Two Dreams

I only remember fragments from the first dream. The insides of attics. Dark wood panelling. Windowless rooms. There were television screens that had somehow become haunted. The screens were showing the 'floating head' illustration from 'The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts' I had as a kid. The image on the screens was more terrifying than the original image itself, if that's possible.

I woke up with that supernatural sense of incursion. It took a while to bring myself back to normality. I still have a copy of the Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in my parents attic. I come across it occasionally, and flick through it till I come to that picture. It's as disturbing at the age of 40 as it was at the age of 10. A terrified man staring at a bloodied floating head with the most awful agonised eyes you can imagine... The stuff (literally) of nightmares... The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts, by the way, was aimed at children...

I was not involved in the second dream but was watching it as a dissociated observer. This seemed to be set in some kind of medieval period. Two men - one a deposed king - were fleeing invaders of some kind - or an army that had usurped them. Galloping horses under drizzly skies. It was hopeless. There was something heroic and noble about the king and his friend. They knew the fight was hopeless and were surrounded. They lost their horses, and began to engage in hand to hand combat - well sword to sword. The king whipped out some kind of crossbow / gun and started shooting the pretenders. There was something brutal and real about this dream. It felt I was witnessing mob violence rather than some fantasy battle.