Mansionarium

Fall Into the World of Dreams

¹
I go someplace when I sleep. It was the better part of a year before I could be sure of it. Otherwise referring to it as an actual place would be a touch too dramatic for what, at the time, seemed to be simple recurring dreams.

They began when I was fifteen. Most likely as a mental refuge from what happened, according to my therapist. But then, her job is to concoct believable sounding explanations for things. There’s no real rigor involved.

I found myself naked the first time. Greeted as I awoke by the cold, solid concrete beneath me. An industrial facility of some sort, although it was never clear what it was for. Roughly U shaped, with a series of tall windows inset in the outer wall, dull yellow light pouring in through them onto the dusty grey floor.

Whoever designed this place really loves concrete. It’s something that turns up in a lot of their work. I think it’s the blunt, homogenous banality of it. My therapist said it’s the physical version of depression. That the more I described the place to her, the more certain she was that it was all some elaborate cry for help. Worse, there was a brief spell where I believed her.

But, a cry for help does not have relentlessly self-consistent physical laws. Nor the same dimensions every time you visit. I’ve always been helplessly methodical, and so on the third or fourth time through the same dream, I began to map my environment. For lack of any measuring implement, I used footsteps.

There is nothing to write with in the dream, and any writing I do encounter is this garbled, ever-shifting mess of unfamiliar symbols. Signs, books, placards. Anywhere I expected to find letters. Not being able to read anything is apparently a common element of many people’s dreams. That there are common elements to everybody’s dreams somehow doesn’t trouble anyone.

On either end of the U-shaped room, I found doors to a grand hall filled with row after row of useless machinery. Designed in a way that obviously won’t work. Gears turning against each other, Pistons pushing against other pistons, electrical wiring set up deliberately to short circuit. I thought I might learn something if I were to fix all of it, so I set out in search of tools.

I found them lodged among stacked rows of rusty steel pipe. That’s the other thing that’s everywhere in the dream, pipes. Snaking up and down walls, overhead, underfoot. Often where it makes no sense, like a loop of pipe doubling back on itself. Nothing living, either. Never once saw so much as a weed.

The tools, if I can call them that, proved worse than useless. Whoever designed them either doesn’t know what they were meant to be used for, or thinks he’s funny. A hacksaw with black, glossy film for the blade. A screwdriver with another handle where the tip should be, that sort of thing.

Every night, after roughly the same duration, I would wake up. Then, while everything was still fresh in my memory, I’d add to the maps. Reams and reams of them, organized into binders stacked next to my bed. Worried my mother terribly and she never missed a chance to say it. As though her steady retreat into the bottle was any better.

I couldn’t see what else to do with it. No choice but to go there every night, may as well try to learn something. It went from a novelty at first, to disturbing, but then settled into a sort of bland familiarity. Every day, in the back of my mind, I knew exactly where I would be that night. Often making plans for some new experiment.

Could I permanently change anything? Yes, it turned out. Objects would remain where I left them from one dream to the next. Could I break any of the windows? No, nor could I see anything through them except for the dull yellow glow. Could I hurt myself? When I tried, the pain seemed real enough that I thought better of pushing it. Could I bring anything through with me? Only whatever I was wearing when I fell asleep.

In this way I began to amass a body of data about the place. And by then I was fully content to say that it was a real place rather than just a recurring dream. Being slammed in the face with it over and over, every single night, had that effect. With no other outlet, I posted to the internet about the whole ordeal. I thought maybe I’d find somebody who’d experienced something similar.

Instead, I found a post describing the exact place, down to every little detail. They’d gone about exploring and recording it differently, but there was no mistaking it when they mentioned the tools, or the unreadability of the text. I searched for a timestamp and discovered it’d been posted just minutes before I found it.

So, I hastily hammered out an account of my own explorations of the place, and included my email so they could contact me. Not really pinning my heart on it, but excited to discover I was not alone. Only the next morning, after my usual nocturnal wanderings, I found the post had been deleted.

Subsequent posts were deleted more swiftly, and I received a warning not to continue “spamming” by private message. I plead my case with the mod but received no reply. It troubled me for weeks afterward. Thoughts of some stranger halfway across the world, suffering the same thing night after night.

The same frigid, grinding, contiguous smear. The concrete. The rust. That place everybody has visited during their long, dark nights of the soul but forgets about when their fortunes improve. They move on with their lives, but it’s still there. Waiting.

The stack of binders grew and grew. More than once Mom threw it all out. I didn’t even make a fuss, just went back to work recreating all of it. By that point it disturbed her a lot more than it did me. I’d already succumbed. Living more in the dream than I did the waking world. You need only fear what’s in the dark until you become part of it.

