The Book of Dreams…Short Story Contest Runner Up!

Congratulations to Mike Branch! He’s the first to be featured of the two runners up in my inaugural Harris Burdick short story contest. I loved the relational warmth this story portrayed and the vibe that says “this could really happen” as the story unfolds.

I know you’re going to enjoy this interpretation of the Harris Burdick sketch chosen for this contest. Stay tuned at the end to learn a little more about Mike and leave him some love in the comments!

Without further ado…

THE BOOK OF DREAMS

By Mike Branch

Sandra could hear water running in the bathroom, a sure sign that Ed was up and her dreams were about to be interrupted by a new day. Not that she minded. She rather liked the sunrise, with glowing pinks that transformed the sky in seconds. Colors and shapes fed her soul.

When the water stopped she knew that Ed’s face must be smooth. He still insisted on using those disposable two-blade razors, a fresh one every day. He hated the idea that malicious organisms might lie in ambush on a used blade. She, on the other hand, never fretted about bacteria or anything else. She could imagine Ed’s handsome image in the mirror where he would now spend exactly eight minutes setting each strand of gray hair into place. In a few minutes she would get up and do the same thing with just three strokes of the brush capped off with a headband. She wasn’t quite sure whether their forty-four years of marriage had survived in spite of their different ways or thrived because of them. She did know that they were both deliriously happy together, she the carefree spirit and he the meticulous planner who was on schedule to retire in just one more year. She was an artist of sorts—and a dreamer. Quite literally.

She did not dream every night, of course, or even once a month for that matter. But she dreamed. Many years ago, she had started recording the images of her dreams in a sketchbook that she always kept beside the bed. Some drawings were rudimentary, the type that might cause one to say, “Tell me about that,” as clueless parents do when young children proudly bring them a scrap with random crayon marks. Other pages, however, were true works of art, capturing nuances of color, shape, and motion that mesmerized anyone who saw them. Sandra never knew which of her personas would bring her dream to the page on a certain day.

This morning a dream was fresh in her mind. She nudged the covers aside, careful to avoid upsetting the groggy state that would maintain her dream-memory for as long as possible. She reached for the sketchbook and opened to the next page, then fumbled for the pencil that marked her place.

As her bleary eyes searched for the space to draw, she fought to shield her thoughts from the glimmers of sunshine in the window. Those beams typically exposed a fresh white page, but today. . . .

Sandra awoke with a start! The next blank page was not blank at all, but was covered margin to margin in the deepest, thickest black she had ever seen. Her mind moved in rapid succession from confusion to comprehension to stunned disbelief.

Without a word she slumped into the bed, falling across the book as her life peacefully departed this world.

* * *

Some artists require a smock before they begin their work; brushes or pencils must be lined up like soldiers, ready to advance when the order comes. Subjects must be sensibly placed, colors carefully mixed, and lighting adjusted with infinite precision.

Sandra’s mama had been nothing of the sort. Her art grew out of pencil stubs on a scratchpad, fingertips on a dusty end table, or lipstick on the window of a car. Wherever she went, her strokes seemed to skate with an effortless joy, more whimsy than study. Waiters found her simple figures left behind on paper tablecloths or credit card slips. Her children found them . . . everywhere.

Sandra was the older child in her family, followed by Rudy two years later. Their papa had read that two children was the optimal number, so two it was. One of each sex was a bonus. In his mind the children would be dressed in clothes that matched, but he rarely found them that way when he came home after a busy day at the office. His wife’s ways were less structured, and the children came to eagerly anticipate their topsy-turvy days with Mama.

Sandra was five years old when she came under the spell of her mama’s artsome ways. It happened one morning at the breakfast table, where Mama had been turning out pancakes in the shape of Christmas trees. “Mama,” she said, “I want to make one!”

“Why not?” said Mama, scooting a chair toward the cooktop for her to stand on. “Just be careful!”

Sandra’s pancakes looked more like lollipops than Christmas trees, with dollops of batter strung like stepping stones from bowl to skillet. Rudy celebrated the shapes as if they had taken weeks to finely craft. “More!” he shouted in his shrill three-year-old voice. Mama agreed that they were the best shapes that Sandra had ever cooked, which, of course, they were.

From that day, Sandra began to mimic each object her mama drew or created. She drew incessantly on steamy mirrors in the bathroom, craft paper from the bookshelf, and kids’ menus at the restaurant. Every year she found new ways to reflect her inner artist. On one math paper, she answered 4+5 with a drawing of 9 turtles.

