By Ann French
Photographer:Ian Britton
The ice cracked. In his dream he watched as the gap widened and he saw the water flowing silently and swiftly beneath his feet. He knew it was freezing cold and that if he fell in, he would die. He would be swept under the ice, his breath would give out, and the dreadful cold would numb him to the bone. He would drown. Deep painful breaths made his lungs ache. His heart beat faster and faster and he could taste his fear.
Jim woke up. Sweat drenched the sheets and the thundering of blood pounding in his ears was so loud he was frightened to move in case he had a heart attack. Gradually it lessened. The black dots that danced before his eyes, vanished and his breathing returned to normal.
He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. It was early morning and he flicked on the switch. His reflection stared back. He was pale with huge shadows under his eyes. The word 'haunted' sprang to his mind. There was no doubt the nightmares were getting worse and becoming more real. Now he could taste and feel the horrors that came in his sleep. They tormented him and he could not remember when he last had a good night's sleep. Certainly not in the last six months.
His head ached and he found a couple of Digesic in the cabinet and swallowed them. His chest was sore as though the effort of breathing while fighting the dream had damaged the muscles. "That's all I need. To die of a heart attack while having a nightmare," he thought.
Jim went back into the bedroom and changed the sheets. They were wet as if he had left them out in the rain. He crawled back into bed, read for a while but sleep was a long time coming.
He had dreamed all his life but these nightmares were a new experience. He researched books at the library about them but learned nothing that was any use to him. He thought of consulting a therapist but decided he might be laughed at and instead went to the doctor who prescribed sleeping pills. He slept so soundly that twice had woken with the breath whistling through his mouth, his heart beating out of his chest and a feeling that Death had been standing by his bed. He stopped taking the medication.
The dreams differed. Sometimes he ran from something or someone that filled him with such dread that he once woke and found he had urinated and soaked the bed down to the mattress. Another time he dreamed he was staked out. Giant insects of every kind, spiders, scorpions, cockroaches and beetles, climbed over him and into every orifice. He woke screaming and a neighbour called the police, thinking he was being attacked.
No nightmare was ever the same but the worst were those about water. Ever since he could remember, Jim had been afraid of drowning and these dreams made him incapable of running or swimming. In one nightmare, he stood motionless, unable to move a muscle as a tsunami bore down on him. The wave, hundreds of metres high towered over him and though he strained his eyes upwards, it was so immense he could not see the top. It fell upon him just as he woke up.
Jim was an intelligent man but lack of sleep had an adverse affect on his personal and working relationships. He lost his job as a computer consultant after insulting a client (the day after the insect dream) and his girlfriend moved out saying she was sick and tired of listening to him scream and thrash around in his sleep.
The job he had now meant he worked at night and could sleep in the day. When the sun shone through the blinds, he was not so frightened of sleeping. He ate better, felt better, even happy but this last week the dreams had intensified and he was back to his pale, shadowy self.
He worked at the Glide Ice Rink, cleaning the changing rooms, repairing skates and after everyone left for the day, driving the giant ice groomer which smoothed and scraped the surface of the rink for the following day. He enjoyed it although it was repetitious work and took pride in the appearance of the large oval skating circuit with its white, shining surface.
There was no water beneath the ice. Water was sprayed onto the surface and large motors beneath the rink caused it to freeze like a giant refrigerator. It was a metre thick and checked frequently through the course of each day which was why the dream was so strange.
On Monday night when Jim went to work, there were not many customers. The weather was cold and stormy and snow was predicted for some time during the evening. By 11 pm everyone had gone and Jim began his rounds. He cleaned the changing rooms, checked the skates for nicks and loose blades and then climbed into the ice groomer. The motor started with a roar. Lumbering out onto the ice, Jim forgot about his dream. Up and down he drove, scraping and scalloping, pushing the 'dead' ice up to the barriers where later he would scoop it up and dispose of it.
The overhead lights flickered and dimmed then surged back on. For a second his mind refused to accept what his eyes saw then frantically he tried to reverse the huge machine. He saw the crack in the ice racing towards him and the green water oozing through the split. The engine stalled and Jim knew that time was running out. Jumping from the cab, he skidded and slid across the icy surface, making for the barrier and safety. As though reading his mind, the fissure sped up and cut off his escape route. There was nowhere to go unless he wanted to leap across the gap in the ice, which was widening by the second. He jumped. And plummeted into the freezing water that snatched the breath from his body. The swift current swept him under the surface and he had only a moment to contemplate his fate before the extreme cold caused him to convulse. Through the coffin of the ice, he could dimly see the groomer listing heavily to one side. Then it was gone. For a fleeting instant he tried to imagine that this was only a dream but then that thought too vanished and his lungs sucked in the watery death.
The fissure retreated, closed and healed itself. The overhead lights dimmed and retreated into darkness until only the glow of the ice penetrated the night.