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The Return of the House that Haunts Me
By admin | June 21, 2007
Again, I was in the house. The house that always haunts me; or the house that I perpetually haunt in my dreams. The house that has a presence and seeks me out. The uniqueness in this dream is that I wasn’t drawn to the basement. I wasn’t drawn to some dingy cellar, dark and musty with an old furnace. Or drawn down some set of back stair cases into a godforsaken lower portion of the house. This time it was the attic. The house took on an upward dimension that seems staggering to recall it. And up all the flights of stairs I still wasn’t to the room. I had to take out a ladder and climb up to a trap door in the ceiling. It was a paneled trap door, as though put together in slats and then painted white.
The house was still in disrepair. This time, the roof was leaking and falling in and water was coming through all the ceilings of the rooms it seemed. It was another moment of “oh, shit, we don’t have the money for this.” The oppression of house repairs lay heavy on K and I. And yet, this wasn’t the sum total of it. Soon there was the old familiar malevolence in the house. The house was watching me. A malice followed me around. I was tripped. Pieces of plaster fell from the highest portions of the house and hit me, or fell near to hitting me. I walked into rooms and had visions of people who had committed suicide in the house before: throwing themselves off upper floors, over banisters and onto the main landing or entry way. Suicides in shut-off rooms. Why? What was it about this house? How had this house been sold to us in this state? With no warnings? Finally, it was all I could stand. I resolved to leave. We all were leaving. Moving out. The house be damned. The loss be damned. It was too much and now I thought of K and E.
Strangely, I had conceded defeat to the house. I even asked aloud permission to leave. The house granted it. It granted it by not attempting to harm us anymore. The sense of malevolence moderated. It was as though the house were simply satisfied that we were leaving.
I was up in the top attic gathering things. Pulling clothes from an upper shelf of the closet. There was more stuff in the house than I could imagine. Strangely, there was a cord running from the top of the closet, out the door, over the lintel, and up into the ceiling. It was a modem or a cable run for the internet. I remembered all my computers up in the space. I was moving everything. It was then that I felt the offer. The house wanted me to stay. It was fine with K and E leaving, but it wanted me to stay. There was a tremendous flash of light and I looked to the window on my left (I was standing on a step ladder). I could see out the window. The sunlight was as brilliant as I had ever seen it. The sky was yellow and golden light fell on green grass and green trees outside. There was a lake not too far off and all sorts of wild animals and livestock were around the lake and off into the distance on the hillsides. I was flooded with a sense of permanence and well-being: hope and satisfaction. Belonging. I knew that it was an offer from the house; or whatever spirit occupied the house, that this was my home; this is what it offered me. Equally quickly, I saw a vision of E growing. I saw her at all the stages of her life. I saw here flash before my eyes in stage after stage, growing up, turning into a young woman. I was being told that she would be safe without me. Her life would be good.
I made no decision. I could not sense what would happen if I said “no” to the request. Would my family be harmed, for instance? I could sense no malice, but I could sense no assurance either. I was befuddled. I knew for some reason that the offer before me was fair and good. But I knew I would never see my family again. It was as if the house were asking me to commit suicide and remain.
I woke up before anything came of it.
Topics: Attic, Destruction or Disrepair, Future, Haunted House, Haunting, Ladder, Leaking Roof, Malevolence, Menace, Our House, Trap Doors | No Comments »