When Papa saw it, he laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.

* * *

One bright morning in September, Sandra found three surprises at the breakfast table.

There was a cake. There was a flat, wrapped present. And there was Papa, who had postponed his workday to join in the festivities.

A cake for breakfast! It was just like Mama to do that. The pink letters on top read “Happy 7^th Birthday Sandra,” but they were hard to make out since Mama had surrounded them with so many sugary cartoon characters. Sandra loved it.

With a belly full of cake, Sandra turned her attention to the present. “It must be a book!” she exclaimed.

Mama and Papa exchanged knowing glances. “You’re right!” said Mama. “Kind of.”

Before Sandra opened the present, however, she was eager to open the envelope on top. Each year her mama created a custom card with a hand drawn picture of her doing something special from the year before. This year’s card recollected the time she rode Uncle Jerry’s white horse. How frightened she had been to let them set her on top of the massive animal! Thankfully he was a gentle giant who won her heart by the time she was led twice around the pasture.

Finally, Sandra tore into the present itself. She squealed when she discovered the “kind of” book inside. Between the covers were plenty of pages but no text or pictures. Mama called it a sketchbook.

Rudy looked puzzled, like there had been a mistake. But Sandra saw something very different, a book full of unspoiled territories with opportunities to make them her own.

Papa slid a second present across the table to her, this one much smaller. It was wrapped tighter than the book and coated with clear tape that finally required his prized pocket knife to open. Inside was a box of colored pencils. “My Princess,” he said, “I see so much of your mama in you. I remember the first time she and I met, and the note she sent me later with our pictures drawn together on it. Your book was easy to open because it is like the life we each have, blank except for what we write in it every year. But the pencils, Princess . . . not everyone has the same pencils because they can be hard to open. You see the world like Mama, and I know that you will fill your book, and your life, with many vibrant colors.”

“Enough with the speeches, Papa,” Mama chimed in. “Sandra, I thought we’d start the new school year by learning more about science and nature by taking some walks in the woods.”

Sandra loved the outdoors. Her eyes grew wide. “And I can use my sketchbook to draw what we see?”

“That’s the idea.” Mama smiled.

That night Sandra hugged the book close like a doll as she fell asleep. It was marvelously empty and full, all at the same time. It was the most cherished possession she had at the moment.

It turned out to be the most cherished possession of her life.

                                                                 ***

They say that the things you think about during the day work their way into your dreams at night. Sandra’s birthday card had sent her mind back to the happy day she rode Uncle Jerry’s horse. That memory may explain what happened the next morning—or it may not.

The day began with Rudy’s unwelcome bounding onto Sandra’s bed. He often woke up before his big sister and was notoriously unrestrained in his enthusiasm for new days.

“Stop it!” Her scream would have brought Mama running, except it had become a routine way of starting the morning. Mama knew the hubbub would die down soon enough. Rudy quickly tired of aggravating his sister and took off down the hallway for his next rendezvous with adventure.

Sandra gave her limbs a long stretch. What is that? she wondered. Something hard poked into her leg. It was a corner of the sketchbook, which had worked its way down the bed during the night. Yes! She dug it out from under the covers and held it out where she could admire its pristine cover. She traced the elegant letters with one of her fingers: My Sketches. She flipped it open to the first page, excited to see the empty space where she would use her precious pencils for the very first time.

Then she gasped.

The empty page was not empty. Instead there was a drawing, easily recognizable as a girl with a horse.

“Rudy!” she screamed, and this time she meant it. “Mama! Rudy drew in my book!”

This time Mama did come running. “What in the world, child?”

“Look at my book!” Sandra could hardly speak, her voice lost somewhere between anger and sobs. “Rudy drew it! I know he did! He ruined my book!” She threw herself onto Mama’s shoulder as tears freely flowed.

Mama was no stranger to her children’s ways. Rudy was the most likely culprit, but she wasn’t sure his skills included a drawing executed as well as the one she saw on the page. She was pretty sure he was innocent of the charge, especially if it had meant sneaking the book out of her bed for the purpose. To deepen the mystery, the new colored pencils appeared to be unused, as sharp as when Sandra had opened them the day before.

By then, Papa appeared in the room with Rudy, who vehemently denied the charges. The picture’s mysterious appearance stumped them all. It was days before Sandra accepted the fact that it wasn’t Rudy’s fault—grief over something you lose leads to its own period of denial—but she eventually admitted that he was an implausible suspect. So who did draw the picture? She pondered the question every night for weeks.

