Normally I don’t share my dreams with others, but this one is just so weird and so much like a
A bespectacled man, wearing square frames and a business suit, walks through a doorway into a dimly-lit room. He noticed a reddish glow emanating from a small room adjoining the current room and located a couple dozen paces away from the door through which he just entered. But he turned to his right instead. And then, through the shadows, he saw her. Goosebumps prickled the flesh on the back of his neck. A girl, wearing a white frock, ragged around the edges, was standing in the doorway of an adjoining room, her jet-black hair long and her face and one side of her body obscured by the shadows. Behind her, the man observed that the door had been removed and in its place, a wispy, tattered curtain was billowing despite the absence of any air flow. The room beyond had a sickly pale green glow, and on the floor, a small and old mattress protruded slightly beyond the wall, blocked by the girl’s feet. Yes, the girl. As the man started to look up to face the girl, he saw something dangling from her tightly clutched left hand. Dangling upside down by its right leg was a white, curly-haired teddy bear with a red kerchief around its neck. The man’s eyes widened and his lower lip quivered and curled up to form a scream. And then, all went black.
A group of us entered a large room, which must have served as the mansion’s ballroom during its golden era. The enormous room was adorned with oak paneling on all its walls, save for the small windows along the top of one wall. Aged russet-colored curtains swayed gently, buoyed by a light breeze, scattering dust particles on the pine tables below as sunshine streamed through the windows. We traipsed over the well-worn mud-stained carpet, which no doubt had been plush under the well-heeled tenants of days long gone.
We were there to tidy up and organize the room for next day’s formal event, perhaps a black-tie fundraiser or maybe just a bingo party for the elderly. It mattered not, as the task that lay ahead would be tedious and exhausting and all that we could focus on. I was paired with a tall, wiry fellow, with a white crown of hair holding back against his receding hairline and grey-flecked goatee. We cleaned up the enormous fireplace in the corner of the room, and then dusted off the armchairs and couches around it, carefully ripping off the plastic sheets that had covered them all these years. We worked long and hard, and continued to work through the fading rays of the setting sun, turning on the antiquated but magnificent chandeliers that were evenly spaced on the ceiling of the ballroom. By this time, the wiry fellow and I were the only souls remaining, as our coworkers had all left for the night. After we moved the last couch into position, we stood back to admire the results of our efforts. Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out, plunging the room into inky blackness.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“Probably faulty wiring. I’ll go look for a flashlight.”
Suddenly there was a low rumbling sound that increased in intensity every so quickly, and was punctuated by a sharp punching sound as a small ball of fire broke through the ceiling and smashed smack into the fireplace. The glow lit up the entire room, and I jumped up and grabbed a bunch of blankets and threw them into the smoldering heap on the hearth, anxious not to have the embers jump onto the wood paneling surrounding us.
“What was that?” the man whimpered. He looked shell-shocked, as the ball of fire narrowly missed him.
“I don’t know. It looked like a meteorite,” I replied nervously, looking back at two smoking holes marking the spot on the ceiling from which the “meteorite” made its grand entrance.
After we had sufficiently doused the flames, I thought it would be best if we left the building and return to the comfort of the outside world. However, I had forgotten through which door I had entered earlier that afternoon, choosing to depart by the door nearest to us. I walked into a large, two-story, vaulted glass-ceilinged room that must have served as a conservatory in its heyday. It was a dark, moonless night and I could barely make out the twinkling stars through the dusty panes, high above us. I rubbed my eyes and tried to make sense of my surroundings in the faint light. All around me were two-story tall structures composed of painter’s plastic covering vertical wooden beams, spaced a few feet apart. These structures formed a wall that ran the length of the room, folding back on themselves every so often, creating some sort of maze. It would be a chore to find our way out of this labyrinth. I heard muffled voices a few yards away. My muscles tensed and I motioned to the wiry man to follow me, and we groped our way along the solid wooden wall adjoining the door towards the source of the voices. Then the voices faded away, even though we were heading towards them. This is all confusing and creepy, I thought, but I was determined to get out of this confounded place. Suddenly I bumped into a human form. This person whirled around, nearly striking me off balance. It was one of the gentlemen who had assisted with the clean-up process hours earlier. He called out to his partner through the darkness to track back to our location. After the four of us had settled down, we shared our respective tales. It turns out that the two individuals we ran into had left with the main group of people just before sunset, but had decided to come back and take advantage of the electric lights to explore the mansion a bit more. They had been in this conservatory when the lights cut out, heard the rumbling sound, and seen the glow, but didn’t know what to make of it. When the light faded for the last time, the two friends had made a frantic attempt to retrace their steps to the front entrance, but had lost their way in the darkness, until I bumped into them.
