Behind The Door
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It was late at night, maybe 10 pm or so - which is way past end of day for me. I’m a jammies-on-before-9 pm kind of person. For some unknown reason, I had to go downstairs and turn the outside light on, the one that hangs over the front door. Maybe someone was still out and needed that beacon to guide them home or, maybe it just seemed like the friendly thing to do; “people live here and we’re nice enough to leave the light on for ya”. It was cold out, cold in a way that makes everything look like it’s made of concrete painted over in bright colours to disguise the frigid grey. I walked softly down the six or seven steps from the living room to the empty, dark foyer; it’s a split level bungalow so not many stairs to the main level. On either side of the front door are two long rectangular frosted windows that look onto a modest front step, with a short privacy wall and a slim view of the neighborhood beyond. The door is wooden and painted a deep burgundy colour. It was secure; locked with a dead bolt. The street lights cast a warm glow across the snowy sidewalks, like an illustration from an old detective novel, minus the long shadow of a man in a trench coat. Other houses had small porch lights on too, making the frosted windows look like they had been splashed with milk. A few of the yards had snow men, stray scarves, or single mittens lying in the snow, abandoned by kids late for dinner. The evening was extremely quiet - both inside and out. The only sound was the squish of my slippers on the polished wood steps. I didn’t go all the way to the bottom of the stairs, but rather stopped on the last step to swing around and slap the light switch on the wall. I barely noticed a difference. Did the light come on? I flipped the switch one more time; off, on. It looked so dim I couldn’t tell. I kept flicking the switch; off, on, off, on, off, on, until I was sure I noticed the strobe effect and knew the light was working.
“Stop Stop Stop!!! They’ll think you’re signalling them. They’ll come for us!” yelled my dad from the basement.
He came bounding up the stairs and slammed his hand down on top of mine to turn the light off. I heard a few small pops as my knuckles cracked. Just as quickly as he arrived, he disappeared back down the stairs to the basement as if something urgent needed tending to because of my actions. I wondered if my playing with the lights had somehow set off a dangerous chain reaction and hungry zombies would suddenly rise up from the cracks in the basement floor to eat us if he didn’t get down there to stop them. He was in pajamas too. What had I done? Who had I signaled? I ran back up the stairs in my nightie, which is not easy to run in, and headed for the front window to look outside. Before I could get there, the bright lights blinded me and stopped me in my tracks. The deafening sound of the chopper landing in my neighbors yard rattled my head, and the windows, like a bombastic symphony playing inches from my face. I ran back from the window and crouched behind the small wicker waste basket that sat beside the couch, away from the light that was pouring in from outside. I knew my dad was downstairs pinned against the wall between two windows, out of sight of the soon-to-be searching flashlights. I crouched for a long time, squeezing my body in tight, barely breathing; the sound of heavy knocking on the front door stopped my heart. The squeak of the leather gloves on glass as the men cupped their foreheads to look in the windows made my skin crawl. My dad was right. I had signaled them.
This was my most recent dream of hiding behind that door. Sometimes these nightmares where I am hiding and threatened, leave me so shaken and confused I need to count to ten in order to restore inner calm and confirm which reality I am actually in. This was not the first time I had dreamed of being in danger, hiding behind ‘my front door’. The house in this dream, my childhood home, has long been sold, my father has since passed and I haven’t worn a nightie since I was eleven. I had this dream only a couple of weeks ago and the fear and strangeness of it has stayed with me.
Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I dreamed I was in my childhood backyard, with neighborhood friends, doing cartwheels on a summer day. Back in the old days when yards were wide open, and not everyone had a fence, you could do cart wheels in ridiculously large circles until you were sick. Which I have done. In the dream, my friends and I were tumbling around the yard like Olympians, laughing, falling and carrying on as though summer were endless and nothing of importance needed doing that day, or any day, ever. In my books, that is and should be the very definition of childhood. Somewhere from behind one of the shrubs at the back of the yard, a couple of punk rockers, with candy coloured spiked hair, leather motorcycle jackets with over-sized safety pins stabbing their chests, dark makeup, and tall lace-up boots came walking out of the shade. Without speaking, I knew they meant harm. They had angry faces and fingerless gloves with stained, cracked knuckles and a crazed look in their eyes. My friends scattered while I ran across the yard and around to the front door, the same front door, the one from my childhood; wooden, and painted a dark burgundy. I slammed the screen door as I raced through it, then turned and shoved the wooden door tight. As fast as my fingers would go, I turned the key and bolted the top lock. I was safe inside. I backed away from the door with my eyes fixed on the stillness; the shiny paint reflected summer light that was bouncing off the white walls. The other side of the frosted windows that flanked the door stayed empty, shadowless. As I inched back ever so slowly, feeling somewhat secure behind that door, the first blast hit, splintering the wood. The second blast came almost immediately after, hitting me square in the chest. I fell backward, and after a second or two of lying lifeless on the ground, I woke up - breathless. Clearly, one of the punk rockers that appeared from the shrubbery had followed me and shot me through the door. I read somewhere that most people wake up before they die in a dream. My body and consciousness had given me a few seconds to stay in the scene before waking, making it all the more traumatizing. I never had an issue with punk n’or feared anyone who is a follower. I’ve had fingerless gloves in my day. This dream, like the other one, was weird. Some of the most frightening dreams I’ve ever had in my life have taken place behind a door, and often, the front door of the house I grew up in. The place where arguably, I felt safest.
