I wrote this story based on a few different dreams I've had. I have this weird thing where most of my dreams are set at the one place - a house that used to belong to my Nan and Pa. They've moved out now, but I still have all these scary nightmares based in the house or the grounds around it. Anyhow, I wrote a story ... yep ... tell me what you think :P
THE HOUSE OF DREAMS
'What the hell is this?' said Rohan, rolling the car to a stop. The second car pulled up behind them; the occupants mouthing questions through the windscreen. Antoinette frowned at the crumpled Google Maps printout and then out at the country house beside them.
'I can't see where we could have gone wrong,' she replied defensively.
'Chill,' said Rohan, opening the car door with a creak and stepping out. 'We'll sort it out.
Outside, the wind blew like ice, and it would only get worse – the sun was almost below the horizon. The girls pulled impractical jackets over their thin cocktail dresses, and Rohan and Harry wished the dress-code for the exhibition opening had included several layers of fur.
'We're going to be late,' said Ant.
Rohan heard the anxiety in her voice. Not arriving on time to her own exhibition opening would certainly put a damper on Ant's night of triumph. Her first exhibition of oil pastel artwork was due to open, and fifteen minutes before she was due to make a speech, they were somewhere that was less 'somewhere' in the scheme of things, and more 'nowhere'.
The others stretched their legs, thankful for a break from the long car trip. Lily checked the GPS on her iPhone while Ant leaned over her shoulder, swearing repeatedly. Harry and Kelly were doing slow laps of the cars, trying to remember how to walk again. Rohan took the chance to look around, a shudder of intrigue and thrill washing over him for reasons he could not explain.
They were parked in a long drive of broken grey stones. On one side of them was an almost empty paddock, where a lone pine tree overlooked a flat, murky dam. On the other, a house stood nestled among trees, low and silent. There was no-one else about.
Frustrated, Lily and Ant turned away from the unhelpful electronics and suggested they simply head back out to the road and try again. Rohan was all in favour of the plan; it involved getting out of the unnatural cold. He reached for the car door.
It would not open. Cursing, he pulled out the key and shoved it unceremoniously into the lock. It would not turn.
Behind him, Lily was pummelling the central-locking button on her keyring, while Harry tried jiggling the key on every conceivable angle to get it to turn. It was inconceivable – their cars had simply given up on being driven and retired to a life of greener pastures. Then, Ant screamed.
Galloping towards the low paddock fence – towards Rohan and his friends – were a dozen of the most freakish beasts he had ever seen. Their stubby legs pounded over the ground like ten metres were a fairy's step, and their stark white bodies bristled with ugly, coarse hair. Their fat heads lolled about, Rohan's height from the ground, with jaws that looked like they could crush bone. Most frightening was the cry – a yelping, a high-pitched frenzied screeching that spoke of blood-lust and madness – and the niggling feeling of familiarity.
Ant had lost her head completely and skirted up the nearest tree, screaming. It took no persuasion for the others to follow suit. Even as Rohan, the last to climb, pulled himself up to the sturdy branch beside the others, the beasts had reached the fence. If they had ran for the highway, the snapping jaws would have been upon them in moments.
The beasts stopped at the fence, so close that Rohan could smell their foul, rotten breath. He felt intense relief wash over him. Whatever these demonic creatures were, they could not climb. They were safe for now – so why was Ant shrieking more hysterically than ever?
The realisation hit everyone at the same time. They turned to Ant. She felt their eyes on her, and she seemed to be trying to shrink out of sight. She failed.
'We've seen these before,' said Rohan.
'They're in your exhibition that's supposed to be opening tonight,' said Lily accusingly. Rohan realised with a pang of excitement that Lily had moved behind him, so close it felt like she spoke in his ear. He shook his head to clear the useless thought.
Ant, chalk white and shaking, nodded mutely. She had drawn these animals – this exact paddock – months ago. Why, Rohan wondered, were these things here, now? Why had their directions led them to this place?
