In the dream, my sister and I are traveling through a dream version of Italy. It is a very specific place with stable, dream contours and familiar monuments: a cobblestone square next to a small canal. We quickly leave this familiar part of the world for a series of country roads, like the outskirts of Parma. While the streets are unpaved, there are modern-looking houses lining them and small fields full of wheat or grapes can be glimpsed between them. As it begins to get late, my sister and I stop at a hostel, though it looks like a large mansion.
Inside, it is very strange. It seems to be populated by one family: grandparents, parents, in-laws, cousins though no one under the age of twenty or so. They have a distinctive look, big teeth, small, close-set eyes. They are friendly but there is something off. My sister and I watch TV with them. All the rooms are over-sized and this one is more of a home theater. Old, dilapidated couches sit at odd angles, and my sister and I settle into them, pressed up against the many family members. I am seated next to a very old man with rheumy eyes. He keeps slapping me on the back and pointing at the giant projector screen. There is soccer on it, teams in North Africa.
The bedroom looks like a hostel at least: lots of rows of bunkbeds in an un-adorned white box. In the middle of the night I need to get up and use the restroom but the one I passed by earlier is filthy. I wander out onto the front porch, which, covered by a tarp, extends some twenty feet in front of the house. There is a door that leads into a wing of the house I did not notice before. I open it and find a very modern, well appointed bathroom. The design is Art decco, the furniture is comfortable. And there is a door from the restroom deeper into the new wing.
I open the door and find stairs leading down into a basement rec-room--very well kept and pristine. Compared to the somewhat ramshackle nature of the rest of the house this is also a shock but it makes me uneasy. That's when I see them, glowing eyes in the relative darkness of the rec-room. They come closer, attached to children, horribly deformed, their flesh streaked and scarred and, suppurating keloid flesh hanging in tumorous clumps. They are dressed in nice velvet dresses and tuxedos, crawling on their hands and knees towards me. I scream and run.
The next day, my sister and I are driving around the outskirts still, looking for a place to stay, or our parents, or just trying to avoid going back to the hostel. We are driving by a school and there are a lot of children crossing, It is utter chaos and I am switching gears constantly, cutting a slow path through the crowd. That is when I back up into something. There is a crunch of metal. I get out of the car and see that I have hit a man's bicycle. It is twisted up under my back bunker. The hostel is down the street and I am eager to get away from it, so I approach apologetically. The owner is 7ft tall and sinewy, rail-thin. His face is gaunt and he has gray, stringy hair down to his waist. He is dressed in a clean, red tracksuit. and there is something so threatening in his eyes, so menacing in the clench of his teeth that I start to back away. He raises a wrench in one hand and starts striding towards me. I put my hands over my face and sink to the ground. He walks past me and smashes my rear-windshield with his wrench. Then he bolts, letting out an unearthly howl.
My dad appears at the end of the street and beckons my sister and I to follow him up onto the highway. As we do so, I wake up.
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