Bringing Mae Flowers

I saw the same empty rooms almost every night and woke up with the unheard voices still ringing in my ears. Each night the dream felt more and more real. I could smell the musty scent of damp brink and decaying wood. I could feel the rough walls under my brown fingers, and the chilled air on my face. When I woke, I was more tired than when I went to bed; as if I hadn’t slept at all. I’d stumbled around my bedroom getting ready for work with my sinuses swollen from imaginary dust, and my feet sore as if I had been walking barefoot across rough floors.

I tried everything I could think of to cure myself of these nightly visits to the house down the road. I tried meditation and yoga before bed. I changed my nightly routine. I read books until I passed out in hopes that the stories would fill my mind with anything else. I even went to the doctor to get sleeping pills, but nothing worked.

“They’re just dreams,” I told myself to quiet the growing fear that something sinister was calling to me from the house.
“It’s just an old house, and they’re just dreams.” I repeated the sentence as a personal mantra, a daily affirmation, until I almost convinced myself that dreams couldn’t hurt me.

That morning, I woke with a familiar jolt of panic.

My nose itched, and my eyes were dry. I raised my hands to rub my tired face, but paused just before making contact with my skin. My fingers felt gritty and unclean. When I looked at my hands in the green light of dawn, they were covered in dust.

I stumbled into the bathroom to wash my hands and attempt to remember my fleeting dream. I was in the house again. My hands running along the dusty walls, just as I had every night since the evening I met Barry and Rose. The rooms were as empty as before, but this time I went further. Iooked inside what I had assumed was a closet and found the steep, ladder-like stairs to the attic.

The soundless voices grew more insistent in my mind and urged me to climb. There were only 8 steps between where I stood and the attic’s floor-insert door. My hands found the splintery wood and I felt myself start to push it open. The door opened just enough to see a sliver of the dark room within when I heard her voice. Young and desperate, and clear as the morning air: “Free us!”

The memories of my dream were slipping away like shadows hiding from the sunlight. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was just after 6 am. I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep. I didn’t want any more sleep. I stumbled to the kitchen and turned on my coffee maker. I made a mental note to call into work to take the day off once the office opened at 8:00. Work could wait. What I really needed was to do research on that damned house.