Down the Stairs, Around the Corner, Welcome to Hell

Have I told you my theory that dreams about houses are actually dreams about your life? If I haven't, it's because I'm afraid of losing those dreams by sharing. That can happen sometimes.

Ponder a bit. Do you tend to show up in the same place over and over in your dreams? Do you have a "house" you visit constantly when your eyes close? Do certain decorating themes recur enough to give you deja vu upon awakening?

I have a couple of places I have mentally visited enough times to be able to provide a map if you're interested in a dream travel getaway complete with blowing sheers, arched ceilings and open access to the underworld.

One feature in my "dream houses" is the basement doorway to Hell. It's never an actual doorway. In fact, there is nothing preventing any hellspawn that takes a fancy to an above ground stroll from doing so except possibly a narrowing of the unfinished concrete walls. This narrowing might make a human pause, but it would be a day in the death of any demon accustomed to navigating the bowels of the deep.

Usually my dream basements are unfinished. Concrete floors. Cement block walls with or without a water barrier coating. Bare lightbulbs. They aren't generally crowded with boxes or junk. It could be a space anybody could work in. But...in one of the corners, half-hidden by the shadow of an I-beam, there's an opening...

If you peek in, you might see a narrow corridor curving gently away from the light as the concrete floor turns to dirt. It might open into a crumbling, musty cellar that stretches far longer than a cellar should in a typical neighborhood. Once it was just a hole in the wall. Always that space is set apart by the absolute certainty that if I continue into the darkness, I never escape, or if I stray too close, I will draw some unspeakable horror out of its pit to hunt me down.

I'd say I was reading too much Lovecraft, but I suspect it's more a case of Lovecraft capturing what I fear - the unknown depths where evil lurks.

Happy Tuesday, dear readers. Pleasant dreams.