Ghostly Time Slip

Dreamed again of the house on the hill. It is being rebuilt and the grand staircase was framed up over the stone foyer (that main part of the house that seems to be able to change into any sort of space as needed.) Some of the ghosts were also back.

One very sad little ghost  hovered around the common landing above the stone foyer. I managed to speak to the boy. It seems he was tortured to death by a military officer well over a century ago. It made me very angry, so much so that I was able to bend time and warp myself back to when the house on the hill was a hotel.

The stairs were carpeted with red and black patterned carpet, the stone foyer was open all the way up to the glass cupula above the head of the double staircase. There were hallways off the common landing with suites to either side. There was the sounds of cannon outside, and the chandelier which hung from the center of the glass cupula tinkled as it rocked to the booms from the cannon.  The railing on the landing was riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes. The place reeked of gunpowder smoke, lemon oil and damp wool. The glass in the windows facing down the hill into the town was somehow still mostly intact. The glass over the view to the front of the hotel was riddled with holes and gaps, long shards hung pointed dangerously at the entry way far below. (The landing was three stories up.)

The boy was playing on the landing, using a small brass scope to try to see out the great front window to where soldiers lay on their back clutching their rifles to their chests hidden behind a makeshift sandbag wall.

An officer, from a nearby suite, still putting himself together, spotted the boy and shouted at him. “Spy!”

The boy stood up, shocked, “No, sir!”

“Come here, I’ll teach you!” The officer reached the boy in two swift steps and had him by the front of his shirt.

As the officer’s hand raised a thick baton to strike I stepped in and pushed them apart.

“Who the devil are you!” The truncheon swung down and glanced off my shoulder, instantly numbing my arm along the outside down to my ring finger and pinky.

The boy shouted for his mother, tottered across the landing, and striking the far railing, broke through it. I knew in that instant that he’d fall to his death amongst the shattered marble and wood furnishings below. The officer hadn’t seen that, but laughed.

“Your mommy can’t help you, now,” he laughed and I noticed that his face was bloody around where he licked his lips and there were scratches along his face. “Still standing? What are you looking at?” He raised the truncheon again.

I dropped my right leg back, bracing it, and with both hands thrust him through the remaining glass window out towards the gray gravel drive of the hotel. The remaining glass of the front window shattered. I leaped after him, aiming to land on his chest, but I warped back to the present before I even cleared the shower of glass.

The little ghost was there, with the ghost of his mother. They thanked me silently and vanished, leaving me feeling guilty about pushing the kid so hard he’d fallen to his death.

Work on the stairs continued around me as though nothing had happened.

I now know the identity (of sorts) of the mysogynistic ghost that used to haunt the shuttered hall of my old house, but now that presense was gone. By saving the boy from torture, I’d apparently prevented the death of the officer.

I hung on to the shattered tatters of the dream, hoping to go back and save the boy, and perhaps his mother, after all, hadn’t I warped back once? But it didn’t happen and I finally had to respond to the light in the window. This dream has stuck with me for four days now. I seem unable to remember any others, though I know I’ve had them. Hopefully writing it down here will get it out of my head.