Invisible Touch

Invisible Touch

Chapter 4 ~ The Dreams

Ernie Maxwell was always a writer. Sure, he engaged in the usual boy-traditional activities of ball playing and digging in the mud and pirate ship with sticks for swords. But when it was time to write in his journal, he wasn't ashamed to put pen to paper. While other boys turned out fairly meaningless content, just to fill the page, Ernie wrote about things that really mattered to him.

Today's writing prompt was "write about your earliest memory." It was the second day of school, and the first journal writing assignment, but second grade teacher Miss Sanders preferred this theme to the more traditional "what did you do during your summer vacation." It told her more about the children and it wasn't something they might have been prepared for. Unless an older sibling was one of her former pupils, that is.

She looked around the room as soon as she instructed the class to begin work. She noted which students began writing right away and which ones looked around the room for inspiration. Ernie was in that first group.

"When I was litel, I went to the park and ate ice crem. My Gramma and Grampa tok me. Mom died when I was born but she luvd me the same as a hundrid yerz. There were squillz in the park and they ran up and down the trez. I get hedaks and the doktr thinks I have a lergeez. My dreems are wird and I dont slep gud."

Miss Sanders read from each student's journal. This one was very interesting. It had the typical early childhood spelling mistakes, but that didn't matter at all. It was very expressive for a seven year old. This boy was off to a good start in his writing.

Much of what he'd written, she already knew from the file the school district kept on each student as continuity from year to year. His mother had died from complications during childbirth. It was rare in this day and age, but still happened, and gave her a chill as she was reminded of it. Ernie's maternal grandparents were raising him, she also knew. She didn't know anything about his father, whether there was a death or divorce. It wasn't any of her business, she supposed, even if it did make her a little bit curious. "A hundred years," he had written -- how sweet. He was surely being raised by loving par -- grandparents, she corrected herself. The headaches and... ahh, allergies, he had written. This was something she did not know, something she would have to keep an eye on, in case it might affect his school work. Weird dreams and sleeplessness. This gave her pause, and she made some remarks in a notebook of her own.

The dreams had started when Ernie was five year old. And "weird" was certainly one way to describe them. They fell into two categories. In some of the dreams he could see detailed pictures of a person, awash in a colorful hazy fog -- pink, yellow, green, almost like a halo. In other dreams he could barely make out the details of the picture, but more prominent were foggy waves of color -- sometimes all he would see were the colors. The dreams didn't frighten him at all, but they absorbed his consciousness and he found it difficult to sleep when he was having one.

Ernie didn't understand the dreams. He had noticed that there were different colors, though, and most of his dreams were colored in pink. And it was very strange, but if he had a "pink dream" about somebody, they were always happy the next day. A few times he had a dream in yellow, but the next day he didn't always see that person. Some of the time the "yellow people" were absent from school the next day with a cold, and some of the time the person would be at school with a runny nose or coughing. How did the yellow dream make that person sick, he wondered. And one time he had a green dream about a girl in his class. The next day they were playing ball at recess and she found a dollar on the playground. This intrigued him. He wished he could have a green dream about himself.

He never did have a dream about himself, though -- always about somebody else. And what he never did notice was that if he merely saw someone or spoke to them, the dream would be just a foggy haze of colors. It was people he touched physically in some way that made the dream clear and detailed.

When he had one of his colorful dreams, he would wonder what it might mean. But when he could see details, he would watch it like a television show. He would become mesmerized by whatever action was taking place. Children playing, that was what he mostly saw. Some of the children would appear fuzzy. But only one of them would ever have the colored halo. Sometimes he could tell who the other children were, but not all the time.

These dreams usually kept him awake at night. His eyes could be open or closed, and he would still see it. Sleep was sporadic, and at best, by the end of the night, might amount to just a couple of hours.

He would read a lot, and this distracted him somewhat, but the dream he was having would blur the words on the page. He could see both at the same time, but found it hard to concentrate on what he was reading.

One night he tried listening to the radio. Music never worked -- this would make him want to dance, not sleep. But news or talk programs were different. They were so boring to him that they made him drowsy, and in the morning he would feel that he had slept a little bit more. And more sleep was better. But when he listened to people talking on the radio, something else happened. All of a sudden, he would have dreams about strangers. They were always dreams of foggy colors, but the faces he saw were completely unfamiliar to him.

He didn't like the dreams about strangers, but it was helping him sleep. He knew he felt better in the morning, and that was what mattered the most.

