The House
Lucid Codex Entry 003
Time wasn’t broken.
It was personal.
She’d learned that through trial. Through error. Through bruises she couldn’t explain in the morning.
Time travel didn’t follow logic. It followed blood. DNA.
You couldn’t go anywhere. Only inward. Only through your own timeline.
She was the tether.
But this jump was wrong.
This house wasn’t right.
It looked like her grandmother’s...almost. A memory under fog. The angles were slightly off. The hallway too short. The ceiling too low. Familiar...but re-rendered in dream code. A double.
The walls held photos. Baby pictures of her.
But not her.
Not from this timeline. Not from any album she remembered.
The kitchen had that same green glow it used to at night, humming under the hum of the fridge. But the counters were taller. The walls closed in by an inch too many.
She was alone.
No voices. No grandma in the back room. Just her. A single bedroom. A bed. A small radio on the nightstand, quietly turned off.
She tried to sleep.
The radio clicked on.
No voices. Just static. Deep and slow like it was being spoken in reverse.
She turned it off.
Tried again.
This time, the door opened.
Not slammed. Not creaked.
Opened.
As if to say: “Yes. You’re in here.”
She lay back down. Closed her eyes.
And felt it.
A pressure against her chest.
Not weight.
Not breath.
Just awareness. Something trying to understand her shape. Or claim it.
She sat up.
Wrote on the wall with shaking hands:
This is my home.
But the house didn’t agree.
In the kitchen, she found a tall wooden drawer...something she’d never seen before. Like a vertical utensil coffin. Tiny compartments filled with tools she didn’t recognize.
The drawer slid shut.
By itself.
With purpose.
She ran.
Back to the room. Turned the radio on. Then her phone. Then the TV. Anything with noise. Anything to fill the silence between her thoughts.
The show on screen: Soldier Boy. Doing something violent. Cartoonishly violent. Wrong for the moment. Wrong for her nerves.
She turned the volume up.
The radio began sputtering phrases in a voice just slightly too close to hers. Mimicking. Testing.
She called her grandmother.
No answer.
Called someone else.
No answer.
The fear wasn’t cinematic.
It was child fear...the deep, marrow-level panic of being in a place that once loved you, but now looks at you like a stranger.
On the wall: a photo.
A giant baby version of her. Smiling. Too wide. Eyes too clear.
It watched.
She opened the Lyft app.
No roads on the map.
Just a blinking blue dot.
Alone in memory.
Then she woke up.
Not screaming.
Just… relieved.
Because the worst part wasn’t the presence.
The worst part was knowing the house had been waiting for her.
And now it remembered.
-
Dream 8/8/24
I discovered time travel and was using it to go to different times in my life. It only worked with whoever's DNA was using it. Then I got stuck in a house. It wasn't my grandmother's house that I remember, but it was a version of it. There were pictures of baby me, but I don't remember this house. I was staying the night, but my grandmother wasn't there.
This house was fucking haunted. I had a radio and a bed. It was a small room, and every time I went to sleep or would try to, I couldn't. I could feel the presence of the entity. At first it touched me, then it turned the radio on to wake me. Then it would open the door.
I tried calling out to tell it this is my home on the walls, but I don't recognize that home. Writing this dream now, it doesn't feel familiar, but in the dream it did.
I went to the kitchen and there was this weird utensil holder I'd never seen before...wood, height to my breast, with different small drawers for utensils. It was open and then closed on its own, and I knew I wasn't alone because the way it closed was not natural.
So I ran into the room and left the radio on. It seemed to leave me alone if I was using something. I turned on my phone and there was a show about Soldier Boy doing something, and a radio show on the radio.
I used my phone to try and call my partner, but he didn't answer. Then I called my grandma, and she didn't answer. She was staying the night somewhere else.
This was a small house near a main street. The back door had steps that went to the grass, a small plot with a wire fence, and you could see the street.
There was a huge blown-up baby picture of me on the wall in the room I was in, but that wasn't my house.
I looked in my phone for Lyft to take me home, and then I woke up. I was so relieved when I was in my reality. That dream was truly scary. The feeling was not okay.
