Saint Michael and Bill Ashcroft
by Pedro Blas González (April 2025)
The end of a story is rarely the end…
Take Bill Ashcroft’s ordeal, a reoccurring dream that he can’t figure out.
Bill is taken up to the rooftop of a building under construction by two people who he has never seen before, one of them whose face he never sees. The 26 story building is in Chelsea, near the Hudson River. Bill rode up the side of the building in an external, temporary elevator, a metal cage that gave him chills. Looking around, he held on to construction scaffolding. It is a windy night. Though the city looks majestic at night, Bill is afraid to look down. His fear of heights made Bill’s vision blurry.
Bill can’t bear to look down. He is surprised to find out how fearful he is of heights. Must be a late adulthood thing, for he was never afraid of heights when younger.
One of the two people who brought Bill to the rooftop of the high-rise, a man that laughs at and mocks Bill, forces him to look down. Bill is frightened. Anticipating a fall, he backs up several steps. The laughing man pointed down to Bill’s apartment building across the street.
“See the second window from the left, on the fifth floor?” the laughing man asked Bill.
“Yes.”
“See the man moving around inside?” the laughing man continued.
“Yes. Barely, Bill said,” scared to look down.
“That’s you surround by the bluish light of the television. You must have just awakened from a nightmare,” the laughing man laughed heartily.
“How am I here if that is me in the room?” Bill asked the laughing man. The laughing man did not answer.
“Bill Ashcroft, what will people remember you by? The man who fell from a building under construction? People will talk. You know what they will ask—what was he doing up there? Will you be remembered by something else you have done? An accomplishment, perhaps?” the laughing man mocked.
“Something else,” Bill answered, stepping further back, “take me down. I don’t like heights.”
Bill could not see the other man’s face, though he recognized the raspy voice as being that of a man.
“He will be recognized as a person,” the faceless man said to the laughing man.
“A person … you fill yourself with pride when you say that word … person. What is a person? What do you know about persons?” the laughing man questioned the faceless man.
The laughing man grabbed Bill by one arm and tried to throw him off the building. Without much effort, the faceless man pulled Bill away and walked him into the elevator, a rickety cage suspended outside a tall building. Once inside the elevator, Bill let out a sigh and thanked the faceless man. The elevator didn’t move.
Closing his eyes, Bill told the faceless man to take him down. The man did not respond. Opening his eyes, Bill was horrified to find the faceless man was no longer in the elevator. The laughing man had also vanished from the rooftop.
“God help me. I must get down from here,” he said aloud, desperately pressing the electric mechanism that controlled the elevator. The wind picked up.
The following morning, Bill woke up tired and confused.
At work, Bill sat at his desk, taking small breaks, pondering the meaning of his dream: Am I being taken to the gallows? He thought.
Gallows? No. There are no gallows, he tried to convince himself.
Strange dream, Bill thought.
He had several dreams like that before, dating back to his early twenties, including very vivid lucid dreams and frightening dream paralysis. He took these dreams in stride, trying to figure them out patiently. After the passage of a reasonable amount of time, mainly weeks, Bill always came to understand his dreams. He viewed them as epiphanies.
That night he prepared for bed like any other night. He slept soundly for the first three and a half hours and then awoke. Looking around the room, Bill began to think about the previous night’s dream. Eventually, he dozed off into sleep. In the morning, he dressed and went to work. It was Friday. Friday night and Saturday were uneventful.
During Sunday morning Mass, the priest’s homily invoked Saint Michael the Archangel and spiritual warfare. Bill was struck by the clear manner that the priest talked about the two realms: the here-and-now, physical and sensual reality, and the transcendent world.
After Mass, Bill spent a large portion of Sunday reflecting on the priest’s words. That night he had another powerful dream. The two men came to him and took him away; only now the building was taller.
Bill still could not see the face of one of the two men who took him to the roof of the building. In this dream he found himself atop of the building, standing by the ledge. He was terrified.
“Interesting how it all seems unreal from up high,” the faceless man said to Bill, “imagine God’s view.”
Bill nodded, trying to step back.
The laughing man tried pushing Bill off the building, but the tall, faceless man held him back, scolding the laughing man.
The laughing man gave Bill an angry look, nodding slightly, as if to say, I’ll get you yet.
After several weeks, on and off, of suffering through variations of the same dream, Bill realized that the laughing man wanted to harm him, while the faceless man protected him.
Why does the faceless man tolerate the laughing man? Bill thought. Would the laughing man throw me off the building if the faceless man were not present? He continued to ponder.
Bill contemplated the meaning of the dream throughout the day. As the days went by and the dreams multiplied, Bill noticed coincidences throughout the day that, though subtle, were teases that affected him.
