House of Dred

Tears would burst from his eyes in the pseudo-corporeality of his dream-state and cross over into the world of tangibility, where he would startle awake with salty rivers streaming down his face and a pillow wet with the product of dismay. Hitching sobs would rack his body, and the faces of wicked clowns would float aimlessly about upon his mind’s pallet, permanently burned upon his conscious and seeded deeply in his subliminal self. Presently, when the green fog—or what his young mind assumed to be smoke—cleared, he found himself in the anteroom of the house between the two staircases. He could have easily just walked back out into the parlor area had it not been for the wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, jail-cell bars blocking his way. They weren’t ordinary bars either: Each one being diamond-shaped and the skinny edge being one long, continuous blade . . . razor sharp and gleaming bright with potential adversity. All two hundred or so bars dripped incessantly with bright-red blood, making big, ever-expanding puddles as it pooled and coagulated on the floor. Little Billy was more scared than he had ever been, but little did he know that the bad stuff was only beginning to begin. Without the coping abilities to deal with such a traumatic experience—given that even some adults wouldn’t be able to hold their own—he slunk down to the floor, teeth chattering, tears falling, and with both arms huddling his knees close to his chest while rocking ceaselessly back and forth . . . a cloud of dread and despair washing over his face. His parents were gone. His brothers and sisters were gone. And he was utterly alone, trapped behind bloody bars of razor-sharp steel. That was when the grandfather clock (The Clock of Death) began to chime. It was loud and ascetic—a sonance to call the masses. Once . . . twice . . . thrice. Six times all told . . . this in accordance to the number of the beast—for in the walls, blood was beginning to flow like the poetry of the dead. And The Clock of Death turned a brilliant shade of bright, crimson red. It glowed as luminous as a midnight sun shining through the gaseous clouds of a nuclear storm on a faraway vaporous planet. From the corner of his eye, Billy caught movement and looked in its direction. There in the painting beside the crimson death clock were masses of people walking through the streets of an old cowboy-like town—each with his or her own agenda—probably nothing more than going to the blacksmith to have their horses shoed or heading to the barbershop for a morning shave before Sunday meeting. But he couldn’t have been more wrong. His full and undivided attention was drawn to the canvas as each and every person stopped in their tracks and began playing old-time games that boys used to love: Marbles, G.I. Joes, Hot Wheels Races, Kickball, Kick-The-Can, Hide-And-Seek, Baseball, and Football . . . among others. Billy stood up—thoroughly entranced—and approached the painting. To any adult, it would have been an utterly out-of-place and disconnected scene. Men with their cowboy hats and spurred boots, and the women with their bonnets and parasols playing childhood games would have appeared simply contemptible. But the big, red, playground ball—just like the one he and his sister were playing with only days prior—arcing in slow motion across the window-scape on the wall and the other colorful toys being thoroughly enjoyed by all held him in fascination. His frame of reference was from above the street at about a forty-five degree angle, only yards away, and he could hear the ball’s distinctive pinging sound with each impact as it bounced on the hardpan ground. He could hear the calls to the quarterback from open receivers in the football game. He could hear an umpire calling out balls and strikes. He could hear the can clanging across the road. But he was fully unaware that none of the fun he was witnessing was accompanied by laughter. He was a boy beguiled. Then there was movement again, atypical to what he was already witnessing. It was synchronous and deliberate. His stomach churned with wooziness as he moved in closer. The strange people all turned to look at him at once. They were the faces of evil: Eyes with irises of red and cat-like pupils. Ears long and pointed. Skin grey and pale, like that of decomposing bodies. But what was most frightening was that where their mouths were supposed to be was nothing. Skin covered the faces from the septum of the nose to the bottom of the chin. He wanted to pull away and turn his head but could not. He wanted to scream but could not . . . it was as if he had no mouth either. Then a thought occurred to him that no seven-year-old boy should ever have to experience: If I got stuck in a dream, would that become my 'real'? And would I stay in it forever? In unison the people in the painting all pointed toward the end of the street far off in the distance, and his viewpoint once again changed and followed their direction. Vivid colors of red, yellow, blue, green, purple, and orange filled his view—overly colorful, as if the artist had used color as the opposing element in the painting to give it a luminescence of it own—as he approached what appeared to be a carnival or a circus or even a combination of both. One of those enormous, red and yellow circus tents was just ahead of him with three flags of blue atop, blowing in a breeze that he thought he could actually feel. He could hear barkers calling out for their fodder. His perspective was such now that he felt as if he were flying. The bloody bars and the smoke that had stolen his family—and only a few feet behind him—were forgotten now. All that mattered was the carnival. The painting gave him the sensation of gaining altitude up and over the big tent and then swooping down and to the right to glide along the fairway, past the ring-toss and the milk bottle ball-throw and the squirt-gun horse races and the dime-toss and the fishing pond and the dunk tank and the food vendors. The almost heavenly smell of popcorn, corn dogs, Indian fry bread, churros, and cotton candy filled the air. And then he stopped. He was directly in front of the Haunted Crypt dark ride, standing about fifty feet away. All sound ceased. His eyes were locked on the entrance where six cars waited to be boarded. From the doors that the cars would go through once loaded, stepped a clown. What could be heard now was the clanking sound of its striped and oversized clown shoes as it stepped across the corrugated metal platform and down the stairs to the midway. With purpose, it walked, and without deviation, it approached. Billy wanted to run, to at least step away from the painting, but couldn’t, for at that moment the floorboards at his feet turned to liquid, and fluidic, wooden hands reached out from the mixture, grabbing his ankles. Arms bearing the same wallpaper design as the wall they had appeared from seized him as well, wrapping themselves around him and holding him steadfast. He cried out as the clown approached the painting. It was tall . . . maybe seven feet or more. Its eyes were large and completely black—no sclera at all. The white paint on its face was smudged and caked up in the wrinkles of its dry, lifeless skin. Its smile was racked with sharp, yellowed-teeth, dripping thick, sticky drool from its rufescent lips. Its slimy, forked tongue—as black as its eyes—would snake out of its mouth as if testing the air for food. It continued to come closer, and Billy began to scream.