Dear Creepypasta [#Wattys2016]

Recursing dream

It's been six months since my family left me and every night I always have the same dream. A dark dream. A nightmare. Or is it? It's been so long, my recollection of events have become scrambled with the dream, I can't tell fact from fiction, truth from lies. I can't remember what happened that night, no matter how hard I try.

It always starts with me standing in our living room. The walls, furniture and the layout is the same as it was back then, but everything else is twisted, it's as if no one had lived there for centuries. Every sign of life escaped.

In this dream I can feel pain, I can see everything with incredible details, I can feel things with my fingers and I can smell the dust in the air, and I remember everything when I wake in cold sweat.

I once brought up the subject with a friend who called the phenomenon, lucid dreaming. A dream where you are in control, although, I'm never in control.

As the dream begins I can always hear static on the radio, an occasional voice muttering through the ambient noise, "Murd..rdd his en-iirr fam--yy". The man on the radio would stutter as the frequency jumped from on to off, the phrase repeating over and over. The only light came buzzing as whites and blacks were stuck in an endless struggle on the TV. Drapes fluttering as the winds drifted through the cracks in the wooden walls. The floor screamed in agony with each step I took and the attic howled curses. Bookshelves covered in dust, some of it slowly drifting through the room, visible only were the moonlight shun through split boards, like gray mist in the air. Blood dripping down from the ceiling, each drop landing in dark puddles by my feet, only to slowly sink down to the floor below.

After a while I come to the stairs. A mirror on the wall in front of me, spiderwebs covered most of it, but a shade could be seen. A shapeless man, a face darkened by shadows, no contours only a fleeting image. A photo without focus, a fleeting memory of a man I once knew. On the left, stairs spiraled upwards, light sparkled through a broken quarter window. The railing brown from rust and the carpet on the steps worn and faded, like memories forgotten. The walls were covered in paintings and pictures of a happy family, porcelain dolls stood in the window sill, the paint on their faces had since long melted away but a slight pinkish hue could be seen on their ballerina dresses.

A trail of dark blood ran down the stairs, drops sliding down the steps, thick as syrup. On every other step the blood had splashed outwards as a small foot had stepped in it. A bloody handprint clutched desperately to the wrung at the bottom of the stairs, twisting the wall to make a quick turn.

On my right the stairs ran straight as an arrow, pointing down into darkness. The hinges of the door had broken inwards and the wood cracked under heavy force. Up until this part the dream was always the same. Me walking to the stairs, and then the one choice I am given takes place.

Up, or, Down?

There was something about the darkness that frightened me. There was a secret down there not meant for my eyes, a memory I had tucked away deep inside. Instead I had always gone upstairs and searched every inch of every room.

The broken cradle in the kid's room, it's white oak splattered in drops of red, a few sticks ripped to shreds, lying dispersed on the floor.

The smashed frame in the bedroom, with a picture of a woman I did not recognize, holding a babe in her arms. The covers tossed to the floor as someone had made off in haste.

Or the bathroom with it's huge pool of blood, slowly running down the shower drain. Rain smattered against what remained of the windows.

Lastly was the study with its faint aroma of bourbon. Books collecting dust on the shelves. A lone table light was flickering just above a typewriter, it's pages empty.