DWC Short Story: The House That Dreams

Every night was a gamble for Amy and Jack. They had lost their apartment in the dead of winter, and now their car was the only thing separating them from the bitter cold. They parked on a quiet, forgotten street near an old, abandoned building—a looming, decayed structure with shattered windows like vacant eyes. By day, it was just a relic of a bygone era, a husk of forgotten grandeur. But by night, it became something else.

Each time they closed their eyes, they awoke inside its walls.

At first, they tried to rationalize it. Sleepwalking. Shared delusions. But the deeper they ventured into the building’s history, the more it became clear—they were not guests. They were prisoners.

The first night, they found themselves standing in an opulent ballroom, its walls lined with cracked gold trim and rotting velvet drapes. A grand chandelier, once a beacon of wealth, now hung overhead like a skeletal reminder of the past. The air shimmered with ghostly figures, draped in elegant attire, waltzing to music that played from nowhere.

Amy and Jack stood in the centre, dressed for the occasion—Amy in a crimson gown, Jack in a stiff, antiquated suit. Their limbs moved of their own accord, drawn into a dance that felt both foreign and eerily familiar. The figures around them whispered in hushed voices, their laughter light and hollow, like wind through dry leaves.

Then, Amy noticed something—among the dancing figures, some faces were blank. Just smooth, empty flesh where eyes, noses, and mouths should have been.

The music swelled. The faceless figures turned toward them.

Amy screamed.

Darkness swallowed them whole.

The second night, they awoke in a Victorian parlour, where dust hung in the air like suspended breath. Candles flickered weakly, casting long, spindly shadows across the room. Amy sat at a grand piano, her fingers resting on ivory keys yellowed with age. Jack stood before a wall of portraits—dozens of them, each one depicting figures with hollow, sunken eyes.

As Amy played an unfamiliar tune, something changed in the room. The air thickened. The portraits, once lifeless, began to move.

At first, just a flicker. A shift. A breath. Then, slowly, the eyes in the paintings swivelled toward them.

Jack staggered back as the figures in the portraits leaned forward, their skeletal fingers pressing against the painted canvas as if testing its limits.

Then one of them smiled.

The room dissolved into blackness.

The third night, they woke in a hospital ward. The walls were yellowed with age, the stench of antiseptic and decay clogging the air. The metal bedframes were rusted, the floors streaked with old, dried blood.

Amy looked down at herself—she was in a stiff nurse’s uniform, her hands trembling as she held a metal tray. Jack lay in a patient’s gown, strapped to a hospital bed, his wrists bound in leather restraints.

A doctor stood over him, his face obscured by a surgical mask, the glint of a scalpel catching the dim light.

Jack tried to scream, but his voice was swallowed by the overwhelming silence of the ward.

Then the doctor turned to Amy, his masked face stretching unnaturally as he grinned.

The scalpel pressed against Jack’s chest.

A shriek.

Then—nothing.

On the final night, they found themselves in a room made entirely of mirrors.

Hundreds of them.

Each reflection showed a different version of themselves. Some were gaunt and sickly, their eyes sunken and mouths stretched in silent screams. Others were grinning maniacally, their teeth jagged, their fingers claw-like. But the worst ones—the worst ones—were just standing there, staring back at them with knowing, hungry eyes.

As they moved, the reflections did not follow.

Then, one by one, the mirrors began to crack.

A single voice rose above the silence, a whisper that echoed from all directions:

"You should never have stayed."

Then the mirrors shattered, and darkness swallowed them whole.

But this time, they did not wake up in their car.

The vehicle was gone.

They stood in the parking lot, barefoot on the frozen ground, their breath curling in the frigid air. The building loomed behind them, its dark windows gleaming with a terrible, malevolent light.

Amy turned to Jack, her heart pounding. “We need to leave.”

Jack didn’t answer.

He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at their reflections in the building’s glass doors.

They were still inside.

Their reflections grinned.

And then, one by one, they turned and walked away.

Amy felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Her hands trembled.

The realization clawed at her mind like a feral thing.

They had never escaped.

They never would.

The building had claimed them.

And as they turned to run, the doors behind them creaked open—welcoming them home.