Dream - The narrow valleys and the steep mountain ridges, and the dark funnel cloud that passed over my home

On Saturday, June 12, 2010, around 6:30-9:30 PM, I dreamed I was at home with my mother, who looked younger, maybe in her forties or fifties, but sometimes I went to the south, across a series of brown dirt mountain ridges, steep but not very tall. Sometimes there were more mountain ridges than at other times. I was going to a place associated with work, the work in Nevada, something to do with secret stuff I think and testing things, and maybe to some extent with bombing from planes. It all took place in a valley between the ridges, at least most of it. The valley was just a narrow crevice between the ridges, as the other valleys between the ridges were.

Then, at home, I was in my bedroom with my mother, talking to her. It was in the afternoon I think, Saturday or Sunday. Going to the window and pulling the curtains aside a bit, I saw outside a tall, black, funnel-shaped cloud not far away, to the north, and heading this way. It was coming fast. I told my mother about it and went back and looked out the window again at it. It was here already, things were falling down on the house in front of the window. I heard the impacts, mostly ash and cinders and things like clumps of gray-white burned charcoal almost the size of my fist.

My mother was trying to contact somebody about it, using a little device like an iPod in appearance. I tried to use a similar thing. I think the radio in the room had been on too. She got somebody but then lost the connection, and was saying something like, "Ohhhhh, they're gone, I've lost the connection," in an irritated manner. I had managed to get somebody on my device, and I wondered if I had interfered with her device, that they used the same phone connection and it wasn't able to keep them both going at once. The radio in the room was on a separate connection, the original phone connection, but the little device used a second one that was somehow set up.

Then my connection was gone and hers was back. The people she was talking to said they didn't have any records of what she was reporting, and so far no one else was reporting it, and gave other possible explanations, ones that didn't really make any sense, and sounded really patronizing. I suggested that maybe she should contact a TV station, that maybe they would have heard some reports. Considering the situation, since the people had said there were no reports, it seemed likely that the source of it might be very close, in the neighborhood, maybe no more than a few streets over, or even the next street over.

I tried to go out and find out more about it, and I went back over the mountain ridges to where I had been, in the very narrow valley, and it was starting to go over the ridge to it, but paused at the top of the ridge for a while, sometimes going partly down the side of the mountain and then retreating and going back up. A plane flew low over it and slightly between the ridges, above me, checking on it apparently, and it seemed the dark funnel cloud might be part of some test that was being done, somewhere over in the next narrow valley to the north, a valley that I had passed over to get here. It seemed confusing, though. I didn't know how the dark cloud could have passed over my house that way, if it had originated out here, well to the south of it, and it was going south as it passed over the house.

There was also something brief then about scientists in white working in laboratories, just a few of them, and hearing them talk about it a little, apparently working on it, and I was looking in from way above them, apparently viewing them, directed to them by someone else, but not actually physically being there.


Note: The dream was probably influenced by seeing on the CBS News at 6:00 PM, which I saw part of, the burning of part of the oil spill in the Caribbean Sea, which produced a tall slanted funnel-shaped cloud, very black.

Dream - The mall, the man in the devil mask, and the storm

On Saturday morning, November 20, 2010, in a period of sleep ending around 11:00 AM, I had a long dream in which I ended up at a large mall, apparently where the old Osco/Bashas' stores were, at 74th St. and McDowell Rd., then left and wandered off north, possibly to Plaza 777 where the radiator shop used to be, then I went back to the mall again. I was talking to some other people sometimes, at least some of them family members. It was afternoon, a pleasant temperature, mild, the sky clear but kind of a gray tone. I went back in the mall and was wandering around. Besides little shops, it had layers to go though. Some of the mall was to the right, like at Fashion Square, but I went to the left, and it seemed like I was going through layers of primarily the same store, to different departments, with walls between them. I also found some candy by little walls, in glass jars. I ate some of it and was looking for more.

