I had that stupid house nightmare again last night. It's different every time, but it's always in the house.

In this one, the house was on fire already, and the smoke was everywhere. Filling the room, choking my lungs, and oh Lord, the smell. I'll never forget the smell as long as I live. It was overpowering— lacquered wood and moth-eaten fabric and that super specific old book smell, all burning at once.

Except Lord Argyris was there too. He wasn't dead yet. He was screaming at me to clean that one awful display cabinet, the one with the glass doors that weren't quite level with the rest of the shelving, so if you ever even touched them, they'd squeal. Every time, I was convinced that those doors were going to shatter and ruin every priceless heirloom inside with an explosion of glass shards. So I had to clean that, with the Lord hollering about how the soot was getting all over the glass and how was anyone meant to admire his collection of artifacts, the pride of his family, if I couldn't do something so simple as clean two panes of glass? I was trying, too! But the soot kept coming, faster than I could wipe away.

At some point, I turned around and started shouting back. I guess my subconscious forgot about the whole fire thing, because the smoke was gone and the house was back to how it was when I first came there. Everything I wished I could've said to his face while he was alive, all my hatred and resentment, came pouring out of me. But he wouldn't say a word. He just stood there like he couldn't even hear me. I couldn't see his face, either. He always towers over me in these dreams, like I'm a little kid again.

That's how the dream usually goes. But this time, my brain came up with a new way to torment me.

Sometimes, I turn around and leave Lord Argyris, but I can't leave the mansion. It turns into this maze of endless staircases and hallways, and I can't find the foyer, let alone the front doors. I get lost in there.

This time, though, I turned and the Lord grabbed me. You know how most of the time, you can't feel things in a dream? In this one, he had his big claws dug into my wrist, and it hurt. I was twisting away and screaming for help, for someone, anyone, to come set me free. I knew there wasn't anyone around who could hear, but I kept screaming until my throat burned. Lord Argyris was still deathly silent, his grip unbreakable like rigor mortis. Then, suddenly, I tore myself free, and started to fall. I kept falling.

But before I could hit the ground—

I woke up.

I jumped out of bed, bedsheets tangled up around me, half-expecting to hear the Lord calling for his breakfast. Then I remembered where I was, and who I was. I sat down on the edge of my bed, the heels of my hands pressed into my eye sockets, trying to breathe and trying to rein in my racing thoughts.

I recalled to memory the house as it really was. As it was now. Nothing more than a cracked stone foundation, little incursions of green growth into cracks formed by years of exposure to the elements. I'd made sure that the house was gone. I'd given up a lot to know, without any doubt, that it was gone.

But the house is never really going to be gone. It exists in my memories, in my nightmares, forever.