I wrote this awhile back and decided to share it. Enjoy.
I have decided to share a dream I had as a child. I should have shared it yesterday since it was Halloween. This is one of 2 nightmares, at least I hope they were just nightmares, that I had as a child that would set me on my path. This happened nearly 40 years ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. So, without further ado.
I was 5 going 6 years old and it was hot that summer, so hot it almost felt like the fires of hell were heating the outside. I was at my Great uncle & great aunt's farm, I loved going to that farm and went as often as I could. The farm was located in Convoy, just outside of Van Wert, Ohio. Good luck finding it on a map.
The house was a small 2 two-story farmhouse with a concrete front porch that was the length of the front room. The old screen door, in summer was the only door closed, was metal and squeaked every time it was opened, almost like a poor man alarm system. If someone came in that door you knew no matter where you were in that house.
The door opened into the living, where larger 1 of 2 TV's were. To the left was the doorway to the dinning room. The dinning room and kitchen were separated by a bar, where the 2nd and smaller TV was. The dinning room was home to a large wooden, rectangular table that was only used on holidays. In the Kitchen was a smaller, round wooden table that was used everyday for breakfast and dinner. Lunch was usually served at the bar, but sometimes at the table. To the right of the living was my great- Uncle Bill's and Great-aunt Sue's chair', which set directly across from the wooden console TV. Behind the chairs was another door that led to a long narrow bathroom. To the left if the bathroom door was the door to my aunt and uncle's bedroom. And to the left of that door was the upstairs door which led to my cousins bedroom.
There were 2 rooms upstairs. The stairs opened into the 1st which a loft type of room. This is the room my cousin used the most and had his bed in. Just past his bed was another door which led to another bedroom. This room was never used. Now, I could tell you that it was too hot in the summer, which it was, and I could tell you about the wasp nest in that backroom, which there was, as to why we never went In there, but to be honest the room never felt right. Obviously, I didn't spend much time in there and strange places to little kids never do feel right, but that room just felt wrong, although as far as I know nothing ever happened in that room.
Under the stairwell was a closet that sat in a little hallway off the living room. In that closet was a rollaway bed that me and my cousin used during the summer nights. That hallway led to another room that had a doorway that led into the kitchen on end and another that led into my aunt and uncle's bedroom. In that room was a couch that sat under a set of windows. Those windows were the ones I would look through to and see true horror for the very first time.
At 5 years old I was a short skinny thing with
a mop of brown hair on top of my head. I hadn't started watching anything truly scary yet and I was a little over a year away from the first time I watched The Exorcist.
My aunt and uncle always made me feel welcome. I was treated more like a child of theirs than that of a grand- nephew and no more so than by Sarah.
Sarah was a Doberman pinscher who was named after my mother and she acted like my mother as well. She was 1 if two dogs and my favorite. Whenever I was outside Sarah was by my side. We played and l roamed the farm and if I went where I wasn't supposed to go Sarah would bark and let me know. If I was outside, she was by my side. They had another dog to a short curly blonde-haired ankle biter named princess. While Sarah was an outside only dog, princess was in and out. Princess was a hunter. She would constantly bring all kinds of small animals to the porch. After a day of transporting dead birds, rats, & mice she would get up on the couch next to you and try to lick your face off. To this day I do not like dogs licking my face.
This was a time before cell phones and 24hr TV. A time when kids stayed outside all day. When I was there, I would get up early (not my choice), eat breakfast, watch the old Spider-man cartoon while my aunt cleaned the kitchen. All this happened before the sun rose. My uncle and cousin would go start chores.
After the kitchen was clean, and if they were running low, my aunt would take me out back to the chicken coup to gather eggs. The morning before that nightmare we gathered enough for a whole week.
There was a back door at the back of the kitchen that led to a back porch that was more of a go through room, meaning it was a room we would go through to get outside. They used it to store all sorts of junk but to me it was just a go thru to the backyard. We didn't use that back door much in the summer because there was another wasp nest nearby.
To the left if the house was a small apple orchard that I played in frequently. The only other stand out thing about that summer was the fleas. They had really bad fleas and this was before foggers, so the battle was long and arduous. On that particular day nothing out of the ordinary happened. We had dinner, me and my cousin set up the rollaway bed and by 10 p.m. we were in bed sleeping. That night was hot, and I remember even having a sheet on was too much.
I woke up, at least I think I did, sometime in the early morning. It was still dark, and I swore I heard a noise, a clunk sound. I got up and peered outback where the noise originated and what I saw chilled me to the bone.
Back by where the creek ran behind the house was a line of women in white robes. The line wrapped around the house and out if view. At the head if the line a woman with dark raven like hair stood before a large tree stump. Standing behind the stump was a man in dark trousers, no shirt, a black hood, in what I would later come to know as an executioner's hood, and he glowed with a red light. Although it was dark the women had a blue glow that surrounded them.
The woman knelt down by the stump, bent over, and laid her head on the stump. The man then raised an axe and swiftly brought the axe down and severed the women's head. Her head and body disappeared and the next in line stepped forward. Woman after woman stepped up and had their head removed as I knelt on the couch and watched through the window. The next woman had long curly blonde hair that hung around a round face. As she laid her head on the stump, she faced me and raised a finger to her lips as to warn me to stay quiet before her head was severed and she disappeared. The man slowly raised his head and turned his gaze towards me. I ducked quickly to hide from him, hoping he didn't see me. I am sweating even more now. I wanted to look and see if he saw but I was afraid that he was waiting for me to pop my head back up.
My face soaked with sweat and tears. I stayed low and hoped back in bed and pulled the sheet over my head. Terrified I lay there shaking and listening to hear the screen doors open.
I don't know if I fell asleep, if I was asleep, or if I laid there long enough but I remember the kitchen light coming on and my aunt starting to make breakfast. I got up and ran in there and told her what I saw. She said that I must have had a nightmare.
I don’t know if I dreamt what I saw, if it was my overactive imagination, if it was a ghostly execution, or if somehow I saw into hell itself that night but I have never forgotten what I saw and in a way I hope I never do.
This story is true, and I plan on adapting it to my new book "Shadows" along with a few other tales. Maybe another time I will tell you of the other nightmare or the shadow-bugs that
attacked me nightly for a couple weeks or many of the tales my aunt told me. Maybe even my experiences while in the Navy.