I finally left, taking a heavy white plastic trophy I saw on a shelf by the free snacks. It was a statue of something, heavy and compact and styled, with just the suggestion of an animal form. Out in the parking lot I began to wonder if it was really free, and decided that it probably wasn't. I looked around it for a price tag. At or near the car, the gold 1989 Olds, I finally found a small white sticker with something written on it. I turned it up toward the sky to try to get more light on it, but the light was dim, it was late in the afternoon and the sky was somewhat overcast. A little sunlight came through, though. At first I thought the price was other things, then finally resolved it as $9.00. I decided that I had to take it back. I walked back in with it, hoping that no one would bother me about it. Some people frowned at me, and I eventually set it down somewhere, not where I got it.

I saw my sister, the oldest one, who was several years younger than me, and we walked through the mall together.

It was starting to get late and things getting ready to close. We went back toward the entrance. We passed some people from the store at a minor side entrance, doing a strange dance, one or two dressed in strange clothes and wearing strange lifelike almost devil-like masks, but without the horns, doing a strange acrobatic dance over a large broad mattress-like thing close to the floor, entertainment for the people. A woman showed up with the mask after a while and did some of the tumbles, but it was like they shared the same mask, that the other guy had taken it off while he was gone and then she emerged wearing it, though I think I eventually saw them together with masks on.

Approaching the main exit, I lost my sister and went back into the mall looking for her. I got to where it turned a corner, and there were other little stores, some of them selling food, but they were pulling down their roll-up covers over the fronts of the stores.

Going back, I passed the man with the devil mask and strange costume. He had his shoes off and his feet were covered with fake feet too. The mask was tight fitting and had no seams, and looked natural, though still somewhat rubbery. He had a reflective expression on his face, sitting and looking off into the distance to the right, toward the short exit, rubbing his foot. He talked very briefly. I moved on. Near the main exit, my sister came up behind me. She had been following me for a while, and seemed amused by it.

She had been for a while at a side room across the aisle, too, a place where food was served and also where everyone sang and played musical instruments. I could see them from here. I went over and went in for a while. The place had a tropical theme, which became more manifest deeper into it. At the other side of the room it blended into an outdoor area with plants and palm trees, and round concrete tables among shrubbery. Inside, everyone sat close together. I wandered outside for a while. There were worries and warnings about a storm approaching. It was still light outside, late afternoon, near sundown, still with some sunlight. A strange cloud was there to the southeast though, gray brown, boiling, churning at the edges, on the ground, wider at the top than the bottom, and with a flat top. It was coming this way, visibly so, though people didn't know if it would dissipate before it got here or not. People were running around, though, trying to get away. I kept looking back at it. Each time I looked it was moving this way, but didn't seem to get closer between looks. I wandered off to the southwest, into the parking lot. Large areas were flooding, with tall palm trees sometimes at a slant, sometimes with large areas of sodden mud over the parking lot and things. It had evidently gone through here already.

I went back inside and went over to the main exit. The various things lining it, little stores and various activities, had closed for the most part, and were covered up, but now they were starting to reopen, a late night thing. Things seemed more sinister. The man in the evil mask was back again. A place there was also offering odds at things, like odds on how TV shows would do, and odds on other minor things, and I thought about placing a bet, but wandered back to the main section and was trying to find the board/sign I saw with odds on it. Looking at it, I realized I had misunderstood what I had read before, and the odds weren't good. I decided not to do it. The man with the devil mask was going over a raised, long rectangular area with concrete edges, and a cloth placed over the middle. Underneath it were a series of crosswise rods and large beads. Before, when I was going to leave, he had been on a slanted one, like an escalator, with things in the middle that weren't moving but with bands on the edges moving down, with little rough things on them and around them, like tiny broken rocks. He had been cavorting in the middle and maybe singing. I had tried to grab onto and slide down one of the bands. As I made my way toward the direction of the exit, I saw him looking my way, not entirely happy at it.

