Mystery HouseThe voices came from the back. The echoes of their whispers and slow, uneasy laughter slithered along the smooth, wood panes.
I peered down the dark hallway. I’d give anything not to be here. But dreams are such that you don’t get to choose where and when you show up.
I am here. For now, I am her, and she is me. There is no back story. Only now at this moment. I know who I am because my consciousness still exists. This isn’t the first house I’ve been in. Each held their secrets, their stories, a life that I was put in, not by choice.
The only thing I knew now was that I wasn’t leaving. Because the powers that be wanted me there, and I was to play the role that I was about to play.
I crept down the creaky floorboards. The back room expanded into a large space. They look normal enough. Those teenagers and young adults in T-shirts and casuals. Some lounging in couches and cushy seats, gathered in small groups of twos or ones, seats pushed to the sides of the room. In the center were about four to five of them, not adolescent but not quite adults, males and females. Standing like statues in a freeze game.
They didn’t know I was there. I’m by no means a ninja, and I wasn’t a small person. Yet, so engrossed were they in their discussion that none had noticed an intruder in the mist.
This was my house. 
That for sure I knew. As certain as when my dreams brought me here. Same as they always did to the other houses I’d been.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
The chatter stopped. A dozen eyes turned to me. Different colors, different shades.
The evening sun was close to Twilight. The Asian manicured garden at the back wall, the clear glass, and the expanse of beauty hinted at something more sinister.
Those people, their shadows stretched across the wood floors of this Antique house.
I hated being there. I hated it because houses like these only meant one thing.
The undead.
I wish the dead would stay dead. And fucking leave us alone. As if life wasn’t complicated enough. These existed in the Perennial till something such as faith takes them to their ends.
“Who are you?” One of the boys asked. I can’t remember the details of them. To me, they could be just body one to twelve.
“Owner of this place,” I said. Place, because this house hid its true intent. “If I were you, I’d leave,” I said, and gestured down the dark hallway. “Go.”
The twelve looked to each other. Typical young people. Can’t make a decision. Still looking for guidance.
I was annoyed. I didn’t have time to babysit. I was trying to cumulate the clues to my current existence to worry about them. One thing was for sure, they weren’t a danger.
The house was.
Dying in a dream wasn’t bad. The mental scarring and lingering horror when I wake was what I was afraid of.
I slipped through the armchairs, and they scooted aside. The freeze dancers were still standing and watching me warily as I approached them.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We’re practicing,” said one.
The room suddenly turned dark. The sun ran away. These people should, too, if they knew what was good for them. There were many reasons why terrible things happened in the night.
“Dancing?” I asked. “No.” I gave them an eyeful.
They shook a little, caught in a lie that they’d not spoken.
“Ma’am, can you leave?” A girl from a couch behind me spoke. I glanced at her and looked up to the sounds of the patter of feet.
Here we go.
The little one appeared from the same corridor where I came from.
“Mommy!” The young one in a red dress laughed and launched for me.
I caught her in my arms. Barely the height of my waist. Asian like I was. Her eyes were big, round, and filled with mischief.
Do I know her? No. But my heart did.
In this scene, she was mine like the house was.
“Mommy…” her cute voice trailed as she peered at the dozen people staring at us. “Who are they?”
“They’re visiting,” I told my daughter. I could feel it. Her vibration, the danger of who she is, from her warm, soft, plump body, her arms around my neck.
She pulled off from me and toddled to them, black eyes shining bright.
No one is leaving now.
My girl lit her fire from her palm. The dozen wooed and ahhed. No words needed explaining. They were like her. Ostracized for being different. I wished I could remember the rest of what was said and done.
Powers, telekinesis and whatever, seemed cheap tricks in the world of superheroes and imagination. In this house, it wasn’t unexpected that things not normally possible would be possible.
We talked and discussed in somber tones.
“You must leave,” I said. “You can’t hide here.”
More of them arrived. Young adults in NASA emblems and others after work in their shirts, pants, and skirts. This house was their safe space, and I was asked to show my abilities.
“I’m here to watch. Just passing by.” My daughter was on my lap as I smoothed her hair. In the garden, the shadows moved. The ground was rumbling. Our motions and talking were stirring them up.
Along the hallway, others were coming. Those whom I hated.
“Please leave. The momoks are here,” I said.
“Who?” They asked.
“I don’t know if I can hold them back,” My powers weakened by my lack of faith. It didn’t matter much to me as the years progressed. Before, I believed I needed to be more powerful to survive the night. Prayers, some faith in the gods, trying to be good, hugging my stuffy, and beliefs in the powers of be.
These days, decades gone by, yes, I was defeated. I died and died and yet woke the next day. And the haunting continued into the daylight, echoing in my mind and the terrors hooked in my thoughts, but I let them be because I began to believe this is who I was.
Why fight the inevitable? Dreams came because they wanted to.
Changing them won’t take them away. Forgetting did.
“But these ghouls are nothing compared to the others,” I told them. These dozen or more characters in this mystery house, I realized, weren’t real. The more the scenes unfolded, the more my need to save them faded; my resistance mattered less.
They won’t care for me if I die, so why should I care for them?
None of these is real. Even when each breath I took was as real as I was stuck in this dusty, eerie house.
“Who?” One person asked.
“The gods.” I pointed to the garden with the low rising moon cresting the trees. A golden smiley with a ring of thin, shining light outlining its circular crown.
“Moon god. He’s hard to deal with,” I told them. “You play with your little powers and juggle those fun tricks,” I smirked at their annoyed looks.
“You think you’re special, all that’s great.” I shook my head and gestured out the window to the darkness. “Him, he’s vengeful.”
I rushed to the hallway and shut the sliding door, just as the ghouls smashed against the wood. Thundering, lashing out at the thick door. My body bashed through their onslaught, heart hammered in weakness, as we heard the ghosts screaming and growling in frustration.
The door would only hold them back briefly. In my heart, I’m praying.
Get me out of here. I’m done.
House, I’m done for tonight.
The moon god was peering at me from the garden. I felt his spiteful mirth. He was waiting for me. Blood would be shed tonight if I stayed any longer.
I hugged my fake daughter to my chest. Her warmth and my unexplainable love for her kept me worried.
“Tell my story or else,” he said in his low, sultry voice. A chilling thrill ran through my body. I don’t want to love him. The man that he was, the god he chose to be.
Please get me out of this house. I wanna go home.
The sun heats my face. The birds are chirping. I am safe.
For now.