When Travis and I moved to Alaska I couldn’t bring any furniture with me. I had about $600.00 worth of boxes shipped up there, and that was paring our possessions down to what we considered vital and what could be left behind. It was far too expensive for me to ship furniture and too expensive to buy new, so when it was time to furnish our apartment I went the yard/garage sale route.

One of the items I never ran into at a yard sale though was a bed. I had a queen sized air-bed, but even though it was comfy enough to sleep on, I hate and detest and loathe getting down into bed at night, and crawling up out of bed in the morning.

I’d been on the mattress ever since leaving the Motherlode lodge at Hatcher Pass, and my little twin bed up there. I was getting more impatient by the day (or rather night) to find myself a decent, used bed.

I wanted a gently owned one, one without blemish, something I could actually lay on and not give a thought to who or what may have transpired upon said bed, and wanted one from someone I knew, perhaps something still in the box, not really too much to ask for having realized (most happily) that whenever I need or want something it will appear. And so it was that my bed appeared via my neighbor across the hallway, Gail.

Was she already living in the apartment across from me when I moved in? You know, I really don’t remember. But one day we started talking and more or less struck up a friendship. There was something just a little odd about her but I liked her well enough, she certainly wasn’t a problem neighbor or anything like that, she just wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to hang around with very much.

Gail was a prison guard someplace near Anchorage. She had a teen-aged daughter living with her, whom I really don’t recall much about either. Her husband and sons lived in Idaho where she said they owned a house and property. I thought she looked too slight and fragile to be a prison guard, but she seemed to enjoy her work. She was very Christian, nearly in the category of “brainwashed” Christian (as I’ve come to think of the overly Christian women in my acquaintance who have jacked the whole Christianity thing to cult level). I think we may have attended church together a time or two, but anyway, one day she mentioned she had an extra bed she might consider selling or trading.

I asked her if she wanted to trade for my air-bed and surprise, surprise, she said she did! I think she said the bed belonged to her daughter and the daughter was going back to Idaho to live with the dad. The air-bed could be folded away in the closet until she came back, if she came back. I think that’s what the deal was. I also think she told me she’d gotten the bed gently used from someone in her church. So there it was, I knew the person who owned the bed, no bedbugs, no roaches, no stains, maybe not still in the box, but close enough to my ideal that I was more than happy. Thrilled happy. I was getting up off the floor.

Gail seemed a little reluctant to go through with the deal though. She kept hemming and hawing and naturally I kept asking because I was reminded on a nightly basis how much I loathed my sleeping arrangement, but she finally said okay, and we made the trade.

Now the bed really was clean and it looked brand new. I don’t think it had a headboard, I think I made one, and it was just a double, but it suited me just fine. It was very comfortable and very inviting with my lacy spread and pillow shams, looking all pretty in the center of my bedroom. I’m not sure how long it took for the dreams to start. But it wasn’t long.

The dreams I had were awful, horrid dreams of slicing myself. In one dream I was pregnant with my 2nd son, Donnie, and I was slashing my own belly. I’d dream I was slicing myself with razor blades on my arms and on my thighs. And, as I was slicing and dicing my way through various limbs, I was sitting on the edge of a bed. I would wake up shocked. I was dreaming of doing things to myself that had never, ever, even crossed my mind in real life.

My boyfriend, Shawn, spent the night soon after and told me the following morning that his dreams were so terrible he could not even speak of them. To this day I don’t know what he dreamt that night. He was horrified. Shawn is a simple soul and is easily upset when confronted with the vulgarities of human behavior and so his nightmares that night were unspeakable as far as he was concerned.

It did not take me long to make the connection between the bed and the dreams. But, and this is a big but, I liked sleeping in a real bed again.

The bed itself did not look creepy. All made up it looked so nice and it was so comfortable just to be able to sit on the edge of a bed again to put on socks and shoes and pants that I didn’t want to give it back. I just wanted to get rid of the nightmares. So I decided to use my sage and give it a cleanse.

I am never without a sage bundle and my bundles are all blessed by a holy person. I have cleaned many a space of negative energy using my sage. So out came my trusty bundle and I performed a cleansing ritual, Indian style. However, to my great surprise, the dreams continued.

I think I did the sage a few more times, and at first I’d think all was well, but then I’d have another cutting dream. You know what finally worked? Or should I say “who”? Jesus, that’s who!

When the sage failed to disperse the energy causing the dreams, I asked Jesus to bless the bed. I asked that he give comfort to the person who left those terrible images behind, and to bring white light to the bed. I went around the bed and made the sign of the cross. I thanked Him. I figured that if the bed came from a Christian person it would take Christ himself to redeem it and make it fit to sleep in again. Time proved me right. Those dreams never returned.

When I left Palmer I gave the bed to my friend Becky. She knew it's history and was comfortable with it.

I never said anything to Gail about the dreams or the bed, not really knowing her well enough to go prying into her life, not wanting to go prying through her life, but I did ask her about the person that gave her the bed. Gail said the gal moved and she didn’t know where she went.

So, was that bed harboring images of dark deeds? You know, I believe it was.