A PHONE RINGING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
ROBERT LOERZEL

A phone ringing in the middle of the night could mean only one thing, Edgar thought: Someone in his family had died. He quickly ran through a mental list of uncles, aunts and cousins, but no likely candidates came to mind. If anyone he knew had died, it would be one of the deaths the newspaper obituaries describe as "sudden." The phone rang a second time. Then again, he thought, maybe someone’s gotten drunk, and they’re calling me now because they don’t realize what time it is.

Or maybe, Edgar thought as got out of bed and the phone rang again, it’s someone who is infatuated with me. He recalled all the various times he’d been infatuated with someone, and how he would have trouble falling asleep because he could think of nothing else but how much he wanted to declare his love for this latest girl he’d fallen in love with, and how he would always consider picking up the phone at three in the morning and calling the girl and telling her everything, and how he would never do it. He ran through a mental list of people who might be infatuated with him, but no likely candidates came to mind.

A fourth ring, and Edgar picked up the receiver. "Hello?" he said, and before he heard the reply, another thought occurred to him: It could be someone calling from another time zone who’d forgotten the difference in the hour. But for this to be a reasonable time for the person on the other end to be calling, it would have to originate somewhere far to the east, Europe probably. He tried to run through a mental list of people in Europe who might be calling him, but he couldn’t think of anyone at all.

"Hello?" Edgar said again, wondering why the caller was taking so long to respond. Maybe this is some sort of malfunction in the phone system and there’s no one at all calling, he thought, but then he heard the reply, a cold, monotone whisper.

"It’s me."

Edgar had never heard the voice before, but he instantly knew who it was: the dream boy. It didn’t sound like a boy, though. He must have grown into a man since the last time Edgar had seen him.

"So it’s you," he said. "I haven’t seen you in years. Why are you calling me?"

"Renewing old acquaintances," the caller said.

Edgar thought of what the dream boy had looked liked in his childhood nightmares. The boy had appeared whenever Edgar had realized that he was dreaming. In Edgar’s dream logic, he believed it was a violation of the laws of night to know that you were asleep while you were asleep, to know that you were in the middle of a dream. Edgar broke this law frequently as a boy, interrupting his nighttime fantasies with the revelation that they were dreams. Whenever this happened, Edgar knew that he had only a few seconds to break out of his sleep and escape the dream if he wanted to avoid the consequences, which he imagined to be dire. Even if the dream had begun happily, now it was a nightmare. The only way of ending it was for Edgar (the dream version of Edgar, that is) to cross his arms tightly against his chest and to squeeze his body in upon itself with a squinty-eyed concentration. This act was in itself another violation of the laws of night, Edgar believed. It was then, as Edgar tried to force his way out of the dream with that arms-crossed maneuver, that the dream boy always appeared, a black silhouette without any features, a menacing void in the shape of a boy. The dream boy would come out of nowhere, racing toward Edgar, threatening some unspecified sort of violence, ready to penalize Edgar for being cognizant of the dream while it was in progress. The punishment never arrived, though, because Edgar always awoke in time. Eventually, after dozens of appearances, the dream boy vanished from Edgar’s nightmares, perhaps because Edgar’s knowledge of the waking world stopped seeping into his dreams. It had been twenty years since Edgar had seen the apparition, and though the silhouette had never spoken in any of those childhood dreams, Edgar somehow knew the voice on the phone came from that mouthless, shadowy form, an adult version of the same creature who had monitored his dreams as a boy.

"So," Edgar said, not feeling as afraid as he might have expected, "this must be a dream."

"So it would seem."

"If this is a dream, and if I now know that it is a dream, then it must be time for you to come get me," Edgar said calmly.

"That is the way it normally works."

"But it’s not my fault that I realize this is a dream. Why should you punish me? You’re the one who told me I was dreaming. You usually wait until I’ve come to the realization myself before you show up. By telling me that I’m dreaming, aren’t you the one breaking the law?"

"Despite what you may think, none of this is a matter of breaking laws. That was merely how you interpreted all of this as a child. There’s no law against knowing that a dream is a dream."

"Then you aren’t going to come and punish me? Even if I cross my arms?"

"Punish you? I’ve never intended to punish you."

"But all of those times I saw you coming at me— "

"You assume that I was coming toward you to do harm, but you always awoke before I had a chance to reach you, so how do you know what I intended?"

Edgar began to doubt whether this really was a dream. This conversation seemed to be going on too long for a talk with the dream boy. Maybe one of his friends was playing a joke on him, but who else knew about the dream boy? Maybe he was simply too groggy and he had misheard what the person on the other end was saying. He thought about what he’d heard the caller say. How had he known whether the dream boy meant to harm him? That should be obvious, Edgar thought. Weren’t the dream boy’s intentions clear, Edgar thought, from the utter blackness of his form? And from the way he moved, the speed of his approach, which seemed to generate waves of anger and menace in Edgar’s direction? Nothing the caller said could convince Edgar otherwise.

As if reading Edgar’s mind, the caller said, "Just because you were frightened by my approach does not mean I intended any harm. Just because I am a black silhouette does not mean that I am evil. The equation of evil and darkness is merely a cultural convention. Has it ever occurred to you that you were frightened of me merely because you were frightened of what it meant to be in a dream that you realized was a dream?"

"If you didn’t mean to hurt me, what did you mean to do?"

"Allow me to touch you, and you will always know when a dream is a dream and when reality is reality."

"I don’t know what to think. I— "

Edgar saw the dark shape of the dream man emerge from a corner of the room, as if it were a cloud of smoke billowing from one of the heating vents. As the dream man floated toward him, Edgar thought he did not seem nearly as quick or aggressive as he had been in those dreams of so long ago. Edgar was still holding the phone in his hand as the dream man stood behind him and clasped both of his arms, his touch soft and hot like a breath of steam. Edgar looked down at his body and saw the blackness of the dream man surrounding his own skin.

Now Edgar felt the fear that had been strangely absent, the same sense of panic he remembered from those childhood dreams. Edgar pulled free of the dream man’s enveloping shape, crossed his arms against his chest and tightened his body, squinting his eyes. He squeezed and squeezed, and just as he heard the dream man whispering his name, Edgar awoke from his dream.

Edgar sat upright in bed. The phone was ringing. He wondered who would be calling him in the middle of the night.