In my dream, there is a prologue. In it I am back in high school. I have my PhD, but I am back there all the same, in a classroom full of seniors, being taught by an English instructor I had who I never got along with. I am in his office, asking if the presentation I am supposed to give is powerpoint. I am terrible at powerpoint and afraid that, despite having good information, I will be graded down for being unfamiliar with the tech. He says that I will be fine but yes, powerpoint is necessary. The day of th presentation, I begin to narrate my project: a comparison of Jane Eyre to other Bronte sisters' novels, proving that Charlotte's is not, in fact, Gothic. As the presentation begins I am swept into a Gothic story, ostensibly Jane Eyre, though it bears no resemblance to the novel.
That was the prologue. My dream takes place within this Gothic world. I am simultaneously viewing it as a novel I am writing about, a film adaptation of the novel, and a lived experience, as I am also inside the world described.
It is a swampy valley whose high hills border the sea: a rocky coastline covered in shattered bridges and old causeways. I can't tell what time period it is, part of it feels like early Renaissance Italy, another like Victorian England, and yet another seems like something out of a hitchcock film: the late 50's or early 60's.
I am arriving with a small party of friends for a vacation at the manor of the man who owns the valley. He is perhaps an analogue for Rochester, though the part of me observing this as a film thinks he's been cast far too old and weaselly. The master of the house reminds me of no one so much as Roddy McDowall. As he approaches, I see that he is strapped into something halfway between ornate armor and a palanquin, elaborately enameled wings on his shoulders. The faceplate of his helmet depicts a cherub, though it only covers him down to the lips, so that I can see them move, and the gray whiskers on his chin. It looks as though the cherub is speaking through a hole in his neck.
As he reaches us, the servant unstrap him from the palanquin, more cage-like than anything, and he greets us. I see him linger on one woman in our party. She is dark haired and shy and I can tell he intends to marry her, perhaps against her will. We enter the manor, he slinking behind us, dressed in the black, ascetic coat and collar of an Anglican priest beneath his armor.
We spend the next few days exploring the grounds, and find ourselves on a shattered bit of railroad tracks, extending over a rocky gorge, that sunders the coastline. One of our party, a woman who looks as though she stepped out of a Hitchcock movie--frosty and blonde and unreadable--says that she can make the jump to the other side. She attempts and misses and falls onto a spongy patch of sand below. I watch her fall, disinterested. She is splayed out as though dead, a fact we confirm when we reach the shore. A doctor in our party says it is unlikely the fall killed her. We find a bite mark on her neck, something bit her, something poisonous.
On the return to the manor--now a suburban home where nothing feels quite finished: furniture un-varnished, carpet not yet cut properly--we see our host, leering at the brunette. Clearly we have interrupted him in his seduction. He tells us that what bit our friend was one of the eels that lives near the manor. He says they are quite dangerous and we should stay away from them. We ask if they live in any particular pool and he gestures around. Everywhere is a pool, the whole manor sits in a swamp. The eels are already in charge.
From there the dream becomes more of a horror show. I drop the levels of distance as an observer and presenter. The eels begin to worm their way in through all the windows, up through the pipes. They are huge, as long as a man, and nearly as wide. They have great, billowing mouths, like basking sharks, and spiked pedipalps on the sides of their mouths, like spiders. We begin to see them, over the net few days, swallowing guests whole, using their pedipalps to ease them down their gullets. People burst into rooms carrying struggling eels as big as they are and tossing them out windows. It would be comical if it weren't so grotesque.
The last stand is up in the attic of the manor. Those of us left are fending off eels at all turns and tossing them down below, onto a suburban street with a portable basketball hoop. Others beat them with baseball bats once they've hit. It's a scene of utter carnage, but I am too caught up in my fear and hatred of the eels to notice.
I wake up.
