The portal

The house.  I’ve seen it a thousand times…well not this particular one… and not this particular one in person.  

It’s your typical ranch-style house that populates the thousands of generic neighborhoods that sprang to life in America throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.  Brick facade with rectangular windows bordered by dark brown shutters that serve no function other than aesthetics.  The house is wider than it is deep with a gently sloping roof covered in charcoal grey shingles. Just another cookie-cutter representation of the American dream.  Only this one is…different.

Why am I here?

I remember waking at around 2 am this morning, surprisingly full of energy despite only a couple of hours of sleep.  I dressed, packed my backpack with god knows what and left.  Hopped in the car and started driving.

I must have driven for hours but now as I think back, it seems like a blink of an eye.  Why can’t I remember the details of the drive?  What roads did I take?  Why don’t I remember what the signs said?

Where is my car?

That’s right.  I ran out of gas and started walking.

Now I am here. Standing in front of an unremarkable house on a hill in the middle of god knows where.

Maybe I should call Sheri and let her and the kids know that I am okay.

Well, apparently I left my phone at the house or in the car?  Hell, I don’t remember.  They probably got the cops looking for me right now.

But I can’t go home. There’s something I need to do here.

I must be having a mental breakdown. Christ.

What’s that?  I see a small speck of pulsating purple in the sky.  It seems to be coming closer or perhaps getting larger?  Small black specks seem to be drifting towards it.  Not specks though, but rather, distant trees, cars, and buildings….people.  Shit.

I gotta stop this.  I gotta get inside.

I step onto the porch and a sharp pain pierces my temples.  Blinding flashes of pain bring forth images or maybe hallucinations.  Candles, metal that flows like water…an eye!  Oh god!

I awake, lying on my back.  That purple hole in the sky is evermore present.  Swallowing up my world.  I gotta move.

The Front Porch

I step back onto the porch.  The wind howls, blowing roiling waves into the tall grass outside.  An empty wheelchair is propelled towards me like a protective hound, it’s wheels screeching along it’s rusty axle.  I manage to dodge out of its way as it continues off the porch and disappears among the tall grass.  

The door is ajar but as I approach the smell stops me in my tracks.  The foul odor of rotten meat mixed with ammonia.  I fear what is beyond the door that can create such a stench.  That is until I realize that the odor comes not from inside but rather on the wind itself.  I rush inside and slam the door behind me.

The Foyer

The odor is gone and the muffled howl of the wind screams from outside.  The house is well lit although the mahogany paneling makes it seem darker.  I see the living room beyond the foyer and a dining room to my right.  Here stands a coat rack holding a single yellow, hooded raincoat.  It drips as if it has just been hung by someone coming in from a downpour.  

To my left, on the floor, burns a small candle set upon a saucer.  The light awkwardly angles up to reveal not a wall of mahogany but rather a plaster relief of people prostrated towards a tentacled beast that is devouring the sun.  I touch the relief and realize the plaster is not dry and still malleable. 

The candle!  I have seen it before.  I must have!

I pick it up and extinguish it before stashing in the small pocket on my backpack.

As I step into the dining room, I hear the relief fall away onto the floor is a sickening plop.

The Dining Room

A fine chandelier hangs from the ceiling, too fine for a house of this style.  The tiny bulbs flicker at random increments as if each has a loose connection. The dining room table is like any to may find in a middle-class home although the scene surrounding this one is of chaos.

The chairs are tossed aside as if thrown into this room from the outside.  The table is covered in silverware, broken dishes and glasses.  The floor is also littered with dish and cooking ware as well as lumps of plaster and splintered wood.  Oddly enough, a small tea set with 4 cups and saucers seems to be precisely set up among the refuse on the table.  I pick up one of the tiny tea cups and admire the intricate floral design on the side.  My daughter would love this.

A child’s laughter echoes through the house.

The Kitchen

I rush towards the laughing, fully expecting to come face to face with some terribly, creepy ghost child like in those horror movies Sheri loves so much.  But as I enter the kitchen I am met with nothing but silence.  This kitchen is unremarkable at first glance and fairly tidy.  The floor seems like it was recently mopped and wax, reflecting the dimming light coming through a window at the front of the house.  

I check the cabinets and they are fully stocked and stacked with various dishes, cups, and glasses.  The refrigerator has no power and is thankfully empty.  The drawers are full of utensils and other cooking gadgets except for one.  This drawer is full of strips of paper, hundreds of hand written receipts all stamped with a red “PAID”.  They list no products but only totals.  Ten dollars here two-hundred and fifty dollars there.  All apparently “PAID”.  

