PART ONE...

The Boy had lived in the orphanage for most of his life, about his parents he knew nothing. Parents. They didn't deserve such a formal title. He'd been abandoned as a baby, left in the care of strangers. The people who gave him birth didn't matter, they were ghosts to him. A new set of people wanted to take him home and call themselves his parents. He figured he'd put up with their attention as long as necessary.

PART TWO...

The Man dreamed again last night. He found himself standing in front of the house staring up at the second floor. He was engulfed in light, but rather than being blinded by it, his vision was clear and everything stood out in crystal clarity. And the quiet...an ominous, unnatural kind of quiet. There should have been birds singing, cicadas shrilling, something, but there was nothing.
The trees were motionless in a deep blue void. He could feel the wooden porch steps warp under his feet, felt the screen door shake clumsily on its rusty hinges as he swung it open and entered the house.
There was nothing remarkable about the interior, except, what would seem ordinary under other circumstances took on an apprehensive aspect, as if everything was in a state of readiness, only needing someone...himself?...to complete the scene. The small, lace doily-covered table resting somewhat precariously on three curved legs beside the old bent-wood rocker, the pile of magazines on the floor, a radio on the cabinet in the corner, all ordinary, normal in any other context, but here in his dream world all carried an oppressive sense of foreboding.

Automatically, and unbidden, he found himself at the foot of the second floor staircase. Here's where the dream varied. Sometimes he'd painstakingly climb, every step a seeming eternity, othertimes, he'd suddenly find himself at the end of the hallway, facing a door. He'd grip the knob, but before he could twist it, he'd awake.

PART THREE...

7:30 AM, another work day. "At least it's Friday," Jason Chaney said to himself. As soon as work is done at the produce warehouse he'll leave town for a few days. The need to get out of the city burns like a hunger, he doesn't quite know why, but the need is always there. It's as if he expects there to be something out there waiting for him. Most likely he'll check out the junk shops and flea markets that seem to spring up overnight, like weeds, in the small towns along the interstate that progress has passed by. Growing up an orphan forces you to create your own history out of whatever you can find: old toys, advertising posters, books and magazines; junk collecting allows him to be a part of somebody's past, even if it's not really his.

"Linder's Fine Used Goods" the sign read. One of those old country stores where the wooden floors creak and so does the proprietor, an old man of nearly 80 by his appearance.

"Afternoon," he said, sizing up the prospective customer. 40-some odd years in the retail business had given him a knack for knowing which were buyers and which were just "lookers." This one he pegged as a looker.

"Lookin' for anything in particular?"

"Hello, no," Jason began, "I'm...," his voice trailed off as he spotted the painting behind the old man's head. It was the house, HIS house. The same one he'd dreamed a thousand times.

"Heh, well, suit yourself," said the old man, warily eyeing Jason as he stood spellbound. He was about to ask what was wrong when, finally, finding his voice, Jason asked,

"That painting, is it for sale?"

"That old thing? I suppose if you want...," but before the old man could finish Jason had blurted out:

"I'll give you fifty bucks for it!"

Knowing a live one when he saw one, and forgetting his late distrust of the stranger in his store, the old man promptly replied, "Sold!" and Jason was the new, somewhat confused, owner of an old, most likely worthless, piece of art. All he could glean from the proprietor about the painting's origin is that it had hung there as long as he could remember, it was unsigned, and the artist was unknown.

On the drive home Jason couldn't stop glancing at the painting. The sight of it transported him right back into his nightmare. No...nightmares, at least ten years worth, each one as maddeningly incomplete and cryptic as the previous ones. A sudden light-headedness forced him to pull over. Sitting there behind the wheel as cars breezed by on the heat buckled asphalt of the county road he wiped his face with a sweaty hand, persperation rolled down his neck in rivulets to wet his shirt collar. The more he stared at the painting, the more disoriented he became. Its haunting image burrowed into Jason's mind, multiplying into rapid-fire images that fluttered at the edges of his conciousness, never coalescing or stopping long enough to become fixed. A blast from a passing 18-wheeler's horn shocked him back to cold reality.

PART FOUR...

The boy had heard every word of the arguement downstairs. They were plotting to get rid of him, this he couldn't allow. He wasn't going back to the orphan's home. He didn't always know why he did the things he did, only that sometimes he had urges he couldn't control. The petty theft they passed off as youthful mischief, but this latest transgression of their rules was more than his adoptive parents could bear.

"Why didn't the orphanage warn us?" his new mother had said.

"We never would have adopted him if they had, that's why!" his new father spat back.

No way was he going back there, he had to do something.

PART FIVE...

Arriving home Jason encountered the landlady on the stairs.

"Back so soon, Mr. Chaney?" she inquired in a tone of concerned curiosity.

"Yes, Mrs. O'Conner, I'm not feeling so good" he half-lied. She was a nice old lady, not nosy like some, and he didn't want to upset her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, if there's anything I can do, just give me a ring."

"Thanks, thanks a lot, I'll do that."

She didn't question him about the painting, she'd seen him haul so much old junk up the stairs to his room one more piece didn't excite even a mild curiosity.
Once safely inside he began to look for a suitable place to hang the mysterious object. The front room, opposite his reading chair, seemed perfect. He tossed the vintage poster hanging there into a crowded corner and at down to study the painted image of his strange, nocturnal obsession.

