The dark wrapped Tommy like a warm blanket. Even though the imagery of the dream had been startling, he came out of it feeling calm and warm. He looked out toward where the cross in his dream had been; he was struck by another sharp pain in his chest as his eyes settled on the shadowy figure of the tree from his dream.
He rose from his seat, as though he had been tugged, and knocked over his glass of unfinished beer to the deck below. It shattered. Tommy didn’t seem to notice, and began a dazed march toward the dream tree.
The gray scenery pulsed with a soft, nearly unperceptible blue light. He felt trapped inside his skull; he hammered against the sides of his skull, screaming at his legs to stop. He trudged on into dark the branches of the tree reaching out to welcome him.
“Please don’t see the cross, please don’t see the cross,” he chanted to himself, or maybe to the tree. He wasn’t sure.
He did see the cross. His vision began to blur, his eyes unable to find a focal point to look at the thing. The harder he tried to look at it, the harder it became to see, until he could swear it was fading entirely. He took a deep breath, and the cross ceased to exist.
“It was never there. Please, it was never there.”
When had he knelt? The damp earth clung to his knees; his hands plunged into the earth, his fingernails becoming full of it. He began to dig. No, he wasn’t digging. His body was doing the digging, he was screaming at his hands to stop, but his hands no longer obeyed him.
The calm he had felt upon waken tightened, his screams faded, and he surrended to the terrible warmth and comfort being forced into him.
Hours passed in heartbeats, and he was blinded by rays of sunshine that had already begun to heat the day and enliven the mosquitos. He looked for the cross. It truly wasn’t there, but now there was a grave. Had he done that with his bare hands? Two of his fingernails were missing, and his hands were soaked with blood. That was all the answer he needed.
For a moment, he expected the force that had impelled him to the tree to dig this grave was going to push him in. Then he saw that there was already something inside the grave. There was a human shaped burlap bag in the hole.
“She wanted me to find her, that was all,” he said to himself. He hadn’t been aware he was speaking, and at first he thought there was someone else here, speaking to him.
His hands took hold of the body in the grave, his legs pushed away from the earth, and then the thing was sitting next to him. His hands began to undo the knots that held the dead thing in the bag. The last length of rope fell away, and Tommy reached to open the bag.