It was night now, had been for a while, late, and I went out the exit to leave. It was cold, and the parking lot was covered by cold mud, with snow dusting it in places. Some areas just had a little mud, and some areas were very diluted, almost water, some just slightly dirty water, and some not much of that. It was daylight still then for a while. I went to the car. It was looking normal, but as I got there, or soon after I got there, it changed to a much smaller and lighter electric car, still with front wheel drive. Some other people were coming too to their cars. We passed by some tiny wooden guard shack type things, damaged by the storm, sometimes sitting at angles there between the rows of cars, wet inside. I walked through one and out the other side, wondering a bit if someone would object. The others seemed more afraid to do that. I got to my car, which turned out to have my mother's purse there on a small white table behind the passenger door. I guessed I must have left it outside the car. I was glad no one had taken it.

I got in and drove, not toward the exit at 74th St., but down the row toward the north, then toward the east and into another row going back south, where conditions were much worse, heavy mud covered the pavement. A delivery type truck was backing out down the row ahead of me. It slowly backed out, but there was some kind of trouble, and it finally got going and moved away. There was another big truck on its side at an angle, that I had to go around. In the dream I didn't know why I came back there, it was a lot harder to get through and more dangerous. The small car with front wheel drive that I was in, though, pulled through and over the mud.

I got to the front, by the mall, and turned to the west, toward 74th. Other cars were going out through the exit near the intersection, across from the bank. I didn't like that though. I thought it was too close to the intersection, too hard to get out, although it had a traffic light. However, there didn't seem to be one earlier, and at times, and I tried to go to the south, to another large exit, further away from the intersection. People on the walk around the mall were calling out to me, not to do it, it was too dangerous. It was fully night now, late. I tried to go south, but ran into increasingly heavier, deeper mud, and there was also worry that I might heading into the storm, that it would come through here. I turned around and went back. A little Mexican-type kid, possibly part Indian, had been following me, a little girl. She was associated with someone, a couple of people mainly, but had been following me, and I agreed to let her go along. The car was so tiny now, that she was riding on the back. It was rainy and cool, even chilly. The car seemed to be a two seater with a small wooden platform on the back, even some wood rails going along the sides, and a very short front.

I waited at the light for a while. It turned red just as I got there. Across the street, there was just the sidewalk with landscaping along it. Everything was wet and cold, and rain was softly falling. Water was running in the gutter in front of me, and it was a sharp short slope to the street. I couldn't see the traffic light from here. I had to lean forward and tilt my head to look up, then I could see a tiny curved dark metal tube coming down from it, with the end glowing the color the light was. Off to the right was the intersection with its own traffic lights, and I thought it was going to be a long time to wait, to get them both coordinated properly. There was only a very short wait, though, before I saw the light in the tube above me turn to green, and I pulled out into the street, going south, the girl happily riding along with me, and sometimes running beside me holding on. I had no idea really what I was going to do with her, whether I could drop her off at her house somewhere along the way, maybe on a small side trip, or at somebody else's house along the way, or just a a place where she could make it home from or be picked up from, an intersection in the neighborhood, or if I even had to take her to my house for a while. Her parents seemed to approve her going along with me though, so I guessed it was alright, whatever was going to happen.

Dream - God of storms

Sunday morning, November 23, 2008, I had a dream in which I displayed godlike powers and attempted to control the weather, and received retribution from above for my daring to do such a thing.

The dream was a lot longer than what is written here, but the first part of it has been forgotten. There seems to have been something about superheroes and superhero comic books and dolls, but it may have been part of a different dream.

At some point I was with a group of people. It was night and we had traveled across some areas like broad fields or yards with a few trees and bushes bordering them, perhaps in part across the area around a school, a school similar to an elementary school I used to go to, and then into some countryside beyond. My impression is that we flew through the air under our own power.

After going a few miles we landed outside a large building, in the parking lot near some wide steps leading into the building. It was still night but the area was well lit, particularly near the building. Some other people were nearby. They were scattered a bit, though some were within a few feet of each other.

