dream diary

n and i are staying in the flat at night. there are noises and strange lights. we both think, but don't say, that the flat is haunted. where she staying is a basement flat, but i live upstairs in my flat. we're both huddled downstairs. through the slightly raised window you can see lights and shadows from the outside. at one point the window lights up with a complicated pattern showing a big pyramid and the alphabet. this prompts n to finally speak: i don't want you to freak out, she says, but... do you think policemen used to live in this flat? i know, somehow, exactly what she means: either that they died here or they killed someone here, she's talking about ghosts. this makes me get completely hysterical, and for a while i am shivering and raving and saying there's someone there, even though i haven't seen anything to suggest this, just shadows fleeting past the corner of my eye. then i go upstairs to my room and try to calm down.

i keep hearing noises but convince myself it's the wind. then i go to the loo and, bam! there's a man there. he's semi-transparent, so i know it's a ghost. he's dressed in blue overalls, is bold and has a beard. slightly paunchy. a little like that autopsy guy on the telly. but, i know this, he's...a plumber! now i completely go crazy, although i'm not scared of him, i'm scared of the idea that forms in my head of someone living in my attic.

i run downstairs. n catches me at the bottom of the stairs and sits down with me trying to find out what's wrong with me. silently the guy comes and sits next to both of us on the steps. n doesn't see him. i say: who are you? he says: i live up there. i say: you do?!? and i wake up.

i wake up to the unnerving notion that perhaps, one day, a plumber died in my attic while fixing my boiler. a long long time ago.