This is Halloween: Day 3

Alright! Day 3 of my Halloween-themed blog is here and to celebrate, I wanted to share a story that I heard when I was a Boy Scout. To fully appreciate this story, you need to imagine the circumstances that existed when I first heard it. We (my scout troop) were on an overnight campout somewhere in the mountains around Oakley, Idaho. I don't remember exactly where, but I need to research it so I can go back there. The place we were camping was really close to a set of old canal tunnels that had been cut through the mountain to allow for water to run through them. These canals and tunnels were not in use and hadn't been for years. Anyway, our scout leader takes us on a hike and we end up inside the longer of the two tunnels. After walking through it for a few minutes, our leader stops us and tells us to sit down because he has a story to tell. We all sat down in a small cirlce on the dirt floor and we are told to turn our flashlights off. Once the lights were out it was pitch black in the tunnel. We couldn't even see light shining in from the tunnel's entrance. And so, with the mood appropriately set, our scout leader told us the story of...

The House of Dust

There was a doctor that lived in a small mountain village during the time when technology was just beginning to emerge. As a result, the doctor was one of the only people in town to own a working telephone. The doctor had opened a modest medical practice to serve the little village which consisted of miners and sheep-herders. There was something unique about this little village, however. High up on the mountain overlooking the town there was a rather impressive looking old mansion that had been abandoned and in a state of disrepair for as long as anybody could remember. Every window and doorway was boarded up and the mansion was the subject of many of the villagers' superstitions and campfire stories.

So it was that the doctor spent his days helping the villagers whenever they had fallen ill, or broken a bone, etc. After an especially tiresome day (it was the rainy season and bad luck seemed to follow the village during this time of the year), the doctor finally closed up his little practice for the night and returned to his way home at the edge of town. The rain seemed to be especially cold and stinging as the doctor made his home. Upon reaching home, he went inside and sat down to take his wet and muddy boots off when suddenly, his telephone rang. Sighing at the prospect of having to set another broken bone, the doctor begrudgingly picked up the receiver.

"Hello," asked the doctor.

There was no response from the other end.

"HELLO," said the doctor again, louder and increasingly irritated.

Just as he was about to hang up, he heard a faint wheezing sound on the other end.

"Who is this," asked the doctor. "Are you hurt?"

"P-please...help me," said the faint voice and then the line went dead.

"Wait," yelled the doctor. "Who is this?" But the storm outside had likely severed the connection.

The doctor hung up his phone and thought for a moment about who could have called. He knew that nobody else in the village had a telephone, but he seemed to remember somebody once telling him that they had once heard that the large house overlooking the village had a telephone similar to the good doctor's. Without any other option, the doctor opened his door and headed back out into the storm.

As he made his way up the tiny path which led up the mountain toward the mansion, he started to doubt his trek.

"What if this is someone playing a trick on me," he thought as he stumbled through the mud.

After slipping and falling for what seemed like the hundredth time, the doctor thought that it was surely somebody playing a joke on him and was about to turn around and head home when the thought occured to him that if there were someone in the old house in need of help, he had to take the chance or regret his decision for the rest of his days. So after what seemed like an eternity, the doctor finally made it to the old mansion.

By now, the storm had subsided some and he had a clearer view of the old house. Never having been there himself before now, the doctor looked in awe at the large and forbidding structure looming over him. He climbed the front steps to check the door but found it to be bolted and boarded up tight. There was no possible way for him to get inside, this way. The doctor began walking around the edge of the old house in search for an alternative entrance: a side door or open window, but every possible orifice into the building was blocked. Just as the doctor was deciding to head home, the moon broke through the clouds and illuminated the ground. The doctor saw faintly in the mud, a set of footprints leading to the back of the house. The doctor retraced his steps and found that the footprints led to a cellar that he must have missed during his first inspection. The doors to the cellar were unchained and so the doctor grabbed hold of the old wood and pulled the doors open, revealing a staircase leading down into the darkness. Cursing himself for not bringing his lantern, the doctor felt his way down the old creaking staircase and came to a heavy oak door. The door was unusual for a cellar entrance and was complete with an old brass door knocker designed to look like the face of an extremely ugly little man. It almost looked like the gnomes he had read about in picture books as a child only this creature seemed more human-like somehow.

Shaking off the eerie feeling that he felt when looking at the door knocker, the doctor tried the heavy cellar door and found it surprizingly easy to push open. Once inside the cellar, the doctor had to wait for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the blackness around him. Once his eyes had focused somewhat, the doctor felt around and finally found an old brass lantern on a nearby table. Searching his coat pockets for his tobacco case, he found a small box of matches and used them to light the lantern. Grateful for some light, the doctor looked around and discovered that the old cellar was full of strange looking objects that wouldn't have been out of place in one of those creepy fortune-telling shows that sometimes accompanied traveling circuses in the big cities he had lived in while studying medicine. Finally, the doctor located a stairway leading up into the house itself and so he continued on his mission.

As he climbed the stairs, the doctor noticed that the floor was covered in a faint green-tinted dust. He was just thinking about the odd color when he came to another heavy oak door at the top of the cellar stairs. This door also had a similar looking door knocker that resembled the ugly little man. Again feeling slightly unsettled, the doctor pushed open this door and was shocked by what lay beyond it.

