I was in an unknown town, in an unknown neighborhood. The neighborhood had short, crisscrossed streets lined on every side with big Victorian houses. The houses were old, with faded and peeling paint. I was holding my two-year old niece and walking with my sister on the sidewalk, trying to get home before the storm came. The weather was rainy and dark. We were walking on the sidewalk when I saw a bum asleep in a bush in front of a home that was painted a sickly green color. He was dressed in an old nasty coat and had thick, long black hair. Even though he was asleep, his presence made me extremely uncomfortable*1, so I motioned for my sister to give him a wide berth and step into the street.
We walked in the worn street for a few feet and stepped back onto the sidewalk. At this point, we were directly in front of the porch steps of the house that the bum was sleeping in front of. My ex's sister was there on the steps, holding a newborn child wrapped in a blanket. I passed my niece to my sister and told her to keep going. Something felt wrong, and I wanted her to go home.
"Estelle*2, what are you doing?" I asked the woman who had almost become my second sister. She was putting the baby in a basket that was nestled in the bushes beside the stairs. She babbled a story to me that was punctuated with heavy sobs. Apparently, this baby was her seventh child under the age of seven, and she and her husband couldn't handle another child.
"The woman here takes care of children," She told me, which was why the basket was there. Some sort of free haven, where people left their babies in a basket where a woman would give them a free home.
"No she doesn't!," I begged her, starting to cry myself. Somehow, I knew it was a lie. "She says she takes care of the babies, but she gives them to him." I nudged my head back toward the bum, who had begun to wake up and stand.
"But what does he do?"
"He eats children."
By this time, the bum had come up behind me. I turned around and he was right there. His face had been painted with what looked like blood in some sick twisted caricature of a snowman*3. Where his nose should have been was an empty hole. He was right beside me, but was completely oblivious to my existence. Instead, he reached out for the baby with hunger in his eyes.
I looked up at the house; an old woman was standing behind the screen door. She watched us silently, her wrinkled face statuesque in its coldness. Looking at her, @%**% in my eyes, something told me that there was nothing I could do to save the baby. Estelle had put him in the basket, and once she had, we had lost all hope.
....
Usually I don't remember dreams, but this one stayed with me all day. I woke up completely fearful with the bum's face in my head. I wanted to call "Estelle's" husband (he and I were always buddies) and warn him to watch after his family, but I don't have his number. I think it's some horrific presage of doom.
*1 = Bums scare me.
*2 = Names have been changed to protect people's identities.
*3 = His face looked human, but horrific. The best way I can describe it is as if someone wanted to decorate their face like a snowman using Heath Ledger's Joker as a template. I searched "scary snowman" on Google to see if anything popped up. Nothing looked like him, but I found this picture, which ties into my dream with some sort of awful hilarity.
It's creepy that the snowman looking right at the baby doesn't have a nose.
I'm afraid to stay in this hotel room alone again.
