian”
I listened to Nicola’s theories of the possible source of Julian’s dreams, and although it was interesting, it all sounded rather Freudian. I was thoroughly taken aback by the fact that Julian was getting so intense about his dreams. I felt myself become more distant the more I heard. It all seemed too ‘over the top’. I had never taken anything Julian had said about the content of his dreams seriously. Yes, I had believed they had affected him, that was obvious, but I believed there to be as much correlation between Julian’s visions and some DNA ‘message’, as there was of Nicola really being an alien!
I now understood Nicola’s first question, but I still did not know how to answer it. I did realise, however, that despite my personal thoughts on the matter, this was important to Julian. I felt obliged to listen to what he and Nicola were saying so I could begin to try and understand his problem. I was told many an interesting theory that afternoon, and it was precisely because Julian had not found any support from me when he initially told me about his dreams that he had excluded me and his mother from all his mysterious investigations.
Julian had therefore decided to go and visit Roberta and talk to her. He had left for Manchester on the same evening that he had telephoned me. He had been absolutely sure that he would come back in a couple of days, however, when Julian had explained to Roberta what had happened to him, she excitedly suggested they investigate further and had booked tickets to Spain the next day! The plan was to find the place in Julian’s dream. They both understood that this plan was rather bold considering the lack of research and factual evidence, but Roberta was caught up in the excitement, so they decided to go.
The next five days were spent touring museums and libraries in southern Spain. Remarkably, they managed to find quite a few historical references to places where the brutal inquisition had tormented the unfortunate. Burning by fire was a popular means of punishing the unbeliever in the fourteenth, and all the way through to the sixteenth century. At one of the numerous libraries and museums they visited, they discovered something which had shocked Julian. A particular engraving, which depicted one of these burnings, which had taken place at the time of the inquisition, was so similar to the scene in his dream that it seemed to him like a photograph.
“The square, the church with a domed roof to the right of the fire. Everything was as I saw it!” he said. “But what struck me most of all was the figure in the long dark soutane. This man had an angry face, and had his hands held up, holding a large Christian crucifix in his left hand.” Julian broke off and had stared straight at me; his eyes had taken on a distant look as he continued;
“It was him, it was definitely him. That was the barbarian that struck me with the burning log in my dream” At first, despite her initial enthusiasm, Roberta was sceptical and asked him how he could have been so sure. Julian assured her that it was a combination of things, the man’s ugly facial features (not one he could forget that easily), his clothes, and hairstyle.
“It was him!” Julian murmured again to no one in particular.
I felt that Julian’s problem was now beginning to verge on the serious. The man appeared obsessed by his dreams. To actually run off to Spain at the drop of a hat was not the type of thing I would have expected of Julian in the past.
Julian continued to tell us how Roberta suggested he may be the victim of an overactive imagination. She asked him where this scene in his dream could have come from and suggested he had possibly read a book with this engraving in it as an impressionable child. The picture and story could have remained in his subconscious, only to surface later. This concurred exactly with my opinion, but Julian
