I'm in Love With the Man Downstairs, Chapter 2:

The Dream: First Contact, A Foreshadowing

By Darknightdestiny

A sound.

Footsteps, maybe? No, it couldn't be…

…could it?

Silence hung as thick as the air itself, swimming with dust and the night fog. Not a sound could be heard for miles…

At least to untrained ears.

Aching muscles awoke to the soft pounding of another's heart, those muscles stiff with the sleep of the ages. A thick metallic smell unfurled at the base of the wooden doorway, a smell that could only be detected by the sharpest of senses. A smell that crept over the rotten wood floors and casually threw itself on top of the deep cherry-colored wood as a dramatist would, seeping around the edges of the heavy imprisonment. And it smelt so strongly that he could taste it.

So it was true.

Outside the darkness, where the sun still shone through the cracks in the ceiling and the elements ate at the old foundation, a familiar warmth made his hideaway to be its destination, forcing itself into his resting place.

Humans…

On the shore…

It was not yet time.

Kira stood out in the night air, staring up at the mansion. The moonlight cast an eerie glow upon its stony walls, and made it look as if it were glowing itself. Darkness crept in between the crevices in the walls, casting a gloomy shadow that stretched over the ground beneath the building, all the way up to her feet, fifteen yards away.

She shivered in the cold night air blowing off the mountains in the distance. The soil was soft underneath her feet, and there was no sign of life anywhere around. Chills danced along her spine as she stepped forward, ready to enter the new place where she was going to spend the next few years of her life, until someone else said otherwise.

It was still a lot better than the plantation.

As soon as she stepped forward, the ground began to stretch onward, and the distance between her and the mansion grew. She started again, and the distance grew with her next step as well. Eyeing the structure warily, she started walking towards it, and she found herself going nowhere.

Looking around herself, she realized for the first time that her family was nowhere to be found. The dead trees to her left and right stretched high, their dead limbs scratching the surface of the sky like bent fingers of an old corpse. She passed them one after the other, and still, the mansion never grew any closer. She stopped walking, realizing that she wasn't making any progress.

All of a sudden, dark clouds gathered in the sky and thunder roared as bright flashes coursed throughout the darkness. The clouds drifted over the full moon, a purple glow covering their edges. Kira looked up, no longer able to see the stars, or the source of the light. She lowered her head again and looked at the mansion.

Gone.

The mansion was nothing but a pile of rubble, dust blowing in every direction as a warm gust of wind blew up from the ground. The minuscule bits of ruined stone rushed at her and burned her eyes, and she looked through the blur at the mounds of rock. She began to walk towards the mansion…

And this time, she made it there in no time at all. Viewing it up close, she thought it looked ancient, old as the dirt that surrounded it- maybe older. She stepped within the holed out walls, mere slabs of still-holding dust in the middle of nowhere; they no longer connected, and she could see the fields from where she stood. The light had come back and the sky had calmed. She took a step further, and the floor gave way, her foot caught in between the splintering wood.

She tried her hardest to remove it, but she was unable to free herself. She looked around at a loss for what to do, and then something caught her eye. In the distance, she saw a black shape approaching from the shadows, flying straight in from the fields behind the mansion. From what she could see, it looked like a horse and rider, and it seemed to be made of darkness itself, because when it had reached the moonlight, there was still no difference in its appearance; the only thing she saw was black.

It came quickly, galloping at an unearthly speed; the wind screeched as it tried to grasp the tattered cloth that clung to the rider, but horse and master escaped its clutches. When the horse reached the same distance she had been from the mansion where she had first found herself, it reared up on its hind legs and let out a deafening scream, much harsher than that of the wind's whispered cries. The sound was unlike anything she had ever heard before, and she was sure it was something she could never have imagined on her own. It spoke of death and despair…for a minute she thought it might have come from the rider and not the horse, but she then decided that the noise was inhuman as well.

When the horse landed on its hooves once more, the rider had vanished. The animal stood still, unwavering in the suddenly chilly air as if waiting for something. She was sure she was now participating in some sort of stand off, but she couldn't be sure, because she couldn't pinpoint the location of the animal's eyes. For all she knew, it had none.

As she watched the horse with curiosity, all the while forgetting about her entrapment in the rotten floorboards, a wet coldness surrounded her body. She pulled her arms tightly around herself, as a dark mist spiraled against her flesh, enveloping her, taking her into itself. It rippled in waves as it crawled across her skin sending chills up and down her spine. She knew it would consume her if she didn't move…

But it felt so soothing…

Lightning flashed across the sky once again, and just ahead of her, the horse turned to ash and drifted away on the wind, screaming as it went. The last vision she caught sight of was the red moon up high, burning brightly in the sky.

"Kira!"

Kira woke up with a start to a pounding outside her doorway.

"Kira, you still in there?"

Kira pulled the sweaty blankets off her slender form and slid her feet down to the floor.

"Carter?"

"Kira, we've made it to shore. We're all ready to leave the ship! You'd better get ready as well…"

"…I'm coming. Just let me get myself together."

Carter's footsteps disappeared down the hallway of the cabin and Kira pulled her dress back over her bloomers and brazier. She decided to skip the corset this time, not in the mood to put herself through any more torture and not caring what her mother had to say. There was no one here to impress. Besides…

She didn't need it.

The moon shone a bright, pale yellow upon the visitors, a sharp contrast to the black night shores. Kira was growing more nervous by the minute. No one else seemed to be worried in the least, but they hadn't had the dream she had. Maybe her excitement had finally gotten to her…or maybe it was that last meal they'd had back home.

Kira's father was ecstatic. He'd waited for a long time to prove his worth to the company, and now he would have his proud name known for his efforts in founding a new city. He hoped to succeed Beraville's current status and bring this new city to the glory of Red Square.