They were discussing among themselves some task they had to perform there. It was some kind of hush-hush thing, involving secretly getting into the building, or fairly secretly, and taking some things from there, enough that several boxes were involved, which were being loaded into a big truck. I don't think it was quite like stealing, it felt more like it was some kind of secret mission, though I don't know if it was actually sponsored by the government. I was a little distance from the others.

I felt that I had to show them my power, I had to show them what I could do and what was possible. Happy and smiling broadly, I called out to the others to look and I pointed my arm at the sky, my hand holding high a large stick or scepter/wand/cane, pointing it at the sky as an extension of my arm. It something dark and made of wood and smoothly varnished, with a wider section eight to ten inches long fitted onto it toward the end, like it was something that could move back over the thinner part I was holding, to make a shorter object. It also had some rings, probably made of brass, at the edges of the sections. I was moving it and my arm in a large circle. A thin overcast was moving across, lit partly by the lights below and partly behind it by the stars and maybe the moon. The sky was faintly visible through it, though the clouds were thicker at the edges.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but I kept it up. Then the thin overcast slowly started to turn in the area of the circle. "See, see!" I cried, jubilant. Then, still smiling, I started to wonder about consequences, what might be required of me as payment for the energy I was using.

Then suddenly a thin smoky bolt came out of the sky at an angle and hit a heavyset man about a hundred feet ahead. He was wearing bulky clothes that had an ornamental feel to them, and was just a dark silhouette. The man was a leader of the group, maybe even my father. A burst of smoke or fog or cloud appeared at the spot the beam hit, like an explosion, and then the beam retreated and took him with it back into the sky.

"No! No! Take me instead," I cried, bending over double in guilt and anguish, still looking toward the spot where the man had stood. The sky gave no response, and I was no longer concerned about making a twister.

After a bit of a pause, the other people in the group mainly continued what they were doing, if anything. Perhaps some looked toward me and what had happened. If anything, I felt they were very slightly amused, perhaps also with a feeling of life goes on and to continue what they wee doing as best they could without him. The project seemed mostly done, though part of it now seemed to have been abandoned and they were getting ready to leave, and some were already leaving.

Dream - Low purple clouds and mutant creatures

Long ago, perhaps in the mid to late 1970s, I had a dream of very low purple clouds, perhaps low enough to touch, with heavy black outlines. The sky was covered with them, but light still came through somehow, either through them or through breaks in them. The clouds seemed unnatural. It was very ominous and worrisome.

Sometimes I went out and looked at them, and sometimes I looked at them from inside, through the windows of my house. My mother was there, and sometimes I talked to her about them while I looked out the window. Other things also went on in the dream, though I don't remember what now, but I kept worrying about the clouds and going to check on them.

Later on I walked down a sidewalk, a little tensely, heading east, still worrying about the clouds. It seemed to be somewhere around the middle of the day, perhaps the middle of the afternoon. The clouds were a little higher when I started out, and got much higher for much of the time, becoming a purplish gray overcast.

I'm not sure what destination I had in mind, or if I really had one. A few possibilities did go through my mind, places I might go or should go, but I wasn't really heading for them, just going in their general direction.

One of the things I should do was see my father, who was at work several miles away to the southeast. In some versions of the scene I think I did contact him or even go to him, but in other versions I didn't. He was expected to come home later that day, but I felt it was important to contact him first, to warn him about the clouds. I did come to feel that he knew about the situation, that he had been told somehow by someone, but I still worried. I also came to see in my mind, several times, him driving home, sometimes not far away now, with someone with him, perhaps my mother or perhaps someone else. It was later in the afternoon, though, when that happened, almost like I was temporarily ahead in time. It's possible, too, that the part about my father was actually part of a different dream, one that I had a decade or two later, but it's hard to know for sure now.

I continued to walk along the sidewalk, heading east. The clouds were lower now, though still high, and it was no later than the middle of the afternoon.

Strange, mutant creatures began to follow me, generally from a distance. Sometimes I walked by some of them, too, and sometimes I saw some a hundred feet or so away off to the side.

