The Reverend Dreams

Today I wrote in a couple stretches and wound up with 2200+ words for the day. Here's part about Reverend Herbert Gantt's dream (the final part of the first "day" of the novel):

Gantt wasn’t much of a dreamer; what scattered thoughts passed through his subconscious, usually drifted through without notice or comment. Once in a great while he would awaken, troubled by a persistent thought that he had been shown something he should have remembered.

Tonight the Reverend slept. Tonight the Reverend dreamed.

He was standing on the shoulder of the highway. Behind him sat the bus, the flat bed trailer truck that towed the portable building that served as office and sanctuary, the trailer truck that held the meeting tent (tabernacle was the word that echoed in his head when he saw the trailer) and folding chairs. He looked in the windows of the bus and saw his assistants asleep. He saw himself asleep on the bus as well, his wide forehead pressing against the window. A thin trail of saliva trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

All looked as should be expected, except for two things. First, all the vehicles were painted black. If not for the lights on in the bus and portable building and the running lights on on the vehicles they would have looked like areas of inky blackness in the star-streaked high desert night. The other thing that was odd were the hundreds of cars parked behind the second trailer truck. Like the ending of that movie, Field of Dreams, the cars with their running lights on stretched to the horizon. They sat there, their engines idling. None of the cars had their interior dome lights on the way the bus was illuminated, and that sat fine with Reverend Gantt. Something told him he didn’t want to see who was driving the cars. Part of him knew. The rest of him was glad the other part was keeping it a secret.

Suddenly a rumble arose from down the line of cars. The dream Reverend in the bus, asleep, shuddered. The dream Reverend outside the bus, who somehow knew this was a dream, realized that the real Reverend dreaming the dream had just shuddered, too. The awake dream Reverend sincerely hoped that the dreaming Reverend would wake up before whatever was making the rumbling noise made its way down the endless line of parked cars.

Okay, it gets a bit metaphysical at the end, but in general I like it. At least it didn't cause vomiting while I wrote it.

(daily word count: 2,272 words; total word count: 6,572 words; words remaining: 43,428)