It is so quiet in here.  Why am I so scared?  I think I prefer the ghostly laugh of a disembodied child to this.  Then I see it.  A dark spot in the corner of the kitchen ceiling close to the dining room entrance.  A shadow maybe? No. That’s black mold.  I saw it plenty of times when I did contracting work with my best friend.  A small bit of black mold is nothing to fear but this bit is starting to get out of control.  Slowly but surely it is creeping out from this corner and spreading across the ceiling, walls and floor.  Tiny, black-fur tendrils creeping at a snail’s pace in all directions.  It was nothing to fear at first, I guess.

I gotta stop this.

The Laundry Room

At the back of the kitchen, next to a small pantry is a laundry room.  There was a door here but it now lies inside the small room, with a large dent in one side as if a battering ram was used to burst it off the hinges.

The door to the dryer is open, casting a small but warm light into the otherwise dark room.  I try the light switch but to no avail. Wait.  I check my backpack and yes, I guess I was genius enough to pack a flashlight.  

Nothing really of note here beside the washer and dryer and shelves above holding various cleaning agents and stacks of neatly folded rags.  Atop the dryer rests a cube.  Upon closer inspection it seems to be a cube of some type of metal, perhaps aluminum?  I pick it up but it instantly melts in my hand, drips back upon the dryer and congeals back into a metal cube.

The flashing pain returns again, dropping me to a knee on top of the busted door.

Yes! The liquid metal!

I use one of the rags to carefully wrap the cube without touching it.  It stays solid and I place it into my backpack.

The Living Room

I move quickly from the laundry room, through the kitchen, and into the living room, keeping my head low in hopes of avoiding the mold spreading continuously across the ceiling.

I cringe as I enter the living room.  It seems that whoever lived here smoked a thousand cigarettes here.  A yellow tinge covers everything from the windows, to the lampshades, to the once white leather chair in the corner.  It still smells of stale smoke.

A small round coffee table is covered in a tattered cloth.  The cloth moves gently as a draft passes through the room.  The draft probably comes from the poorly sealed double doors leading to the back porch.

The Back Porch

I am tentative about going out there.  I don’t want to see that hole in the sky eating my world.  Not again.  Despite my reservations, I step out the glass door onto the back porch.

The wind is not blowing like it was before.  In fact the air outside is now very still, not a single blade of grass sways.  But there is an unnatural haze in the air, like being in a dust storm.  My eyes water and my nose and throat begin to burn.  I pull up my shirt to cover my nose and mouth.  It helps…a bit.

The only thing out here is a desk.  An odd place for an office desk if you ask me.  The desk is covered in papers that have overflowed to the ground.  Each paper is covered in various three-dimensional geometric drawings.  Cones, cubes, tetrahedrons. 

My eyes and lungs are killing me.  Let me get back inside

The Hallway Bathroom

I stumble back through the living room and lean up against a wall to catch my breath and clear my vision.  It’s gotta stop.  I gotta stop this.  

I flip on the flashlight again, illuminating the dark hallway.  Two doors to my right, one to my left, and one straight ahead.  Might as well be thorough.

I head into the first room to my right.  It’s a bathroom, complete with commode, tub, and sink.  The walls in here are not the mahogany paneling found elsewhere in the house but a rather bland, grey wallpaper.

Did the shower curtain just move! 

I can hear it.  A gurgling noise like viscous oil seeping down a slow drain. Just behind the shower curtain.  I reach for the curtain with a trembling hand and quickly pull it aside.  Sitting in the tub is what seems to be a slab of meat, like a beef roast, but raw.  It is pulsating and heaving and the gurgling sound is followed up by a geyser of fine-misted blood that spatteres the tile.  I hold in a retch but then on the top this…thing opens an eye.  Staring wide-eyed, directly at me, it sees me as much as I see it.

The eye!  I am stopping this.

I grab the eyed, spewing chunk of flesh and rush back into the living room.  The meat trembles in my arms and spews blood in every direction.  It is afraid.

It should be.

I slam the abomination on to the coffee table.  The tattered white cloth begins to turn red with the beast’s blood as it continues to gurgle and spew.  

I grab the candle from the bag along with the metal cube in the cloth.  With matches from the mantle I light the candle as the eye stares at me in horror.  I remove the cube from the cloth and place into the palm of my right hand while holding the candle in my left.  Simultaneously the metal melts and drips into the eye along with hot wax.

The wind howls and the house shakes.

Then all goes dark…

I am on the back porch again.

No, not that one…I am home now, watching my kids play on the playset in the backyard. 

Life is good.

But I wonder which one of them will be the one to do what needs to be done to save us, when it comes to swallow the world again.

What you just read was an actual play of The Portal at Hill House, a solo journaling game by Travis D. Hill and Lindi M. Farris-Hill.  It is available on itch.io here.