Woking, Surrey, 1993-1994
I have never heard a voice like it since, so deep and resonant. I was
lying drifting around the vast cliffs, the worn gull encircled rock-faces of my mind.
Supine on my single bed eyes closed to the world outside. He (for a
voice so deep and beautiful could only belong to a man beyond a man)
called me by my name. Startled I sat up
in bed, who had called? Like Samuel in the temple I ran onto the
landing to see the face behind the voice, but there was nobody there,
not even Eli.
It was the only time I have ever heard a voice outside, but words and
voices patter statements across my mind and into my inner ear.
Sometimes in day, sometimes in dreams, and they are mostly lost before
my pen captures their depth in eternity. I was seventeen years old, and
my dreams and terrors were becoming more and more disturbed. So many
lucid dreams, it seems I had dreamt a whole new reality I could live
within.
Kilburn, London, Autumn 1995.
It's the early hours of the morning, and my large bay-windowed bedroom
in the creaking Victorian house is silent. With only the dim light from
the street-lamps spilling over the half-familiar shapes, the bookcases,
desk, armchairs and shadows, this is my twilight world, the nest of my
resting thoughts. The whole of the house is silent. All seven of my
friends, who share this dwelling, are sleeping silently. Four young men
and four young women lie, each in their own room, each with their own
dream or patch of oblivion, each with their own half-read books
discarded amongst empty beer cans and joss-sticks. They rest the long
night in peace - except for one.
I'm not sure how long I have been awake, I left my dreams slowly like a
receding tide, and now aware, even in the sleepy hours, of the
possessions I harbour in the secret chamber of the night. Then It
begins, the familiar sensation of paralysis, fear and impending doom.
They come forth the spectral wraiths from the gloom, the malevolent
nothingness of their hooded faces closing in on me. From the torture of
past experience I know there is no escape .No movement afforded, no
noise to my silent scream. Yet I scream in my mind for help, and a
surge of feeling rushes through my body and spirit, each nerve ending
ablaze with a experience beyond anything you have ever known and beyond
any words I, the master of words can assemble. Not good, not bad, it is
its sheer intensity that is too much, then it bursts through, out of
the skin of my soul and body and into my mind, taking my mind away, out
of the old rags of my physical presence into the room beyond. My mind
cries out one last time, calls on the name of the one in who's name I
bore my own new name. Crashing through the merger of my room and
flashes a blue-white light and before I pass into unconsciousness I
wonder whether the angels have arrived.
Bethnal Green, Summer 2000
I have been lying napping during the day again, although time in this
my life no longer has any meaning. For more than six months I have been
drinking and dropping, drinking and dropping, rarely stopping to catch
my breath, and the pain of this has taken its toll on my mind and body.
I had always felt that some monster was lurking just behind me, but
until it enveloped my life in despondency, I had no idea just how ugly
and relentless it was.
So I gaze across the room and inwardly groan, as I feel the familiar
flicker of eye- movement and helplessness. I now know the way to pull
myself from this mind inflicted anaesthetic of my motor neurones. I try
and ignore the evil one as I turn all my will to one hand, trying to
re-establish connection between my mind and fingers, jolt just one
digit into a brief motion, that the rest of my stuck limbs will follow
and I can wrench myself out of this waking nightmare. He is alone, the
evil one, but closer than ever before, and it is not long before I
realise my hallucination is in bed beside me. My second body fights off
his relentless attack, whilst my corporeal body remains powerless. I
will never give up you know. Through horror, dread, fear of the dead,
and what my head can create for itself. I will wrestle them until I
die, these my personal demons. For when they return now they their
assaults are ruthless. My ability retreat back into your world wanes.
Each battle seems longer, yet I will grow stronger, and wait for the
angels.
