I dreamed last night, a dream I haven’t had in well over a decade. It was a dream I had in childhood; many nights, over many years. It was starkly new, yet fathomlessly old, it struck me as if I were a child. It reminded me of a time, when I felt things were pure and right. I blinked in darkness, not alone. I found a familiar friend. We were young again and in an old house that I had lived long ago.

We were playing a game, I’m not sure what. But, it involved chasing each other through the house. As we lost sight of where we ran about, we came upon a stairway. The stairway led down into the dark, damp basement. It was filled with boxes and discarded things that no one cared for. But, the hallway down happened to also be cut all the way up to the exposed beams of the roof. There nestled near the roof was a hole in the wall that led to attic. I remember this well, because in my dreams it was where the occasional bat snuck into the house that my father would have to chase down and kill. Well, this night in particular my friend and I dared each other to explore this hole in the attic. We stepped skillfully upon the banister and pressed a leg against the opposing wall of the hallway until we could just push ourselves to the hole into the attic. We crawled into the darkness. At first it was exquisite in it’s silence. The darkness was all encompassing. But as our eyes adjusted, we began to map out the ribcage structure of the attic. Beams running down like aged, wooden pillars. The spiny nails piercing out between the roofs beams. It was a veritable dungeon of fears in the dark. As we crawled through this cavern, it seemed to grow in length and in height. At the end of attic, we could just barely see a beam of light as if another hole existed. Our curiosity was too much to bear, so we began crawling toward this exciting new adventure. As we crawled, a sound could be heard. At first, it was merely the sound of our own hands and jeans rubbing along the rafters. But the deeper we traveled, the louder the sound became, it sounded almost like coins being dropped upon the ground. Now, we began to see the shadows of a creature moving slowly through the darkness.

By now, the attic had grown to an enormous cavern. Large enough to accommodate the beast that now stalked us. It wandered in the darkness and now every step of flesh rubbing across the wooden planks was accompanied by a scraping of claws as they wrapped down for added grip. The sound of coins that was enticing in our curiosity at first, now was quite clearly the sound of a chain dragging across the beams and finding slack between as the beast took pause. It scraped in terrifying fashion as it drew it’s feet from the ground, and as it drew closer we could feel it’s heft weigh down on the planks that we shared. The smell of it’s breath began to creep onto us, until we finally gazed upon it in the darkness. It’s definition was hazy as we couldn’t focus for the dark and our fear, but it stood with poise like a horse, yet stalked with it’s bobbed head like a lion. The exit grew near as we hurriedly pressed on. The beast let out a deep, crackling growl. At this point, we were both dripping with sweat, terrified at the prospect of this creature that stalked us. As we looked back upon our entrance, it appeared that for every inch the cavern had grown ahead of us, it had grown a foot behind us. With no alternative for retreat, we pressed on with a hurried pace. The beast encircled us and chased us. We split apart from one another and scurried like mice between the pillars that supported the spiny roof. As the beast chased me, it’s chain became wrapped in the pillars and just as it was about to strike me, the chain caught fast and held it’s wrath at bay. I woke slightly at this point, as I always did. I quickly pushed myself back to sleep to continue this quest. Perhaps out of curiosity, excitement, or fear of what had yet to occur.

Back in my dream world, my friend and I crawled into this new hole and found it let out into a room. The room was large and spacious. It had many games that I had become accustomed to. Some toys that were familiar to me. It was like being in my own living room, but only if it were immaculate. In it’s perfection, I found myself oddly uncomfortable. My friend was immediately occupied by the items in the room and set himself to playing. He had changed though. No longer was he someone recently familiar, now he was a childhood friend, less familiar than the friend he had been before. Even in my dream, I knew this meant that my grip on the dream was slipping. The longer I failed to accomplish my quest, the harder it would be to focus my directions and remember the facts. So, I began searching the room for something of significance. As I searched, the room began to be less and less perfect. I focused and the room clarified from it’s previous hazy, beautiful living room into a stark, aged room. It was reminiscent of some kind of enclosed belfry. There was a window on two opposing walls, high and center, and a closed stairwell. We must have happened upon a portion of the attic that we had never been before. As if two houses were connected to one another with the cavernous attic that we had crawled across. The walls were an aged wood. If there had been paint, it had faded and flaked off long ago. As I search the room, I found a stairwell nearly hidden from sight that up to a door. The mere sight of the door immediately filled me with terror and my heart and soul sunk to the lowest I’ve experienced. At this point, I woke again. I could not allow myself to stop here and drove myself back to sleep as quickly as possible.

I began to make my way up the stairwell. It was arduous and painful. The stairwell seemed to grow as I crawled up it. My friend was now not even familiar to me. His face a blurry skew of a human. He begged me to stop. He shrieked his warnings. His sobs of fear echoed in my chest, but were drowned out by the sound of my own heart pounding. The walls of the stairwell were a blurred white wood. I’d lost the ability to focus on what was occurring. I had to hurry to find what was in the room at the end. I couldn’t let the dream end now. It no longer mattered what happened to me, I had to know what was in this room. As I finally came upon the door, I grip the oddly warm door handled and forced the door open. It was as if the door was cut for another doorway. I pushed and pushed as the door scraped loudly upon the floor. The sound reinvigorated the cries of my friend who I had left behind. As the door finally gave way, I fell upon this new room. It was so hard to focus on anything in particular. It seemed to be an office. I could make out a desk, it appeared to be roll top with pencils and papers. There was a bookshelf, but I couldn’t make out any of the book titles. Then it came upon me, the room was filled with things that were immediately warm to me. Things that I remembered. Things that had long ago gone missing. Stolen from me in the dark. So many warm memories of toys, creations, gifts. There were wooden trinkets, drawings, stories. All manner of things that once had been mine to love and share with others. But, why were they locked in this room?

At that moment, they came upon me. Terrifying creatures of all manner of sizes. Their faces were obscured like all the things that I was trying to focus on. Their bodies were blurred even more, to the point where their movements couldn’t be determined until after the force of their hands were felt. They screamed. It was a high pitched, blood stopping scream filled with anger, pain, and fear. Perhaps more pain than anything else. The scattered the warmth that I had briefly felt in the objects as if dousing me with water. I quickly turned and ran for the door, but their clawed hands gripped me and tore at my clothes and flesh. I wept like a child far younger than I could ever remember being. Their jagged teeth spread like a snake’s separated jaw as their screams grew into a chorus of tortured hate. The sound alone drew from me a feeling of terror that made me want to vomit. They had no eyes in the dark blurs in their heads and their bodies with darkened with what may have been soot. Their legs faded off at the knee, blindingly into the blur of the walls, floor and ceiling. I felt my skin tear, my blood pour freely from my wounds, my scalp stretched and tore with thier menacing grip upon my head. And as I felt the tear in my skin run down from the top of my head slowly to the right side of my forehead, then to between my eyes, then down along the side of my nose, and finally as my upper lip split in half; I saw the door begin to close.

I had no hope for salvation at this point. I dared to discover what was hidden in this room and found my most stolen of cherished memories haunted by creatures of the most violent descent. I saw my blood covered hand reaching out to the door desperately begging for someone to help me. Save me from this torture. And as the door closed, I finally awoke. This time I did not try to go back to sleep. This time, I finally resolved that the dream would be the same as it always has been. I couldn’t change what happened. I never could. And now I no longer wish to find the answer, I just want to stay awake. But, the fear and pain will fade. And one day, I will search for the answer to what’s in that lonely room again. Though the humor in it is that I already know that the story will end the same. Sometimes you can’t change the things that lie in the dark, no matter how hard you try to control them.