Nightmares and dreamscapes

it is 6:46 am, and I have just woken from a dream.

In it, I am in my great-grandfather's old red barn, which sits on the land he originally homesteaded when he emigrated here from Czechoslovakia in the 1800s.
In the dream, it is my grandfather's barn instead, even though my granpa never lived on that farm or worked it in all his years, owning his own land instead. At one point (the 40s) my dad lived in the small house next to it, with his first wife. This barn is a source of contention among my relative in Houston who want to tear it down (and now own the land), and the relatives in Nebraska, who want to preserve it, even in its decrepit state. This is all true in real life. Parts of my dream involve scenes that are not but were true in the dream.
The dream:
I face the western wall, looking at images from the late 1990s of people I went to high school with. The only sense of any family I get is that of my nephew Ben, and I can't even be sure he's on the wall. There are tacky glamour shots and birthday greetings and faded computer print- out pages stapled to the wall. Sometimes it is a wall, somtimes it is just a support beam and I'm focusing on the wall behind it. Whatever it is (when not switching forms) it is supposed to be a wall of commemoration, a wall of celebration in my family, and I cannot understand why pictures of men and women four years older than me are on the wall, looking frozen in time in their leotards, poufy hair cuts and wide-armed tanktops.
I am in the barn alone, taking pictures of it, after seeing a picture of it on my dad's wall for the first time, a shot of its hayloft through some pines, aesthetically pleasing. I've actually seen this picture for years, but am just now figuring out that it is of the barn. I decided to take pictures inside the barn, to preserve it before it is gone.
When I enter, there are things hanging from the ceiling, old, dark metal things with cobwebs and decades of farm grime blanketing them. I can't make out any of them, and as I move underneath, among other planks and boards of wood that seems to have fallen over time, I find clothes and throw them into a bin of some sort; a black hoodie that lookes like mine and maybe another sweater, but certainly a black hoodie.
I make my way to this wall of pictures which feels like and alter of some sort.
At first, I'm just taking pictures, using the small digital camera I have in real life.
I kneel down, I use clever angles, I capture as much of one scene as possible. When I kneel in the dirt, the whole thing smells like ancient decay and I feel age, but it doesn't smell correspondingly. Or at least, I don't remember if it smelled.
Behind the beam/wall, is somehow another wall (in life this would make no sense, it probably doesn't now either).
This wall is green, covered in years of moss. Soft, green textured moss. Up high, toward the ceiling and illuminated, are horseshoes. Horseshoes hung above a doorway signify good luck, and these shoes look as if they have been up there generating luck for as long as the barn has been standing. I am trying to get a good, framed shot of theses horseshoes and the soft beam of light and drifting dust motes, and it isn't happening, the shot I want. Think Norman Rockwell painting.
As I'm moving around to get this shot, I run into something, to my right.
It is clear. And round, an orb of some sort. Gelatinous, not in that sense that it feels jello-y and squishy, because I don't feel it or see it, but in that sense of bouncing right off of it with a miniture vibrational shift up through my shoulder and head, like they do in the cartoons, wavy, wiggly "blluhhuhhhh" lines to show bounce.
I bounce back to where I was standing moments ago. Bounce is the wrong word because it seems to imply some speed, and this was not quick. I shift back? At first, I have no idea what I ran into. I can't see anything there, but something is keeping me from getting the perfect shot, of the horseshoes and softly aged sun.
I try again, and it has made itself solid. I still can't see it, and it has no shape, but I know it's clear and round. And standing its ground. There is no way past this thing, and I realize that it's not good. It's something evil, something unhappy, and I'm instantly scared. But I stay.
For whatever reason, I wrap my arms around it. I don't think I want to, I think it sort of forced itself upon me, and I'm trying to protect? myself. I start praying, using words and images and entreaties-- not to it, but God and his forces. I'm reassured that I'll be ok, I'll walk out of the barn.
This thing and I keep on hugging, in a corner-ish area, on the southeastern part of the barn, near the door, and I feel nails digging into my hand. I'm certain they are nails, although I can't see anything of any sort and I still sense that this thing is round.
I don't know if I hug this thing out of existence, but I don't think so. I think I take it into me.
And then the dream ends.

I wake up on my left side, arms wrapped around me as much as they can be, with a pillow sort of underneath my right arm. I am shrouded in a soft, white blanket. The sun is coming in through slats in the blinds, and my stomach hurts. I can feel the dream in my brainstem, in my stomach, my right leg, my foot. I am not scared or crying, but full, almost sickened by taking in too much. I feel like I have that slight vibrational hum of life and activity. I have no idea what that means, because I AM alive and mostly active, so I have that anyway. But this is new and different (no, I'm not pregnant, it's not possible) and it is making my stomach crazy, which is why I mention it.
And this is the only reason I think I took this thing in, truly.