The earlier ones tended to be more human in appearance, though rather brutish, like ogres or even cavemen. The very first ones were probably bald, though with a slight stubble of hair on their heads and faces. A little later some of them had mops of dark hair, and sometimes hair like what might be produced by putting a bowl over their heads and cutting off everything under it. As time went on, stranger and stranger ones showed up.

There were not large numbers of them, and they tended to be in ones or twos or threes. The numbers increased over time, and I started to see large groups of them, standing in broad lines facing toward me. They generally had frowns on their faces and sometimes slight smiles. They seemed to have an interest in me, though a mild and somewhat confused one, like they weren't sure yet what to do. I felt that they were directed by someone, though, someone far away. Someone who had sent them after me, but who had not yet told them what to do when they found me.

As I walked, I came increasingly into a more developed area, part of a town. After a while, I was walking along a line of extremely strange and warped looking creatures. They seemed to radiate a kind of vague, amused malevolence. The clouds were much lower now, not far overhead.

I eventually came to a low, dark building, perhaps a restaurant, facing me on a cross street. I went in. Looking outside, I saw lots of the bizarre creatures gathering together on the sidewalk, forming a long line that was sometimes two or three creatures deep. They were not overly tall, tending to be mostly somewhere in the three to five foot area, though an occasional one was taller. Some of them had big shoulders and short necks, sometimes no necks at all. Some of them had very long arms, frequently with short legs. Many of them had very wide mouths, cartoonishly wide. They murmured among themselves, making strange growly sounds. Some of them were looking toward the building, and some were even looking vaguely in my direction, though generally in an unfocused way. They milled around out there, waiting, growing in numbers. It was scary.

Dream - Low purple clouds and disaster

Long ago, perhaps in the mid 1980s, I had a dream of very low purple clouds, low enough at times to touch. There were flashes and tornados in the clouds, I think even a disastrously large tornado or two. I think maybe a UFO or two as well. Most of the time I watched the clouds from the ground, but I think I also flew above them at times. The clouds were very threatening and seemed like a psychic phenomenon of some kind, and could somehow bring about or carry with them something that could bring about the end of the world.

Dream - Pizza-size pancakes, transparent figures in the sky

On Sunday, July 24, 2007, sometime during the day, I had a dream about pizza-size pancakes being delivered, and then seeing transparent figures in the sky.

In the dream, I was at the radiator shop. Unlike in real life, a tall, maybe 10 foot high, flat, green, metal fence was in the back, almost screen-like. I'm not sure what the timeframe was. It might have been in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

A Michel's Supply truck came and parked in the dirt and gravel parking lot in the front, somewhat to the left side, as determined when facing out toward the street. It was at a slight angle, with the back of the truck toward the shop. A man with a beard tried to unload a large, steaming hot box of pizza-sized pancakes (he had heated them up in the truck). He had the box in a two-wheeled dolly, and turned toward the shop and started going across the lot to take it inside. A second box was in the truck, apparently to be unloaded next. Other people were up in the truck bed, working, moving boxes, apparently ones for other places.

I was hungry and the pancakes looked inviting, but I tried to explain that I didn't order them. He wanted to give them to me anyway. We argued about it for a while, standing in the parking lot between the truck and the shop. He went back to the truck, then, leaving the dolly with the box of pancakes, and came back with a small book of invoices, which he held out and showed to me. They had my signature on them, but none of them were for the pancakes and none of them were recent. He finally turned the dolly with the pancakes around to take them back, but turned his head back to me with a somewhat sardonic look and asked when I was going to pay the previous bills. I wasn't sure how much cash I had on me, maybe none, and I didn't think I had much money in the checking account, maybe not enough to cover other things I had to pay, and I looked away and kind of nonchalantly said something like, "Oh, sometime..."

