An open letter to Alan Moore

Dear Mr. Moore,

Several weeks ago you protected me from something really bad, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to thank you. It suddenly occurred to me that, given the circumstances of our meeting, this would be the perfect forum (by which I mean, as good a forum as any other).

I have two levels of bad dreams. The first level is your basic “I’m late to work I haven’t called and I think I’m not wearing any bottoms but I keep forgetting all these things and going out to do stuff anyways” dream. I’m a graduate student. It happens.

The second is a particularly nasty kind of dream that I’ve come to associate with something out there trying to get me. The subject matter varies, but it always contains a dessicated and/or corpse-like version of myself staring at me from dead and knowing eyes. I call her my fetch for lack of a better term, and thus I suppose she has become one.

I can distinctly remember each time I’ve had these level-two dreams, and each time I’ve woken in terror, with the sure and certain knowledge that there was SOMETHING BAD in the room, or just outside, or somewhere/sometime nearby lying in wait for me. My heart would be racing, and I would be terrified to get out of bed for fear of what was out there, but equally terrified to go back to sleep for fear of what was in there. (As a note: although these might sound like hagging experiences, I’ve worked with the medical doctor/folklorist David Hufford and read his book “The Terror that Comes in the Night”, and I’m fairly certain they are not).

Now, these dreams are very rare. I had one in 1990 while taking a nap at school (it was my first — fetch dream, not nap). The second I had while living in Venice Beach in 1998. The third I had in a youth hostel in Bath during my field school summer, which would be 2000). This most recent one I had a few weeks ago, so the Fall/Winter transition of 2004.

But this most recent one was different in one respect. I woke up, eyes wide, heart palpitating (actually, I’m not quite sure what that is, but it’s the appropriate description for waking up from such a dream, so I’m certain mine was at least in the metaphorical sense), terrified of both worlds. Something beyond the foot of my bed caught my eye (despite the fact that I was seriously trying not to see anything in the room…or maybe because of it). I stared as the form at the foot of my bed consolidated into the shadowy shape of a large man with long, wild hair, broach hunched shoulders, trench coat draped ominously over his bulky frame.

And I realized that it was you, standing at the foot of my bed.

And I suddenly felt safe.

And then after a moment or two, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and my brain woke up a bit more I realized that my closet door was open, and you transformed into a conglomeration of clothing, hangers, a laundry basket and a suitcase.

Now, this is the moment in my story when most people who’ve been told it laugh. Ha ha, you saw Alan Moore in your room. Ha ha, you saw Alan Moore in your room and you felt *safe*. Ha ha, maybe it was really Hagrid, or moonandserpent (our local resident Alan Moore).

And I laugh too, because it is pretty funny.

But laughter aside (and the likelihood of it really being you in my room that night left unquestioned and unanswered, because what does that even mean?), my subconscious mind processed what I saw as you, and the “you” made me feel safe from what terrified me, and so in a very real way you were there that night, and you protected me from something really bad.

Because at the level of praxis, the result is what matters.

Many thanks,

kitsune_den, who is sometimes called Alyc
Winter liminal period, 2004/2005