Henry awoke with a start and strained his groggy eyes at the unfamiliar yet familiar scene before him. Where am I? Wait, isn’t this the front door?

 

Henry immediately sobered up as he stared wide eyes at the front door of the mansion. As he struggled to his feet, he saw that his wife and kids as well as the Harris couple were all lying down next to him. How did this happen?

 

Henry tried to think logically as he woke them up. Could this have been a case of mass sleepwalking? No, it’s impossible. How could the Harris couple climb up the hills while sleepwalking? Not to mention, there’s not even a speck of dirt on them!

 

Illogical! Highly illogical!

 

Slowly, the others woke up from their slumber. Everyone seemed to be confused except for the baby. Abel leapt to his feet and muttered something superstitiously, but Henry scoffed at it and told him to think this through logically.

 

“Stop scaring the kids with that nonsense. Tell me, do you remember getting here? Are you a sleepwalker? What was the last thing you remembered?” Henry bombarded the Harris couple with question after question.

 

Madeline took the initiative to speak while Abel was still a bit dazed from the situation. “Last I remembered, we were sleeping in our bed. I don’t recall ever being a sleepwalker as none of our neighbors ever mention anything. Besides, isn’t it illogical for us to walk all the way here even if we were sleepwalking?”

 

“That’s what I thought too.” Henry nodded.

 

“Honey, something’s off about this house.” Janet suddenly walked up to her husband and tugged gently on his sleeve.

 

Sure enough, something was off. When Henry turned around to look, his immediate attention was focused on the furniture. How could there be furniture when they just moved in and haven’t finished packing? Where do these small chest drawers come from? Where do these statues of cupids come from?

 

Henry rushed through the entrance hall and into the foyer. “Strange, the doors are closed.”

 

DONG!

 

The sound came from behind him. Henry turned around and saw an old grandfather clock. It was an hour after midnight. “What the fuck is going on? This wasn’t here a few hours ago!”

 

Suddenly, noise came from the front door as Abel’s surprised voice rang out. “Henry! Something’s off about this place! The door…the door won’t open!”

 

“What do you mean it won’t open?” Henry questioned as he arrived next to the groundskeeper.

 

Not believing Abel’s words, Henry reached out and tried to turn the doorknob, but the door won’t budge. But that couldn’t be! The door was clearly unlocked, so then, when won’t it open? Henry scratched his head furiously as he tried to think of a logical explanation.

 

“C-Could this place be…haunted?” Madeline whimpered in her husband’s arms.

 

“Don’t speak nonsense woman! Everything can be explained rationally!” Henry snapped, a bit agitated.

 

“Don’t you scream at my wife!” Abel roared back as he stood between his wife and Henry.

 

Henry took a step back and apologized. “Sorry Abel, I didn’t mean to. There just has to be a logical explanation for all of this.”

 

“Fine, maybe there is. But for now, what are we going to do? The front door is locked and we can’t get out.” Abel calmed down a bit, but still kept his distance between Henry and Madeline.

 

“For now, let’s just try to find a window or something. I recall there should be one in the kitchen.” Henry replied as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself down.

 

“Alright, I’ll head over there to check.” Abel nodded as he reached towards the door on the right of the foyer.

 

However, when Abel opened the door, there was no kitchen. The room looked more like a game room of sorts. It had various hunting trophies as well as a large table with cards and chips strewn about.

 

“What the fuck!” Abel cried out in astonishment as he backed out of the room.

 

“What?” Henry walked up to Abel and saw the room as well. “What the fuck! How did this happen?”

 

Abel rushed towards another door in the unfamiliar room while Henry exited to the foyer and called out to Janet and Madeline. “Ladies, something’s wrong with this house. Either we’re all in a mass hallucination or we’re somehow in another person’s house.”

 

“What do we do?” Madeline asked as she nervously fidgeted about.

