Four

It was a few nights later when I dreamed about the house again. 

Sarah was standing at the window above the stairs inside the curtain.  She was crying quietly to herself.  I walked up behind her and watched her for a moment before I decided to speak.

“Are you ok?” I asked her.

She stopped crying and turned to me.  Her eyes were darker than I recalled from the last dream I had of her.  She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. 

The door creaked at the bottom of the steps.  Sarah grabbed my hand and pulled me into the attic room before the lady with auburn hair came up the stairs.  She put her finger to her mouth as if to say “be quiet”.  I heard the lady walk down the hallway.

“Is that your mom?” I whispered to her.

She nodded her eyes big with fear.  A few minutes later the floorboards creaked again as if someone had gone down the stairs and the door shut.  A click came right after that I recognized as the sound of a latch being put in place.  We were locked into the upper level.

Sarah opened the attic room door and pulled me down to her room.  She pointed out her/my bedroom window as if she wanted me to look out.  I peered through the glass and saw her mother leaving through the gate.  She looked up at us crossly in the window before starting down the street.

Sarah opened the closet door and pushed a piece of the wall until I heard a sliding sound.  I watched her open the wall up through this piece.  Behind the wall was a small opening.  She gestured me to follow her as she descended on a little ladder.  It was several steps down and a very tight enclosure.  I almost felt like I would suffocate.  When we reached the bottom of the ladder, she disappeared from my sight.  I turned around and saw a small opening into a dark room.  It reminded me of the coal room I had cleaned, except the half wall was missing and there were bins of coal in the corner.  I saw her skirt slip through the doorway and followed her. 

The basement of my house looked very different.  There wasn’t a workbench or the washer and dryer.  The shelves my father used for his tools weren’t there either.  A large woodpile was where those items stood. 

I walked around the corner looking for her and saw a man working on something.  He was so involved in what he was doing he didn’t seem to notice me.  I couldn’t see what exactly he was working on because of the way his body was positioned.  I scanned the area looking for Sarah and couldn’t find her.

“She went upstairs.” The man’s voice startled me.  “Be careful you don’t let my wife find you wandering around, she’s not kind to unexpected visitors.”

I climbed the steps slowly and carefully watching for something that might grab my foot from beneath the staircase.  I found myself in the kitchen.  It looked very different than ours did.  There wasn’t a refrigerator and the stove was an old black cast iron looking thing, it had a pipe leading up through the ceiling.  The cupboards were different than what we had, and the sink was larger and made of porcelain. 

I peeked through the door that led to my bathroom and was surprised, she had told us the bathroom was an add on, but there were fixtures in place in this house, although they were a little different than ours – you could see more of the pipes to them and they had a different shape.

I heard a giggle behind me and turned to see Sarah.  She pulled me into the pantry and offered me a cookie.  I took it and bit into it.  It was a chewy oatmeal based cookie with some sort of fruit pieces. 

Suddenly the room went dark and everything blurred out of focus.  Sarah, the house, the cookie I was eating all disappeared and I was in an open field watching a man work in the garden.  He was bending over weeding some vegetables and suddenly collapsed, then a river opened from the ground and water in the color of a rainbow swept him away. 

I opened my eyes to see my mother over me with a thermometer.  I felt so hot and cold at the same time.  My stomach felt so sick I wasn’t sure if I was going to puke.  I turned over in my bed and noticed she had placed a bowl at the floor.  I also noticed a wet mark on the floor I don’t remember making.

“Honey, it’s ok, you just have a bug.  Your fever has come down a bit since I last woke you.”  Mom shook the thermometer and wiped my forehead with a cloth.

I felt really confused about what she was saying.  I didn’t remember anything but my dream.  It was hard to let it slip away from me, but reality started setting in more and more and my body was aching. 

Mom gave me some nasty tasting syrup and helped me change into a clean nightgown. 

“I found those nice quilts that you had on the floor.  They had to be cleaned but they came out rather well.  What do you think?”  I looked at the blanket she had over me and realized it was the Holly Hobbie quilt I had found in Sarah’s box.

“Did you find a picture?”  I mumbled to my mom, my throat was feeling scratchy too.

“The one you drew?”  She pointed at the crayon drawing I had hung on my wall.

“I didn’t draw that, I found it.” I replied.  “I mean the photo that was on my desk.  It was a black and white, it was old, it had the same people as the drawing.”  I started to cough.