Suddenly, the beasts began to whimper and back away. Soon, there were white blurs in the gathering darkness, and then nothing at all. Their eerie, ethereal screeching had disappeared, leaving behind it a tense silence, disturbed only by the whispering of the chill wind. The friends, too frightened to speak of what had just transpired, instead turned to practical matters.
'Let's walk out. Screw the cars,' said Harry, sliding down the tree. He was feigning apathy, and everyone knew it. They were scared out of all rational though. What Harry said, though, seemed like a good idea. Rohan, for one, was eager to leave this place.
Four more pairs of feet touched down on the rough stones, and the group set a cracking pace up the long drive and towards the highway. They had barely walked for half a minute, though, before Lily stopped so suddenly that Rohan rammed into her. He laughingly apologised, before he realised that the others were frozen, mouths agape, staring at a newly sprung wall of trees that blocked their path to the highway. In the trees hung strange symbols fashioned out of twigs and twine. They looked like stylised spider-webs.
One the verge of paralysing fear, Kelly rounded on Ant.
'What is this? You know. I know you do.'
Ant snapped her fearful eyes from face to face, hoping for someone to say it was okay, that she didn't have to explain anything, that she could go to the gallery now. Each face – including Rohan's, to his slight guilt – held only the hard expression of accusation. They wanted answers.
'I don't know, alright?' she said finally, her voice cracking. 'I've dreamt these things, over and over. That's why I drew them. That doesn't mean it's my fault we're here! I didn't do anything.'
All of a sudden, Rohan felt a glimmer of understanding. Somewhere in his late night sojourns on Wikipedia, he had stumbled across something like this.
'Recurring dreams?' he asked her seriously. 'Frightening, vivid ones, that keep coming back night after night?'
Ant nodded, her eyes bugging. Rohan looked again at the house, with its low, dark roof, and eerie surrounds. Now in the darkness he could see light shining out from the cracks in the curtains.
'I've read about this,' he said. 'This house. If I'm right, it's called the House of Dreams. It's where all the scary, recurring dreams come from. Supposedly. There's loads of people who have claimed to have woken up here and fought their way out. But I've never heard of anyone driving here.'
Harry looked at him with a furrowed brow, but Ant looked positively terrified.
'You mean that my dreams are all here?' she whispered. The icy wind picked up, but this time she seemed to realised something about it. She gasped, looking around for something, but Rohan saw it first. There, in the wall of trees – he only saw a flash – was a man with a bone white face and eyes as black as the night. He held a long, sharp knife, and for a moment before he disappeared, he flashed Ant a wide, manic grin, and laughed with a voice like a blade. Then he was gone.
~*~
'Jack Frost?' snorted Kelly. They had retreated closer to the cars, under the cover of more trees. 'The pansy that sprinkles snow around?' She had not seen what Ant and Rohan had seen in the darkness.
'Much worse,' said Ant. 'I used to dream of this man, Jack Frost, who would look in my bedroom window at night when no-one else was watching. I'd try to run, but he'd catch me, and I couldn't move, I couldn't scream ... But it was just a dream. Then.'
'What does he do when he catches you?' said Rohan, ashamed to hear a quaver in his voice. Ant was not listening – she had seen what Kelly had just picked up from the ground.
'It's a kaleidoscope,' said Kelly, peering into a small brown tube and clicking a button.
'No,' said Ant, blanching, if possible, even more. 'That's what I use to call those when I was a kid, but I got it wrong. It just shows you different pictures when you click it. But not this one. It's a house, and every click puts it more in focus. Drop it.'
Kelly dropped it to the ground and kicked it. She seemed angry that Ant was getting all the attention, and getting to call the shots. Rohan could not think of anything stupider to be feeling right now.
'It means there's one more thing to look out for,' continued Ant. 'If you see a man called Tom – and he'll tell you, he loves to tell you his name – then run. Just run.'
Ant never go the chance to tell them why, for at that moment Harry burst through the trees. In the heavy darkness, Rohan had not realised he had left.