PART SIX...

Inside a filigreed frame, grimy with decades of greasy dust, was a slightly amateurish depiction of a dilapidated, Victorian-era, two story farm house. A big oak stood in front, a cultivated field was showing in back, it was a typical farm scene of the era...except for the absence of people...just like Jason's dream.
He spent the rest of the day alternatively standing and siting in front of the painting. Unable to fix his mind on anything else, it consumed his whole being. Nothing else mattered. Finally, more out of frustration than fatigue, he went to bed, but only to await what he knew must inevitably come, what had come nearly every night for the past month. He didn't have long to wait.

The dream returned. Once again up the sagging porch steps, through the crooked screen door and up the stairs, drawn as always to the now familiar, but still mysterious, door. He stood for a long moment of dream-time just staring at it, memorizing every crack in its white-painted facade, consumed by a desire to see what was on the other side, but also knowing that by turning the knob he would remove himself from his dream-world and wake up.

PART SEVEN...

The boy waited until they'd both gone to bed. He slipped the small hatchet--normally used to decapitate chickens--from under his pillow,and carefully, so as not to squeak the hinges, opened his bedroom door. Creeping stealthily down the darkened hallway he reached the door to his parents room. He quietly exhaled and gripped the knob. The fear and anger he's felt earlier was muted, replaced by a calm resolve that surprised even him. They never even woke up, the first blows were fatal.

The boy carefully washed the hatchet in the kitchen sink, returned it to the tool shed beside the house, then went back inside to fill a pillowcase with food. He'd already pushed the events of the night deep into his subconscious. Exiting through the kitchen door to the backyard, he ran the half-mile across the fallow field to the highway without glancing back.

PART EIGHT...

The bedside alarm rang. Jason awoke in a sweat-soaked bed. He'd spent the entire night staring at that door, never even trying the knob. He felt exhausted, as if he hadn't slept at all. He spent the following day the same way he had the previous, holed up in his rooms, obsessing over the dream and the painting.

Jason barely slept for two days, only for minutes at a time, and then he always dreamed. His health was deteriorating. he resembled a man in the last stages of some wasting disease. He didn't eat, he stopped going to work. They would call, asking where he was, he told told them he was sick. The greater part of his time was spent sitting, staring at and agonizing over the painting. Why, he asked himself, should such an ordinary-seeming house dominate his sleeping, and now, waking, thoughts? Had he seen it before? Had he been there before? He didn't know.

He was growing weaker every day. Sleeping only meant dreaming. He wasn't sure what day it was. The shades he kept drawn: day was night and night was day. His brain was wracked, one thought possessed him: What is in that room?

How long he sat like that he didn't know. His vision had telescoped to the point where all he could see was the painting. His whole world was reduced to a small square of pigment-encrusted canvas. The feeling of being drawn through a black tunnel, head-first into the painting, was overwhelming. It was the last earthly sensation he would know. The room swirled and gradually shrank as the painting became an all-encompassing and nightmarish universe unto itself. He found himself standing in front of the house, fully aware, knowing that this time it wasn't a dream.

PART NINE...

The light was intense. An unnatural stillness hung heavy over the scene. Jason felt himself once again drawn to the house by an overwhelming feeling he belonged there. It was a feeling he'd never had, before he'd always felt like an intruder.
As he approached he made mental note of his surroundings. The huge old oak in front, the zig-zagging brickwork of the walk, the faded paint on the clapboard siding. Entering he once again noticed the carefully arranged furniture. He knew he would never see any of it again.
He wasted no time in reaching the second floor. Now, facing the door at the end of the hallway he once again gripped the knob. He half expected to wake up back in his bed.
This time, the door opened. Standing at the threshold he knew why he had come.

"You say he hasn't left his apartment in over a week?" queried the policeman.

"That's right," replied Mrs. O'Connor. I haven't seen hide nor hair of him in all that time, he doesn't answer the phone. It's very unusual for him to miss work like that."
"I tried my pass-key, but the door is bolted on the inside."

"With your permission Ma'am, we'll break the door down."

"Yes, of course. I'm so worried about Mr. Chaney."

The officer put his shoulder to the door and splintered the jamb with a sharp crack. The deadbolt was flung across the room by the force.
The first thing the officers saw was Jason Chaney slumped in the chair beside the only lamp in the room.
There were no obvious signs of life from the still form.
The first officer checked for a pulse and declared to his partner, "Dead. Call the Coroner's office."

PART TEN...

By the time the bodies were found in the upstairs bedroom the boy had been gone for two days, one lost soul among many in the city. He had survived and even thrived by doing odd jobs, there were many to be had for someone who was willing to work long hours for little pay. He'd easily obtained a fake ID on the street.
No one questioned him about his background, everyone there was running from something.

A cursory examination by the County Coroner would show cause of death as heart failure; a thorough examination of the apartment gave no clues about Jason Chaney's background.
Even if the officers had paid attention to the seemingly banal rural scene hanging on the wall, they never could have imagined the terrors which lay hidden within the layers of cracked paint, or the living hell created by a boy for the man he would become, in that faraway house on a long ago summer night.