text: Preface: these are the contents of a story-esque recurring nightmare that I have every few years. If it doesn't fit here, let me know, but I had it again sleeping in this afternoon and got the idea to post before I forget. I can't handle horror well, so my brain cooks up night terrors to wake me up when it needs water or if my sleep schedule is shifted too far. You arrive at the dark Victorian home. Two stories and broad, wooden siding clattering in the wind, you wonder how such a busted up house could remain standing. It's windows are dark. The lower ones boarded up, much of the upper ones smashed out. "Why the hell do we have to come here," your partner asks. Walking behind you, he is lanky, a head taller than you with sandy brown hair that hangs in his eyes, despitebeing tucked into a hat. You don't even know his name. It doesn't matter, it never did. You just know he's on your side. There's an implicit understanding in everything each of you are doing. You give a vague, noncommittal answer to his question. You don't really know, yourself. You don't remember being called. You just know that the building *should* be empty, but isn't. Your task is to fix that. You don't have any idea what you're going to remove, and that lack of knowing makes you tense and anxious. The half-darkness inside makes you more anxious. There's no light coming in from outside, nor are there fixtures, yet you can see every detail of the stripped interior, from the batting across the studs to the rough wood floor. Those are the only details that surround you. Stripped walls and floor. There are no 'rooms' or 'hallways'. The cieling is a darkness. Though you can see without problems, it's still dark, as though the darkness itself is an invisible gas filling every room that you can sense without sensing it, like a propane leak or the smell of pot. You and your partner begin searching. He's in front of you now, always in sight but not filling your view. You walk, or wander, along the walls and floor. Until you hear it. The single cry of a baby, from somewhere in the darkness. You and your partner look to each other. He asks if you heard the same as him, and you confirm. The baby cries again. The two of you are climbing a stairwell. You reach the top, a narrow landing with a half-wall serving as a railing. There's a door. For the first time, you see actual light around the edges. The baby cries from behind the door. Your partner steps onto the landing and knocks. The door cracks open, and a young Hispanic woman leans her face into view. She's nervous and stressed, but asks pleasantly, "are you here to see the baby?" You look to your partner, and he looks back. You answer in the affirmative. The young woman apologizes, and says only one person can enter for now, and you'll have to switch. She says this is because the room is full enough with the whole family inside. You insist that you both have to enter. Your partner looks at you. What goes unspoken is that you know what you are after is in that room, and you are too scared to go in by yourself, but he doesn't complain. The young woman relents and opens the door, letting both of you in. Your partner is behind you now. You see that the room is full of people, perhaps eight or ten. An old white couple stands out, and the rest are various ages and ethnicities. Even though not all of the people even register in your mind, you know viscerally that they aren't a 'family'. They were all drawn here, and are trapped in a mental cage. The reason why is sitting on the dresser by the window. Atop a blanket in a basket, sits the dessicated corpse of a baby. It's eyes are wide black holes, with veins stretching from them like spider legs. It's mouth, agape and black like it's eyes. It's silent. The young woman says that the baby has been hungry, and they don't know how to feed it. Your partner collapses to the ground behind you. The family cheers, and says that the baby has picked a meal. You are by yourself now, and their prisoner. You don't resist when they take you somewhere else. You are at a candle lit dining table, and the family sits around it as you do. The baby sits at the head of the table. It is still, but it's skin is flushed and moist. Its eyes and mouth are still empty and agape, but you know it is gaining life. Your partner is seated to your right, at the foot of the table. He, on the other hand, is now brown and shriveled, and a third shorter. Somehow, the baby is feeding on him. The family is chatting and laughing around the table, passing dishes that you can't smell. You can only smell the dustiness of the bare wooden walls. You are silent, sullen. You've lost, and your partner is slowly dying. You look to the baby again, as a couple of the women are crowding around it. Suddenly, its neck gives out and the head snaps off, rolling under the table. You jump and start shouting, trying to use the opportunity to verbally beat some sense into your captors. This proves unnecessary, as the spell seems to have broken. Everyone becomes alert, and looks to the floor. A large rat has crawled through the mouth and neck of the baby's head, and is now scampering out of the room with the head riding it. Everyone understands that it must be stopped, and arm themselves with bricks and knives before descending to the basement. Following your lead, they begin wandering the maze like walls and dirt floor of the basement in search of the rat. At one point, you regroup with some others, and you sense the rat approaching. You turn your head, and see the rat and baby's head leap from an eye-level break in the batting onto the face of an 'aunt'. Desperate, it is trying to possess her. Everything moves quickly. The aunt is pushed to the ground, and the rat knocked off of her face. Bricks descend, smashing the hellspawn into the dirt floor. It's done. But the creature's presence hasn't left. It hangs over the group, and you feel that one false move will cause you to carry it out with you, back into the living world. As the paranoia rises to a peak, you wake up. Edit: typos and wrong words used.