Last night I dreamt of that place again. It is a clearing in the woods with space enough to fit a car or a picnic table. To the left, the clearing is small but spacious.

In some dreams it is cut in half by a chain link fence, warding one off from venturing further into the brush. The the right, there is a path, a set of very tall, long, grassy stairs that leads up up up. Where is always different but the path itself is the same. Alone the path, which is long and covered on either side by dense trees, there are homes. They are abandoned, usually or if someone lives within they never come out, never turn on the lights. In some of my dreams, I have entered these houses. They are always mostly wood inside. There are cabinets in odd places that open up and out. There are usually wood burning stoves. The windows, though look normal from the outside, are often glassless from within. They open and close with swinging boards of wood on bronze hinges. In some dreams, we must hide from these homes as we pass. We are being watched.

Usually, when I am walking up these stairs (and it is often in a group) I am feeling scared. There is always something bad at the top, not dangerous always but sometimes alarming. Sometimes I am being hunted. Sometimes I am hunting for something that I do not necessarily want to reach. I am usually aware that it is dangerous. If I have a cellphone in the dream there is never reception.

Once, in a dream, I was kidnapped after driving into the clearing on my own. It was by a cult that wore only black underwear and that was run by a menacing man. I woke up nude in a bed, my undergarments newly died black and hung out to dry near myself.

It is always either fall or spring. Never summer, nor winter. Either green and lush or covered in wet, dead leaves. The situation for which I am in this place in never the same, the accompanying characters different and sometimes completely fictional. I have so many dream memories of this place.

Once I climbed to the top and then into a square, warehouse which i think my have been a lighthouse. I climbed to the top and found a man there who was menacing. I can’t remember what happened. I think I was assaulted or tossed off the side. Perhaps both.

Once, we happened upon the stairs by mistake and decided to hike up. There were people in the woods hunting us. We took refuge in one of the house.

It is important to note how oddly out of place all of the houses feel. There are no roads leading up to them, no walkways or driveways. I don’t know if it is a village that was once full of life and is now overgrown. I don’t know what the backstory for these houses is supposed to be but like the clearing and the stairs which are always to the right, they are a constant in this fictional location.

No matter the scenario, usually in which I am NOT aware that I am dreaming (I have never had a lucid dream experience), I always remember that I have been to the clearing with the stairs. In my dream last night, which was especially disturbing and which I wrote about in detail in my morning pages today, I told one of my comrades that there was water at the top of the stairs and there were ghosts within. This was the subject of one of my previous dreams in this place. I didn’t state it as though I knew from a previous game but more so as though it was lore that already existed in this world. There is continuity in this place. If I carve something into a tree when I am there, that carving is their is subsequent dreams but I see it as if as though someone else has done it.

In my dreams I always think “Here we are again.”  and there is so much dread.