The Haunted Mansion

School
Haunted Mansion

Ft. Colleen, Madeleine, Lale, and my family in the first
Ft. Colleen, Lale, and Will and Lucas from stranger things.

In the first half of the dream, we were teenagers.  I was in Colleen's body throughout the whole dream.  So when I say "I", I generally mean Colleen.

My family dropped us off at a highschool whose layout was similar to Castlemore public school.  The school was definitely along Steeles avenue, since we originally started out at Pacific Mall but went east, and were dropped off. We were ready to investigate something, but I wasn't sure what.  All I knew was a sense of urgency.

Maddie beside me looked just like the way I drew her.  Lale still looked like himself--long hair, dark red eyes--but skinnier and younger.  We mulled over how to contact each other after we found the thing we were looking for, since we didn't have any sort of communication device.  I put a hand on Lale's cheek.  He wanted to go alone, so I told him that if anything happens, he should let his aura go.  Since the three of us were the only people who could see it, that made sense.

So Lale went off on his own, weaving through some hallways in the blink of an eye, and disappeared.  Maddie and I took some side corridors, into the gym where we watched a huge school party taking place.  It suddenly occurred to me that we should join in the festivities.  So Maddie and I laughed; there was a blur as we played games and danced.  Maddie's hands were skinny, soft, and cool, and we held hands often so as not to get lost.

 Quite some time had passed between the morning of our arrival and heading for the cafeteria.  Maddie and I sat side by side afterwards in what looked like Kennedy's old changeroom with a plate of a chicken thigh each, slathered in orange sauce that was sweet.  She chatted to me merrily about something as she drizzled her lemon wedge over the chicken.  I could smell the lemon, and I turned to her to grin.  She looked a bit nervous to eat, as was I.  I drizzled the lemon, too, and took a bite.  The chicken tasted like plain meat texture with sweet and sour sauce.  Lale joined us later, looking curious but without a plate.  I beckoned him over, and he hovered over me as I ripped him a little piece.  He bent over and I fed him the piece with a smile. He looked a bit shy to eat from me.  Then, he grimaced at the taste.  I think Maddie made some nervous comments like, "Is this really chicken?  I dunno..."

We parted ways again, the mission suddenly back on.  Maddie and I scoured the hallways and classrooms, while Lale went off on his own again.  I think he knew we were safer in a pair, but he wanted to be efficient and cover more ground.

Suddenly, Lale's aura flooded the school, like a cloud of black.  We saw it and immediately went back to the front.  He looked unhappy.

"It isn't here," he told us.

"Yeah.  We should go back to the mall.  Maybe we can try again tomorrow," I (Colleen) said.

We took our backpacks from the front and left the school, into a sunny summer parking lot.  There were a few students leaving, laughing.  Something like summer vacation?  Lale looked interesting in the sunlight, as I don't often see him in it.  He slung his hair over one shoulder, looking incredibly beautiful.  I felt so content with the two of them next to me.

We wandered to the edge of the parking lot.  This time, I separated from Colleen's body and I was myself as I led the four of us to Steeles.  I was already thinking of how many tickets I needed to give them to take the bus back to pmall, but then, we ran into my stepdad.  Then my mom and grandpaents followed.  "What are you doing here?" I asked them in Cantonese.

"We're just wondering where you're gonna go next."

I glanced at my group.  Colleen was so cute!  She looked younger than she normally does, highschool age.  The trio of ensemble were huddled close.  Lale had his arm around her waist.

"We're going back to pmall.  Actually, since you uys are here, can you give us a ride?" I asked my mom.

"Sure.  Our van's over there, let's go."

The trio made little yes victory motions each, Maddie bouncing and Colleen folding her hands and Lale smiling.  We made our way to the car.


-


Part two of the dream was a continuation of a nightmare I had a few days ago. This time, I was better prepared.

It was myself as Colleen, Lale, Will and Lucas from Stranger Things.  I did not break from Colleen's consciousness at all this dream.  We were children; Lale's eyes were brown, and his hair was chin-length.  He looked sweet, the way I draw him.  Tall and slim and strong.

We were at a mansion that technically belonged to Will.  Will's older brother was not Jonathan, but some jock dudebro.  His mother was also someone different, a stern red-headed woman in a high-neck, Victorian era dress in emerald and paisley print.  They left us and we tensed.

The last time I had this dream, it started off as an innocuous sleepover, but things went to shit when it got dark.

I will split this into "this time" and "last time".

