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John Custance – Adventure into the Unconscious

 Last night I had a strange and terrifying dream.  I dreamt that I went out from my room in the hotel, where I am in bed writing these lines and found myself in a dark street.  Somehow I do not think I was in Paris, though I have no idea.  A flame of inspiration seemed to descend upon me, and I clearly remember shouting that I was the herald of a great movement that would unite the world in love.

'What another movement?' cried somebody from across the street, flashing a torch on me.

'Yes' I shouted back 'and if you heed me not, woe unto you that compass me about.  The mischief of your own lips shall cover you; the atomic and bacteriological fruits of your own wickedness shall fall upon you.  Look at your proud cities and look, too, at the wrath to come'

Whether others looked I do not know, but suddenly the great city seemed to collapse about me like a house of cards.  I looked at the sky, filled with a blood red glow, as of the very portals of Hell.  In the glow I saw pictures;  I remember very clearly the magnificent skyline of New York, with the statue of liberty in the foreground.  Then came a series of explosions and it was as if it had never been.

I saw other cities too, though I did not recognise them, vast crowds running in panic, and thousands lying motionless in death from plague.  At length all became confused and blurred and I woke up, but with a strange certainty that all the cities which had received me so kindly on my journey – Bremen and Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris, would assuredly be saved.  Perhaps London too, though if that I am not so certain.  Yet who am I to be certain of anything?  After all it was only a dream