Through the years, the dreams continued, and so did the consequences that went along with them. He had to work extremely hard in school to make up for the distractions they often caused. The dreams occurred mostly at night, but more and more often would surprise him during the day, obscuring the lesson he was reading in a book or on the blackboard.

But now in the fifth grade, he continued to impress his teachers with his love of school and learning. His grandparents were instilling in him the same work ethic and attitude they had given his mother. Even in their sixties, they were still excellent parents.

As he grew older, Ernie became increasingly aware that his dreams made him different, and he felt embarrassed by this. He was always conscious of wanting to keep his situation to himself. Ernie's school journal might contain stories or poems about things in his life, but it was only in his personal diary that he would reveal, and only to himself, what was really going on inside.

"Mary Randolph punched me in the arm yesterday. I took her pencil, but that's no reason. She's always doing stuff like that, over-reacting. She always has to be dramatic! But last night I had a yellow dream about her. And today she's out sick. I don't get this. It's like every time I have a yellow dream, somebody is sick from school the next day. It's like I'm Carnac or something. It's freaking me out pretty much totally."

As much as Ernie tried to be a model student, his dreams were a problem was not his to control. One day in math class his teacher, asked him a question. Ernie was being bombarded with visions and didn't respond.

"Mr. Maxwell, I'm waiting for an answer to my question," said Mr. Pavin.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat it?" asked Ernie.

"I've already asked you three times, and perhaps you'd rather give your answer to the Principal," threatened the teacher.

"I, uhh, I'm..." He was being bombarded with images of this same teacher, a green fog hanging like mist about him. A noise like static filled Ernie ears, as if he was tuned between stations on a very loud radio.

It began to subside just as Mr. Pavin approached. "Let's go, mister," he said to Ernie, who rose to his feet and headed for the door.

Ernie had never been sent to the Principal's office before, and he hardly knew what would happen there. Mr. Pavin had called ahead and the Principal was waiting outside the office door for him. His poker face gave Ernie no idea what to expect.

"Have a seat, Mr. Maxwell," he told Ernie.

"Yes, Mr. O'Brien," he replied, and did as he was told.

Mark O'Brien was new to all this. Last year he was teaching third graders, who hadn't really needed much discipline at all. Now he was the Principal at Central Lake Middle school. Now he was supposed to be the enforcer. He had been apprised already of Ernie's offense.

"Mr. Pavin tells me you weren't paying attention in class," he said. "I'd like to hear your side of the story."

"Well, he's right, Mr. O'Brien," Ernie confessed. "I was paying attention, I was following the lesson, and then..."

"Go on, Ernie."

"I couldn't hear what he was saying because... I couldn't see and I couldn't hear..." Ernie didn't want to tell the truth, but knew that no made-up story was going to get him out of trouble. "Mr. O'Brien, I have this thing that happens sometimes and I get distracted. It's like a dream, but I get them during the day. Please don't tell my grandparents, Mr. O'Brien. I don't want them to worry about this."

"I see," said the Principal.

"I can't control it, and I'm really sorry. I'll tell Mr. Pavin I'm sorry," Ernie promised.

"Ernie, you're a good boy and a good student. I can tell you you've just confided something you wanted to keep to yourself and I appreciate your honesty. Do you know what happens to honest people, young man?"

"What?" Ernie asked.

"Only good things, Mr. Maxwell. Only good things. It's time for your next class, but I expect you to keep your word and apologize to Mr. Pavin first thing tomorrow."

"I will, I swear," Ernie said, and he meant it.

"Before you go, I'd like to say something else, Ernie," Mr. O'Brien said. "If you ever need help, not just with these distractions, but with anything else, I want you to feel free to come and see me. You have the power to change the future, and I am at your service."

"Thank you sir," Ernie said. And he went to his next class.

Such a great kid, Mr. O'Brien thought. His mother would have been so proud. If only she could see him now... and who knows, maybe she could.

The next day, Ernie went to Mr. Pavin's classroom before homeroom. There was a substitute teacher there in his place. Oh no, Ernie thought. Another dream, another illness.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pavin's not here today," the substitute began. "In fact, I'm sorry to have to tell you this terrible news, but Mr. Pavin called this morning and quit his job."

Ernie froze in horror. What had he done?

"It seems that he picked the six numbers in yesterday's lotto drawing and all of a sudden he's not so interested in coming back to work for some reason."

And the substitute teacher began to laugh.

Ernie thought for a minute. Yes, there had been a dream about Mr. Pavin. But that had been a green dream, hadn't it?

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