The first thing that happened last time was, we were all nestled up in the living room to sleep.  The living room was interesting, very high-tech looking with reclining leather sofas, a fireplace to our left, big TV, and the walls were completely glass so you could look out into the dark stretch of garden.  It was connected to the kitchen just off our side.  When we turned off the lights to sleep, we all had terrible, terrible nightmares.  I was sleeping in Lale's arms, both of us hugging each other, but he'd periodically wake in cold sweat and I'd wake freaked out, too.  The nightmare in my dream included screeching creatures and night-terror like flashes.  We barely slept the first night and wondered what the heck happened that all of us were sleep deprived.

A bunch of things happened last time, too.  The next day we tried to take our minds off of it by exploring this old house--Will led us, explaining how he and his mom and brother have lived there for the past few months after inheriting it.  However, our explorations led to some freaky shit.

In the attic bedroom--which looked rather like the Room Escape that Angel and I went to recently--we met a terrifying monster, a ghostly apparition that barely looked human, with a huge, gaping mouth, no neck, and fathomless eyes.  It crawled towards us making these strange sounds, like layered, shrill "eeehhhhn"s.  I basically flew through the house based on adrenaline to end up in the front yard, in the sunlight.  The boys were just a bit lagged behind me, with Will at the end and Lale close behind me.  We panted in the quiet afternoon air, free from the attic monster's shriek.

When I looked back, the mansion was gray and black, kind of like Phantom Manor but bigger, darker, less trees, with a manicured garden in front that included a looong stretched pergola. We had to dive back in eventually, even though we dreaded it.  Lale came up to me, worried, and asked in a velvet soprano voice, "Are you alright?"

"Yes," I told him.  "I'll be fine.  Don't worry."

Last time, we divised a plan to lure out the bad spirits of the house.  It involved going into the heart of the house--the basement, and trying to get rid of the cursed core.  The basement felt like the old basement at 72 barrington, all gray light and dim and low ceilings.  There was a boiler, I could tell; the air was humid.

It didn't work.  The dream ended with me getting separated from the others as the walls re-segmented themselves to box me in.  The last thing I saw was Lale's panicked face, crying, "Colleen!" as I was split from him.  I was shrouded in darkness and couldn't breathe.  Then, I woke up.

This time, we were a little more ready.  We realized that there was one big ghost--the ghost of a woman haunting the main floor bathroom.

We were afraid to go back into the house.  We ate in the lawn over a piss-poor barbecue, trying to enjoy ourselves by watching the gray ocean across from the manor.   I could tell the dream was automatically turning into a nightmare, because our food turned into squirming, dripping geckos that made small screeching noises.  I ate it anyway, watching the faces of Lucas and Will glitch out and repeat.  I was scared.  Lale was constant; he squeezed my shoulders and I could feel his heat radiate on my back.  We had to eat something, so I had to do it.

We tried to sleep outside, too, thinking the haunting couldn't get us.  No avail.  In the middle of the night, a black creature shaped like a man with no head, and a face in its chest, slowly walked towards us like he was sluggish, made of mud.  I got the boys up and we ran back into the house, flipping a switch to seal the outside doors and windows.  We sat in the living room, awake, while things were normal around us, and mulled over what to do.

"Guys, it's never attacked me when I was here alone," Will told us.

"It's her.  It's attracted to her," said Lucas.  Lale glared at him, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

"They're right," I told him. "It only comes out wherever I am.  That must mean it's following me.  When you went off to explore on your own, you were fine."

Lale couldn't beat my logic.  We decided to sleep some more and unearth some mysteries tomorrow.

The next day, we went out to the garden pergola, stretching on and on and on.  It was a flowering vine of some sort, like a white love-lies-bleeding mixed with the vine from our backyard, not woody at all.  Lucas unearthed a misshapen cherry tomato from its roots and said Aha!  Because he said this plant contained ghost jewels in the fruit, so we should rip it up so the ghosts couldn't come into the garden.  Tearing the plant off the pergola was a breeze, like dehairing a brush.  We worked long to clean the pergola.  I was wearing a sunhat because it was sunny.

Suddenly, Lale came up to me, holding a strand of love-lies-bleeding.  "Here," he told me softly, eyes shy.  I took it, beaming, took off my hat.  I asked him for a pin, and he rummaged around in his black pants pockets, and gave me a small pin.  I pinned the flower to my hat, and put it on.  We held hands until we went back into the living room.

The house was dark.  No matter how we turned on the lights, it wouldn't go bright.  Will's dudebro brother was surfing the tv on the couch, mumbling 'hey' to us when we came in.  We knew something was wrong because he didn't respond to our questions, just staring at the TV.  "Where's mom?"  Will asked, and the brother gestured vaguely at t