After a while I went out into the street. It was getting toward night. I looked up and saw some dark clouds and thought that if I concentrated I could fly up to them and through them, to somewhere else. I tried, and after a little while managed to fly up to them, but they changed to a mass of small, heavy-outlined transparent figures turned this way and that, seeming to be caught in the act of running.

I went through them and found myself in a restaurant. It had some people, but not a large number. I was in a booth near a window with someone, perhaps my father. Other people were there that I knew, in other booths or standing in various places.

Dream - In the Matrix

Almost four months ago, I had a strange dream that had some Matrix-like elements.

In the dream, a series of minor adventures occurred. I kept worrying about a cloud, though, that was off to my left at an angle. It was a dark cloud, almost black, and it had two eyes and two stick-like arms that extended down from it, bent, dividing at the ends into two stick-like fingers or claws. The cloud was pointed out to me by someone in the dream, and I was reminded of it occasionally as the dream progressed.

It was supposed to be approaching me, though it was actually pointed to the side and not right at me, and I never actually saw it move. When I looked at it from time-to-time, it did seem sometimes that it had gotten closer. It seemed to be something dangerous, although I'm not certain in what way, and sometimes I seemed to feel a hunger from it. I was concerned about the cloud coming, but I knew that there was no way to avoid it, that its arrival was only a matter of time. There was nothing I could do, other than to try and keep it in mind.

A time finally came, then, when the cloud was much closer, and then, suddenly, it was everywhere and I was inside it.

Everything felt different inside the cloud. There was a quietness, and it felt like the world had changed, and I think that somehow the world had changed, at least the part that was in there with me. My surroundings did not seem to be the same, and I appeared to be alone. The light was softer and maybe a little dimmer, but only a few wisps of gray cloud material were actually visible, smoke-like, at least nearby. There seemed to be a feeling of greater density around the border, which was quite a distance off. A figure was walking toward me along a broad area to the left, an area lit with soft light.

The figure came up beside me and a voice said, in my mind, that reality was not as we thought it was. That we placed construct on top of construct.

And I looked to a large area in front of me and to the right. It was filled with people and things. And the people and things started to disappear, several at a time, until, finally, reality itself disappeared. In its place was a vast flat plane, softly lit and soft-edged, colored like dark honey. At widely separated distances, tall, thin spikes went up, like sudden jiggles on a seismograph, and near the spikes were other people or entities, one-to-a-spike.

Beside me, on my left and slightly in front, a tall spike or spire went up. I felt that it actually came down, though, and embedded itself in the plane, the flat surface around me. The spike seemed to have a very thin sliver of a second spike associated with it, that did not extend upwards very far. The main spike was not actually circular in cross-section, but was significantly extended front-to-back, like a small wall that went up and up. And up. It extended a vast distance and then connected to a dark flat object sticking out far, far above me.

The object was another plane of existence, but one that had a leading edge on it. The edge was irregular and had a major rounded area in the center and lesser lobes to each side, much like the dark cloud had looked, at least in outline. The spike or spire or narrow wall went up and joined it on the bottom of the plane near the front, looking almost like the keel on a boat.

My awareness moved closer to the dark plane, and I could see small figures on it, looking down in different directions. I moved closer and I could see that they were short and somewhat thick, with rounded stomachs. They were human in appearance but were blue in color, a slightly grayed and darkened blue. They seemed to be dressed in pants and short, open vests, looking almost like pirates, though genies is an alternate explanation. I felt that one of them was the leader, the one that was looking most in my direction, or at least in the direction of my body. His head was bald on top, with very short, dark hair on the sides. He seemed to be directing the others in some way. They all seemed to be intent on something and very business-like in what they were doing.

I felt that they were concerned with watching over me in some way, protecting me, like guardian angels might do.

Dream - The cloud came down

Early in February of 2005 I had a strange dream. My mother was showing me some books and papers from a few decades ago, from when I was in the 7th or 8th grade. There was a book with a plain, dark blue cover, and it had a few extra pages at the beginning with a paragraph or two on them. Whoever added the pages seemed to be intending to speak directly to me. My mother found another copy of the book that didn't have the extra pages.

