Nightmare of the endless tower

Let me tell you a story about a nightmare that I had as a child, a nightmare that was recurring, a nightmare that ended when I faced my fear. I recall this dream, this nightmare this memory with such clarity, with such details, with such lucency and this story I will tell you now.

It was a dark night with a full moon casting a silhouette of a dead tree atop a hill with and medieval tower. The tower had an old English oak door with a rusted drop handle. As I approach the door I feel my heart racing, it felt like my heart was about to burst though my chest. But I carry on, towards the tower in the dark and slowly open the door with such a creek and screech that it caused bats to fly away in fear of the tower.

As I enter the tower, I see a spiral staircase made of stone around the wall with no windows and no banister. Peering down the side I see nothing but the void a black vast empty nothing. So, I walk down the spiral stairs to see where it would lead. And after awhile I noticed that I still couldn’t see into the void. I also noticed that the stairs in front of me see to go on for ever but could not see more than a few steps at a time. Looking behind me the stars was also disappearing in the black void of nothingness.

In my panic, I started to walk back up the stairs, to find the stairs that was once in the void of black nothingness appearing as if it was always there. As I panicked as my heart started to race and as my mind raced with such dread, I ran and ran and ran up the stairs as fast as I can. I kept on running and running and running, but I noticed I should have seen the door leading out on to the moonlit hill again, but there was no door, no hope, trapped and scared. I woke up in fear.

This nightmare went on every night for about 3 months, only slight changes happened as I try to gain control of my dreams. In the end, inside the tower, I jumped into the void, fearing a bottomless pit, a never-ending fall, I braced for the worse and so I fell and I fell, and I fell. Then I landed as if I only just jumped down a few steps, but it was clear that I had been falling for some time.

I looked around this new room, a room with an old log fire burning away, a sofa chair with an old man sat in front of the fire, with his back to me. Yet I could sense that he knows I was there, just sat there waiting for me to come to him. I looked around the room I could see different rooms, but one room I noticed was my bedroom of where I use to live, but it was twisted as if it was at a different angle to what I was at. I was scared and even though the old man was no looking at me, I could feel that he was watching everything I was doing. I forced myself awake and this was again repeated for a while until one day…

Back again in the room, this time I decided to go towards the old man sat on the sofa chair in front of the log fire. And sat on the floor next to him. It was then he spoke to me, it was then I was awake in my own bed and to this day I do not remember what that old man said to me. But what ever he said to me, broke the cycle of the recurring nightmare. A nightmare so recurring that I could not forget it, even now to this day, a nightmare that I had when I was only 13 years old. That was over 30 years ago now and still today I can recall this nightmare with such details as if I had only experienced it a few days ago.