And They All Fell Down

I see things in my sleep, things I dare not tell to others because of how real they are. My dreams have turned into my nightmares and those nightmares have turned into reality. A dark, cold, demented and twisted version of my reality.
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My name is Jake Golding. At the time this story took place, I was 32 years old and I already had a beautiful wife, Sarah Golding, age 30. She was the love of my life. I also had two wonderful children who I adore. Their names were Henry Golding and Jess Golding, ages 12 and 15 respectively. These three people were my world and my life. After all, having a family is a wondrous thing and I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world.
We decided to have a fresh start by moving into a new town, with new neighbours and a new house. We used to live in Dallas until gun violence increased exponentially. With plenty of robberies and murders going around, well, it was just too dangerous to live there anymore. So without much doubt, we decided to move from America to Australia and have a fresh start in Nairne, Adelaide, SA.
The house itself had a great view of the countryside which inhabited much of these parts, significantly different to what we're used to in America. It was a plain, old, two-story house out in the country, with a couple of streets and houses to accompany the space. The building needed a coat of paint and a bit of a fix but other than that it was a beautiful sight. Made of mostly wood, it had a pond in the backyard and a grand fireplace.
It took a few weeks to do the house up but after that it looked as good as new. We already made friends with the locals and my kids were actually loving school. Me and my wife loved it here and it seemed the kids did too. So by now, you're probably wondering what the point to this story is? The point is simple, never think there isn't something sinister lurking underneath the happiness and the sunshine.
After one week had passed since fixing the house, my nightmares started. Well, to be honest, I had a few of them when I was young, and again when I lived in Dallas, but I was hoping they were gone. My mum claimed that she saw me sleepwalking once and using the tomato sauce to draw all over the walls; I almost gave my little sister a heart attack.
I had no memory of this, and never really saw any pictures or videos, so I thought it was just parent superstition. That's what I thought until now. My nightmares came to me like any other dream, except when they started, it was hard to wake up. I would feel like I was trapped in a dark room full of people I couldn't see staring at me, mocking me and telling me to come closer. I would just be sprawled out across the floor, staying in the only source of light I would find, hearing nothing else except taunts, screams and music playing.
That's when I would see a flash of white and a crack in the darkness. I would always look up at it to see its cause. And always the same girl, who looked like Jess, would look up at me and smile. But it wasn't the smile she would give me in reality, it was sick and twisted with her teeth rotting and dripping with blood.
Flies would swarm around me in the room and I would have no choice but to run as fast as I could through the hoard of invisible creatures until I reached Jess, always on my knees. I would look up and see an expressionless, blank, bleeding face look down at me and see that demented smile break out across it.
I guess that's when I woke up and saw Sarah stare at me in horror. I looked down at myself and felt a slight pain in my right arm. I saw little lines of blood throughout my side of the covers. That's when I looked down at my arm and saw cuts all along from the elbow to the hand, covered in dripping, crimson blood.
I heard my wife start crying and started to wonder what the hell just happened.
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For the next few days after explaining to my family about the nightmares I'd been having, Sarah made me sleep in the basement to see what would happen the following morning. To help to remember what happened, and as proof that I wasn't insane, I started to write entries in my journal about what happened each morning.
Morning 1: I woke up in the basement to find the windows cracked, bottles broken and a couple of pillows ripped to pieces. Henry came down to the basement and said to me he saw me walk up to the fridge and devour all of the food like a rabid creature.
Morning 2: I woke up to find my bed in ruins. Wooden boxes holding mementos and old, thrown away objects from the past were thrown all over the basement with the boxes ripped open.
Morning 3: I woke up to see cuts all over my left arm, a tooth chipped and the TV turned on. It was grey and fuzzy, illuminating the dimly lit basement. I walked upstairs to find the windows in each room cracked, the bathroom mirror cracked and the bath full of water. Sarah told me that I walked out of the front door and then went around the house twice before collapsing on the front lawn.
Morning 4: My right ear is bleeding, my right hand, thumb, middle finger and pinky all broken and a long but not deep cut along my chest. Henry came in and said that I went into his room and started ripping off the heads of all the toys in his room. He wasn't happy with me so I apologised and avoided him for the entire morning. I got up and went to the lounge-room. I saw Jess huddled up against the sofa crying. She said that I almost strangled her to death.
Morning 5: I remember my dream; I walked through a house almost identical to the one I live in and saw Jess sitting by the fireplace. She played with the fire before getting up and opening a flask. I reached out for her yet she simply smiled at me before pouring the contents of the flask all over her body. The liquid looked almost like...oil.
She started crying before lighting a match on the fire burning in the fireplace and throwing it into her mouth. Her entire body ignited and I saw her simply standing there, slowly burning and bleeding to death. She tilted her head as the lounge slowly caught fire. I slowly backed away from the flames beginning to spread everywhere but found my back against a brick wall. Jess tilted her head some more, black and burning, saying, "Daddy I'm burning," over and over again like a chorus.
I woke up and ran straight upstairs into Jess's bedroom. I saw Sarah and Henry panicking. Sarah started calling 911 and Henry crumpled onto the floor, crying. I pushed through them to see the right side of my 15-year-old daughter's body burned severely, the right side of her face also burned. I heard her scream like the constant screams I hear in my dreams, playing on constant replay, the song of insanity.