A failure of imagination, I suppose. To think I’d already seen the worst things shadows can conceal. Because the dreams and resulting obsession with documenting them had begun to impact my health, my mother recommended I participate in the local university’s sleep study. She and I still meet every Sunday for dinner at a Mexican place. I order the same thing every time.

I did it for her. I know she worries, and really, she bears enough of a burden without me adding to it. So I submitted all of my details through their website, expecting to be turned down only for a confirmation email to follow later the same day. I found a number of forms attached to it that the email instructed me to sign, either digitally or by printing them out.

Really long, belaboured legalese. Could all of this really be necessary for a sleep study? I understood the necessity of covering their assess and indeed, it wasn’t hard to find recurring language in the documents absolving them of wrongdoing should I somehow expire from sleeping too hard, or whatever. I skipped to the end and signed, just to be done with it, then emailed the documents back to the sender.

They chose a Sunday to have me visit. I tried to reschedule as I never miss Sunday dinner with Mom, and we’d meant to discuss the matter of what to do with all of Dad’s old stuff that was still sitting in storage. When I called her about it she told me it could wait for a week, that finding some help for whatever was going on with me was a higher priority in her book.

So, with mixed feelings about the whole affair, I showed up before the beautiful antique of a building that the email indicated was where the sleep study would take place. I checked and re-checked the address, putting it into my GPS a second time after I’d arrived to make sure I hadn’t misspelled anything. But no, it really was the place.

I must’ve driven by it four or five times trying to pin down exactly where it was on campus, too. Whoever does the landscaping decided it’d be a good idea to surround it with maple trees which render the building all but invisible from the road. With my CRV parked across the street, I pocketed the folded up paperwork I’d printed out in case they needed a real signature after all, then headed for the porch.

“What? Oh no, none of that. My dear boy, despite all appearances, I assure you that The Institute stays abreast of every modern contrivance including digital signatures.” The funny little old fellow welcomed me into the sitting room and took my jacket. I introduced myself, and in turn he identified himself as one “Heironimus Travigan”. I tried addressing him as doctor or professor but was rebuffed each time out of what I took for modesty.

“Tell me about The Institute.” His eyes met mine, narrowed for a moment as if probing my expression for information. Then his relaxed demeanor returned. “What don’t you know that is necessary for the purposes of your visit?” For a start, I told him I’d like to know what this is the Institute of. He smiled, wrinkles bunching up at the corners of his eyes. “Naturally, it’s the Institute of institution.” When I asked of what sort, he winked and said “Institutional”.

That answered none of my questions and raised more, something I’d soon learn was an irritating habit of his. Just never enough to make you sincerely cross with the man, on account of his otherwise warm, if eccentric, personality. Just as you’re about to boil over and demand some straight answers, out come the cute anecdotes, the rhymes, or some other amusing distraction.

I expected something more technical than a bed. It looked like any other bedroom except for the archaic nature of the decor. Nearly everything intricately carved, polished wood of some kind. The sheets and pillowcase both black cotton, with a black velvet blanket. In the corner, a little digicam on a tripod with a thin retractable USB cable leading to a laptop on the dresser next to it.

I asked how they would measure my brainwaves, my vitals and so on. He mulled that over, then informed me that it wasn’t that sort of study. I could scarcely imagine what other sort of dream study exists, but he got me laughing with some hasty but serviceable wordplay, and soon enough I was tucked in.

“I’m still not clear why I’m not hooked up to anything. I get that you can’t tell me everything, it’d fuck with the results. But how are you going to get any sort of useful data without any sort of medical technology?” He reassured me it was all according to the requirements of the experiment, then handed me what looked like an old fashioned television remote. “That’s the only device you’ll need. But hang onto it. You won’t get far otherwise.”

I studied the little gizmo but found nothing remarkable. Weren’t even any batteries in it. Looked like something my Dad would’ve had in his study. Wood grain panels at top and bottom, big punchy calculator style buttons of shiny black plastic, and curiously scratched out labels under the buttons for rewind and pause.

I asked what it was for but he would only tell me to keep hold of it as I fell asleep. “Rest it on your chest if you like, but under the shirt. Skin needs to be touching.” I began wondering what sort of person I’d entrusted my unconscious body to, but then thought of Mom. So, gripping the hollow little plastic box at my side, I began counting sheep.

