The dream now begins with me stepping into the house – now cold and hollow – the ethereal light from it, gone. With no companion, guard or guide, I enter and descend into the basement – a flickering light illuminates my steps, casting all manner of shadows around me.

A sense of dread fills me as I approach the door, but something draws me to it – overtaking my will in a most unholy way. Touching the knob sears my skin with cold, but I cannot pull away. That same unholy force turns my hand and the knob with it. There is both the feeling of being pushed and pulled into that once-familiar room.

But this time, it is dark and bitterly cold. After a few heartbeats in the black, a yellow light flickers overhead. The doors, once painted a soft cream, not appear chipped and cracked. In places the grain of bare wood lay exposed. Faces stare at me from the wood grain, unsettling and unmoving, yet twisted. For a moment or two more, I stand still in that small room, frozen in place by terror. I turn to the door behind me, the one that should lead back into the basement and go through.

I am blinded by the white light I encounter. But as the door behind me swings closed, the blinding light fades and I see I am standing in the same room I just left. As I come to this realization, the white light turns to yellow and the shadows from it bring forth more twisted faces in the wood grain of the doors.

This is where fear enters my heart, small at first – like a seed. And like a seed watered by my growing horror it takes root. As the yellow light beings to flicker out, I hear whispers in the dark – ambiguous voices murmuring nothing in particular, but contributing to my mounting terror.

But still maintaining some presence of outward calm, I chose my next door. Upon touching the knob a bolt of icy chill works its way through me, shocking my fingertips, resonating up my arm, the chill taking hold of my heart before splitting itself to exit down my other arm, run up through my neck, and finally down through my torso, legs and feet.

I can’t move, but a cold wind pushes me through. The door slams shut behind me and I distinctly hear the click of a lock, barring me from re-entry. The shock of the cold and wind knock me off my feet. My bare hands in contact with a cold, smooth floor I cannot see. Blinking frantically in the dark, I pray for my eyes to adjust and pick up some small speck of light. But there is none to be found.

No light. Not even a sound. All there is to hear is the frantic beating of my heart and the shaking of my unsteady breaths. Through the sound of my breathing, I can hear this room is larger than the last – at least twice the size. Groping through the inky black, I find another door.

This time I was shaking as I reached for the knob, but as my hand made contact I feel it turn by some power other than my own. Terror takes hold. I can’t see, but I feel the door open before me. Colder air wisps its way through the portal and an inky black smoke even darker than the dark snakes across the threshold. It winds around my wrist and without notice, solidifies. I was only able raise my voice in protest as it gripped my arm, yanking me forward into the next room.

As I am thrown to the floor, the door slams violently behind me. But this time in place of a quiet click, a deadbolt secures itself on the far side of the door. I am trapped with the invisible shifting smoke, the whispering voices now sporadically wailing and mocking me. In terror, I spring to my feet, running a good fifty yards this time on a floor that crunched like gravel under me. As I run through the dark, the echoes in the chamber lead me to believe I am nearing the far wall. But each time I sense I am getting close, the wall seems to leap away from me. This room is growing and each panicked stride it seemed takes me deeper into the black.

Then I trip, catching myself and scraping my hands and arms on the shards of rock. The shifting smoke finds me – I cannot see it, but I sense it closing in, wrapping itself around my leg. In another terrifying instant it becomes solid and drags me back across the yards I had crossed. Faster and faster it pulls me, all the while I struggled to stop it – dragging my hands along, trying to find something to grip onto – but all I can grasp are bits of grit and gravel.

I hear another door swing itself open and I am pulled through it. The door violently slams closed and I hear a series of deadbolts, locks and chains being secured on the other side of it. The grip of the the smoke on my leg winds tighter, working its way up my torso, taking hold of my arms and wrists, winding around my neck, choking me and feeding off my fear. I struggle against it on a cold, dank dirt floor, but all in vain.

I try to cry out – to plead with it or call for help, though I know no one would hear. The whispering voices are now at a roar of sinister laughing, wailing, gnashing. I sense things moving in the vast dark around me. This room is so large there are no longer echoes, the sounds of my struggle swallowed up by the black. And the things moving and moaning in it were twisting, crawling, writhing. I feel their breath on my skin.

I am alone with them and I have no way out.

(Read “The Dream – Part I”)