Haunting

I used to have a recurring nightmare that stemmed from three seperate events that somehow became melded in my mind. The events took place years apart from each other, and have been a part of my psyche - and my night time journeys into my subconscious - ever since.

I had The Dream again last night... for the first time in more than 15 years. It stays with me even now - the stench of it surrounds me and I am fighting the urge (for the fiftieth time today) to run into the shower and scrub my skin raw.


Without too much detail, I'll share the events that created The Dream:

I was working the night shift at NAS North Island, and had to stay late on the night in question, though I don't remember why. My route home took me over the Coronado Bay Bridge, and as I began my ascent to the summit I noticed that someone was standing in the outside lane near the center of the bridge. It took a few seconds to register, and when it did, I pulled over next to one of the call boxes on either side of the bridge and used it. Then I walked up.

He was still standing there, very still. He wasn't startled at my approach; he didn't tell me to get away from him or run away or even look in my direction. He just stood, looking out over the water, colorful with reflected light and dark promise.

I stood there silently for a while, not knowing if I should speak or what I could possibly say. Helplessly, I finally asked, "Are you going to jump?"

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "It's cold and windy and I've always been scared of this bridge. I'm not going to stay here very long."

He said, rather comically, "Don't hang around on my account."

I asked, "Please don't jump while I'm here."

He looked at me then, almost quizzically. He shook his head slightly and said, "Okay."

We stood there in silence until I saw the lights, signalling the approach of professionals. And because I didn't know what else to do - and because I couldn't bear to answer any questions - I turned and walked down the inland side of the bridge to my car, got in, and drove away. I didn't look back. And to this day I don't know the outcome... I only know that the morning paper mentioned an emergency call to the bridge and nothing more.

A few years prior, the Search-and Rescue Training Squadron I was assigned to picked up a jumper in the San Diego Bay and transported her to the hospital, where she died on the operating table. We (the night crew) waited for the helo to come in, knowing that it had conducted the mission the crew was trained for and also knowing that a lot of work would need to be done to prepare the bird for the next day's flight schedule. I, in particular, would need to change out the SAR bag assigned and outfit the craft with a new, unused one. We waited on the flightline as the helo taxied in and shut down.

One by one, the crew egressed. The last to exit were the aircrewman, one salty old Chief and one new Airman with only a few flights under his belt. The Airman was sobbing and retching and the old Chief was doing his best to comfort him. I climbed in the cargo door in search of my SAR bag.

The deck of the helo was wet with salt water and blood and littered with bandages, packaging, and bits of flesh and bone. One of her eyes, oddly deflated and trailing ganglia, rested under the troop seat. Horrified, I gathered the pieces of the SAR bag that I could find and quickly sought the relative peace of my little domain in the hangar.

20-year-old I had academic knowledge of suicide, of course. 20-year-old I knew, with the elitist and seperated knowledge of the book-learned, that people jumped off of bridges and other sky-scraping objects in order to end their lives. 20-year-old I had never, however, thought about what a person who did such a thing would look like afterward, nor had 20-year-old I ever known the type of despair that would lead a young mother - not much older than myself - to plan such a cold, lonely, and violent death for herself. 20-year-old I sat in my shop and cried for the unknown woman, knowing that contributing my tears to her pain came too little, too late. And when I contacted the hospital in an attempt to locate the last missing piece of my SAR bag - the rescue collar - I didn't push it when each administrator told me that no one had any idea what happened to it. I didn't want to add it back to my inventory anyway.

Years later, one of our sister squadrons lost an aircraft in deep water, all four of her crew with her. It was several months before the wreckage was able to be recovered. Both pilots and both aircrewman were sailors that I had trained, that I had outfitted to the best of my ability with the finest survival gear available, some of it custom crafted with my own hands. The wreckage and remains were finally pulled from the water and deposited in another hangar on base, where I and a team of others assembled to make sense of it all, to try to piece together what happened.

I sorted bones and tatters of flight gear based on the locations that they were found, and at the end had three neat little piles and one SV-2 gun pocket with a hand-lettered name (done by yours truly). The gun pocket and other assorted tatters of his survival vest was all that was found of one of the young pilots. I was very attentive to my job, as I knew the men and wanted their families to have the peace that is hard-won through the closure of buried (or otherwise honored) remains. Despite the smell of months of salt water decay that suddenly hit air, despite the leftover organic slime coating everything I touched, I was attentive to my task.

Awaiting further investigation, the found flight gear hung in my wet locker, and even dry the stench remained. Theough the remains of my shipmates were long buried, the stench of their deep, cold wait remained. And for months I showered several times per day, trying to get the smell out of my nostrils, off of my skin. The flight gear was finally moved, and later destroyed. The smell remained... but faded, little by little, every day. Until it was gone and I didn't need to wake up in the middle of the night to shower anymore.

Later that year, I started to have The Dream.

It always begins the same, and always ends the same. Only the middle is different.

He stands on the Bridge, and I stand next to him. Sometimes a pale young woman stands with him. Sometimes he jumps, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes I catch his arm, or part of his coat, and we struggle - each time I lose and he falls. Once, he grinned an evil grin and my arm pulled off at the shoulder and went with him. Once, he and the young woman jumped together, and she screamed "NO NO NO" until she didn't scream anymore. Two or three times, he jumped just as emergency vehicles arrived and I was accused of throwing him over. A few times, he took me with him.

Every time, I've awakened to the stench of salty human decay and uncontrollable sobbing.

Several months after it started, The Dream stopped coming just as abruptly as it had started.

Until last night.