“And the dream? Has it faded?”

  I look over at my counsellor, and shrug. “It hasn’t.”

  “Ah. Then you have stopped thinking of the ‘house of mirrors’?”

  I shake my head. “No. It haunts me. I haven’t been sleeping.”

  “Have you been taking your pills?”

  Again, I shake my head. The pills only made the nightmares worse.

  “Then tell me again about the house.”

  “Of course.” I shift into a more comfortable position and begin to speak. “I can still remember the day we moved into the house of mirrors. I can recall driving down a road that seemed to lead nowhere. My mother was driving, and I don’t remember my father — he may have been there, and he may not have been. It didn’t matter.

  Looking out the window of the car, I could see trees. Tall ones, thickly clustered everywhere, as far as the eye could see. It was an endless road, with endless trees, until we reached the house.

  My mother said the house was small, a cottage, but in my mind, it was enormous. The walls towered into the sky, panelled with old wood. Windows were numerous and rge, multi-faceted gems in the wall, and the roof peaked perfectly.

  I recall looking behind me just before entering the house, and seeing a bck car behind us, with two men standing next to it, watching me and my mother.

  I forgot them as I entered the house, and was vindicated about its size. Inside, the house was enormous. It had only one room, but the room was tall, and it continued upwards forever. Stairway upon stairway upon stairway, endlessly leading upwards towards distant rafters that never seemed to grow closer.

  We spent many days in the house. I spent most of my time exploring, trying to find the top of the house. I never succeeded, though I did discover something very interesting. Once, when I was on the twenty-eighth floor, I tripped. To my horror, the banister and railings did not catch me, and I tumbled through them towards the ground. However, when I nded, I was unharmed. I barely felt it, and my mother told me to py quieter.

  I then became far more curious about the house, and especially about the windows. When it was dark, I would look out the windows, and I would always see a face peering back at me. The face was dark and fanged, but continuously warped. No matter which floor I was on, the view was the same. My mother told me it was my reflection, but I knew better; there was something out there, in the endless forest.

  My father was there, I think, but not for long. He came in once, grizzled and in his police uniform, to pile wood in the corner. The house became more curious now, as the pile of wood he stacked on the bottom floor was perfectly replicated in every floor above. I experimented, and found anything I pced next to the walls and corners was replicated in the upper stairs — the center of the upper floors was empty, banistered off, so they were not truly floors, but an endless stair — but anything I pced in the center of the lower floor could not be found hanging in the air, except once.

  I began to see the darkness outside during the day. It was in the shadows of the tree branches, rustling, and occasionally winking at me. It seemed mischievous, and alien, and I wished it would leave me be. It would come up behind me while I walked, and it would watch me while I ate. It was a dark force, I think. A devil, or demon. My mother told me to stop thinking about it, but I could not.

  Night in the house was more frightening than anything. My mother insisted I sleep on the bottom floor, in the center of it, but there, I could see upwards into the house’s eternity, into an abyss of darkness, and the creature would ugh at me. It would knock and bang on the door to the house, and call out for us to come out, with our hands in the air.

  I would always run up the stairs to hide, but its hideous amalgam of a face haunted me from every window I passed, and the windows were endless. It was never long before my running woke my mother, who would put me back in the center of the room.

  The house of mirrors had become entirely unlivable for me by the time a month had passed. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, and I could hardly move for fear. I tried to leave, but my mother stopped me over and over, insisting that we had no way to get home, and that I would be stuck walking in the darkness.

  When darkness fell, I tried to sneak out again. I managed to open the front door, and was set on braving the dark. However, when I opened it, I saw a pair of men in uniform outside, both pointing fshlights at me. Blue and red lights fshed on their car, and they excimed when they saw me. I shut the door, and they could not get in.

  It was two days ter that the men did get in. It was day, and they came through the door holding guns. My mother ran up the stairs, and I followed her. We ran for hours, the men chasing us around and around the room. The dark being seemed to be in the house with us, ughing as we ran. What would happen when we made it to the top?

  We didn’t find out. I turned a corner, and I saw the beast looming before me. I screamed, falling forward onto my face, and my mother stopped, pulling on my arm, unaware of the dark being before her. I screamed again, and then there was the sound of a gunshot, and shattering gss.

  My mother fell, and I watched her fall down an eternity of floors, through mirror after mirror after mirror, until she nded on the bottom. The strange part was that I fell with her, but was unharmed. I was on my hands and knees on the floor, her body in front of me, and the officer kneeling on the other side of the body, his gun in his hand.

  “And tell me, did you ever discover what the dark being was?” the officer asked. At least, I believed him to be an officer — he was wearing office clothes.

  “Of course,” I reply. “It was you.”

  The officer chuckles, and raises the gun to the side of his head. “And you still have this dream?”

  “More than you could imagine,” I reply. The house of mirrors is endless, constant. I have never reached the end or the top, and I have never left the door. He does not know this.

  There is a gunshot, and a body falls. The other leaves the small house full of shattered mirrors and a trio of bodies, and runs into the darkness of the woods. No matter which way he runs, he is met with more forest, more endless trails, and all the while, the darkness ughs at him.

  I still climb the endless floors in the center of the forest.