I also found a paper where some kind of board game had been drawn, apparently by me. Then I walked along over a small bridge in the dark, and turned around and walked back, going down through the dry river bed and then back up. As I neared the road again, there was a slight rise of dry ground, and in the light that shown from somewhere I saw that sections had been marked on the path, like heavy dotted lines drawn across it. I realized that I was living the board game. There were also instructions written on the path, things I was supposed to do if I stepped in particular areas. I saw a dinosaur, somewhat larger than a man, perhaps somewhat like Tyrannosaurus rex or maybe even Godzilla, come from the bushes on the left and then retreat backwards, as if showing what was supposed to happen if I stepped in a certain area. A man came from the right and then retreated, also. I pretty much ignored the writing on the path, deciding that I didn't have time to go through this. I moved quickly across the marked segments and onto the road, where I met someone else, but I don't remember who.

After a while I ended up at a book store. I spent a lot of time looking over some books there. They had a section where I found another copy of the old book. This one had some damage inside; the first few pages were crinkled and folded over along the edge, and appeared to have suffered water damage, because they were soft and not smooth anymore. Someone had carefully hand-printed in mixed upper and lower case a long message or statement on the first two or three pages.

In the middle upper-third of the first page a blank area had been left, with the words going around it on either side. In the middle of the blank area, an address label had been placed. The address label was silver with black lettering, and had my name and address on it.

There were other books there too, in that section, including tall, magazine-size paperbacks perhaps 3/4 of an inch thick, that appeared to be tutorials, as for math, etc. These books were also old, and appeared to be well thumbed through, with lots of grime along the edges.

I came back a little later and the shelves in that area were mostly bare, with the books (and some old magazines) dumped in boxes. It seems that they were getting rid of them; they were going to throw them away. I looked through some of it; it generally looked pretty ratty, but I wanted it anyway. If I actually bought them though, they still wanted full price even though they were in bad shape and were going to be thrown away. A man who worked there kept coming up to me and urging me to buy them, with a very earnest expression on his face. I hated to pay full price for old, damaged books that they were planning to throw away. I also didn't want to steal them, because that would be wrong, even if they were going to be thrown away shortly.

The dream changed to something else, and it seems that there was an intermediate part that I don't remember. I was in a strange house in the desert, though. It seemed to be in an isolated area, perhaps central or northern Nevada. The house was big, with big rooms and long windows facing the outside. The house was single story and seemed to be made of concrete, with a flat roof. I was there with my mother, talking to her.

As we walked, moving to a different part of the house, I looked out the windows and saw the outside. It was late in the day, and some strange clouds were in the sky. The clouds were dark, especially in a segmented arc that went across them. The clouds also had an orange tinge. I tried to get my mother to look at the clouds, telling her how bad they looked, but she seemed distracted and kept on talking. I was finally able to get her attention, though. The clouds started emitting a series of brilliant flashes, sometimes completely blinding and sometimes just partially so. It wasn't lightning, it was the cloud itself flashing. Particularly the dark segmented area that went in an arc.

Then the cloud turned a variety of colors and the whole cloud was formed of segments joined together, and was very close and low. As I kept looking from the cloud to my mother and back again, it seemed that almost each time I saw the cloud it was different. Now the segments had colored flags hanging from them, advertising different things. I tried to point this out to my mother, but it was hard to get her attention. When I looked back at the cloud, all the flags had fallen off except one red one with white letters, saying "Drink Coca-Cola", and it was hanging from one corner. Then it fell, too, and the color of the cloud was light gray with an orange tint again. The cloud material seemed to almost be boiling in place.

The cloud was very low now, and very, very close. The segments that formed the arc were roughly square-shaped, and now had other segments going back on radial lines, like I was seeing a portion of a disc. From where the middle of the disc would be, a column of cloud started pouring down. It was light gray with an orange tint, like the rest of it, and slowly spread out where it hit the ground. The cloud was moving toward me, taking the column with it. There was an uncovered concrete patio outside, with a long picnic table on it with one end facing me. I saw the cloud column start to move along the top of the picnic table, with the bottom of the column spreading out on the table top.

