A Tale of Terror for the Whole Family, or: The Ballad of the Basement Man

Ok, scamps, has Uncle Jackson got a tale for you. It is about a dream I had recently--a dream that I have related to some of my colleagues, and they have been mostly in agreement as to its Internet Web Log worthiness.

Firstly, a "Marley was dead, to begin with..." type thing: my dreams are usually embarrassingly mundane. I dream about getting up and going to work. Or I dream about doing nothing or wandering around. Rarely do I ever dream about anything remotely exciting--and even more infrequently do I ever have nightmares. Actually, I cannot remember the last nightmare I had. It might have been as far back as elementary school.

But this, my friends, was a nightmare.

It starts with me wandering alone through a very nice house--bordering on what might be called a mansion. It was daylight, and everything was quite pleasant. I began to notice strange things rather quickly, however. The first thing was that the landscape outside looked blocky and unrealistic, like Nintendo 64 era graphics. Everything had the same pattern of green grass and yellow flowers stretched over simple three-dimensional objects in order to make ground and topiaries, etc. But more alarming was this growing sense of dread. I use the term "dread" specifically, because I believe that it properly describes the feeling: not unease, not discomfort, and not fear, but anxiety--something much more subtle. A feeling of some deep but unapparent wrongness mixed with the inevitability of my confrontation with the source; that undiscovered thing. Definitely dread.

As my dread mounted, I continued my slow but unstoppable exploration of this house. Eventually, at what I thought was the center of the building, I came to what can be described as an entirely closed-in sun porch. It was a room set up and furnished just like a sun porch--vinyl furniture and everything--but no windows. This was, of course, unnerving. But, to add to my misery, there were some magazines on the glass table in the middle of the room.

From a distance, these magazines looked like regular magazines: a person on the cover, blurbs, a title, everything nice and normal. But upon further inspection I discovered that they were, in fact, all about self-mutilation.

Magazines. Magazines about self-mutilation.

This is the point where any normal person would obey their Spider-Sense and book it. But apparently in my dreams I am a stupid-white-person, and just kind of thought "Well, how about that."

Then I noticed a locked door in the enclosed sun porch. This is where dream autopilot kicks in--that thing that makes you do things in dreams that you cannot control. If, in my waking hours, a situation combined a locked door and a distinct feeling of dread I would certainly not continue. But in this dream I unlocked the door (it had a deadbolt and one of those twisty things in the knob) and opened it. I was immediately faced with another locked door, which I also opened. Beyond that door was a short hallway and another locked door.

In the short hallway I began to notice that there were things scribbled all over the walls--mostly gibberish and stick figures. One of the stick figures was prominent, with a big D-shaped smile, and the phrase "Basement Man" seemed to come up quite a bit. My anxiety had reached near pants piddling proportions in this dark hallway, but my body continued to move towards the final door, and unlock it. It opened into what appeared to be an unused part of the house. There was a hallway, and across from the doorway in which I stood was a small room with dim sunlight coming in. There was dust everywhere and it was very very quiet. Another peculiar aspect of dreams is that you can be aware of things without any real sensory input, and in this case I became aware that there was indeed something in this part of the house and that my opening these fortifications was a very bad idea. I regained control of my body and, in a panic, quickly closed and locked the three doors.

At this point, in the real world, my cell phone began to ring. I woke up and talked briefly to my girlfriend, and went back to sleep--the dream and the apprehension already fading.

Buuut I immediately found myself back in the short hallway with all those warnings scrawled around me. I lost control of myself again, and again I unlocked the last door and opened it. This time I stepped past the threshold and into the gloomy part of the house. There was a noticeable temperature difference. The carpet was thick and my shoes sunk deep and didn't make a sound. The hallway I was standing in went to my left and right, and ended in perpendicular hallways. I began to walk to the left--though every inch of me wanted very badly to leave and lock and re-lock every possible lock I could lock.

As I walked towards the end of the hallway, someone came around the corner. And here, children, was the infamous Basement Man. He was barefoot and had tattered clothing and wide eyes, but most importantly he had removed much of the lower part of his face, revealing his teeth in that strange D-shaped smile represented in the drawings in the hallway. His teeth were perfect, but I guess when one removes the lips and outer part of the mouth it makes saliva an issue, and it freely fell from his maw. In one of his hands he carried a filthy and intimidating kitchen knife. We stood there for a moment, and, in the words of Ed Tom Bell, then I woke up.

Many questions do I still have about the Basement Man. Firstly, from what horrible pit of my subconscious did he spring? Second, if the dream had continued, would he have killed me and eaten me? In that order? Or simply run past me to the unlocked doors and the freedom beyond? Or, most likely, both.

And so, friends, the lesson here is clear: doors are very dangerous things. And locked doors in succession are meant to be locked and stay locked. And to always, always heed warnings on the wall.

Oh, and one more question: Why "the Basement Man?" He didn't even live in a damn basement. I could ask him, but I think all he would say is "glargleargleargle." I demand that my dreams return to reliable nomenclature, if not mundaneness.