This was one of the longest and most entrapping nightmares I have had in quite some time. I was quite intrigued by this one mostly because my nightmares are typically repetitive or what you might think of as "progressive nightmares" with common elements. This particular dream, however, was frighteningly original and had me feeling anxious long after waking.
The dream began with me walking around the house that I grew up in so many years ago. The old hardwood floors, my cozy bedroom with blood red walls, and of course my sister and mother existing only in the periphery of my subconscious nightmare. As I sat in my room lit only by the full moon shining through my over sized windows, I noticed my neighbors bedroom light was on and there was something going on inside. There were people in the bedroom wearing dark robes of some kind, and they were all surrounding a newborn child. I knew my neighbors were God-fearing in a cultish sort of way, but this was something entirely different and extreme from what I had previously seen. One of the young daughters, whom I recognized after she turned towards the window, walked over to draw the shade in the bedroom.
What I saw and heard in the long moments following chilled me to the very core of my soul. Through the drawn shade of the neighbor's bedroom, light played with shadow in a frighteningly impossible way. Strange sounds came from the house, and then flashes of light followed by thunderous banging and screams of terror. Suddenly it all stopped. I realized that I was now kneeling on the floor of my room with just the whites of my eyes peering out my window wondering what I was going to see or hear next. Silence and darkness ensued in the house for what seemed a lifetime. But then, suddenly, my neighbor's front door flew open and slammed against the side of the house, shattering a window and falling off its hinges. Out of the darkness walked the youngest daughter of the family that lived there, followed slowly by her brother and older sister, mother and father. They all trod forever slowly together out onto their front lawn, each dawned with a dark cloak. Before I could gather what was happening, they all had turned simultaneously towards my window. I ducked below my windowsill and all the fear in the world entered my body. How could they have seen me or known that I was watching? It took me minutes to regain the courage to poke my head up to look again. Only when I started to hear strange thumping noises did my curiosity overcome my fear. As I peered out again I saw the limp bodies of my neighbors' family being lifted in the air by some strange force and then being slammed into the ground like a child playing with a rag doll. They were constantly being picked up into the air and thrown down again, now into the bushes, some onto the porch steps, others on the driveway, limbs being contorted, blood dripping, and bones cracking. I watched in utter terror as the youngest girl's body finally came to a sudden rest hanging off the front porch with the rest of her family scattered across the front yard.
To be continued...