I was filled with a real urgency, that we had to get away somehow, that we had to hide, that it was coming for us. I could also hear a Navy plane going by very low, and maybe caught a glimpse of it, and heard it crash somewhere nearby. I tried to tell my mother that we had to get away from the cloud, that we had to hide from it, that we had to stop it from getting us, and she finally realized what I was saying.

We started going deeper into the house, with me leading the way, going to the left, down a broad hallway. As we went, the path was slightly downward, because the rooms became partially recessed into the ground. My mother stopped at a place in the hallway where a type of cupboard was. It had a large, painted, plywood door on its side, opening upwards, set a few feet up in the wall. My mother climbed onto the long shelf behind it, and lay partly curled up on her side. The door didn't want to quite close all the way, because her knees and elbows were sticking out. I tried to convince her that that might not be the best place, but she wanted to stay there.

I moved on and looked into a large room that had a long row of windows facing the outside. That wasn't hidden enough, so I looked in the next room, which was at the end of the building at one side. It was dark, and was sunken several feet into the ground and was completely lined with tall heavy bookcases filled with books. I knew that it had a long row of windows high in the wall, but they were completely covered by the bookcases. I thought that it might be a good place to hide in, but I also worried that if the cloud came, I wouldn't be able to escape, since there was only one way out.

I was also worried about the front entrance to the house. Was it locked? It seemed that it might not be. Was it even shut securely? I had a picture in my mind of the two glass doors, with one of them slightly ajar.

I looked back toward the front, up the broad, sloping hallway, and saw a slight orange haze in the air. And there was the pilot from the plane, standing at the other end of the house. He threw a toy football at me. I caught it, and it had a rubber-like surface, not very tightly inflated. It had seams, or what were intended to be seams, running from back to front and another around the middle. Each segment formed by the seams was of a different color. One was white, one was dark blue, another was a dark gray-green, I think one was black, and there were other colors, too. I looked to throw it back to him, but he was gone. There was just the darkness and the haze.

I threw it anyway, toward a corner where I thought that he might be, but somehow I had it back again. I started to move forward, to look for him.

All of a sudden he was there, stepping into a doorway right beside me. I was really startled, and somewhat scared. He stood there, leaning forward slightly, with a malicious grin on his face. He had a lot of soot on him, and he had something dark smeared around his eyes, which were too large and far too pale. His face was slightly roundish, and he looked like he might be partly Hispanic. He was wearing a green uniform with straps around the legs, wrapping the material to him so that it was almost form-fitting. He had straps crossing his chest, too, but I think they were really too small to be ammo belts.

I tried desperately to get him to call the base, to tell them of our situation. He didn't seem to care that much about it, and was sarcastic and basically acting like a wiseguy. I finally got him to use a very large, blocky, black phone that was hanging on the wall. It had an old-fashioned dial on it, the kind with a ring of holes that you put a finger in and turn, except that it was huge and had extra holes so you could stick several fingers in at once.

He finally took the receiver off, put it to his head and stuck his fingers in the dial and started turning it. However, he started talking immediately, like it was a direct connection. His fingers turned the dial while he was talking, and a loud clicking, ratcheting sound filled the air, along with a loud phone-ringing sound that varied in intensity and timing. He talked loudly, I think maybe in almost a sing-song voice, acting like it really didn't matter.

I saw in my mind's eye a person on the other end with a headset, sitting and listening. He was wearing a light-colored military uniform, with at least one person on each side of him. The other people were perhaps standing. The person taking the call was frowning and trying to make sense of what was being said. He kept saying "What?" or something similar. The Navy pilot, or whatever he was, wasn't really making any sense, and I could tell that he wasn't really concerned about making any sense either, that it was deliberate.

And the dream ends there.