John Three-Six

by Jameson Grem

I don’t remember all of the dream. That’s how it goes for most of us, I know, which makes me wonder what gets lost in the foggy bits? Divine secrets? The answers we’re not yet ready for? A spa that somehow, in a way you can’t comprehend on this side of reality, is actually a Walmart?

But I don’t remember all of THIS dream. And this dream was one of “those,” which leave a mark when you cross back over into waking. Which leave you scratching your head and looking over your shoulder, wondering what you missed.

I was in a big building. If it was a school, it was old. I rarely smell in my dreams, but if I could smell in this one, I know just from what I could see that it smelled of dust, books, and decades of stress sweat BO immortalized in the chipping paint. There were other people in the building — some function happening on the first floor where everything was lit bright and people were chattering away. “Rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb.” That’s what they have polite gatherings of people chant on movie sets, isn’t it? The pretense of sustenance.

Where I was, most of the hallways and rooms were dark. I don't know why I had wandered off alone. And my dream self wasn’t too interested in reflecting on it because they were really creeped out in that very specific way one gets creeped out in old schools after-hours. It feels wrong to be there, like you’re trespassing on the ghosts’ time.

As it happens, it was ghosts I was thinking about when I arrived on one of the upper floors and peeked down the dark hall. As I stared into the yawning abyss, I became convinced that I wasn't alone and whipped myself back around to race down the stairs.

I'd only gotten to the first landing when I abruptly stopped at the feeling of eyes on the back of my neck and turned around, certain someone was behind me. Sure enough, there was a figure standing at the top of the stairs where I had just been. They were steeped in shadow so I couldn’t clearly make them out, but I could tell they had a masculine shape and an afro. And their eyes were a pale glint in the darkness. Fixated on me.

A ghost, I feared. The thought terrified me so much, I couldn't say anything, so he did.

"I'm John Three Six." He crossed from one side of the stairs to the other, which didn’t make him any easier to see.

"John Three Six," I felt compelled to repeat.
"John Three Six," he confirmed.
"What do you need?"
"I'm you," he told me, "--Another version of you from another life. And I need to make sure you don't reincarnate into me."
"Why?"
"Trust me."

And then the fog set in. There’s the vague knowing that John Three Six faded away when someone else showed up searching for me. And the sense that I could not get him to reappear fully. And then there are smokey, not-fully-formed notions that I had eventually returned to my home to find John Three-Six haunting it.

If we ever fully spoke, I don’t remember it. In waking reality, I learned about the Bible verse John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” I’ve made guesses at what that could mean when applied to my life. But the mysteries of the dream are lost to the fog. And with them, I fear, the message of John Three-Six. Rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb.