Excerpt from the Dream Journal

October ——, 20--

The same dream. It has been almost two months since I first started having this nightmare. Recently, I've been having this dream every night, where before it was only every few days. Not only that, but the details have gotten more vivid and the dream progresses further and further each time. More importantly, it's gotten harder to wake myself up when things are clearly taking a dark turn. I take pride in my ability to wake myself out of almost any dream or nightmare, usually to avoid the unsettling imagery that I know is coming. When I first started having this dream, I was able to do that without issue. But every night since then, I've been in the dream for longer and longer. At first I thought it was morbid curiosity, a simple desire to see more of the story my subconscious was creating, but I'm beginning to think it wasn't curiosity at all. No, it would seem that I am slowly being forced into witnessing the horror that I know lies beyond the doors.

I have not detailed the full experience in some time. Since it's been a repeat dream, my journal entries have usually jumped to the new parts. But after last night's new visions, I believe it's time to recap the entire sequence. Maybe writing it all down into a cohesive narrative will help me figure out how to stop it.

The dream begins where I always fall asleep...my own bed, in my own bedroom/office hybrid. I don't know how I know it, but no one else is around. Everything is how it was when I fell asleep (I even experimented once and purposefully left the lamp on to find that the lamp would also be on in my dream). Only two things have ever been different from the waking world. The bedroom light is always on, and the bedroom window leads out into nothingness. For whatever reason, I am not bothered by either of these things. Then I look out towards the door leading into the hallway. It is the only way out of the room. When the dreams first began, I would feel a strong apprehension towards opening the door. For a while, I could wake up before I did so. Lately, because I already know what lies beyond it, I have been more at ease with opening it. Though, with that said, there is always a hesitation.

I open the door and am greeted with a familiar hallway...but it's dirty. Incredibly dirty. Grime, dirt, and other substances are on the floors, ceiling, and walls. However, the doors managed to be spotless. Almost all the lights are on, and many of them have a red-ish, pink-ish tint to their glow. The first time I saw this caught me by such surprise that I managed to scare myself awake, jolted upright. “This is not my house”, I thought, despite initially appearing to perfectly mimic my home otherwise. I did not know what I thought this house was. I see the doors leading to my main office, the home library, and my wife's room, but I wish to avoid those. Somehow, I know they lead to something horrible, I just don't know what. Going down the hallway stairs to explore the house further, the dirtiness continues into the living room, dining and kitchen rooms...it's everywhere. The chairs around the dining room table are floating, and the bathroom wall is mysteriously gone. Windows in the lower level, like the window in my bedroom, showed only an unending darkness. And the doors give off the same feeling of malice the ones upstairs did.

During the first month, I'd spend the remainder of my sleep looking around the living room and neighboring areas, staying away from the doors. Nothing would ever happen. The house remained quiet and the only new things I would notice are unimportant details that I suspect were always there without me realizing it. I did find a stack of paper and a pencil in my bedroom and wondered if I could leave a note for myself for what I now understood to be inevitable future visits. Amazingly, the note would still be there the next time I visited this dream house. So there is some permanence to the dream world. However, the notes would vanish after a while. I have left a note for myself every visit after discovering I could do this, but there would only ever be one left to find when I return to sleep and dream again.

This is certainly a strange recurring dream to be having, but up until last night I would hardly consider it the worst nightmare I ever had, even with the presence of those sinister d o o r s. But starting about two weeks ago, the sequence of events began to change. The d o o r s began to silently beckon me towards them. Where before I spent most of the dream feeling in control of my actions, this time I started feeling that control slowly slip away. My mind would say “don't go near the door” but my body would not obey. Mercifully, I was still able to force myself awake before getting near any

d o o r, but that peace would only last until I went to sleep again. This is where I first noticed it getting harder to wake myself up, and where I began to understand that I do not fully control what happens in this dream. Eventually, I found I was unable to wake myself before approaching the d o o r, and last week I would find myself standing in front of a d o o r, hand on the handle and preparing to open it. Three nights ago, I finally walked up to the d o o r that lead to my wife's bedroom...

and opened it.

At this point it is important to compare what I expected to see to what I actually saw beyond the d o o r. Such a comparison should then explain why I was so silently terrified of what lay before me. Earlier I said that I knew no one else was around, but I had no actual proof of this. This realization made me wonder if my wife was beyond the d o o r. I imagined various states that I would find her in. I considered the possibility of her standing by her own window, looking out into the darkness that has surrounded the house. Or maybe she'd be standing in front of me, staring directly into my eyes. Maybe she'd be happy to see me, just as I would be. Or she'd be visibly angry. Who could say? In my most terrible imaginations, I considered the possibility of finding her bloody corpse, and preemptively braced myself for such a shock. Then there were other possibilities. My daughter could also be there in any number of states. Or there would be a simple ghost, or a creature indescribable. But I was at least confident that the bedroom I knew was beyond the d o o r, and like the rest of the dream house would appear closely to how it was in the real world. But upon seeing what was beyond the d o o r, I felt a terror I had never felt before in dreams or reality.

It was another hallway. Not like the one I was standing in. The wood gave way to blue carpet, the walls were a cream color, and it was clean. Spotless, in fact. No dirt or grime anywhere to be found in this hallway. There was a light on the wall across from me illuminating this hall, and the hall eventually turned right, leading into unknown territory. What frightened me most was just how unnervingly normal it looked. One could feasibly see this exact hallway in any other house. On reflection, the other thing that bothered me was that the hallway should not be able to exist in my house given the boundaries of the property. It should have just led to solid wall or complete darkness, but impossibly kept going to...somewhere. I would have to make that turn to find out where it went. And unfortunately, against the wishes of my mind, I did.

The strangest, most horrific events begin here. Upon entering the hall, I regretfully looked back to see that the d o o r was now gone, replaced by a solid wall matching the walls seen in the rest of the hallway. I was now trapped, forced to go down this hallway and bear witness to whatever lay at its beginning, middle, and end. And so I did, for there was no other choice and I was unable to wake myself in that moment. The hallway turned out to not be as long as I feared, but had enough length, twists, and turns to make me question if I was going through a strange loop. The hall was very plain, with only lights, occasional framed paintings, and a single table being found. The lights did flicker at one point, but only briefly. Towards the end a painting suddenly fell from the wall which did startle me, but little else occurred. At the end of this hall was another door. I would say it did not reek of evil the way the earlier d o o r s did, but I was so clearly in the midst of horror that any sinister energy from the door was indistinguishable from everything else around me.

I open the door to see our first house. The panic and fear within me was strong enough to pull me out of sleep in that moment. I was unable to return to sleep the rest of that evening, not that I had any desire to. The next night (two nights ago), the same sequence repeated, but this time I walked past the open door and into our home. It suddenly closed behind me, and I was seemingly alone. On my immediate left was my old home office, so I went in there first and was suddenly struck with a thought...

LOCK HER OUT.

I had no idea who “her” was, though in hindsight it should have been quite obvious. I continued to explore the old home. I stepped out of the office and into the foyer, then turned my back towards the door that led here. To my left was the dimly lit kitchen, close to how I remember it. In front of me was a door leading to the dining area. To my right was a dark hall, bedrooms on either side...and a red, swinging light on the other side. Mercifully, I did not go in that direction. I also noticed frames on the wall containing no pictures, but instead a black square. These could be found everywhere, and I did not understand their purpose. I continued my exploration by going straight, into the dining room.

A table and chairs were in the room, and there were several doors that led to other parts of the house. The table had three framed paintings laying on top of it. One was of a king, another of a queen, and the last one of a princess. I intuited that these represented my family, but I did not yet know if I needed to do something with them. I investigated these and tried to see if there was something that could be done with them, or if they gave any kind of clue regarding how to end all this. And then I heard it...her voice. It was near, it was far, it was everywhere and nowhere all at once. I recognized its beauty, and yet it was unfamiliar and vile. Indeed, the voice was a cruel mockery of my wife's. And this is what it said...

“I see you. I'll be wherever you are.”

I awoke, screaming.

And now, I come to last night, where the nightmare had its strongest hold on me yet. Worried that I would soon be unable to wake myself from these nightmares, I started by leaving a note to my future self warning of what's to come. If the door to my old home was any indication, the d o o r s are connected to my past somehow. The past is riddled with mistakes and misery, and it is infuriating that my dreams are forcing those horrid memories upon me and further twisting them against my will. It is only fair that my future self know what to expect. After that, the dream played out like the night before, but with one key difference...when she spoke, I did not wake.

The framed photos with the black squares on the wall suddenly had swirling eyes. The lights began to turn red. Visibility was worsening. I carefully walked into the kitchen, hoping the door to the old basement would somehow get me out of here. It was locked, so I turned around

and

saw

her.

Standing against that red swinging light was the black silhouette of a figure that was both familiar and unknown to me. It looked like my wife, but with cruel twists and depraved features. Her movements were all wrong. The body looked normal, but the head was elongated and twitched and shook in ways no life, be it human or animal, could ever hope to mimic. I could not yet make out her face, but by this point I didn't want to.

It ran.

Directly towards me.

I was going to die.

I can barely keep it together as I write this. The imagery and sensations are paralyzing to think about now, and it's even worse in the dream where it all feels so real. I tried running away. Into the dining room with the three paintings. Then past the open door, where I suddenly found myself in an unfinished...basement? I know I went through the door but I don't understand exactly how I got here. Keep running. Holes in the floor. Eyes on the wall. Footsteps behind me. “Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back” I hear that mocking voice plead. A piano. Another hallway. Eyes. Eyes. Eyes. Dining room again. Back to kitchen. Crying. Now running towards the swinging red light. See a door I never saw before in that old home. Open it. Leads to a solid concrete wall.

She caught me.

That face...

I see that smile...

I SEE DISGUST.

SWIRLING. CHANGING.

CAN'T SEE!

IT REMEMBERS!!

I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!

I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M...

I...

...need to collect myself.

I did die. But unfortunately, the dream did not stop there. I was back in the dream house, in the bedroom where it always starts. Everything was quiet again. I didn't move for a while, not because I couldn't but because I didn't want to. When I finally started to move again, I stepped out into the grime covered hallway of the dream house and saw one final, sinister image. It shocked and repulsed me, and confirmed the evil nature of the d o o r s of the dream house. The door to my wife's bedroom (or would it now be the old house?) had blood pouring down from the top. My flesh chilled and my stomach turned, for I knew that this was my blood. I gave out one last pitiful sob...

And then I woke up. My face was soaked in tears.

I know I'll be back there tonight. There is no avoiding a return visit to that wretched dream house and the memories it wishes to haunt me with. I now believe that in order for this nightmare to stop, I will need to open every door and face every twisted reflection of the past awaiting me. I am not sure if I will be able to wake up again until the nightmare is complete. The first memory was truly horrifying and has left me scarred since. I can't explain it, but the world, or at least my perception of it, has changed. There is a clear difference between today and yesterday in either my thinking or the world around me. I have noticed already, for instance, that my wife's behavior is quite different from just one day ago. But what I don't know is if it's my mind fabricating realities or truly a sudden change in her. Both possibilities are equally terrifying.

Tonight, I shall sleep once more, and then I will be back in that dream house with its grime covered walls, horrid doors, and inevitable horrors. I fear that the complete experience will tarnish my mind, and possibly my reality, in ways I can't begin to fathom. But I have no other choice. The dream will appear whether I want it to or not. But in writing all this down, I have figured out this much...

The doors...they need to be opened, so that they can be closed for good.