Over and over...

So we went to the Lakes last weekend, yes I know Dubby’s told you all about it – well maybe not quite all, one way and another it’s been a spooky old week.

As you may know we went to Grange-over-Sands and we were walking through the beautiful park that runs alongside the prom - early evening, sun shining. There’s a wonderful lake in the park, small but larger than a duck pond. Even so, it was full of ducks – Mandarin, Pochard, Eider, all sorts. Dubby would have loved it but I hadn’t pulled him out of the quicksand at this point - I thought I’d teach him a lesson.
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Behind the lake, through the trees, there was a building – park offices or some such, and at the back of the building was a deep red painted door with a sign nailed to it – ‘Haunted House’ it proclaimed.

Haunted house? Could it be? The arrow pointed the way. I had to follow. I’ve been searching for the haunted house for most of my adult life.

I can’t remember the first time I dreamt of the haunted house but I must have been dreaming it for at least thirty years. It’s become one of my ‘recurrings’ - dreams I have frequently and often, like Ju-Ju and the ‘Lost’ dream. In this dream I’m also driving, only this time I’m by the sea and not on a treacherous mountain road. It’s a sunny day, the skies are blue and I’m driving along a gloriously green country lane towards – well nothing really, I have absolutely no idea where I’m going, I’m just happy to be alive in my red open-topped sports car on such a wonderful day.

Now the thing is I’ve never owned a sports car in my life, let alone an open-topped one and if I did… well - if I did I’d be very nervous about it, given this particular ‘recurring’.

I drive along the lane until it becomes a drive to a big red brick house. I park up on the grass by the side of the house overlooking the sea. The bricks are so dark they are almost black, so black that they look like they’re covered in dried blood that has been baked hard by the sun. The door is open. It is my house. I don’t know how I know it is my house, I’ve never been there before, but the minute I see it I know that it’s mine and that it has been waiting for me to arrive for a long time.

I get out of the door, walk across the gravel, climb the six sandstone steps and go in through the open door. It’s dark inside the gloomy hall, a long, wide staircase rises towards the second floor. I climb the staircase, moots of dust rising from the patterned carpet as I climb them. I walk along the landing. It goes back and back, past room after room, and as I move into the interior of the house the décor becomes shabbier, the fabric of the house more and more unstable. By the time I’ve been walking for an hour or so I am walking through decaying ruins covered in pulsating fungi, damp with some sort of sticky black ooze.

In front of me I see a slit of light. It’s a doorway. The rotting door slightly ajar. I can hear the sound of the sea swishing from behind the door. I push the door wide open and step through.

It is the end of the house. The last of the house. The crumbling boarded floor hangs above a sea which is thousands of feet below. The back wall of the house doesn’t exist and the house is open to the storm that rages above the lashing, black, water below. Huge waves batter the purple rocks - they look like pebbles from where I’m standing high above them in the element-open room.

And then I see her.

The woman, her back towards me - she’s wearing that long black skirt, hair up in a bun - as she always has and always will.

She doesn’t turn. Simply holds her arm out and back a little towards me, just about offering her hand. The fingers twitch slightly, she’s wearing a fire-speckled opal ring, the hand is wrinkled, covered in liver spots. It looks cold.

I walk towards her, reach out for her hand, and take it. It is cold, cold as death. As her fingers touch mine the sea below erupts in a maelstrom of fury. She begins to turn to face me and I catch a flash of red in the corner of her eye.

I wake up.

I hate that dream.
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I went looking for the haunted house in the park at Grange-over-Sands. I didn’t find it.

I think that I’m glad that I didn’t.