The night was still young and we couldn’t afford to camp out here until dawn- who knew what lurked in the shadows? We had all been unnerved by the events of the last couple hours and it was in our best interests to keep moving. I was adamant not to go back to the ballroom, even though that was probably closest to the main entrance, as the “meteorite” was hot when we left, and I was sure it could reignite at any moment, plunging us into a conflagration of burning oak, carpet, and curtains. So we forged ahead into the plastic-sheeted maze. After hours of fruitless ambling, we paused to rest. Exhausted, I nodded off into a deep slumber…
…dogs barking, people shouting. A group of uniformed officers rounded the hallway and stopped dead in their tracks, aghast at the sight before them. The large balcony had been transformed into a mass jail cell, with moldy green iron bars all around. There were perhaps a hundred, maybe two hundred, men, women, and children, old and young, healthy and infirm, milling about, muttering to themselves, or sitting on the floor of their cell, rocking back and forth, resigned to their predicament. The chief called for reinforcements and took a sledgehammer and smashed the heavily-padlocked door to the iron cage. As more police personnel streamed in, each busied himself or herself with helping carry or walk one or two of the formerly imprisoned occupants to safety. The chief walked up to the most distinguished looking member of the prisoners, a stout, elderly, whiskered man wearing a bowler hat, and wringing the hem of his tweed coat.
“Sir, is it OK if I ask you a few questions?”
“Yes,” the man quietly replied.
“Who are all these people? What happened? How long have you been here? The last thing my men and I expected to find people imprisoned in this mansion, let alone several hundred.”
“A couple weeks ago, I saw a posting for a house for sale. My foundation was interested in finding a new home, so I and about 50 of my fellow members decided to check out this location, as it looked promising. The rest of the people you see here were milling about the grounds and in the building. I guess this place had some historical value and was a private museum of some sort. We were taking a tour of the place and stopped on the roof of the mansion. It is huge, with vaulted glass ceilings all over, topping off the magnificent rooms underneath. My group split into several threesomes and foursomes and we milled about the rooftop, admiring the nooks and crannies of this spectacular home. At the edge of my vision, I could see three men wearing black business attire interrogating a man with square-framed glasses-.”
“Yes,” the police chief interrupted, “Those men in business clothing were three of my detectives whom I had sent to the mansion to inquire about unusual behavior at the mansion that neighbors had reported. When we suddenly lost contact with them several days ago, we decided to search this place and look for them. Please continue.”
“So as I was saying,” the old man continued, “the three detectives were questioning this fellow, and all of a sudden he became really agitated and darted off towards the central area of the roof, with the detectives in hot pursuit, guns drawn. ‘Weinstein (pronounced whine-steen)!’ they yelled, ‘Stop or we’ll shoot!’ Weinstein continued to run away from his pursuers, every so often jumping on the glass ceilings in a bid to evade the detectives. At one point, Weinstein stumbled and started sliding down one of the steeper glass panels, desperately clutching at whatever he could grab, but with no luck. He suddenly dropped out of sight and the detectives searched for him, but to no avail. He had simply vanished into thin air. The last thing I remember is the rest of us on the roof with astonished looks on our faces, muttering excitedly about what could have transpired. The next thing I remember is waking up in this cell with all these people.”
“Did you make any attempts to escape or yell out to the outside world?” the chief asked.
“Yes, but it was all in vain. These iron posts are very strong and all attempts to file them or break them ultimately failed. The sad part is we could peer over the balcony walls and see the traffic and people moving on the streets below, and we cried out for help many, many times. Sadly, I think no one could see or hear us, even though we were so close. It’s as if we were living in a black hole or completely different dimension imperceptible to the human eyes and ears.”
“Did you know what happened to my men or Weinstein?”
“When we awoke, we tried to take stock of who was present in the cell. All of those of us, who had been in the mansion or on the roof were accounted for, save for the detectives. It seems they had disappeared as well, just like Weinstein.”
The chief paused for a bit, and then pulled out a picture of a man in a business suit lying facedown, with his face slightly twisted to the side. A couple inches away from his nose was a pair of square-rimmed frames, twisted with the lenses cracked and shattered.
“Do you recognize this man?”
“Yes!” the old man replied emphatically, “It’s Weinstein!”
“I thought so. We found his body a couple days ago in the street below. We saw no marking on his body, save for those created by someone falling to his death. Would you know what happened?”
“One of the people in my group spotted a body lying on the street below two nights ago. Of course, rumors abounded. Someone said that he had jumped to his death in horror after seeing the evils in this place. Another said that he had trespassed some sacrosanct corner of the house and been shot into the sky by some supernatural force….”
…a squat middle-aged man with a sad face and loosened necktie crossed the threshold from the plastic-sheeted maze of a conservatory into the dimly lit room. In front of him was an anteroom glowing red. He could see some movement within, as if someone was pacing back and forth, but that didn’t concern him. He turned right to face another adjoining room with a tattered white curtain. In this room, there was a faint green glow and on the ground was the foot of a dilapidated mattress. On the mattress was a pair of feet. The man rushed inside. Out of sight of the viewer, he grasped the hand of the girl lying on the mattress and whispered, “Honey, are you alright? It’s me.” Her small tender fingers weakly curled around the man’s hand….
I bolted upright in bed.
