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When I was younger
When I was a kid I had these recurring dreams. They were very random. There was no pattern or reason for them. Sometimes my dreams would be rainbows and lollipops, other times I would have the same dream of these little creatures over and over.
The dream was always the same, at least at first. In our basement we had this little hole in the brick. It was very strange and out of place. It was like the basement had two walls, one inside the other with no space between them, but there was a perfect two foot square missing out of the first wall. No one in the family ever knew why this was like this. The house was originally owned by my grandparents and then passed on to my father when my grandparents decided to downgrade to a ranch style home to do away with all the stairs. No one ever had any explanation as to why this was like this.
Follow the bouncing ball
In my dream I would be playing with a little red ball in the kitchen. Off of the back of the kitchen was a back door. There was a standard doorway that led to steps. There were about 3 or 4 steps that went down to a landing. If you turned right on this landing you were at the back door of the house. If you kept going straight, obviously, you were in the basement.
The little red ball would always seem to have a mind of it's own. I would be bouncing it and doing my usual kid type things with it. Out of nowhere it would jump out of my hands on it's own. It would slowly bounce away from me. I do mean slowly. Like just fast enough that my little boy feet couldn't quite keep up with it. Every time I would grab at it, I would just miss it.
The ball would bounce this way, all the way over to the door that led to the basement. In my dreams this door was always open, but in real life this was not the case. My parents kept that door closed, and it had one of those latch style locks at the top that was out of reach for me and my siblings. This ensured that no one took a tumble down the steps.
The ball would make it's way to the door. It then would bounce down the steps very slowly. It would literally hit every single step in perfect timing. It was like if it went slow enough, I would definitely keep chasing it. When it would reach the bottom of the steps, it would bounce straight up and down in the same spot until I was right behind it.
There was a dead wall at the bottom of the basement steps. When you hit the bottom all you could do is turn left. So that's what the ball did. As soon as it was almost in my reach, the ball would abruptly turn left and bounce a little further in to the basement. It would then turn left again and start heading right for the hole in the basement wall.
This is where things would get really creepy. Again, it would wait for me, bouncing straight up and down. Once I was in arms reach, it would dive directly in to the hole and out of my sight, which was strange seeing that this hole was literally the width of a brick deep.
I ain't Alice, and this ain't wonderland
I would scurry (as was increasingly popular in the 90's) over to this hole in the wall. As I got closer, the hole got bigger and deeper. My instincts told me "No, don't do it, this is really dumb", but at this point something was pulling me in like a tractor beam. I came to know what was in that hole (at least in my dreams) very well, but I still climbed right in to it every single time.
As I climbed in this tiny two square foot hole that was only 4 inches deep in real life, it became a large room probably 8 feet wide, with 12 foot ceilings. As I walked the floors and walls turned from dusty, dirty, depression era brick to stainless steel panels about 2 feet in width that seamlessly overlapped each other. This room was loooong. It was like facing two mirrors. This hallway always seemed infinitely long.
I continued to follow the little red ball. It still bounced slowly, teasing me, all the way up to that last fateful bounce. This bounce wasn't like the rest. This wasn't a bounce at all. It was a leap.
I would look up and see it. A throne. A big shiny throne with markings that to this day, I still don't know what they were or what they meant. The throne shined in a way that I've never seen before, even today. It was what sat there that was troublesome.
One of the most terrifying things that I've ever seen
The ball leaped right into it's hand. It was probably eight to ten feet tall. It had green fur, or maybe feathers, I don't really even know what it was to be honest with you. It had a jagged, unnatural look to it, whatever it was. By the time my eyes settled on it's face, I was far too scared to distinguish any recognizable features. This thing looked like the honey comb monster had a baby with the incredible hulk. You may have laughed at that statement, but I promise you, if you seen what I saw, it was far from laughable. It was down right terrifying. I still get chills thinking about it 20 plus years later.
It would just stare at me for a moment, rolling my little red ball in it's right hand. It held some kind of weird scepter in it's left. I would try to run, but my body was frozen in time. I would try to shut my eyes, but they didn't work any more. I would try to scream for help, but my voice no longer had the power to leave my mind and travel through my vocal cords. It was like total detachment from the real world. I couldn't do anything. I could only feel fear. Nothing else was an option.
As I would try to scream for help, this being would let out the most god awful laugh that you have ever heard. It would just laugh and laugh at my sad attempts to regain control of my physical self. The laugh only increased the terror levels of my brain.
Finally, the laughing would stop. As I stood there, locked in place, it would just maintain eye contact for a moment. It would then start to stand up. Every time this thing did this, it was like time rewound. I would see the stainless steel panels tear away from the floor revealing the dirty, dusty, depression era bricks again as this giant being got smaller and smaller. Just at the point when I would be exiting the hole in the wall that was getting smaller and smaller, everything would go black for a split second. I would then awake in my bed, crying, just as terrified as I was in the dream.
This nightmare was recurring for years, randomly. At one point it stopped completely for a while. It then picked up again, but it was different. It was the same type of creature but the dream was completely different.
Return to not-so-wonderland
For a long time those dreams had stopped. I don't know why I had them in the first place, or what would randomly trigger them, but without any real explanation they just ceased. At least for a while they did. The moment of silence was brief, maybe only a few months long. Without any notice or warning, the dreams started all over again. Only this time, this time they were different.
