Dread

(entry for 2/19/2025)

(note: this post previously appeared on Medium.com, Jan. 31.)


In the 1995 TV miniseries The Langoliers, written and directed by Tom Holland, and based on a novella by Stephen King, the best part is the way the dread builds. You absolutely know that something dreadful is going to happen. And you’re right. Something dreadful does happen: the monsters you’ve been dreading finally show up, and they’re ludicrous: Huge headless jaws with swollen crimson lips and huge white fangs, snapping at anybody and anything in sight. (Sorry if that spoils it for anyone, but if I didn’t spoil it the show would, so who cares?)

For me, almost all ‘horror’ shows, which this allegedly was, suffer from the same disease: the tension builds and builds, the dread mounts, and then, poof, the monster appears and it’s laughable. (Or the bucket of blood gets dumped.) I always actually do laugh at that point, and if I’m watching the show in a movie theater with an audience consisting of horror addicts, I come pretty close to getting thrown out on my ear. If it’s a book I’m reading, with an obvious horrifying painting on the cover, and I start chortling, anyone else in the room looks at me as though I’ve lost my marbles, which I may indeed have at that point.

(There’s one exception. I do have the proper response when the author is Dean Koontz. He does manage to manipulate me in the manner deemed appropriate. I don’t know why he’s any different for me from the others, but he is.)

Thinking about such things, as I have recently while reading a Louise Penny book which incorporates some horror elements into the mystery story (A World of Curiosities, if you’re interested), I suddenly remembered a recurring dream I had as a child. It was about Nameless Dread, whatever that is. There was no monster, so nothing to laugh at. There wasn’t even any thing at all. There was just this overwhelming feeling.

Imagine a huge elaborate mansion with a very simple full basement, which is actually at ground level and which therefore is technically the first floor, rather than a conventional basement. (How the inhabitants of the mansion, if there were any, got into and out of the residence portion was never explained. Dreams are like that.) Among the simplicities is the fact that the only entrance to the basement is from the outside. There is no stairway, no hatch, no method for getting down to that level from inside the upper part. You have to go outside, and then, if you dare, go back in.

The first few times I had the dream, I didn’t. Go back in, that is. I just went around and around the outside, not daring to go through the entrance to the sort of tunnel where the horror, whatever it was, lived. There was no door, just a square opening to the underside of the house, leading one into a dimly lighted but otherwise featureless hallway that ran from midpoint along one wall to the exact center of the edifice, which seemed to be the focal point of the dread.

Now this was not mild. Whenever I had the dream (except the last time), I was absolutely petrified with fear. Yes, I was walking, and yes, my legs were moving. But that was it. Nothing else worked. My heart was either racing, or almost motionless, I could never tell which. I have never felt anything else like it before or since.

The first three occasions when I had the dream were spaced out about a month apart. I was about five or six. All three times were the same: I never made it into the tunnel; I just went around and around the outside till I was almost nauseous with fear.

Then there was a break of about six months. The dream came back about twice a year for the next three years. In each one of these episodes I got a little farther into the tunnel each time, sure I was going to die, feeling absolute horror at the thing, whatever it was, waiting at the end of the corridor. But never quite getting there.

Then there was another break, a longer one. About a year. The second-to-last time I ever had the nightmare I made it almost to the center of the basement, and could even see the center of dreadfulness— a bright yellowish spot on the wall, about eye level, about six inches in diameter, off to the left side of the tunnel. But I dared not touch it, certain that if I did I would experience a horrible death at the end of a long stretch of torture, though what form that torture would take, or how I would finally die, was never clear. (That was part of the dread. Not knowing!)

Finally, about two years after the next-to-last time, I had the last one. By this time I was about ten or eleven, not sure. This time I made it to the end of the tunnel. I touched the spot. Instantly, everything was all right. The dread was gone. There was no danger. No horror. Nothing negative. It was over, and I never had the dream again.

Yes, I am well acquainted with Freud, and his explanation of what tunnels in dreams mean, but I think he’s way off this time. There was nothing remotely sexual about it, and nothing that had to do with parental relationships or anything like that. In fact, I was the only person in the dream. There was just me, and the house, and its basement, and the dread, and the small yellow spot that meant death or worse. That was it.

I had forgotten the dream until I read the Penny book. It had been years since I thought about it. This is the first time I’ve ever told anybody about it. Have never mentioned it to any therapist, or guidance counselor, or friend, or wife, or anyone else. And now the remembrance has come crashing back— to what end?

I don’t know. There’s nothing in the Penny book that remotely resembles it. So why now?

In Curiosities, there's a long stretch where part of the dread comes from wondering if one of the sympathetic characters, whom we've been led to like, is actually the villain, and a horrible one at that. Could it be that the dream was about fearing that I myself was the horror?  And then somehow finding out that I wasn't? It's tempting, but I don't think that's it.

I do have a tentative theory, but it could be way off.

I’ve been dreading old age all my life, trying to put it off. But in spite of all efforts to the contrary, it has finally arrived. I’m old. I have to admit it. I can't pretend any more.  I’ve touched the yellow spot. It hasn’t devoured me.

Here I am! 

All is well.

At least for the moment!


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