The room he had stepped into was a large dining room that was covered in warm light from numerous, wall-mounted lanterns and a large roaring fire in an elegant fireplace. The doctor was amazed and confused. Surely he would have seen the light through the cracks in the boards covering the house's windows. As strange as the sight was, the doctor felt some relief in realizing that somebody in need of his help was indeed in this house as evidenced by the fire and the lit lanterns.

The doctor was encouraged by this realization and began crossing the dining room to the only door in sight. While crossing the room, the doctor again noticed the green dust covering the floor. The dust seemed somehow thicker in this room than it was in the cellar, but the doctor put it out of his mind. The cellar was lit only by his own small lantern and the dining room was extremely well lit, so he logically assumed that that was reason the dust seemed thicker. As he looked closer at the green dust, two things stood out to him. First, the dust only covered the floor. It wasn't on anything else in the room. It wasn't on the furniture, or the pictures on the wall, nothing. It was as if somebody had dusted the entire room but had neglected to sweep up the floor. The second thing he noticed which seemed odd, was that there were again faint footprints in the dust but they did not lead toward the door. Instead the led toward the wall next to the fireplace where an old picture in an elaborate frame hung. Following the footprints in the dust, the doctor veered toward the fireplace. As he approached the picture on the wall next to the fireplace, he noticed that unlike every other piece of decoration in this room, the picture had small traces of the green dust covering the man in the picture. As the doctor studied this picture he was unnerved to notice that the dust seemed to change the man's appearance just enough to resemble the ugly little men that the door knockers were fashioned after. As he stared at the picture, he felt the hair on his neck prickle as he thought of the door knockers and their creepy, gnomish appearance. Soon though, the doctor found some more green dust smeared on one corner of the picture's frame. He reached out, grabbed the picture frame, and lifted it. To his surprise, he heard a grinding sound and leaped back as the fireplace shifted to one side, revealing a small passage hidden behind it.

The light danced as the doctor held his lantern up and peered into the dark passage way behind the fireplace. The footprints in the dust indeed led into the shadows of the passage and so the doctor swallowed his unease and stepped inside, having to stoop to accomodate the passage's tight structure. The doctor followed the passage for a brief time when he came to another heavy oak door. This door was designed in the same fashion as the other doors of the house (complete with the "ugly man" door knocker) except that this door was smaller in size to fit the dimensions of the small passage. The doctor hesitated briefly before deciding to press on, wishing he had brought something along besides his medical bag...something preferably sharp and pointed! He reached out and grabbed hold of the brass door-knob and pushed the door open to discover another staircase leading down into the bowels of the old mansion.

As the doctor descended the stairs, the green dust was indeed growing thicker as it covered the toes of his boots as he followed the footprints into the maw of darkness. Soon he came to another oak door that was even smaller than the previous door. Sure enough this door had a brass knocker resembling the "ugly man". To far into this mysterious house to turn back, the doctor twisted the door-knob and pushed open the door out of sheer, macabre curiosity. Light burst through the open doorway and the doctor had to squint at the brightness of it after being in the dark passage for so long. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the doctor saw a long oak table in the center of the room and a roaring fire in another elegantly decorated fireplace on the opposite wall. The floor in this room was covered in the now familiar green dust and it was so thick that it completely covered the doctor's boots up to his ankles. The doctor gazed around the room in awe at the strangeness of the place.

"Surely, a mad-man built this twisted residence," he thought to himself.

The doctor gazed at his strange surroundings for at least 5 minutes before he realized that he was not alone. At the end of the long oak table near the fireplace, a small figure was sitting in an ornate chair, slumped over the edge of the arm.

The doctor rushed over to the chair, turned it around, and came face to face with the ugly little man that adorned every door in this house. The man's eyes were closed and he appeared to be dead. In his hand was a telephone receiver that was attached to an old telephone sitting on the end of the oak table. As ugly as this "man" was the doctor was shocked to discover that his skin was a pale green color and that he was very small. The doctor estimated that the little green man was only about 3 feet tall. The doctor set his medical bag on the table and touched the green man's neck, checking for a pulse. Suddenly, the green man's eyes rolled open and he stared at the doctor with small, black eyes. The doctor stood transfixed by the green man's gaze. Everything about this night was strange and the doctor could not begin to imagine explaining this to anybody from town. The doctor snapped out of his trance and asked the man if he was ok. The green man opened his mouth and let out a piercing shriek that made the doctor's very soul shudder in fear. As the green man howled, the doctor heard a loud banging sound coming form the house above and he realized that every single one of the brass door knockers were banging vigorously as the green man screamed. Then, there was silence.

The green man grasped the doctor's wrist and smiled as a small trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. As the doctor tried to pull away, the green man crumbled into a pile of green dust. The doctor jumped back in shock and then noticed that his wrist where the green man had grasped him had an itching sensation to it. Looking at his wrist, he realized that his skin was beginning to turn the same shade of green as the green man and the dust scattered all over this bizarre house. The doctor leaped across the table and grabbed the telephone and wheezed into the receiver:

"P-please...help me."