Under The Watch

Morning sneaked in earlier than you expected. It was just five in the morning and you are wide awake. But the way you left the things weren’t the same. You wake up, slowly dragging your limbs off the bed. Moved into a pajama and headed towards the washroom, splashed your face a few times, took a good leak, and came back. The day outside was blurry and dusty. The window did not offer much view of the locals. 

The hassle you had opening the window wasn’t worth the effort, a heavy gust of dust and sand crawled in through the open window, even on the second floor where your room was. You, right on that, closed the window without a second’s delay. 

Next, you looked at the watch closely, it did read 5:20 and you did sleep in the night, waking up in the morning so it had to be five in the morning. Although your understandings of mornings were that they were calm and subtle and did not contain sandstorms but you are witnessing otherwise. 

You opened the door of your room and found yourself in the most bizarre and bewildering state you’ve ever been in. The floor and the building after your room were missing. The whole thing, the hotel was gone, vanished and the only thing left was your room, standing over two other rooms below yours. 

You are dreaming you thought, what else can justify this out of earth experience. You crawl back into my room and started thinking over what this might be, as if you actually are going to solve this mystery without crossing over. 

You take your backpack and head down. Hanging onto the floor of the doorway you leap onto the first-floor room somehow without much damage. Just a few scratches and you are on the first floor. 

The picture here was even more traumatizing. The bed was soaked in some kind of yellow liquid and on the side table was a sealed bottle of ‘bootleg rum’ and a bag, empty though. The window of this level was sealed with wooden fixtures nailed into the frame. 

A deliberate effort to keep the window closed but the question was why? The picture outside had to be the same as above but somebody did put his sweat sealing this window. You are not in an inspecting mood though; all you have to do is to pass the time so you wake up in the real world, sooner or later which was supposed to happen. 

The yellow liquid on the bed was some sort of chemical used in incubating animals whose generic name was written on the bottle you find underneath the bed. “ARTIODACTYL MAMMAL” the bottle read. You wonder what it is doing here in this dreamy world of your mind as you’ve never heard this name before and why the chemical from the bottle was spread on the sheet!? 

Sure your mind is going nuts figuring out the situation. You leave the things for now tangled as they are. Heading to the next part of the majestic mystery, getting on the level below i.e. the ground floor was a bit tricky. The door of the first-floor room wasn’t well finished and nails were poking out of the frame, so hanging to the frame was injurious to hands, but then again what’s going to happen even if you hurt yourself. It was just a dream after all. 

So without hesitation, you directly jumped not bothering about consequences. Away from expectations, you are standing on your legs which are still intact and functional.  

The winds were still raging fiercely dragging the dust and sand in every corner of everywhere. The ground floor was nothing more than a few pillars supporting the two rooms above it, no walls, no doors, just four pillars and floor under your feet, and winds from one side to the other side of the so-called hotel. Fearing the structural discrepancies you move away from a scrap of a building. Outside was totally empty, you somehow remember visiting this kind of place, or it was a dream too was hard to tell. But sure enough, some surrounding of this kind is in your memory, diluted and subdued though. 

The emptiness of the place was intriguing. Nothing of man’s prints, just silent winds blowing with all that it can. The chaotic winds were so captivating that you just stand there feeling the dust particles on your face and the sound of the roaring winds. You start walking in the direction of the sun; it was morning so it was eastward. 

Not much ahead was the cottage you had seen earlier in one of your dreams or whatever this is. This was the same cottage you saw near Robro’s motel. The log cabin was standing in the middle of nowhere, it was near Kazike, the last time you saw it and now Northwood! 

Something about this whole thing was not just natural. Or it was just you trying to see it all with an unnatural angle? At that point you lost track of reality, you aren’t aware anymore it’s a dream or you are actually living this horrible nightmare. 

When my reality is horrifying enough to be real and real enough to be a nightmare, what would I regard it as? This was your position at that point in time. The log cabin is in front of your sight, it was no illusion. A minute of walk takes you there where you were previously called off into reality by Robro. 

The side table, the cup, and the cottage were exactly the way you saw it the last time. The only difference was of time and space, it was in a different time dimension and at a different place, but how was it even possible for you to dream or whatever it was, experience twice. You have so many questions with no answers to be found, or were they?