'It's Lily,' he said, panting. 'Jack Frost got her.'
~*~
His heart beating wildly, Rohan crashed through the wall of trees, the hanging symbols scratching at his face. They were snowflakes, he realised, not spider webs. Never had snowflakes seemed so evil.
He broke through, following Harry's retreating figure, to a tiny clearing. In the centre, Lily lay on her back. Her face was tinged green, and a discarded needle lay beside her.
'I don't know how, but we got separated from you. You were just gone. And then,' he shuddered as he said this, 'he came out of the trees and grabbed Lily, and before I'd even noticed, he injected her with that.' He waved at the needle with repulsion.
Rohan crossed to Lily, squatting down beside her. She did not stir when he called her name, but his heart leapt when he found her pulse.
'He said there's an antidote, but if we don't find it soon, it's curtains. It's in the house. He said we'll know it when we see it.'
Rohan made an attempt to heave Lily over his shoulder, but she would not budge. She was stuck to the ground with the same invisible force that would not let them open their car doors. Rohan resolved to find something heavy inside to smash the car windows with. They had to get out somehow.
'Let's split up,' said Harry. Kelly nodded and set off around the nearby house before Rohan and Ant had a chance to object, and as Harry set off in another direction, he had the uncomfortable notion that this had been Frost's plan all along.
'Stay with me,' Rohan said to Ant, who shrugged as though she could not understand why anyone would want to walk off on their own in the dark. As a result, no-one saw Harry stumble across a small brown tube and pick it up. As a result, no-one could warn Harry about the dangerous man who liked his own name so very, very much.
~*~
The second room was much the same as the first. It seemed as though the family that lived there had simply gone out for the evening, though the flowery clock on the bedroom wall that was stopped at 1:37 and the calendar that was open to May 2005 said otherwise. Half the conundrum of this house, thought Rohan, was why it was the setting of every recurring nightmare at all.
The warm light from the globe and the crackling of the open fire down the hall cast a feeling of safety over the room, but it was this that Rohan feared the most. Outside – and he felt his insides churn at the thought – Lily was dying on the ground, alone, and they had no idea how long she could last.
'Let's try the second part of the house,' said Rohan. Ant pushed a pile of worn paperbacks to the floor, huffing in agreement. There was, assuming they had missed nothing, no antidote in this room. He hoped they would find Harry in the darkened rooms off the kitchen, for there had been no sign of him.
~*~
Harry looked in vain for a light switch. The rooms off the kitchen were dark and cold, and he could only see the vague, blurry outlines of squat and suspicious objects in the shadows.
He noticed a glow from around the corner, and like a moth, he followed it. His feet met threadbare carpet, and he was careful not to make as sound as he crept toward the source of the glow. Oddly, it was emanating from a full-length mirror built into the wall of a small room. Harry stared at it for a moment in bewilderment. Then, a figure appeared inside.
'Hello,' said the handsome man in the mirror. He held a sword, and smiled warmly. 'I'm Tom.'
~*~
'Through here, I think,' said Rohan. Ant wrenched open the door, and they felt the blast of cold from within.
'This is the place,' she said grimly.
The room beyond was completely dark, but this was Ant's world, and she sensed something that Rohan did not. There was a high window set into the wall, and as they watched, a bone white, grinning face moved to peer through it. Its eyes moved to fix on Ant, and from its glow they saw a tiny bottle sitting on the table beneath – without a doubt the antidote. Neither Ant nor Rohan wanted to move any closer to the window, no matter how much Lily's life depended on it. They knew it was a game that would end in their deaths.
Blind terror made them move for the door to the brighter, warmer wing of the house – but Ant blocked Rohan's as it made to grab for the handle.
'Why,' said Ant slowly, 'would we be any safer in there?'
Rohan blinked, discomfited. Ant could see that his only instinct was to be where there was light.
'Jack Frost never came into my room,' she continued in the same slow, testing voice.
'That's because it was a dream,' said Rohan impatiently. He was looking for some way of getting around Ant and through the door.