Analyzing dreams can often result in finding theories to support whatever you want to believe - good or bad. If you believe your life is on the verge of disaster, well then, that dream of repeatedly slicing a kiwi for a fruit salad can mean your life is about to be split apart and scattered across territory you fear getting lost in. If you are hoping for some big life changes, I’m sure you could find a theory that tells you dreaming of slicing a kiwi means you’re about to open up a new chapter in your life that will be a real moneymaker, hence the green of the kiwi. Surprisingly, consensus and absolutes are not part of dream analysis - shocking right? I decided that looking to others to analyze my darkness isn’t going to work for me.
The door; the door is what I am most drawn to. I open our front door to family and friends. I certainly close it to most strangers, the cable company and Jehovah’s (sorry). I peak out the front door to look for my children, call out to a neighbor, chat with the mail carrier or yell to the Amazon truck to come back. I decorate the front door for the season, signaling to mother nature that I know she’s changing and I’m on the ride with her. In a way, my door decoration lets the world know which calendar I follow; we’re having a good time inside celebrating some WASP-y occasion or another. My door, the primary entrance, is the thing that gets locked when all that are welcome for the night are safe inside, shielded from the world. It’s the entry to my home, and in many ways, my secret world.
Just like in my dreams, I have actually hidden behind doors before, but for far less terrifying reasons - usually to avoid someone who is knocking because I am bra-less or feeling antisocial, or for fun, so I can jump out and scare someone. Try it. It’s hilarious - as long as you don’t do it to me. As a kid, endless games of hide’n’seek left me pressed up against a wall behind the door of a room I probably shouldn’t have been in, willing to pee my pants and stay in place rather than be found. I have even been on the other side of a locked bathroom door dramatically sprawled on the cold floor, drowning in tears, swearing on my life I was never coming out again. Doors have made me disappear, execute an entrance or given me space to sort my shit out.
I have read that dreams of hiding can indicate we are afraid or feeling insecure. It can be about feeling out of control, and hunted. These dreams can mean desiring escape from a person or place - avoidance. One website suggested dreaming about doors indicates feeling overwhelmed by something and trying to block it out - the image of an oozing blob monster seeping under the door comes to mind. The door is protection. A door is also a symbol in dreams of transformation - crossing the threshold into something new, big and unknown; scary and exhilarating.
While some people would call me restless, always trying to shake things up and refresh my perspective, I am also quite easily made content and can sit quietly forever. It doesn’t take much to make me feel warm and secure; a healthy family, a few good friends, my dog, something to look forward to, and a couple of really nice lamps in a cozy room and I’m good. I can’t solve anything or relax in poor lighting. Flickering fluorescent bulbs are not the hallmark of torture scenes or horror movies because they make you want to crack open a Jane Austen and knit. It’s more likely they induce psycho-altering headaches that conjure up voices saying ‘kill, kill”. I’ll take a floor lamp please. Add a candle and a roaring fire to my ‘happy menu’ and there’s no limit to the rational, intelligent thoughts I can muster from my secret depths. I am fortunate in that I have almost always had my share of ‘happy’, tucked safely behind a collection of doors, throughout the decades of my life.
These dreams, these horrific dreams, that woke me sweating, bug-eyed and confused, rattled me because I was cowering in the one place I was meant to feel safe - in my childhood home where I had parents to care for me. How in my subconscious did I turn this place into an unstable battleground? Had I been under a fluorescent light before bed? Kill, kill.
“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
-Werner Herzog - filmmaker
The door to a house I can no longer visit, and don’t even know if it still exists, will always be a sacred symbol to me. If I want to believe the dream analysts, then I have to accept that hiding behind that door means I am afraid, insecure, out of control, and needing to escape. On the other side of that door lies madness. Or, maybe I am overwhelmed with possibility and on the verge of transformation - daring to linger by the door and challenge myself to pass through, despite any danger. It doesn’t take a PhD. in dream analysis for me to realize, I feel all of those things, all of the time. The older I get, the more I am aware of how fragile my life and happiness are. “Nothing lasts forever” is the cruelest of cliches. My dreams will serve me well if only to remind me every once in a while that the choppers are circling and danger is hiding in the bushes. Close the door, lock it, hold on to your nightie and your life; live, love and be on guard. There is someone or something that could take a shot at any moment. The door of my dreams exists to be slammed, illuminated, watched and revered for its protection. I wake in terror at these dreams only because of the reality they threaten. When life, whether imagined or actual, is appreciated, like a favourite toy, the agony of losing it is too much for anyone to sleep through. So I wake, and take stock. These nightmares are my warning to preserve what I can and dare to imagine the worst. I can only have fear if I have peace. Most of the time I have peace, and losing that is scary.
The door and father I no longer have, live on in my mind. They are not monsters in my ocean, but pieces of me that float to the surface when I am asleep. My darkness is truly my light, as nightmares allow me to see people and emotions I might otherwise bury. If in the horror of some of these mysterious dreams, a friendly face appears, even if just for a moment, it’s worth the scare. While the eyes are the window to the soul, dreams must surely be the door that lets us step inside it.
By Carol Sloan
Dream Moods - http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/d.htm
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