Dreamland: The Portal Hunt

House of Whispers (1919)

The fog in Sleepy Hollow didn't just chill the bones; it hid secrets. Back in 1919, the town felt heavier than usual. A young boy was playing with his ball on the cobblestone streets. The only sound in the mist was the rhythmic thump-thump of the ball.

Suddenly, the ball took a bad bounce. It rolled straight through the rusted iron gates of a house that the neighbors only talked about in whispers. This wasn't a normal home with flowers in the yard. It was choked by thick, black vines that looked like skeletal fingers clawing at the walls.

As the boy reached for the gate, a hand clamped onto his shoulder. He gasped and spun around. It was his mother, her face pale with fear.

"Don’t you ever step foot in there," she whispered, her grip tightening.

"But Mama, my ball..."

"Forget the ball! There’s a shadow in that house that doesn’t belong to the living. We are leaving. Now."

The townspeople believed a ghost lived in the manor, but the truth was much scarier. An old woman lived there, alone and consumed by dark magic. Her obsession with Black Magic had already taken the lives of her family, leaving her to rot in isolation.

She never left the house, yet she seemed to know everything. She heard the town’s secrets through the whistling wind. At night, a low chanting came from her basement. It was a sound that made dogs howl and caused even the bravest men to walk a little faster when passing by the house.

One day, a group of college students John, Henry, and Joy decided to test their luck. They were the kind of boys who thought being mean was the same thing as being brave. They had cornered Max, a quiet student who spent more time with books than people.

They dragged him to the edge of the thorn-covered estate.....

"Please," Max begged, his voice shaking. "Just let me go. I haven't done anything to you."

John smirked and shoved him toward the gate.....

"Tell you what, Max. You go in, touch the front door, and come back. Do that, and we’ll leave you alone forever. Deal?"

"It’s just an old house," Joy added, though he kept glancing nervously at the dark windows. "Unless you’re a coward?"

With no other choice, Max pushed open the creaking gate....

The air inside the yard was thick and smelled of rot. The thorns snagged his clothes like tiny teeth. As Max reached the back of the house, he heard a low, humming sound that vibrated in his chest.

He crept toward a dirty window and looked inside. The room was lit by dozens of black candles. In the center of a chalk circle sat the old woman. In her bony hands, she held a strange object a Dream catcher decorated with raven feathers and dull, Grey pearls.

"By the breath of the forgotten, by the blood of the earth..." she hissed in a language Max didn't understand.

Max gasped, but as he turned to move, his foot hit a heavy stone pot. CRACK. The chanting stopped instantly. The woman’s head snapped toward the window. Her eyes were milky white and wide. Max tried to run, but his legs felt like lead. The woman closed her eyes and whispered one word. The world spun, and Max hit the cold floor, unconscious.

Outside, the boys weren't feeling so brave anymore...

"He’s been in there too long," Henry whispered.

"John, maybe we should go get him."

"Shut up," John snapped, but his voice was trembling.

Suddenly, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the night. It wasn't a scream of fear it was a scream of pure agony.

The boys didn't run to help. They ran to the town square, screaming for help. Within an hour, a mob of neighbors and Max’s crying parents gathered at the gates. They broke down the front door, but the sight inside stopped them cold.

The floor was wet with fresh blood. The old woman sat perfectly still in her circle, her face twisted into a terrifying grin. Max lay on the floor. His life was gone a final sacrifice for her dark craft.

The police moved in, their boots clicking on the blood-stained wood. As one officer reached down to pick up the feathered Dream -catcher for evidence, the woman let out a piercing, jagged laugh.

"Touch it!" she shrieked. "Go ahead! You think this is just a trinket? It is a cage for souls! Touch the center, and you will find yourself in a nightmare you can never wake up from!"

The officer froze, his hand just inches away from the web. The room turned freezing cold. Nobody touched it. Instead, they sealed the Dream catcher and her books in heavy crates, dragging the laughing woman away into the night.

But as the police car drove away, the townspeople knew the truth some things, once they are woven together, can never be undone.

Waiting.....