 

“Let’s try to call out to the owner of this house. Maybe we can find them and hopefully they’re reasonably enough that they won’t be spooked by us.” Henry replied as he headed towards the door on the other side. “Hello? Is anyone there? I apologize firstly, but we might have accidentally sleepwalked into your house. Can anyone hear me?”

 

Henry opened the door and revealed the kitchen. “Yep, this is the kitchen and it’s definitely not our kitchen. Janet, let’s quickly search for the owner of the house and get out of here.”

 

The man turned around and reached for the doorway when the door suddenly started fogging up with purple haze. “What the fuck is this?”

 

Henry tentatively reached for the fog and after confirming its harmlessness, he barged through the door and found himself…eye to eye with Abel in the game room! Abel nearly jumped out of his own skin when he saw Henry emerging from the door on his right. He was just about to open it too.

 

“H-How is this possible?” Henry cried out as he stared at Abel and the game room with a stupefied expression.

 

“Are w-we dreaming?” Abel stammered as he saw Henry exit to the foyer and then reappear from the door next to him.

 

“Dream….” Henry quieted down as he mused over the word. “That’s right. This must be it!”

 

“What is?” Abel asked.

 

“We’re all inside the same dream!” Henry responded with bright eyes.

 

“Dream...you’re right! We must be in a dream.” Abel nodded slowly. “The Henry I know definitely won’t say something as absurd as that.”

 

“No, but think about it. This could be the only explanation to what we’re experiencing so far.” Henry pointed out. “Besides, during my travels, I’ve read accounts where people would sometimes share the same dream because they were either emotionally connected or they had a lasting impression on one another.”

 

“I…So, we are in a dream?” Abel repeated, his mind still trying to clear away the confusion.

 

“Yes.” Henry finalized. “We are in a dream.”

 

“Abel?” Madeline walked into the game room and gaped at Henry in surprise. “Henry! H-How? What? Weren’t you in the other room?”

 

“I don’t know how I ended up here.” Henry shook his head with a wry smile. “But I think we are in a dream. That’s the only possibility I could think of. Either that, or we’re all hallucinating and I can tell you right off the bat, I don’t smoke drugs and my kids definitely do not either.”

 

“Oh…then what should we do now?” Madeline asked. “Are we still looking for that window?”

 

“For now, we should look for an exit. Once we find one, we’ll probably be able to leave this dream. So yea, let’s look for that window.” Henry nodded as he walked back into the foyer and signaled his family to help out.

 

Henry rushed back to the door across from the game room and entered with caution. Meanwhile, Madeline entered the kitchen and checked the other doorway only to find that it led back to the front entranceway. Doubling back, she followed after her husband into the last door in the game room. Janet carried her baby through the door on the left of the front entrance with John and Paul following close behind.

 

Henry entered through his door and found himself outside beside what seemed to be a graveyard. “I made it! I’m out! Janet! Abel! Madeline! This is the way out! This – !”

 

@#$%&

 

What was that? Henry listened closely as he thought he heard something. It was a whisper. At first, he was about to dismiss it as the wind, but you seemed to be growing increasingly louder.

 

@#$%&

 

A#$%&

 

AH$%H

 

AHHHH

 

AAHHHH!!!

 

A soul-rending shriek pierced through the night, causing Henry to cover his ears tightly in pain. When the screech disappeared, Henry looked around dazed as a trickle of blood escaped from his ears. What was that?

 

“Illogical!” Henry shook his head in disbelief. “This can’t be! What was that scream? It can’t be the wind, can it? No, it sounded so…human!”

 

Henry felt that he could very well lose a number of brain cells trying to come up with an explanation for the screech. Luckily, he didn’t lose his insanity as he’s determination for all this to be a dream kicked in.

 

Henry looked around him for an escape route, but other than the endless rows of graves, there was nothing. Begrudged, he could only turn back and look elsewhere.

 

Abel entered through a door into what looked to be a poorly-maintained abandoned room with Madeline following close behind. Seeing nothing like an exit except a door on the right, the couple headed over.

