Brookline, Mass., March 2000

The nightmare is expunged.
Not that I have actually dreamed this recurring nightmare in many years - but its images have dominated my memories of Costa Rica, and have always conveyed a particular freight of terror.
Perhaps rather than being expunged, the memory is buttressed with fresh waking realism, its terror washed out. In any case, I think I've discovered that to replace such a fear, the new visions must be sufficiently near or analogous to the first. You'll see what I mean.
My recurring nightmare was a concatenation of events which happened when I was six years old in Costa Rica. Not that the events themselves were so terrifying - nor that they even happened exactly as I shortly dreamt them - but that they awoke me in my own bed in an irrational sweat. This power was such that eventually I could not distinguish my memories of the dream from my memories of the real events.
The visions: a steep mountain road under a dark cloud, the black Renault's footing slick, rain pelting down, a jagged cliff looming over us on the left - as viewed from the back-seat window, my neck craned around - a sheer drop-off on the right, without guardrail or shoulder.
In a flash of sinister light, I see an elaborate shrine - almost a mausoleum - up on the vertical hillside, then another still farther up. The cruciform silhouette, the air of danger and death, are alien and terrifying.
The car gets stuck in the mud, and my mother gets out in her stocking feet to help push. Her feet sink up to mid-calf. There is a hullabaloo, angry people, spinning tires, danger on all sides. I am expected to help but I don't know how.
(To be continued.)