It’s a cliche, but really works. At least it always has until now. Somewhere around thirty five, the sheep slowed down. More and more until one hung in the air just over the fence, defying gravity. This is when I realized I’d fallen asleep. Usually it’s straight to that place, no interlude. So imagine my concern when the sheep began to move backwards.

Slowly, at first. In a stilted fashion, like watching an old timey movie while something goes increasingly wrong with the projector. Then faster and faster, sheep whipping by, jumping backwards over the fence. Faster and faster, until it was one long continuous blur. I felt myself sweating, somewhat surprised to be doing that in a dream. Then I felt the remote in my hands.

Pause. The sheep, a blindingly rapid streak until now, suddenly halted. Again, one of the sheep hung in place over the fence. I looked down at the remote, exactly as I remembered it, and hit play. The sheep resumed their normal motion, and moments later the vision faded to black. It’d been such a novelty to experience anything else in a dream that I felt sort of let down when, upon opening my eyes again, I found myself there.

Same cold, concrete floor. Same windows, same bizarre doors with no knobs. All the frames slightly different sizes, as though the architect had only a rough idea of how big people generally are. But, there was one difference. Something unprecedented in all of my history with this place. When I looked down, I was still holding that odd little remote.

How could that be? I’d tried numerous times before to bring various objects with me. I think clothing worked because it’s part of my self-perception. And, apparently, because it directly touches my skin while I fall asleep. But nothing I’d ever tried would make any other object from the waking world appear in the dream, or vice versa. Until now.

A blast of static issued forth from a small speaker embedded in the device, behind a grid of little holes in the bottom wood panel. I dropped it while reflexively covering my ears. When I uncovered them, I heard what I soon realized was the professor’s voice scolding me through the speaker.

“I told you never to let go of it, you twit! What’s the first thing you do but drop it! Pick it up at once, before one of them gets ahold of it, and don’t you dare set it down anywhere after this!” I bashfully picked up the remote and inspected it for damage.

“That’s some of the most sophisticated technology at our disposal, right there in your hot little hands. But you must’ve realized that already when it came into the dream with you. That’s no small feat! Though it is not alive, it shares a crucial quality with your body which allows both of them to travel between the Manifold and the waking world intact.”

It just kept coming. Seemed like a better idea to just let him talk than to inject questions here and there, as it usually turned out he was about to explain whatever I was going to ask about anyway. But only in the same sense that he ever explains anything. “Oh dear. It’s as I suspected. You’ve really stepped in it, you know.”

I asked what he meant. “You’re in that place. I don’t have to tell you or anybody else which one. Everybody knows it, if not as a dream then as a certain feeling. The feeling of writhing internally even as you are outwardly placid. Of wandering alone on a dark Winter’s night. Fingernails dragged across a blackboard, forever.”

I asked what other place I was supposed to be in. He sounded exasperated, as if I should already know all of this. “You must’ve had normal dreams before this one. Those are your own mind. Your own little offshoot of the Manifold, as it should be. Most never get further than that, and I tell you in truth, they’re better off for it. But the place you find yourself in now is something like an antlion’s pit for wayward dreamers. You’ve been trapped there for some time, haven’t you.”

I affirmed it. When I told him it’d been several years rather than months or weeks, he sounded stunned. I shook the remote a few times wondering if the speaker crapped out, but he’d only fallen temporarily silent.

“I don’t understand. It never lasts for this long. By this point they’ve always reached the bottom.” I astonished him a second time when I explained that I’d never gotten further than the the bottom of the stairwell, as it’d been the work of all those years just to completely document everything until that point.

He laughed uproariously, leaving me to wonder what the joke was. “My boy, that’s just fantastic. I knew I did well picking you out of the pile. See to it that you don’t explore any more of the place than you have already. If you don’t already know why, turn the remote over.” I did as instructed. I hadn’t thought to check the back until now and discovered an index card sized mirror on it.

“Mirrors are another thing you’ll never find in that place. Not one that’s clean enough to see yourself in, anyway. For one thing, you’ll understand a good deal more than He intends if you do that. For another, mirrors can be used as an alternate means of escape into the Manifold. It’s not intended that anybody who finds this place should ever leave. The longer they stay, the more of the wither they accumulate.” More nonsense. As if sensing my skepticism, he admonished me to study my own reflection, so I did.

I gasped. It was everywhere. Why had I not recognized it until now? The texture of grime, of dust, of crumbly cracks on every surface. Which I’d assumed was actual wear and tear, but which I now recognized for something like a rash, or a fungus as I could now see it coating my neck, arms and part of my face. Overlaid on the skin like a decal, shifting about as I moved as if not completely bonded to me.