Whether it was causing David’s horrible nightmares was unknown. He wrote one of his most memorable night terrors down in his journal when he was 11.
February 4th, 1996: Worst dream I can remember. We learned about Tuberculosis in school yesterday and all the hospitals they called sanatoriums. Thousands of people died in each of them all over the country. My teacher said they abandoned them when they cured everyone with antibiotics and a bunch of them were turned into old people homes.
I dreamed I was in one at night all by myself. I couldn’t find my way out. I was in the basement. It was dark everywhere except where the moonlight shone through the basement windows. The light made strange shadows on the cinder-block walls, turning normal things into bizarre, misshapen weird stuff. A huge black boiler looked like a monster with the pipes sticking out, becoming the legs and tentacles of the creature. Pitch-black corners were hiding horrible things, maybe ghosts waiting to reach out and kill me. I felt my way around the basement of this abandoned maze, where thousands of people died. I searched for a way out, a stairway or maybe a hallway to an exit.
A stairway, yes, a stairway! But to where? Oh God, it’s darker than the basement!
I climbed so carefully and slowly, listening for any sound, trying to see through the blackness, saving my flashlight for the worst. I held onto the cold metal railing, stepping on something crunchy over and over again. I flashed the light on quickly. Cockroaches! Huge, disgusting cockroaches everywhere!
What was that at the top of the stairs? Something dark, a shadow? Shit, where’d it go? I can’t go up there now! What’s behind me? What’s that noise in the basement? There’s nowhere to go, I’m trapped!
Someone started coughing behind me at the bottom of the stairs! Now I had to climb the stairs to wherever it led. I reached the top to a metal door with a sign on it. “Solarium & Cafeteria” it said. I pushed the door slightly and it opened with a rusty screech. I peered into the long dark hall, but I could see nothing but blackness. I peeked around the corner of the door frame, flashing my light off and on. It was a hall full of doors to other rooms. Patient rooms. Some were closed, and some were open. The floor was littered with old patients records and X-ray films. Wires and old incandescent light fixtures dangled from the ceiling and pieces of the ceiling tile lay on the floor with flakes of old paint from the peeling walls.
I can’t go down that hallway! Something will come out of one of those rooms! I just know those doors will slam if I go down there! God, please let me wake up if this isn’t real!
(More to come...stay tuned!)
Comments