VITAL STATISTICS
Dreamer: Helen
Date: Summer, 1987
Title: The Deep Ones
I had this dream a long time ago, but I still remember it vividly. In the summer of 1897 I was living in Burlington on Archibald St. with Miki in a sewage-scented dump of an apartment across the street from an abandoned synagogue and kitty-corner from a graveyard. I also read the complete works of H. P. Lovecraft that summer, an experience that has, among other things, left me permanently unable to eat or to even look at canned macaroni and cheese.
[The Deep Ones are the amphibian, Elder God-worshipping, creatures from Lovecraft's story The Shadow over Innsmouth]
I was visiting with my friend Steve L. I knew him from high-school, although I had been graduated for several years both in the dream and in reality. I was actually walking him home from my parents' house. My parents lived at the top of a hill, at the top of steep incline leading down to the Winooski River. In this valley behind their house was a suburban development, and Steve lived toward the bottom, a few blocks from the cliffs that formed the river bank.
I was walking Steve home because a rash of brutal and so-far unsolved murders had been taking place in the development and I wanted to make sure he got back all right. It was around midnight, right during the summer solstice, but the sky was oddly bright for nighttime, almost tinged with pink. I remember noting how weird it was.
Steve asked if I was going to be OK going home by myself, and I assured him I was. For some reason I felt no fear walking this murder-plagued development. I was absolutely confident nothing was going to happen to me.
Between the time I dropped Steve off and started walking home the sky turned the normal dark for midnight, although there was a bright moon out. As I was walking along, suddenly some shadowy figures darted across the street, whispering strangely. That rattled me, but I still walked right past the large, thick juniper bushes they had apparently disappeared into.
Suddenly a pair of powerful human/frog-like arms reached out and clamped a webbed hand over my mouth and pulled me into the bushes, Another set of arms helped drag me into the backyard of a typical suburban ranch house. I was terrified, but the horrible frog-human things indicated silently to me that if I made a sound they'd kill me as easily as blinking. One of the group picked up a rock, reached up and broke the glass of one of the kitchen windows. He crawled into the house, and the rest followed him up, except the last one who hoisted me up and shoved me through the window into the kitchen before climbing in himself.
The Deep Ones motioned for me to stay silent. They crept into the house and tore the sleeping inhabitants to pieces as they they slept in their beds. I stayed in the kitchen, but I simply knew that the Deep Ones were disembowling the people and pulling their limbs off. I personally felt calmer; that they hadn't killed me yet probably meant they wouldn't unless I did something exceptionally stupid.
Having finished with their ghoulish chore, they crept back to the kitchen. The leader approached me, and in English, announced cheerfully, "Now we can make nachos!" They began ransacking the kitchen for ingredients. Some Deep Ones located the tortilla chips, another one was searching for the salsa. One was pre-heating the oven, and another found the cheese. Splattered with blood, human flesh and entrails clinging to the claws, they taught me the Secret Nacho Recipe of the Deeps Ones: teaching me the proper temperature for the oven, the proper size for slices of cheese, the correct ratio of salsa to chips, and how and in what amount to apply the extra fixings.
I woke up with a powerful craving for nachos, needless to say, and had to be prevented from walking miles to the nearest 24-hour supermarket in South Burlington at 5:00 in the morning.
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