the dream i had last night

I had a new nightmare last night. It was in my mom's house, the one I grew up in, as all my worst dreams always are. For years I dreamed that wolves were trying to come in through the front door, and every time I was barely able to slam it shut and lock it before they were able to get in. Then with horror, I would remember that the back door was open, and I would run as fast as I could through the hall, the kitchen, and across the laundry and always I would wake up just as I met them through the screen door. I could run in this dream, and the house was always just as it was when I was a kid there. No misplacement of rooms or doorways or furniture. Often my dreams of my mother's house are a twisting of memories: a passageway from the basement steps or extra rooms and windows. In the wolf dream, it was exact down to the lumpy piles of laundry on the chair near the backdoor. The dream finally ended one night when my sister Cathleen appeared in it, showed me the way to a window I'd never known before where I could watch the wolves approach. They stopped at the front door, sniffed around a bit and then moved away again, disinterested. And I have never had the dream since.

Last night I dreamed I was on the landing, peeping out the window at a car parked in the driveway we shared with my aunt who lived next door. When we were kids, my cousin Johnny used to park his car in that very spot, and sit there for what seemed like hours, smoking cigarettes and fighting with his wife. And we would watch through that window on the landing, watch Johnny and Diane fight. We couldn't hear what they said, and we used to try to stay low so they wouldn't see us watching, but we were fascinated somehow just the same. Last night in the dream it was much like that but when I looked in the car, I saw four very old people sitting in it, doing nothing. The driver had a head made from playdough, with red eyes he turned up to the window to catch me peeping there. Afraid, I ducked, and when I looked out again, there was a wickedly horrible, ugly old woman climbing the wall outside, her head stretching up to peer in at me. I screamed. Cathleen! My sister would be in her room at the top of the steps, but her door was closed. I couldn't move to run to her, and she couldn't hear me screaming because I couldn't open my mouth to let the sound out. Cathleen! Cathleen! And desperately and painfully I found I was able to stretch one leg far enough to knock at her door by kicking it, and at the same time I wrenched my lips far enough apart to croak her name. Cathleen! And I woke up, shaking, heart pounding, terrified and exhausted. And somehow I knew that there in my bed I had opened my real mouth far enough to let her name out, that at that moment the dream and my body merged.

What does it mean? I don't know. I understand the wolves at the door, now that they're gone, but these horrible old people, who are they and what do they want from me? What do they want me to do?