'No,' said Ant. 'In my dreams, he never attacked until I ran. I would run from my room into the hallway to find my parents, and he'd be there.'
'Okay,' said Rohan, failing to see how her epiphany was relevant.
'Isn't it odd how strongly we want to go back to the other rooms? It's almost like a survival instinct.'
Rohan's features shifted – he had begun to see what Ant had felt from the beginning. They turned back to the window, but were disturbed to see the creepy face had gone as suddenly as it appeared. Where had Jack Frost got to, and what menace was he now wreaking?
Suddenly something crashed loudly behind them, and they turned to find Harry lumbering forward, hefting a ferocious looking sword. He clearly meant to kill them. Ant screamed, groping blindly for the door handle, and heard Rohan doing the same behind her – but it was too late. Harry raised the sword, preparing to bring it crashing down on Ant. She covered her head, knowing it was useless but out of ideas in such a state of panic.
But the sword did not come. Harry's eyes widened in shock, and his mouth gaped as though to say something he did not have the strength to say – but his strength was failing, and the raised sword shook as though desperate to find its target. He could not hold out against it. Setting his features, Harry brought the sword down, but at the last moment, changed its path and stabbed himself through the chest, pinning his body against the wall.
His eyes searched wildly for something he could not see, but in his last moments they focussed on something invisible and he gave an almost imperceptible smile. His body went slack. From somewhere nearby, a man giggled softly.
~*~
Kelly pulled her jacket tighter. The wind outside blew harder and harder. 'Lily?' she called. She had definitely heard her friend calling for help somewhere nearby. Was she cured? Was she dying? 'Lily?'
A far off voice answered. 'Kelly! Kelly!'
Kelly turned to it and, with horror, found herself facing a skeletal man with a bone white face, whose smile struck too much fear in her heart to bear. 'Kelly! Kelly!' he said mockingly, confirming her worst fears with his voice of sharpened ice.
She tried to run, but her body was frozen. She tried to cry for help, but her voice stuck in her throat. No-one would hear her death.
Slowly, Kelly felt her body grow colder. She felt ice forming like a cloak all over her body. She would have shivered, but she could not move an inch. She was forced to stare into Jack Frost's cold, black eyes until he finally released her, and with a tiny 'Oh!', she dropped to the ground and never moved again.
~*~
Taking care to avoid looking at any mirrors, Rohan threw his blazing log of wood at the pool of petrol with all his might. The room went up in flames in an instant, and Ant was already coughing when she darted back to him with the shining bottle of antidote.
Their feet flying, they bolted from the house which was igniting behind them like a grass fire. At the back door, they found Kelly lying still on the ground, frozen to death.
Ant's shock turned to practicality, and she had to wave the flaming torches she had prepared in front of Rohan for several seconds before he remembered how to function again. He took one numbly, and they crashed through the dark trees.
They found Lily precisely where she had been left. Rohan felt himself once again filled with shock at the sight of her pale, sweaty face. She looked like death, but the smallest warmth from her breath told him that she yet lived.
A fresh needle was tied to the antidote bottle, and Ant filled it with green liquid before passing it to Rohan to inject. He was the only one who had a clue how to inject needles, but still he blanched when the needle broke her skin and he pushed the plunger down with a shaking thumb. A tense minute passed with no change, and Rohan began to panic that it had been a trick – that the bottle had been filled with more poison.
'Rohan?' murmured Lily, blinking weakly.
Ant's knees buckled in relief, and Rohan felt he would have done the same were he not already sitting. He kissed Lily on the forehead before hoisting her over his shoulder and continuing the mad dash for freedom. Rohan's car opened at a touch, and he drove through several bushes to get onto the driveway that would take them out. The wall of snowflake-hung trees had disappeared, and the highway spread mercifully in front of them. Just once, Rohan thought he caught a glimpse of Jack Frost in the rear view mirror, but he was, after all, only a dream. He could not escape the House of Dreams.
