brigid | 017 Dent and Dream

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

It’s a hotel, one of the old ones. The rooms are large, spacious, with plenty of room to store clothing and shoes and your empty luggage; they’re large enough to live in genteelly, which was common once. The large windows, flanked by heavy drapery, look out over Lake Michigan.

One of the spacious, well-appointed rooms has a large dent in the wall.

This is an upscale hotel, and not the sort of place that accumulates dents and dings and stains. Every time the large, round dent is noticed, it is repaired. And soon the dent is found again. Sometimes there is an explanation: a hotel guest tripped and hit the wall with a bowling ball, a room cleaner banged something into it accidentally. It is quickly patched, only to become dented again.

The dent is probably there right now, although currently a large and heavy piece of furniture is against that wall, hiding the dent. Out of sight, the theory goes, out of mind.

Yet guests who spend the night in the room all report the same dream: that of a dark haired, large eyed child with no mouth standing by the side of the bed, slender arms outreached as though imploring wordlessly for some sort of assistance. There are heavy footfalls, in the dream, and the child looks over his shoulder. A rough hand closes on his shoulder, no other body part visible in the thick darkness, and drags the child away. There is a sudden wet smacking noise, and then silence.

The dent returns. The dream recurs.

It is an otherwise pleasant room.