Dream CLXII

I had taken my car to a local business where I was going to repair it.

The business was not a car shop, but specialized in food manufacture, so I wasn't looking for expertise, just a quiet place to work.  For some reason, my brothers and my friend Tom decided to join me.  We all parked in a parking area lined with low cement walls.  While the three of them busied themselves with other activities in their respective cars, I went to work.

After several hours I had finished.  It was now close to 1 AM and the others were asleep.  Each car had a small, bright-red light on it that I thought would keep them awake, but apparently it didn't.

I nudged my younger brother awake, and asked him to awaken the others so that we could leave.  He said, "Well, I've never been here, let's look around a little."  So he got into the driver's seat of my car, I climbed into the passenger side, and we went down one of the corridors.

The building was massive, Gothic, gloomy and dark.  It seemed to be centuries old.  I knew that it had originally been used for some other purpose, but I couldn't remember what.  Everything was covered in a shadowy gloom, so that details could not be seen clearly until you were right on top of something. 

I could see another corridor bound by a gate to the one we were in, and I could see something shadowy standing in the middle of the "road."  It looked like a figure, but fifteen to twenty feet tall.  As we drew nearer, I urged my brother to turn around and he finally did so, just before the gate entrance.

We drove back to where the others were parked.  On the way, we passed one of the central oven complexes, a huge concrete affair manned by bakers who crawled all over its surface, occasionally lit when one of them opened a sliding panel on the flames.

I told my brother that the side we were nearing had a map on it.  We stopped the car and I pointed out the main road, and said that if he just took that he would be outside within a few minutes.  He made a note but said that he wanted to explore a bit more.

I told him to take me back to the others, and he could use his own car.  When we got back to the parking area, the others had gone.  He got into his own car and drove off into one of the corridors.

I looked up at the ceiling.  I could see vague shapes clambering over the stonework, and occasionally drifting between structures like wisps of smoke.

I shuddered and turned away, hoping I could find my way outside.