“Well, we don’t have all day to think about it now,” Mama finally said. “We need to get out to Uncle Jerry’s. Who knows, you might even get to ride that horse again!” With that Sandra jumped out of bed, sidelining her anger as she anticipated feeling that gentle giant beneath her for a second time.

It hardly occurred to her that the unexplained picture in her book was what she had just dreamed . . . and that there could not have been a better picture of that day’s adventure if she had drawn it herself.

* * *

Days passed, and Sandra began to fill up her sketchbook with pictures of leaves, rocks, bugs, and clouds that she inspected on their nature walks. Her favorite subject was vines, which she often used to border the drawings with colors so vivid they seemed to spring off the page. Her drawing skills improved with practice, reflecting an eye that saw detail and a hand that easily captured the sense of a subject. To Mama’s and Papa’s delight, her shapes and colors flowed in a way that seemed to embed a story inside each image.

The sketches began with nature walks, but one morning a new dimension entered the scene. As Mama gathered her children for breakfast, Sandra was a bit indignant. “Mama,” she said, “I was having the best dream last night when Rudy woke me up!”

“Really? Tell me about it,” Mama said as she filled their bowls with cereal.

Sandra did. She recited the dream in great detail, painting elaborate pictures with her words about the scenes that had intrigued her sleep.

As she did so, Mama took in the wonder of her daughter’s excitement. “What if,” she said when the story was concluded. “What if you drew a picture of that dream in your sketchbook?”

“Could I?” Sandra exclaimed, nearly spilling her cereal.

“Of course, dear. But let’s finish breakfast first.”

That was the first of many dream scenes that found their way into Sandra’s collection of sketches. She kept the book on her nightstand with a pencil marking the next available page, ready to capture whatever might come into her head at night.

You would have thought that such a sketchbook would run out of pages. After all, Sandra was prolific. But it never did. If you flipped through the pages, every sketch was there. If you turned to the back, there was always a set of fresh, blank pages. Sometimes Sandra would puzzle over that mystery, but more often she simply accepted it and moved on. She was an artist, not a detective or philosopher.

Years passed, and Sandra’s pictures became less about nature walks and more about other moments in her life: her first volleyball game, family vacations, and life at college.

One bright September morning at college, she awoke to the sound of some very unmusical voices singing a familiar tune far too loudly: “Happy birthday to you!” She wiped the sleep from her eyes to find half a dozen friends standing in front of her bed with a birthday cake inscribed with “Happy 21st Birthday Sandra!”

A birthday cake for breakfast! That Mama. She must have told them about our family tradition. This is great! After the commotion died down and the others had excused themselves to prepare for classes, she reached for her sketchbook to record the moment.

She flipped it open to the next page, anticipating a blank slate for her memory.

Then she gasped.

The empty page was not empty. Instead there was a drawing, easily recognizable as herself with a young man. Her mind raced back to a long-past birthday, when another picture had mysteriously appeared on the first page of her sketchbook.

She knew it wasn’t Rudy this time.

Later that day, as she sat down for lunch in the crowded dining hall, another student asked if he could sit at her table. By the time they finished, she agreed to have dinner with him, as well.

His name was Ed. The sketchbook’s mysterious picture had perfectly captured their first moments together, just as if she’d drawn it herself.

* * *

Sandra fell in love with Ed at first sight. So did Mama and Papa.

The next summer, Ed and Sandra were married and set up housekeeping. There were amazing professional photographs of the wedding, along with a polished video. But to see the event in all its glory, the best picture was the one in Sandra’s sketchbook. During rocky times—and what marriage does not have them?—Sandra would return to that particular sketch to regain her equilibrium and remind herself how very much she and Ed loved each other.

Ed had especially loved the moment when Sandra invited him into the privacy of her sketchbook. They spent hours paging through her images, a personally guided tour of Sandra’s most intimate memories and experiences—including the pictures whose source was unknown, of a girl with a horse, and a girl with a guy.

Those two pictures struck him as equal parts marvel and menace. He believed her, or at least he wanted to, but who could believe in such fairy tales? He wondered if he should warn her about the book, but realized that now it was too late. The book had held a spell over her for more than a dozen years and defined her as the person with whom he had fallen in love.

To live without the book would be to live without her. So he chose to blindly wonder with her at the book’s secret ways and limitless pages.

As the couple moved forward, she continued to draw her dreams, occasions, nature, and, in due time, the antics of their son Reston. But every few years the sketchbook would mysteriously present a picture of its own, each of which depicted something that was about to happen.