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Morning 6: Jess was in hospital, we were asked to go back home and head back over there in the morning. I woke up and saw written in blood all over the walls, "I know what you did to me." I looked at myself and saw more cuts along my stomach area and my chest area, along with my left leg. I was covered in dried up blood and crying out in sharp pain.
I slowly made my way upstairs where Henry said he saw me in the swimming pool. He saw me turn up the thermometer to 60 degrees Celsius, and said he saw steam rising from the pool. Yet there were no burns on my body, so if I went in there why didn't I burn?
Henry, Sarah and I headed back to the hospital where the doctor in charge of Jess was trembling. He made us walk into her room where I saw the entire left side of her body covered in burns. She was a ruined mess, the quilt covered in red and her eyes slowly looking up at me. Her lips turned into a smile before I heard a slight chuckle.
Morning 7: Sarah raced down the basement stairs and told me to get up and get some clothes on. She said that something miraculous had happened to Jess at the hospital so I quickly put on some clothes and drove down to the hospital. I saw Jess in her room sitting on a chair by the window, smiling at all of us. Her body was completely healed as if nothing had ever happened.
After we were told we could bring Jess back, Sarah told me that she is going to lock me up in the basement for the greater good. She said that each morning she will unlock the door for me to leave, but is afraid of me at night now.
Morning 8: I woke up to the screams of my son Henry and my wife beginning to cry above me. I quickly got up and started knocking at the door, begging Sarah to open it. She quickly did so, only to see me covered in blood and a knife in my hand. She saw the basement was completely ruined, the TV still on that grey, fuzzy screen and windows shattered.
I pushed past her and dropped the knife that I didn't know I had in my possession until her reaction. I raced up to Henry's room. I saw his bedroom full of claw marks along the walls and my son, naked with his his back red raw with over fifteen deep cuts all over it.
Morning 9: I woke up to find myself on the grass, breathing in the cold morning air and smelling the scent of blood and bone wafting past me. I scrambled up on my feet and walked into the house to see all the windows broken and the front porch splintered. I saw Sarah backing away from me. She had a black eye and bruises all along her body.
I tried to get near her but she screamed at me and told me to get out of the house. I gazed past her as she screamed at me and saw Jess, naked and bloody. But the most unusual thing besides that was the fact that in the cracked mirror I didn't see her reflection.
After a certain time passed, Sarah chained me up to my bed, boarded up the broken basement windows and chained the basement door before locking me up in the basement to sleep.
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Morning 10: I opened my eyes and saw myself in chains still. Nothing had happened to the basement or to me over the course of the night. I wondered if Sarah's plan had actually worked. I looked all over the room until I saw Sarah over by the fuzzy TV staring at me with wide open eyes.
I looked at her arms and saw them all covered in cuts before seeing a hammer in her left hand. She slowly walked over to me, smiling while she did so. "Honey, what are you doing?" I asked her.
She simply smiled down at me and replied, "I'm going break you sweetheart." I started to panic, wiggling as strongly and as quickly as I could but to no avail.
"Don't worry honey, it will all be over soon," she said to me.
"What the fuck are you doing Sarah? This isn't you, you're in a trance, you're not yourself. Just wake up!" I shouted at her.
She kneeled down beside me and whispered in my ear, "Sarah's dead honey, I ate her just like I ate your daughter."
She smiled at me before pulling out some nails from her pocket. I knew exactly what she was about to do next. She put the first one on my two feet which were chained together. I started to scream in pain as she slammed the hammer down, making the nail stab straight into my feet.
She then started hammering the nails into my left and right hand before dropping the hammer and slowly unlocking the chains on me. Sarah took the chains off my body before leaving the basement. As she locked the door all I heard was her laugh, her insanely twisted laugh.
That's the end of my journal for there was nothing after that except the next events.
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That night I heard loud bangs and crashes coming from upstairs before hearing Sarah screaming and Henry once again crying. I had to do something, whatever these nightmares I'd been having, whatever paranormal entity had been unleashed, I had to do something.
I started pushing my hands upwards as blood oozed out of the nail wounds and skin peeled slowly off the sides of the nails. After five minutes of what seemed like endless pain, I managed to pull my hands free from the nails. With my two free but bloody hands I tore out the nail from my feet and started to crawl slowly up the basement stairs.
As I made my way towards the basement door I saw one of my older journals that I used to write in when I was back in Dallas. With nothing left to do, since the door was locked, I opened up the journal and flipped to the pages about my older nightmares.
And that's when it all unfolded before my very eyes. I drew pictures of all of my nightmares. I drew pictures of the burning of Jess, the scarring of Henry, the beating of Sarah, the destroyed basement, the burning pool and the ruined house. Everything I had written and dreamed about became reality, it had all unfolded before my very eyes.
I flipped over to the next page as I heard more screams and cries above and looked on in sheer horror. I leaned up against ruined walls and started rocking back and forth as I constantly heard the song "Ring Around the Rosy" play over and over again. I didn't want to know the things that would happen next, for what happened next would be the end of what I lived for, what I loved.
So I simply cried myself to sleep and let the end of my nightmares unfold around me as I faded into darkness.
Category:Dreams/Sleep