Dream Wall

If you are reading this then I am dead, my life taken by my own hands. But please do not judge me. Over the last couple of days, events occurred that are beyond my understanding and beyond the scope of the science of human beings. I am writing this account of those events in the hopes that it will be an asset to the future in helping to understand these types of things. By the time you are done reading this account, I hope you will understand why I am going to kill myself and even maybe forgive me for the sin I am about to commit. And may God himself forgive me.

I am Dr. Phillip Harris, a professor of oneirology, or the study of dreams, at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. I have studied dreams for all my life, and consider myself an expert on the subject but the events that occurred over the past few days have baffled me as to their circumstances and occurrence.

On the evening of October 10, 1927 I was doing a lecture about lucid dreaming at the university. After the lecture, as everyone was filing out of the room, I was approached by Edward Jacobs, one of my students. Edward was one of the best students in my class and it was always a pleasure to grade his papers because of how well he understood the concepts being taught. On this evening asked if he could talk to me and I agreed. He told me of a recurring dream he had been having for the past couple of weeks.

He explained the dream in a great deal of detail. After he falls asleep he is in a completely white space, no structures or anything. He looks around and is terrified at what he finds behind him. Rising as high as the eye can see and fading into the distance on both sides is a monstrous wall of white brick. The size of this wall cannot be measured and Edward believes that it stretches to infinity in all three directions, but cannot give a reason for this line of thinking. He stares at this horrible wall feeling an intense sense of terror at its tremendous size. He then proceeds to approach it, the feeling of dread growing ever stronger. A hand reaches out in front of him and he realizes its source. His hand touches the terrible wall and finds it to be ice cold, chilling him to the very soul; it’s smooth like metal despite being made of brick. Then, unconsciously he begins knocking on the wall, not being able to control the falls of his hands. He wants to stop it for some reason he does not fully understand, as if something behind the wall will hear and react. Each knock is deafening, echoing as many as fifteen times through the empty abyss. And then, on the third knock, Edward says he wakes up in a cold sweat.

This wall interests me because of its apparent symbolism. Dreams often use symbols to mimic real life problems, such as dreaming of driving a car and suddenly losing control. This dream uses the symbol of a car going out of control as a sign that you subconsciously believe you have no control over your life. There are many different explanations for dreaming about a wall, but I have never heard of a dream containing a wall that goes on forever in every direction. The knocking on the wall also interests me. First is that the knocks are so loud that they echo a substantial amount of time. Second, what could be the reason for there being three knocks?

I told him that I had no explanation for his dream, no symbols that I could explain. He looked disturbed at not being able to understand his own dream and I couldn’t stand such a great student not being able to explain the effects of the science he is studying on his own life. I decided that I would help him study this dream, as I would like to understand it as well. Miskatonic University has an extremely advanced sleep lab, being able to study the brainwaves during sleep and even a method to induce a lucid dream. A lucid dream is a dream where the dreamer is in control of his or her dream world, able to manipulate and bend it to their will. I told Edward of my plans and he thanked me from the bottom of his heart. Now, as a recall the events that were triggered by this simple experiment, I wish to God that I hadn’t done it.

In order to augment the advanced technology of the Miskatonic sleep lab I told him of a machine that I have been building since 1922. The machine is sort of like a microphone that can enable a person that is asleep to communicate with the waking world, but only if the sleeping person is experiencing a lucid dream. Through my studies I have found that the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for speech, continues to work during REM sleep, although very slightly. This is the reason people sometimes talk in their sleep, but a lot of what they're saying in their dream is not expressed strong enough in this part of the brain to have it expressed through the mouth.. What my machine does is amplify this, allowing the speech of a dreaming person to be heard in the waking world through a speaker.

The next day, October 11, 1927, Edward accompanied me to the Miskatonic dream lab. I set him up on one of the tables and attached wires to him to be able to monitor his brain waves. I then proceeded to hook up the object that would trigger a lucid dream. This is a small object that is placed around one of the subject's fingers that, while dreaming, I will trigger to induce a lucid dream. In order to experience a lucid dream, the dreamer must be aware that he is dreaming. In order to do this, we flow an electric current to the subject's finger, just enough to allow them to realize that they are dreaming but not enough to wake them up. Finally, I hooked up my own invention that would allow me to communicate with Edward while he is dreaming. It's a single wire that is attached to the subject's forehead and will pick up even the smallest workings of the cerebral cortex, translating it, and transmitting it through the speaker. Edward is able to hear me if I just speak normally.

With Edward hooked up to all the systems, we commenced the experiment. It took a while for him to fall asleep with all the wires attached to him, but after a little before an hour he was unconscious. I monitored Edward's brain waves as they traveled from light sleep to REM, and when he entered REM I triggered the electric shock that would alert him to his dreaming. A few minutes after the shock I heard from the speaker on my machine the first words ever picked up from a sleeping person. He asked me is I could hear him and I answered in the affirmative. I then asked him what he saw.