“Don’t worry about it now honey, just get some rest and feel better.  I will check on you in a bit.  Do you think you could stomach some apple juice?”

“I’ll try.”  I told her.

“I’ll have Betty bring you a glass.”  She left the room.  I heard her walking across the hallway floor to the stairs, and then the steps she took descending the staircase.  A few moments later Betty appeared with a glass of amber colored liquid and handed it to me.

“Mom says to sip it slowly.”  She told me.

I took the glass and tasted it, like always when we were sick it was watered down.  I was grateful that it wasn’t too strong because the moment it touched my tongue my stomach turned more.  I handed the glass back to Betty.

“Tell mom it makes me want to puke.”

She sighed at me like she was annoyed and left my room.

I lay in my bed half-conscious trying to make sense of my dream.  I wondered why I hadn’t remembered waking up and all the things mom and my surroundings indicated had happened since last night.  I couldn’t come up with a suitable answer for my curiosity.

I rolled over on my bed and felt something crumple in my sheet.  I pulled at the cloth to see what was under it and pulled out a paper.  Looking at it I realized it wasn’t a paper, it was the photo I was searching for.  I put it under my pillow wondering how it got inside my sheets and fell back asleep.

I found myself in my back yard – the grass covered with daisies that stood over my head.  I looked up at the sky and noticed the window at the top of my house.  Sarah was in it watching out over the yard and neighbourhood.  A snake slithered past me just as I went to take a step.  I looked back up to the window and Sarah was gone. 

I walked through the path touching and smelling the flowers with each step.  As I neared the house it looked strange to me.  The paint was peeling off all around it.  The patio’s stone pavers were broken in pieces and weeds were bursting through all the cracks.   I stepped down to the door of the basement and tried to open it.  As I pushed  it fell from its hinges into the basement.  

A large dog on a thick heavy chain jumped up and started to bark at me.  Its teeth were dripping with saliva and his breath smelled horrible.  I backed out of the doorway and fell against the stairs.  The dog’s chain was just long enough to reach the door and I had fallen just far enough to be out of his reach.  I backed up the stairs on my bottom and found my footing again. 

I heard a scream coming from the inside of the house.  I ran to the steps of the deck and started climbing them.  I could see through the wood that something was moving underneath the deck.  I hurried faster and pulled open the screen door at the top of the stairs.  Another scream called out from the upstairs level.  I bolted through the porch and into the kitchen.  A loud thump upstairs made me jump and I ran to the stairs in the bathroom.  The door was locked.  I fumbled with the sliding latch trying to open it but it stuck firmly in its place.   I heard another wail coming from the upper level and remembered the secret doorway through the basement.  I hurried to the door of the basement and heard the latch on the door to the upper level move.  I looked back as the door creaked open on its own.

I ran back to the stairwell hearing another scream from above.  I couldn’t make out what was being screamed, or even who it was that was screaming.

I ran up the stairs so fast I tripped up half of them twisting my ankle.  The pain didn’t stop me from reaching my destination.  My heart was beating and adrenaline pumping me faster and faster.  I almost missed Sarah in the attic room.  I paused to see if it was her, but the screaming that started again confirmed it was not.  I ran down the hallway towards my room and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw in my peripheral vision Sarah’s mom holding someone’s long black hair up while the girl dangled from it at least 6 inches off the floor.  She turned and looked at me, her green eyes almost glowing; she had a wooden rod in her hand beating the poor girl.

“Hey!”  I shouted at her as she raised her hand to strike the girl again.  Then I saw who it was.  She had my sister Betty in her hands.  I didn’t think about why Betty was in my dream, all I could do was run at the lady with all of my strength.  Just as I came close to her, she turned into smoke and Betty disappeared.  I fell into the wall when she disappeared.

I heard a cry come from the attic room.  This time the sound was not a screaming like before, but a sad wail.  I picked myself up and fled the room to investigate the attic.  When I got close enough to the door I could almost touch it - it swung shut so hard the slam shook the house.  I could hear a maniacal scream followed by a thud, and then another and another.  The crying stopped, but the thudding continued.  At least ten thuds followed, the maniacal screaming consisted with each blow. 

