The House On The Hill

“I took off my Walkman headphones and looked at the house from the street. I said, “I’ve been here before.”

When I was 17, my dad dated a woman, Carmen. One night he asked me to go with them to her recently deceased mother’s house. 

About a week before I met Carmen, I had a dream. I dreamt I was with one of my friends from school and stood on the porch of a house in the middle of the night. The house was up on a hill from the street and there were concrete stairs that led up to the house. Once on the porch, we found a key at the top of a window sill and went inside. The first room was quiet. The lights did not come on. The power was off. Inside, the room had a thick carpet that absorbed all sound. It felt eerie because of that. The next room back was the kitchen. Even in the dark, It felt warm and inviting. There were a lot of really old kitchen tools and gadgets, which gave the room an oddly inviting feel to it. Down a short hallway, beyond the kitchen, a medium-sized dining room was at the back of the house. A small four-person wooden dining table stood in the middle of the room. Beyond it sat a cast iron railing that surrounded a large hole in the floor with a black iron spiral staircase going down into a room below. 

So, back to the day we went to Carmen’s mother’s house. When my dad and his girlfriend and I pulled up to the curb, I took off my Walkman headphones and looked at the house from the street. I said, “I’ve been here before.” 

My dad asked sharply, “What?” And I told him I had been here in a dream, not long ago. He and his girlfriend looked at me. Her eyes widened and she crossed her heart like a good catholic. Then we all stepped out of the old blue Dodge van.

We went up to the house where she pulled the key from her purse and opened the door. We went inside. The power was shut off, but the rooms and layout looked the same as in my dream. I felt all the hair on my arms stand up and tingle. My dad asked, “Still look like the house from your dream?” 

I nodded and said, “Yes, but the one in my dream has a spiral staircase back there in the dining room.” I pointed toward the back of the house and my dad’s girlfriend grabbed her purse and clutched it to her stomach. She ran outside and immediately fumbled for a cigarette. My dad ran after her. After they left, I went straight back to the dining room and my mouth fell open. I looked at the staircase. Indeed, it was the same cast iron stairs running down into a hole in the floor. The dark wood table stood definitely like I was supposed to check in with it before proceeding.  

My dad came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything about it. What could he say? We went out to the front of the house and Carmen opened up the garage. In the rear of the garage, there was a small door to a storage area under the house. They had brought me there to get some drums for me from the space behind the garage. His girlfriend had said I could have them a few days before and that’s why they brought me. We got the drums and left. They spoke in Spanglish on the way back. Despite being of Mexican descent, I did not speak Spanish, but I understood the word ‘Diablo,’ so I felt like she was telling my father something about me being the devil.

The drums were not what I expected. They weren’t really studio quality. But they were an unusual children’s drum set, and mostly, all that was left of the set was the main bass/kick drum. It was made of tin and the drum heads were made of a heavy plastic membrane, unlike what I was used to on my old 1930s Radio King drum kit at home. Because the drum body was made of tin, there was a haunting echo to the tone of it. Its voice was no less unnerving than the experience at the house where it came from. I loved that drum because the sound was unique. But more than that, I loved that I had been shown the future. That kind of precognitive dreaming still happens, but it’s rare, and the information is infinitely more important these days. I try to keep my mind open. I hope that one day, I can be more vigilant about remembering what I dream.