One year she found an unexplained picture of a tow truck in the book. Later that day she was involved in a traffic accident. Thank goodness there was no ambulance in the sketch!

Another year the book presented a picture of a beach. Later Ed called to say he had won a sales contest and they were headed to Bermuda.

Other times, the mysterious pictures were less recognizable, and a bit troubling. Two times in particular come to mind, mornings when she knew her dreams were unsettling but could not remember anything about them. In each case the page contained nothing but a solid black rectangle that covered half the page.

On the day when the first blackness appeared, she received a difficult phone call. “Princess,” it began, “this is Papa. I have some bad news. Mama passed away.” She could hardly see through the tears as she hurried across town to join Papa and Rudy in their grief. Only much later did she have time to consider the field of black and wonder at its knowledge of the future.

Her heart skipped a beat three years later, when the book presented the second black rectangle. Before she could even get to the phone it began to ring. “Sandra,” it began, “this is Rudy.” Papa had joined Mama in heaven.

Somehow, the book had known. She began to call it her Book of Dreams.

* * *

Ed emerged from the bathroom with his usual cheerful exuberance. His full head of gray hair was carefully arranged, and the familiar scent of aftershave announced his appearance in the bedroom. “Good morning, Love!” he bellowed.

Nothing.

No sound came from his wife. No arms reached up to greet him.

He gasped. He lunged toward the lifeless figure on the bed.

He called 9-1-1 but realized the effort was futile. While he ran about frantic, she lay in perfect peace.

His next call was to Pastor Jack, whose voice had encouraged them through so many times in the past. As Jack struggled to process Ed’s news, Ed picked up the sketchbook that he now noticed under the body that had been his wife’s. The book fell open to the last page just as Jack began expressing words of comfort.

“You know, Ed, how much Sandra loved Jesus.”

Ed wanted to answer but the page had left him speechless.

“And that she is with her Savior.”

This picture made all other pictures in the book appear bland. Its brightness eclipsed the sunlight that dared challenge it from the window. It carried a vibrant depth that surpassed anything he’d ever seen—and he swore that the picture was moving. A golden vine seemed to spill off the page, as a bloody lamb became a roaring lion became a ruling king and bridegroom. A carefree artist became a chosen bride. And behind them followed a giant, white horse on which only a conqueror could ride. As Ed stared, spellbound, a man seemed to step into the picture from the side—handsome, joyful, with meticulously groomed hair and the same freshly shaved face that returned his gaze each morning in the mirror.

Suddenly Ed felt very dizzy. Then he felt nothing at all.

* * *

By the time Pastor Jack arrived at Ed and Sandra’s house, the police and their son, Reston, were already there.

“So you were on the phone with Dad when . . .” Reston’s voice trailed off.

“Yes,” Pastor Jack responded, wondering just what to say next.

The tears would crush Reston later, but right now he willed those emotions into the background. “It’s shocking. I mean . . . Of course, Mom did say that she always dreamed that they would die at the same time. She couldn’t stand to think about living without him, and she didn’t want him to be left alone, either. But this? The police said there’s no sign of anything but natural causes . . .”

He paused to collect himself, then pulled something off the table. “Did Dad say anything about this on the phone?” he asked. “We found it on the bed.”

Pastor Jack reached out to take the book and turned it over in his hands. “’My Sketches,’” he mused, rifling the paper. “But look. There’s nothing inside but a bunch of blank pages.” He handed it back to Reston.

“I know.” Reston flipped it open. “Blank pages. Like maybe she knew she was ready to start something new.”

He reverently set it back on the table. For now, there were phone calls to make, arrangements to coordinate, and tears to shed. Without thinking, his fingertip began to draw on the surface of the dusty tabletop. He’d started doing that a lot, drawing on whatever was close by at the moment. He looked again at the sketchbook and tucked it under his arm. Maybe his mother would have wanted him to have it, he thought. He was something of an artist—and a dreamer. Maybe it was time to start something new himself.

---

One Christmas morning in elementary school, young Mike Branch was surprised with a gift he never thought to ask for but loved at first sight. Under the tree he found an old mechanical typewriter, rescued by Santa from a repair shop to make the holiday seem fuller on a family’s tight budget. That providential gift inspired a job in newspapers, a career in magazines, an ongoing stint in marketing and copywriting, and a tool to point to the glories of God. Mike and his wife, Sherry, have four children and twelve grandchildren, with another grandchild on the way. Last year Mike published a book, True Stories to Remind You of Heaven When Life Hurts Like Hell, available on Amazon.