Dreams about moving back into your first home are weird.
I'm sure much has been written about childhood nostalgia. The unsettling sadness that remains when the rest of the dream evaporates is like nothing else. And turning your back once more on the place where you were immortal inevitably brings you face-on to the truth of your own death.
Usually, when I dream about 7 Mariner Way, either I have never left in the first place, or nothing has changed in the interim. Last night, though, the furnishings had been updated. Our hideous blue-and-yellow bathroom had been repainted and de-grouted, the weirdly-indented skylight made welcoming and clear, and when I looked into the bedrooms, it was clear other children had been living here. Their toys and books were still on the shelves.
When I asked my mother why their things were in our house, she replied that one of them was on exchange to another country, and had not yet been returned ('been returned' was exactly the phrase she used). I was disturbed by the idea that a strange boy, abandoned in this cruel way by his parents, would knock on our door one day, but that did not stop me wondering which bedroom was his, and how much the contents of the other bedroom would fetch on Ebay.
My old house had a top room which I always felt there was something strange about--it was one of those rooms you wanted to get out of as soon as possible--but I thought that perhaps the previous family had not felt the same way, as it was one of their children's bedrooms. When I came upstairs to help my father move things, I saw his bookshelf. There were two copies of every book, arranged neatly next to each other. I knew then that the room had not changed, and wanted to go.
That dream was by no means as weird as the strange electrical-cult dream I had the other night, but I can only remember little snatches of that one.
Mostly, I was running through and amongst abandoned buildings, avoiding mortar fire, and all the while there was a thick trail of blood on the floor. I remember seeing the barracks of the ally, boxy metal constructions, and considered hiding there for a fraction of a second before having a surprisingly graphic premonition of my own death. Because of course, they would be aiming for military installations.
I had a brief image of their sigil--a red, five-pronged continental electrical socket, the slits arranged in a pyramid. We had angered them by destroying their invisible gods, wandering signals in the air that played music which we had captured for study. I ducked into an abandoned college and found a locker room and bathroom three floors up, where I hid behind a shower curtain, knowing all the while that they would eventually get me. But not with mortar. They wanted me for their laboratories.