Then suddenly the door opened.  Terrified I peered through the crack to see what was going on but no one was there.  In fact, it didn’t look like the house of old any longer.  It had our boxes, the axe against the wall, and the strange floorboards that were new compared to the older flooring. 

I walked through the rest of my home and found it was exactly as it had been the day before; our furniture, our kitchen, our food in the pantry.  The bathroom was the one we used. 

“Sam,” I heard my father calling me from the basement and went to see what he wanted.

 “Samantha.”  He called me again.  I descended the basement stairwell and looked for him.  “Sam,” he called again.  I couldn’t see him anywhere.

I opened my eyes and found that I was still in my bed, my father sitting next to me in my chair.  It looked like my desk had been moved against the crawl space door.  My vision was blurry.  I rubbed my eyes.

“There you are.”  Dad seemed like he actually cared.  “How are you feeling?”

I sat up in my bed.

“Okay, I guess.” 

“Mom says you’ve been feverish and sick all day.”  He felt my forehead. “You seem to be doing better now though.  What was all the tossing and turning for, you having a nightmare?”

“yeah.” I nodded.

“You want to talk about it?”  He asked me gently. 

“Not right now.”

I adjusted myself in my bed and felt the photo I had under my pillow.  I pulled it out and handed it to him.

“This is the picture I found.”

He looked at it and furrowed his brow.  He turned it over and read out loud “Fowler, September 1904.  Hmm.”  He handed the picture back to me.  “That is a very interesting find Sam.”

“I think it’s the people who built the house.  Gus said that was their name and described them.”

“Well, don’t worry too much about it.  Whoever they were doesn’t really matter now.  This is our home and although it may be interesting to learn about the history of our home, I don’t really think it would be productive.  Why don’t you worry about resting up, I still have a lot of work I need your help on.”  He seemed like he was trying to be nice about a subject that irritated him.

“Alright.” I wished that he was willing to listen to me about this. 

He got up and left the room pausing at the door.  “I’ll let your mother know you are awake and can try some food.”  Then he turned and walked down the hall.  I found it strange that the creaking floorboards weren’t sounding off for him like they did everyone else in the family, even the people in my dreams.

Mom showed up with a bowl of chicken broth and some crackers on a tray.  I was looking at the photo of the Fowlers trying to shake off the horrible images and things that happened in my dream.

“Here you go Sam.”  She placed the tray on my lap and sat in the chair.  “It’s good to see this is a minor illness.  I wonder what got you feeling so bad.  No one else is showing symptoms.”  She looked at the photo in my hands and held her hand out.  “Could I take a look?”

I handed her the picture.  She studied it closely - her eyebrows raised a little. 

“Where did you find this?”  She asked me.

“In the box with the quilts and the other picture.” I pointed at the crayon drawing on my wall.

“Wow.  I didn’t realize you had something like this.  Maybe we can show it to Gus and see what he says.”

“Thanks mom, that’s a good idea.”  I smiled at her.

“Okay, now eat some soup, it will help you get back on your feet.”

I picked up the spoon and started swallowing the broth down a little at a time. 

“Slowly.”  She advised me.

I nibbled at a cracker and ate my soup slowly while my mom visited with me.  She told me what they were doing for the day and how much she missed my help around the house.  I was feeling better enough that when I was finished with my soup I wanted to read for a while.  Mom handed me the book I requested and told me that she’d check on me later.

The story I was reading was about a girl with dark hair and a Siamese cat that solved mysteries.  It was very exciting, and I read half the book before I noticed my closet door had creaked open on its own.  I looked up from my book and the door shut itself.  I put the book down and opened the closet door.  I remembered my early dream and felt around on the panel of the wall for the secret opening.  I couldn’t find where it might have been, but it had gotten so dark I decided I’d try with a flashlight.  Before I could find the light my mom had come back up to check on me. 

“What are you doing?”  She asked me as I was looking through my drawers.

“I’m trying to find my flashlight.”

“Well, let’s leave that for tomorrow.  It’s time for you to get back in bed.” 

I got back in my bed and she took my temperature.

“Yes, you do look like you are feeling a lot better.”  She handed me a glass of watered down apple juice.  “Drink this.”

I sipped the drink and gave her back the glass.

“Go brush your teeth and get to bed.  Have a good night.  Love you.”  She told me.

I groaned a little and did as she asked.  Getting back in my bed I hoped I didn’t dream about the house for the rest of the night.