Some would say I dreamt those events, and had suffered nothing more than an unusual nightmare. I would like to think this is true. Mamie’s sleepwalking ceased that night, as did the crying sounds from the hill, and never again did I see the creature I witnessed upon its peak, though never again will I set foot there.
Whatever the cause of Mamie’s odd behavior its effect has apparently passed for good because she seems happier than I have ever known her to be. She rubs her belly each night, content that she has recently started to develop a bump where her blossoming child grows. I smile at her exactly as often as she smiles at me, honestly happy in the pregnancy but secretly grow fearful of what may become of us. I keep telling myself that it was but a dream yet the sound still haunts me.
The terrible sound that reached me in the darkness, that hideous sound that so terrified my nights, did not come from the beast upon the hill. No, not from the throat of some animal, but from that of my wife as she lay beneath that unnameable horror, writhing not in terror… but in ecstasy.
Juan Miguel Marin
RIEMANNIAN DREAMS
Nighttime. Recurring dream. Water cascades into the pool. I walk towards the waterfall, my bare feet noiselessly stepping over the dream sand, my bare skin exposed to the cool air, barely covered only by a loincloth. The rushing sound of the water cascading will soon become the seductive voice saying only one word, almost a whisper: “Come.”
There. I hear it.
The voice appeals to my body’s instincts, sending to slumber the scientist in me, lulling to sleep my rational mind. I fight it. I keep my mind alert by keeping in mind the facts.
Fact one: the dream’s origin lies in something mundane: the voice recorded as publicity for my recently acquired Edison phonograph prototype.
Fact two: I helped the American inventor, Herr Thomas Alva Edison, with the physics behind the acoustics and received a phonograph as gift.
Fact three: I listened to the phonograph’s voice so now, whoever the actor with the androgynous voice is, has now become embodied in my fantasy. But I have to admit something erotic about the test voice emerges when combined with the rushing waterfall, its rushing white noise serving as stage for the voice revealing itself:
I am the Edison phonograph, created by the great wizard of the New World to delight those who would have melody or be amused. I can sing you tender songs of love. I can give you merry tales and joyous laughter. I can transport you to the realms of music. I can cause you to join in the rhythmic dance. I can lull the babe to sweet repose, or waken in the aged heart soft memories of youthful days.
No matter what may be your mood, I am always ready to entertain you. When your day’s work is done, when your wife is worried after the cares of the day, when the children are boisterous, I can rest both of you and quiet the other. I never get tired and you will never tire of me, for I will always have something new to offer.
I give pleasure to all, young and old. My voice is the clearest, smoothest and most natural of any talking machine. The name of my famous master is on my body, and tells you that I am a genuine Edison phonograph. The more you become acquainted with me, the better you will like me. Ask the dealer.
I did. Edison introduced me to the beautiful whispering voice of his machine, the voice now embodying itself in a beautiful blond youth emerging out of the waterfall’s pool depths…
In the first lucid dream I could glimpse only a young, pale, androgynous face, which the water ripples sometimes hid, sometimes revealed. I could not tell whether the attractive stranger was a boy or a girl. I could only notice the blond-auburn hair, pale skin of a healthy pinkish color, rose-colored cheeks, rosy red lips, and the eyes…ah, the eyes of the deepest turquoise, as deep and watery as the light but darkening blue of pool’s bottom. Now in this lucid dream, she or he, turns around and stands. I see now a beautiful backside. Like mine, also covered with nothing but a loincloth. My scientific curiosity tries to find out more about those lovely hips but the mist prevents me. As in the previous dream, the youth asks “So, what do you want me to do?”
He then says (and I realize that this time, it is a he, though he still doesn’t look at me): “I know it’s cold. Just dip in slowly.”
I step closer and say, “Untie the knot of your loincloth. Let it go.” He does, revealing his beautiful bottom. I go on, “Now come and untie mine.” He turns around and his face approaches mine. Still looking at me, he slips my loincloth off, never ceasing to smile. When we are both naked, I put my arms around him and press my lips against his neck. I inhale the smell of his wet hair. He laughs and turns around. I try to reach his nipples, still trying to know for certain the gender of my fantasy. But he laughs again, and stops my hands with his. He caresses the soft hairs of my arms and then I notice he is not any more a boy. He becomes the girl of a previous dream, the dreamy girl with blond auburn hair and small breasts, her boyish chest almost as flat as my own.
She kneels and kisses my stomach. She does it so slowly than when her lips go further down, the intensity of the heat energy makes me explode, vaporizing stranger, pool, waterfall and the rest of the dream realm.
Sunlight comes through the window’s glass. Morning, but, what day? Sunday? Monday? I’ll just call the physics department and say I’m sick. I have lots of mail to read. Picking up a stack on unopened envelopes I see a letter from America, from Haverhill, Massachusetts. A message from Mr. Walter Gilman.
Herr Gilman, a student planning to attend Miskatonic University in the fall, recently “discovered the scientific discovery of the century.” He found out about some “unusual circumstances that had more or less suddenly given a mediocre old woman from the Seventeenth Century an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and De Sitter.” He moved to the Arkham, MA house where the unusual circumstances occurred. He now sleeps in the same room the woman once occupied until arrested. The charge? Witchcraft!
Gilman’s change of address gave him the witch’s intuitive knack to solve Riemannian equations. And right here on the back he scribbled some equations. Yes, those are mine. He copied them, and their solutions, from my On The Foundations of Geometry.
Why do cranks keep sending me their theories? Another letter tossed into the wastebasket, with the other raving lunatics.
Moonlight comes through the window’s glass. Night, but can’t sleep. I feel guilty for having dismissed the young American student so quickly. What if he is the next Einstein? I myself have often entertained wild speculations about the ultimate reality of the cosmos. True, I lack the courage to publish my meta-mathematical writings, at least not until I get tenure. The few close friends who have read them pat me on the back, and at the most congratulate me on my originality. They then suggest I submit them to the American pulp magazine, Weird Tales. Why do those who accept my mathematics as a potential work of genius, nevertheless dismiss my natural philosophy? I have no idea.