Waking Into the Dream.

This whole situation just hit a new level of weird and terrifying.

I'm still having the dreams. Always with those fucking dreams - sinking, being closed in on, isolated and killed. Over and over. But really, the worst part about them is that for half of the time I'm dreaming, I can't even tell the difference between it and reality. I wake up, I do normal things, I move on with my day and then things take that awful turn.

Today, if I am dreaming, it just got so much worse, and I can't wake up. However, I think this was real.

I woke up (I work nights, so this was in the afternoon) and as I drove to work around 7:30 pm I saw the old man who broke into my house a few weeks ago. He was standing, dripping wet, wearing the same clothes as that day that he came into my house. Standing under the overpass behind a short, chain link fence, I could see his one good eye tracking my car. I nearly rear-ended the car in front of me because of while I watched him.

But again, that's how my dreams start. Everything's normal and then some part of reality shatters like glass and that's the first sign that something is wrong. Then it breaks more and more and by the end...

But this wasn't a dream. Maybe if I say that enough, even I'll believe it.

I went to work, which has been its own mess, and zombie-stumbled my way through again. I only vaguely remember my boss telling me about how I've been acting different, that he's worried about my performance. It just doesn't seem worth concentrating on, especially with my mind on the fact that the old man was back. What was he doing there?

I drove back home, arriving at about 4:30. Early morning is about the only time I enjoy it here. It's cool and calm, unlike the rest of the day. As much as I thought I wouldn't, I miss the hell out of Oregon.

This is what I was thinking when I walked up to the front door, and with key in hand, in the brief light of a passing car, I saw him through the window. He was standing, crouched on the dark stairs. I could just see his feet and torn pants, and the bottom of his old rain jacket as he sat about eye-level on the stairs above me.

At first, I didn't react other than backing away from the door. I was so shocked at what I'd seen that I couldn't even form a plan of what I wanted to do. Then I ran. It wasn't the reasonable thing to do - I should have called the police again, but with the last two times that they've come ending with my own interrogation and nothing good coming from it, I subconsciously decided against going down that road again.

So I ran. About a minute after starting, I think I forgot why I was running and just... blacked out. I guess it was sort of like being in a daydream, except there was no dream. It was actually nice.

I found myself in a small park at the end of a dead-end residential street, just as the sun was beginning to come up.  I sat on the swings while I caught my breath and called the police. The dispatcher said that they'd send someone, but that my address had a note against it in their system and that I should meet them in the parking lot that I share with the other houses in the area.

I agreed and started jogging back. How had I run this far in slacks and dress shoes?

On my right, I could see the road that I'd driven this morning, the various overpasses, exits and signs filling with red taillights of people going to work. I was really close to where I had seen the man this morning. Close enough that I could take a minute and see if anything was there, I reasoned.

I left the sidewalk and followed a dry, dusty path beneath the overpass. There were a surprising number of footprints and trash all around. People had obviously been living there. Were living there. I thought, a little further back there might have been a sleeping bag in the corner where the cement pillar met the ground. At the bottom of the hill was a small... I can't call it a pond, but it was standing water, and all around the edge where it had receded in the recent heat was trash and various debris. Everything you might expect to find except, floating near the edge was a wooden oar. I remember thinking, *what the fuck is that doing there?*

My minute was up; I turned to go, but silhouetted against the rising sun was a profoundly greasy-looking man in an old rain coat.

He moved with startling speed, having the upper ground and the element of surprise. I tried to run, but in the soft sand, I managed to take only a couple of steps before he was upon me. I crouched, bringing my center of gravity down, and then exploded my body upwards into his. The stink of alcohol, body odor, and garbage was overpowering, and he was still very wet. He fell down the hill, crashing down onto the edge of the not-pond.

Unfazed, he got up, grabbing the oar with both hands. Again I tried to run, but he was faster. He brought the oar down on the top of my head with a low, fleshy crack. Things went dark. I could feel myself being picked up and dragged, and I thought I could hear a little girl screaming...

I felt my body lifted up high into the air, and cleared up enough to make out the man screaming "... be baptized and ye shall be free!"

I was in the water again, disoriented and now unable to breathe. I opened my eyes, but the only thing I could see was the man's face and arm, under the water holding me by the throat, bringing me down further into the water. I reached for the bottom, anything to get a grip and push off of. How is it so deep?

The water started to froth and bubble around us, and soon I couldn't even see his face. I kicked wildly, and finally connected with something. He let go, and I was free-swimming in the deep water. I figured out which way was up by following the bubbles, and after another few seconds, broke the surface. The air felt cool on my fiery lungs.

I wasn't in the not-pond anymore. I was in the middle of a large lake, near a dark green fiberglass rowboat. I scrambled up onto it in my panic. Where was the man? Where was I? What the fuck just happened?

I sat in the boat, curled into a ball, just breathing for several minutes. I hadn't heard a thing break the silence on the lake around me. I peered over the edge and saw the man, floating face-down in the lake, a dozen feet from the rowboat. I took the paddle and set off toward land.

After a few paddles, I realized that this was the lake that I'd been thrown into before. I was back in Oregon - back in my hometown, even. I paddled up to the bank, toward the only house I still knew in the area, Nicole's.

After spending the day in police custody, they finally released me back to Nicole's where I'm writing this now. As I said, things have drastically escalated, and this is far from over.

I can't go back home. I'm here. And despite feeling like I've fallen into my own Twilight Zone episode, there's also a feeling of being back home... So now I'm going to get to the bottom of this thing. Nicole has agreed let me stay, so long as I try to keep her out of whatever is going on.

Tomorrow, I take my first step toward solving this. Wish me luck.