Edward replied that it was an empty void, white all around and it felt as if the world was flowing, not quite solid. He looked at his hands and replied that his fingers were stretching ever so slightly. I told him to experiment with his power of manipulation and he replied that he could lift up into the air, he summoned a chair, and other awe-inspiring feats. He then proceeded to look around and told me all he saw was white until he turned around.
A few seconds past and I began to get worried whether I had lost contact with Edward, but then a noise came from the speaker. I spoke to him, trying to get him to talk to me again and then disjointed words began leaking from the speaker as if trying to form a sentence. Again I tried to talk to him and asking what he sees and was answered by two words: a wall.

I asked him to look around in all directions to see if he could find an end and was told there was no end as far as he could see. I then asked him to walk in a direction to see if he could eventually find one, but after two hours with no response I told him to stop. Being a dream, lucid even, Edward should be able to control his dream as he did earlier and make the wall disappear so I told him to give it a shot.

To no avail he replied the wall wasn't doing anything no matter how he tried. The only thing left to do was to use force. I relayed to Edward my line of thinking and he accepted it. He told me that he was going to try and knock it down with a sledge hammer that he had produced. Some time passed, how much I'm not entirely sure, but I remember when he broke through.
A loud screech flew from the microphone, almost causing me to lose my balance and I started yelled at Edward asking him what happened but was met with no response. I rushed to his sleeping body and began shaking him out of his sleep and succeeded. What happened next startled me. Edward jumped up and was screaming and running backward. I could make out only a few words, something that sounded like "Get away" like I was going to hurt him.

He huddled up against the wall and I managed to have him acknowledge me and he stopped screaming. I tried to talk to him, to ask him what happened but he wouldn't say anything. He was visibly shaking, trembling with fear; of what I do not know for sure even now.

I took him home to my house, believing he was not fit to travel home. I fell asleep at around eleven, but I'm not sure that Edward would sleep. Early in the morning, before sunrise, I was awakened by loud thumps coming from Edward's room. When I got to his door it was locked and I could still hear noises coming from the room. I slammed up against it several times and eventually it gave way. What I saw chilled my blood ; Edward was curled up in the corner of the room whimpering and crying. When I looked up there was a knife embedded into the wall with a dozen other puncture marks all around it.

Something had frightened him, enough to believe he could injure it. I feared that my experiment on Edward had destroyed his mind driven him insane. By light of his outburst I couldn't let him walk freely anymore as he could injure himself or others. For this reason I committed him to Arkham Asylum and began writing a letter to his parents inform them of their son's state.

As I was finishing the letter I received a call from the asylum telling me to come right away, though I was not informed for what reason. Upon my arrival I was informed of the death of Edward and almost collapsed to the floor, my knees losing strength. Wanting to know how it happened they said to see for myself as they had no idea how Edward was killed.
Finally reaching his cell, I peered inside immediately recoiled in disgust. Even now trying to interpret what I saw and how I felt at that moment causes my hand to tremble. Someone that wasn't there and didn't see the body will never know the full extent of the terror and loathing felt at the sight of such grotesqueness.

Edward was lying at the back of the room, leaning against the wall. Blood... there was blood everywhere. Before that incident I could not imagine a human being could hold so much blood. His neck... or lack thereof was the worst of the sight, it was the worst thing I had ever seen. It was as if he ripped his own throat out but... it was so deep, I don't believe there was any way for Edward to have been able to do that to himself. At least all of it. He eyes were glazed over in fear, deep scratches ran the length of his face. His mouth was frozen in a silent scream.
The image is now burned into my mind and there is no way to forget it. If you had seen it you would understand. I do not believe that Edward killed himself, as insane as that sounds. I probably belong in an asylum as much as Edward did. But just thinking of what killed Edward, if it indeed wasn't himself, brings up dreaded thoughts of things I read about in the Necronomicon, by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.

Whatever killed Edward, I hope to God I never find out. There are some things in this world that should never be discovered though the want to know everything is great. Knowledge is like a drug, you need more and more of it after you've gotten a taste. That is one flaw of the human race: they crave knowledge even if it will bring their downfall. The advancement of science and the craving of more and more knowledge will eventually bring the downfall of humanity. There is no doubt in my mind. And I don't want to be around when it happens.

My thirst for knowledge overpowered my thoughts and now it is too late. A boy, one of my students, is dead and I am the cause. I allowed something it be let loose in Edward's mind and it led to his death, either by his own hand or... something else. I cannot live any longer with these two factors crowding my thoughts.

Perhaps now you realize the reason for my actions, maybe not condoning them but at least accepting them. May God, if he exists, have mercy on my soul.