At the time, the house we lived in, the same house I spoke of earlier, was a fairly old house. It was built in the 20's. The house had the typical 20's style floor plan, with the living room being longer than it was wide. From the living room, if you were sitting on the couch, you were looking directly into through the dining room and into the kitchen.
Again, the dreams were recurring, randomly. They were always exactly the same, to the smallest detail. I was a little older now, by at least two or three years. I wasn't much in to little red bouncing balls any more. My tastes in playtime had progressed. At this point I was really in to art and drawing. I spent a lot of time sketching and what not.
My dreams always started with me sitting on this couch drawing, which is something that I did often. My oldest sister would always be sitting with me, just watching me draw. At some point my sister would say that she needed to use the bathroom. Our only bathroom was in the upstairs of the house, where all of the rest of my family was. I could always hear them in the dream, upstairs in my parents room playing with my parents, watching movies and stuff. Now, with my sister being upstairs, I was left all alone on the main floor of the house.
Out of the frying pan...
This is when the noises would begin. I would hear banging. Every time was exactly the same. Just a bunch of banging. I would always look up and glance around the house. Nothing would ever be out of place, so I would just go back to drawing. The banging would start again, but this time it was louder, closer. Again, nothing would be out of place so I would just go back to drawing.
Now, the banging would intensify, but there were also other strange noises as well. It would sound like metal scraping, with the added effect of something sliding across the floor. It was at this point that I would look up in time to see our stove shaking slightly. It was like something was moving it, but there was nothing visible that could be moving it.
...and into the fire
I would watch it for a few seconds while that familiar terror slowly filled me. I would see that familiar creature make it's way from behind the stove. It would slowly edge it's way out from between the wall and stove. This one was different. It wasn't the huge, green, scepter wielding abomination from previous nightmares. This one was smaller. It couldn't have been more than 3 feet tall, and was a pale brown color, maybe more like a tan.
The biggest difference in this dream compared to ones from the past was that this being never acknowledged that I was there. It was like it couldn't even see me. The overwhelming fear was the same nonetheless. I would try to move, but I couldn't. No working voice box either, the ol' cords failed me once again. I would try so hard to scream, but all I could get out was a gust of meaningless air.
I don't know what this thing did, to be completely honest with you. It was like it foraged the main floor, looking for something. If it was looking for something, I couldn't tell you what it was, or if it ever found it. It just moved about in a weird, staggered, unnatural way. It did this for a few minutes before slowly making it's way back to the stove. The creature would slowly wiggle it's way back between the stove and wall, nudging it's way behind it. As it disappeared behind the stove, the machine would slowly start edging it's way backwards, accompanied by the same scraping and sliding sounds.
Just as the stove slid back into it's original orientation, my sister would hit the bottom of the steps, finding me a nervous wreck. As she would ask me what was wrong, I would wake up in bed in the same state as I would from the other dreams.
Finally, Quiet
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, we finally moved out of that house. It wasn't a planned move. Apparently, my parents had been behind on the property taxes for some time, but no one knew that. One day this haggard old woman shows up at our door. She holds up a piece of paper for my dad to see. My dad gets angry and slams the door in her face.
I found out later in life that the piece of paper the woman was holding up was a "quit claims deed". She paid the back taxes on the house, and in exchange, she was awarded the deed to our house. She gave us thirty days to move out before she took possession of the house.
I was finally free from all the nightmares. Once we moved, all the way up till now, I have never had another dream about those creatures.
Several years passed. I was about fourteen years old. My parents were in the process of buying a new house. While we waited for all of the paper work to go through so that we could move in, we were staying with my uncle.
A bombshell
While staying at my uncles house, this story got even more bizarre. I don't know how the whole topic got brought up, but everyone started to openly talk about all of the strange, and honestly insane things, that had happened in that old house. I wasn't the only one that was plagued with recurring nightmares that couldn't be explained. Both of my sisters shared similar dreams that involved them free falling through the house and into that basement. I'll cover that another time though.
It was my fathers nightmares that startled me the most, and you'll see why shortly. He told me the story like this:
A familiar feeling
The dreams were always the same, every last detail. He would be in his room asleep. He would wake up in his dream. There would be a lot of loud banging and weird scraping noises coming from downstairs.
Being the man of the house, he wouldn't wake anyone else. He would just jump out of bed and go to investigate. Creeping out of his room, he would slowly make his way to the steps. With every step the noises intensified. There were definitely people in our house, he would think at this point.
As he took the first step down the staircase, it would get quiet. He would take another step. Now both of his feet were on the stairs. On the third step down, the entire staircase would turn into smooth metal, the walls and ceiling included. There were no more stairs. It was now more like a tube slide. He would end up on his back, sliding through this metallic room.
At the bottom, he would land flat on his back. Looking up, he would see several of these small creatures, the same creatures that I had experienced in my nightmares. He would be lying flat on his back, on what he said seemed like an operating table. There was a light overhead, and in the glow of it all he could see was these creatures standing over him, laughing at him maniacally as the terror filled his body.
After a while, everything would just go black. Pure blackness. He would then wake up in a sheer state of panic.
How do two people, living in the same house, have nightmares about the same thing, if that thing isn't real or has never been spoke of? I never told my father about the dreams that I had, not as a child or after he told me about his, at least not to my recollection.
