The Case of S T Nikos

The Dreams of S T Nikos

I have mentioned several times the peculiarities of S T Nikos, but there was more to it than even the oddnesses I have already spoken of.

Nikos confessed to me that he had had bizarre dreams ever since he was a child. From the time he was able to think rationally about it, he had assumed they were caused, or somehow connected with, his poikilothermism. He dreamt of a hot misty world with white skies and frequent torrential rains. Large fields were drained by sinuous ditches and grazed by unicorn-like cattle making high pitched noises like coo-loo-woo, loo-hoo-hoo. Here and there were strange trees, some of them broken, but across a broad shallow river he could see dense woodland. Here and there stood groups of large rocks but in the distant mist was a city�for that is what he was certain it was though he did not know its name�of cyclopean stones.

The nameless city had been built in distant times by a race of grey-green reptilian beings depicted in sculptured reliefs on the monumental stones of the ancient city. These creatures were of a generally human shape but seemed to have the power of magic for they maintained a distinct culture and civilisation apparently without making use of technology. Nikos tried to explain that he felt they were technological but in a different way from ourselves. They abhored rectilinear structures much preferring organic shapes and had somehow learnt to grow whatever they needed. Their very technology was organic.

But then the scene altered as the mist got thicker and the sky darker and the sun fainter until it could only be seen occasionally through the smoky black clouds above. The distant city blackened until it was covered in soot and the reliefs could no longer be seen. The grazing creatures fell dead on the sward and the ditches putrefied in an oily stinking mass of decaying matter. He could barely see across the broad river which was now silted up completely leaving a morass of black bubbling sewage. When he could pierce the gloom he could see the trees of the forest standing like stick insects at strange angles, charred and quite dead, while elsewhere some seemed to be still aflame.

Nikos would dream this dream or variations of it often. But he had other strange dreams too. He would dream that he was laying on a large slab of cold stone in a sepulchral grotto or cavern. The light whch illuminated the scene was faint and green as if it had travelled through sea water. The cave was made of huge stones cut with the low reliefs typical of his dream world. though the stone was hard and cold, Nikos felt himself warm and peaceful in his dream. He felt sure he was asleep. Then the green colour began to darken. Like the previous dream he was overwhelmed with a strong sense of decay. Great gobs of mud or tar began to drip from the cyclopean rocks which became streaked with corruption. He felt uncomfortable and scared as if he were having a nightmare. Then echoing through the cavern, gradually getting louder from the total silence, he could hear the repeated word: Awake! Awake! Needless to say, he would awake at this point in his dream.

Another one that Nikos related to me was that he was floating as if on a magic carpet, lying there in the sun, warm and secure. All he had to do was imagine something and it would appear. He could create rainbows and firework displays, floating billiard balls dancing before him and kalaidoscopic patterns, at will. Then he turned over and found he was just above the earth which was grey and sooty. Buildings stood derelict and decaying around him, and at his feet were oily puddles full of trash and rusting cans. Suddenly a distorted rat-like biped scurried from behind a broken down building, to stop in its tracks when it saw him. It opened its eyes wide in terror, and jabbered horrifically, stumbling backwards. Nikos in his dream felt revulsion for the stunted little monster and its disgusting world. He feels he wants to kill it, and then he wakes up.

In yet another he is moving through vast canyons of monumental stones. Unrecognised friends pass him with a friendly greeting. The air is warm and clear, with beautiful scents of flowers drifting in from the nearby forests. Suddenly he is startled by a rat scurrying behind a stone. It seems unimportant and he continues to walk joyfully through his familiar pathways. But again he is surprised by a scurrying creature, then another and another. They start to emerge from everywhere�loathsome, skinny, rat-like dribbling things. Like locusts or like soldier ants, they run beneath him, they begin to scramble over him they begin to inundate him. They bite him, they tear off his flesh, they stare into his face malignantly, and he falls down consumed by them.

Perhaps a psychiatrist would have his own views about Nikos�s dreams but Nikos had certainly developed his own. At one time he had felt he might be able to turn his dreams to some use by writing fantasies based on them, but had decided that others would do it better.

Nikos explained: "The dreams affected my way of thinking because I became certain that they were based on the fundamental truth that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practising laissez faire technology, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on the outside, ever ready to take possession of the earth again."

These dreams had conditioned Tino Nikos�s career and particularly his interests in antiquity and palaeontology�effectively his whole life.

S T Nikos himself summarised his dream theory in one of his letters as: "There have been ages when other things ruled on the earth, and they had great stone cities. Remains are rarely, but still to be, found as cyclopean stones scarcely recognisable as constructions. Their builders all died vast epochs of time before man came, but there were conditions which could revive them when the cycle of being turned once more into the correct quadrant, when their successors proved to their makers that they had forsaken all responsibility for their tenancy as guardians of the earth.

"And so it is not to be thought, that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters. His predecessors wait�not in the world we know but at its edges. They rest asleep�tranquil, elemental and�except when they stir�unseen. For the serpent is yet poised, motionless but alert, awaiting the moment to strike."

Michaela Magi Griffiths, Bloomsbury, September, 1993
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