Stopped at an intersection red traffic signal, Bill noticed the driver of a car in the next lane staring at him. The man looked like the laughing man in his dreams, and as far as Bill could tell, he wore the same clothes.
In the dreams the laughing man accused Bill of things he has nothing to do with. In one dream the laughing man said to Bill: “Why do you live, when so many others were never born? Have you thought about that, Bill Ashcroft?”
In one of the dreams Bill witnessed the laughing man balance himself on one leg on the edge of the high-rise. The laughing man implored Bill to join him, while laughing. “Come to the edge. If you fall I will catch you,” he said with a hearty laugh, while the faceless man stood in front of Bill.
In another dream the laughing man asked Bill to imagine a vacuum devoid of sensations, except for one: hatred of God.
In one of the dreams the laughing man cajoled Bill to jump off the building with him. The laughing man grabbed Bill and began to drag him off. The faceless man intervened, holding Bill. The laughing man jumped off the building. Bill gasped. Seconds later the laughing man was standing behind Bill once again, laughing a deep-throated, guttural laugh. He asked Bill: “Do you know your dimensions? That’s a handy thing to know.”
Bill awoke and wondered what the laughing man meant by dimensions.
In another dream the laughing man took Bill to the top of one of the towers of a suspension bridge. Looking down at the water and shimmering city, Bill shivered with fright.
The laughing man taunted Bill: “‘To see a world in a grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And eternity in an hour.’ What do you say to that, Bill Ashcroft? You know Blake, the bard, don’t you? See, I am the one he describes in the poem. What I have seen and know, you could never understand. You are limited by your puny flesh. Though, I must admit, flesh, a body, sensation is what I lack and have desired from the beginning,” the laughing man said, “think of me as your augury, Bill Ashcroft,” the laughing man continued to laugh.
Driving to work the next morning, Bill thought: Augury? Portent. An augury is an omen, things to come. Is that what the laughing man means?
Driving home that evening, Bill thought about the faceless man. Why does the faceless man allow the laughing man to torture me, yet keeps the laughing man from hurting me? Why do they always show up together in my dreams?
When he arrived home, Bill began to cook dinner. His peripheral vision caught a glimpse of an entity walking past him, from the living room into his bedroom. The entity was about four feet tall, a deformed, grotesque torso with legs and arms but lacking a head. Bill froze and watched the entity disappear into his bedroom.
Walking into the bedroom, Bill saw a dark blob, the size of a basketball hovering over his bed. He took out a crucifix that he kept in a nightstand and began to pray The Lord’s Prayer:
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…”
Before Bill could finish the prayer, the black blob dissolved, leaving a foul smell in the room. Bill then sprinkled holy water around the house, while finishing The Lord’s Prayer.
That night Bill went to sleep earlier than usual. Several hours later he awoke from a nightmare. In that dream, Bill fought off some entity that was pressing down on him. When he began to pray, he felt the entity being lifted from him, leaving him feeling lighter. He had trouble falling asleep again, so he began to read.
After about an hour of reading, Bill turned off the lamp and went to sleep. He began dreaming that the laughing man was trying to throw him off a high-rise. Every time the laughing man threatened Bill, the faceless man calmly intervened.
“Was it a trick of light, Bill Ashcroft, that little visitor you received last night?” the laughing man mocked.
When Bill attempted to answer, the faceless man said, “No Bill. Don’t indulge the vileness of hate.”
“Hate?” the laughing man burst out, “I am the angel of light, or have you forgotten, my master angel?”
“You do not know light, only darkness, being the slave of hate that you are.”
The laughing man began to laugh a violent laugh: “Bill Ashcroft, I will be around. I’m always around. Save your holy water,” he mocked. At that point the laughing man flung himself off the rooftop of the high-rise. Bill could hear his laughter fading as he went away.
The faceless man grabbed Bill by the left arm. Bill still could not see his face. The faceless man hurled downward toward Bill’s apartment, which had a lamp turned on. Bill saw himself entering through the window. He awoke and sat in bed. His lamp was turned on, and he held his crucifix in his hand.
Table of Contents
Pedro Blas González is Professor of Philosophy in Florida. He earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy at DePaul University in 1995. Dr. González has published extensively on leading Spanish philosophers, such as Ortega y Gasset and Unamuno. His books have included Unamuno: A Lyrical Essay, Ortega’s ‘Revolt of the Masses’ and the Triumph of the New Man, Fragments: Essays in Subjectivity, Individuality and Autonomy and Human Existence as Radical Reality: Ortega’s Philosophy of Subjectivity. He also published a translation and introduction of José Ortega y Gasset’s last work to appear in English, “Medio siglo de Filosofia” (1951) in Philosophy Today Vol. 42 Issue 2 (Summer 1998). His most recent book is Philosophical Perspective on Cinema.