IJ study archive

The Face In The Floor nightmare (pp. 61–62)

quote

Your first nightmare away from home and folks, your first night at the Academy, it was there all along: The dream is that you awaken from a deep sleep, wake up suddenly damp and panicked and are overwhelmed with the sudden feeling that there is a distillation of total evil in this dark strange subdorm room with you, that evil’s essence and center is right here, in this room, right now. And is for you alone. None of the other little boys in the room are awake; the bunk above yours sags dead, motionless; no one moves; no one else in the room feels the presence of something radically evil; none thrash or sit damply up; no one else cries out: whatever it is is not evil for them.

Context

The dream proper begins: first night in a subdorm, almost twelve, and the evil is a private address — "for you alone," unshareable, unfelt by every sleeping boy around you. Solipsism rendered as nightmare mechanics: the terror can't even in principle be corroborated.

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