Beraville was the small city that the Winchester family had been living outside of for a long time. Though it was civilized enough, it was couldn't even hold a match to the torch that was Red Square. The only thing the city, or rather the town, of Beraville had going for it was that they were paid for their exports of raw power. Beraville had a wealth of resources, specifically coal. Coal had only been discovered as a fuel source within the last seventy years; fortunately for the residents of Beraville, the first major deposit was discovered by one of their own.

A gold miner by the name of Samuel Perkins had hoped to get rich by taking his pickaxe into their own mountain range, and by chance, he had discovered a wealth of coal in the base of one of the cliffs. Soon after, workers were sent to see what they could dig up, and it so happened that they discovered hundreds of intricate tunnels buried within the rock. There must have been a landslide a long time ago; the system was of an intelligent design and was obviously set up for efficiency in mining the site. This was also taken as a sign of the previous civilizations, and soon became Beraville's claim to fame.

However, Mr. Winchester's company wanted to spread its influence, and they wanted to create a port on the shore opposite of Red Square City, where Beraville's goods could be exported. Their chief plan was to create a city-center at the foot of the mountains where they could spread out from Red Square, using the larger city as their base. They would start an urban revolution, picking up from where the old society had left off, and building upon that, eventually making more cities and branching out across the world. The next site would be across the Sleeping River, at the entrance to Great Desert Canyon.

And the Winchesters would get to be the start of it all.

Somehow, Kira wasn't at all impressed. They would just be spreading the same influence that had always existed as far as she knew, making up a society that she had already come to loathe. She wanted things to change, she really did. But she was a lady, and as she was she could not express her feelings on the topic. No, her father would be the leading influence here. Disappointment set in as she realized she would never get her fresh new start.

The caravan made its way across the plains and towards the mountains, a short line of people in a solemn parade like a surviving thread of ants once the hill has been flooded. They carried little with them, for they'd been assured that everything they would need would be found at their destination. There was Mr. Winchester and Carter, followed by Mrs. Winchester and Kira, who kept receiving scolding looks from her mother for lack of corset. Just behind Kira followed Madame Kroisse.

Kira really wished the woman hadn't been paid so much to follow them.

The household servants brought up the rear with guides in the front, back, and a few interspersed within the party. These guides would stay in a section of the mansion until the workers made their way through the mountains the next evening. Then the guides would leave on the same ship that had brought them here. The workers would set up their camp in the fields, working around the clock in shifts until a decent amount of construction was completed. But Kira wouldn't be allowed to talk with them, she was sure.

Crossing the moors, Kira began to dread their approach of the mansion; she hoped that she had been wrong about the dream. She hoped she wouldn't find the same thing she had found in the dream.

Kira hated it when she was right.

Well, maybe that wasn't true, but she wouldn't know because she was never acknowledged for her opinions. But she was definitely right about this, and it scared her. The mansion loomed up ahead, bathed in the same eerie moonlight from the beginning of the dream. She wished she could stop moving, but she was being drawn to it- they all were. And this time, the mansion was still.

"Have you ever seen something so captivating?" Carter asked his father.

Mr. Winchester chuckled and slapped his son on the back. "No, I don't believe I have!"

Kira agreed, but she wasn't about to say anything.

"They say," began the chief guide, "that when the survivors on this side of the ocean got together to form their place of refuge, that they tried to build their city on this side of the mountains."

"That makes sense to me," said Mr. Winchester. "The other side has a port, but this side has better access to the rest of the continent."

"But, Father…" stated Carter, "Red Square is the chief import center for Wutaian products. Their location works to their advantage."

"Ah, but when they started, they could not have known of Wutai's survival."

"The reason," continued the guide, "they had tried to settle here first was because that mansion a still standing sign of the old world."

"You mean it's that old?" Kira burst out. Her mother sent her a death glare.

The guide laughed a bit to himself. "Yes, my lady. The legends of the Great Disaster speak of mass destruction, explosives going off all over the world, machines attacking their owners. But somehow, this place survived while the rest of the world fell, save for the nation of Wutai, which never relied on the old technology. Never even kept any of it on their island." He nodded back towards the mansion. "They say it is over three thousand years old."

"They've dated it? What, pray tell, keeps it from falling apart?" asked Kira's father.

"That…is the mystery," said the guide. "Some say that the place is haunted. Others say that it was destroyed along with the rest of the world and it is merely a phantom."

Kira's eyes widened in fear.

"He's just telling ghost stories," said Mr. Winchester. "People from the company have been inside, taken care of the building. They can tell you that it's real and that there are no ghosts."

Looking up at the building, Kira wasn't convinced.

"I wonder then, how the building stays together?" the guide mused aloud, one end of his mouth curling up into a sly grin. Kira shivered in the night wind. "I can tell you one other thing that they say…"

Kira listened intently, while her father breathed a clipped laugh and rolled his eyes.

"They almost did settle here, and they would have too, except their people kept disappearing. Stories of phantoms and other strange occurrences made a legend out of the area. Stuff falling on people, dogs barking at nothing, cattle dying without cause…and that phantom rider…"

Kira's head shot up at that as they passed a bed of twisted metal sticking up from the ground and reached the huge double doors.

"Shall we go in?" asked the guide.

(A/N): This was kind of more background, but I hope you all enjoyed the dream sequence…

Okay, so he appeared in the beginning, but he'll make a real flesh appearance, and in front of Kira, next chapter. Really, he will! Actually, he appears a couple more times, if you pay attention to the detail in the dream and read into it…

Tell me what you think- I love to hear from you! As always, please leave me an e-mail address if your review is unsigned so that I can thank you!