 

However, just a few steps shy from the door, both felt an incredibly uncomfortable sensation as if something…or rather, a group of things were crawling above them. The two slowly tilted up their heads and peered at the dark ceiling.

 

Something dropped and landed on Abel’s face with a tiny thud. Abel reached out and touched his face, feeling the thing squirm in his hand. He pinched the thing and brought it up for him to see. It was a black insect, kind of like a black mealworm.

 

Abel threw the bug onto the ground with a start and looked up just in time to see hundreds…no, thousands of black bugs dropping onto him and his wife, getting on their skins, in their hair, and under their clothes.

 

The Harris couple yelped in fright as they struggled to brush the bugs off of them. But, with a blink of the eye, they were gone. Was this also a dream? It felt so realistic! Abel was scared out of his wits as his eyes bulged with the adrenaline rush. As for Madeline, she had dealt with bugs constantly while working in the garden so she was less affected. Just a simple fright and nothing more.

 

The two glanced at each other as if trying to reassure themselves before steeling their resolves and venturing through the next doorway.

 

Janet and the kids found themselves in an empty room with a cracked stone floor. Suddenly, billowing black smoke gushed out from the cracks, sending the mother and kids into a series of coughs and gasps. Janet did her best to cover Mary with her shawl so that the smoke did not affect her.

 

Seeing no end to the smoke, Janet called out to her kids between coughs. “*cough* John, *cough* *cough* Paul, *cough* let’s get *cough* *cough* *cough* out of here *cough* *cough*!”

 

Janet and the kids hurried through a door, away from the smoke. As they shut the door, they found themselves separated. Janet and Mary had entered one doorway while John and Paul had entered another doorway. Janet wanted to turn back to look for her two boys, but the thick smoke made it hard to see or cross. And it seemed that Mary won’t be able to take another round of the smoke.

 

The mother could only venture forward while praying for her sons’ safety. Janet gently rocked Mary as she tried to calm the baby down. The mother looked at her surroundings, trying to make out anything useful from the dimly lit hallway.

 

Other than the door she just came through, there were three other doors – one on the left, one on the right, and one in front. Since John and Paul must have went through the other door, Janet decided to take the door on the left in hopes of entering a room connected to the kids’ room.

 

Meanwhile, John and Paul found themselves in a small indoors garden decked out with a stone pathway, some flower bushes, a wooden table, and a pair of chairs. The garden was dimly lit by the moonlight that shone through the windows.

 

John peered through a window, but he couldn’t see much due to the purplish fog. “Can’t see anything. Paul, hand me a rock. I’m gonna try to smash this window.”

 

Paul crouched down and chose a sizable rock from the stony pathway and handed it to John. The older brother hefted the stone in his hand and tried to gauge its weight. Finding it just the right amount, John smashed the rock onto the window.

 

BOING!

 

The rock bounced back and flew out of John’s hand. The two boys looked at the window in surprise. There wasn’t even a scratch on the window. Suddenly, they heard what sounded like a baby’s cry followed by a scream coming from the door at the end of the room.

 

“Mother!” The two boys glanced at each other in shock and worry as turned tail and barged through the door just to see…nothing.

 

Well, not nothing. Opening the door revealed not their mother or their baby sister, but rather a rambled corridor filled with broken statues. The statues looked so lifelike that the kids wondered whether they were real or not.

 

Paul walked ahead and picked up a statue. It was of a child – a wingless cupid – and it was the only whole figurine. As he examined the sculpture with interest, he heard some footsteps behind him. At first, Paul disregarded the footsteps as he believed that it was from John. However, when the footsteps became more frantic followed by an angry shout, Paul couldn’t help but turn around to look.

 

“Wha – ?” Paul exclaimed before pain surged through his head and his eyes glazed over.

 

With a thud, he collapsed onto the ground, the statue rolling out of his hands. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the heavy pants of his unknown assailant.