Robert and I had gone to live with his distant relatives (the Lippincotts who had not left Europe) on their plantation in Europe. It was somewhat like the Lippincott farmhouse in Blair, only huge and sprawling. The main building was in a German colonial farmhouse style
The rest of the building was much more like a Mediterranean farm.
The land was also very similar to the land in this photo. Only there was a stone bridge over a trench. And between the German colonial part and the fence in the back there was a large plaster arch. Also there was an abandoned tower, that figured into the dream's general feel, but I never went into, to the far left on this picture.
The land also had more crops. To its left there were some corn fields, as are so numerous in Iowa and Nebraska. Complete with dirt/gravel paths. Not the green time of year, though all the other crops were green and flourishing... they were more...
To its right, and through most of the back field there were tomatoes and grapes.
The house had a basement with all sorts of valuable history, but it was also dusty and creepy. It had a gaudy sliding glass door. Like the doors on a Carousel.
But the happiest part, for me, was the flower garden. It was like the Secret Garden, only not walled up.
In short this place was kind of like paradise. We had a cook and a maid. And I helped with all of the chores and stayed merrily busy. At night I would learn things from the cook, and he would also tell me stories. He was in his forties, a merry sort of mischievous man. He kind of reminded me of Marc mixed with Long John Silver.
Not long after we arrived at this place, however, but Bob got a computer job that required him to travel nearly all of the time. Before he left Bob showed me a flower he had planted me in the garden, he told me it was "our flower" and I should visit it every time I missed him. It was even better than that picture, though. It was tall and strong.
So every few hours I would sneak off from my chores and visit it.
This dream went on for what seemed like quite a while in this same fashion.
Then one night Long Marc Silver told me about the plantation's ghost. He said it was Robert's far off distantly Grandpa Euripides. The man had been working in the basement one day, and mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again. Ever since the basement had been used only as a storage room which was haunted by Euripides. In fact many of the servants, including Long Marc Silver, had met him on numerous occasions and always found him to be friendly but quiet, inclined to tip his hat and then hurry on his way whistling. It had long been considered good luck to see him.
The next day as I was visiting "our flower" I felt the need to use the facilities. After having accomplished this, I despondently hurried out the door again. I was so missing Robert, that it took me about thirty feet of walking to realize I had gone out the wrong door. I was in the cornfields, and something didn't feel right about them to me. So I made a wide circle around, through the vineyards, toward the garden.
As I was making my way toward the bridge, I saw an old man and immediately put together that it was Grandpa Euripides. I was overjoyed to see him.
He dressed sort of like Sherlock Holmes, minus the hat. And he looked like the Grandpa from Moonstruck only paler.
I ran up to greet him, but to my surprise he didn't seem to like me. He seemed very distracted and determined about something. And he kept looking over at the tower. I was worried that I had the wrong guy, so I tried to speak his name. But, as so often happens in my dreams, I could not get the words out. Finally I managed a "Euri" at which point he shushed me quietly and nodded. He then walked quickly toward the arch.
I suddenly realized that this was a reenactment of the day he had died, and he didn't know what was about to happen. I put together that he was still a detective, that he had never retired as he had told his family he had, but rather he had just gone undercover. I determined to figure out the mystery, and "save his life and his soul" in the process.
I ran into the arch hoping to go around it and hide to wait for him. There I found "a bandit" hiding. I decided he must be the killer and I determined to stop him. However, as soon as he saw me he began shooting me. I didn't die, and there were no physical wounds, but the shots were still horribly painful. These were "ghost bullets" so I determined the bandit was also a ghost for sure. However when I ran to warn Euripides, and he saw the bandit after me, he too started firing at me. It turns out the bandit was not a bandit but rather his partner.
I was in a huge amount of pain by now, and I couldn't take any more bullets. So I started running, with them close behind reloading their guns as they ran. I ran to the basement door and hurriedly pulled it open. Only to feel a greater evil lurking within. I realized then that they were following me, thinking I was the one they were after, only to fall into his trap thanks to me. Grandpa Euripides' death had been my fault all along. I was filled with despair, and terrified of the evil I had exposed us all to.
That's when I woke up, still terrified for about a hour. Though I couldn't place my finger on precisely what had scared me that much.
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