The cup on the pavement right outside the house on the small table once had tea in it. The scent made it evident. You think of entering the house but you’re afraid as you somehow know that there is something inside the house waiting for you. 

Like a predator, waiting for the prey to pass by and on the right moment pouncing on him with a deathly blow, you and your imaginations!

You once more think of circling the house for a few more clues of what you’re dealing with here. So you did. On the left wall of the pavement was the window of the front room which you gazed in previously. And you did it again. The room was horrifyingly still, the harrowing screams of winds were still playing the satanic melodies in the background, but the stillness of the house was giving you chills. 

You are waiting for something; anything to happen that would break the curse on this place. But as expected nothing happened. You walk to the backside of the house after gazing in the room for a few minutes. At the back was the gate to the basement, a little trapdoor in the ground shut from the inside. So it was of no use for now. 

A little further the back-wall reached its edge. From here was another sidewall of the house running all the way back to the front, you along the wall reach the façade of the cottage and stood there gazing at the monster house. You know there is something unusual about this particular house. And you are going to find the unusualness, you think to yourself.

You reach the door, again. Holding the doorknob you feel that you will wake up now like the previous time, but you dint. And you opened the door in a sudden thrust. The heavy gate opened with a squeaky noise and the hinges adjusted themselves of the rusted settings. 

There was a coat of dust and sand on everything visible, the inside of the house was also swept in the dusty cover. you are standing right at the main door and on your left is the wall while on your right is a television set, a classic most probably black and white and on the top of it was a scenery of a meadow pretty old and dusty, as everything else was. 

The room was oddly painted with red, crimson red paint on one side of the wall, the television side and on the wall with the window was white, both faded with time. The thing in front of the television was more or less a seating arrangement which you can vaguely call a couch.

You carefully maneuver yourself in and around the room, not to touch anything and not to stumble upon something. Cautiously you crossed the room to the other side which was right in front of the front gate through which you entered the house. The gate led to the foyer which had entrances to other parts of the house. 

Now, the lightless portion of the house was growing horrifying and silent with each passing second and step. The ferocious noise of the winds outside was significantly dropped. A much calmer yet horrifying state you are in now. 

The foyer was largely occupied by the staircase in front of you, leading to the first floor of the house. The foyer then had an alley adjacent to the staircase running deep into the house behind the foyer and stairs. The staircase was a classic work of art, with pictures that made shapes and shapes that were meaningless to a human mind. 

You observe and inhaled the serenity and haunt of the placid woodhouse, both at the same time. On one hand, you are mesmerized by the artistic beauty of the house, at the same time you are also afraid for you are dwelling deep into unknown corners. 

There is no greater fear to man than the fear of the unknown, when you walk into a dark forest even after being aware of the horror that awaits you. But they say man’s curiosity leads to his demise. In spite of acknowledging fear, you did what you shouldn’t have done. The easy part was done now, a much griever and deeper horrors were calling for. 

The staircase you choose first to venture. As both the directions were unknown, so it hardly mattered which one you take, the staircase or the side alley. So you start scrutinizing the house on the first floor. As you’ve already seen, the staircase was a work of art, painted deliberately probably years after it was built. 

The difference in the color tone was quite a ground for your belief. Now, the first floor was nothing but a small lobby containing entrances to two rooms. One was right in front of you where the staircase ceased to exist and one at your right. Both grandly old and toxicated by the venom of time. The smell of plagued wood was distinctly fuming your lungs at that time

A sudden thud, a sharp pain in your legs and you find yourself in the basement. The dingy old wooden surface gave away and you fell two floors. You have acute pain in your legs and feel an electric shock running through your body. 

“Adam”, you hear someone shouting, it’s your name, you think to yourself. But who here would be calling your name. 

You look around and find nothing and no one in any corner of that basement. “Adam”, you hear again. 

Another electric shock rips your heart out and your suddenly open your eyes. A bright light flashes in from of you. You are laying on a cold metallic table and your hands strapped to the table you’re lying on. 

The hallucination you were having was over. You’re back in your senses. You’re in the safehouse now. You’re in a sanitarium.