Nocturnal Behaviour part 47; Price of the Barrowed Time - part 1

All the characters in the dream are Disney characters.

They lived in town very much like Kokkola, with a disney twist. None the less, the towns name was Duckburg. All the friends for life lived on the same street, at the outskirts of the town.
Most of them lived at a large apartmentbuilding, built with red bricks. Next to that were the two buildings noted usually as the shame of the street. An old apartmentbuilding that had been sentenced to demolition by the court, but which had just stayed there, wasting away slowly. And right next to that house was a huge, cranky old theaterbuilding. Both buildings should have been torn down but the town had kinda forgotten them, and in a way the two, ramshackled buildings were a part of the streets atmosphere.
Goofys, Mickeys, Clarabelles, Donalds, Gladstone Ganders and Gyro Gearlooses children were good friends with each others, like their parents before them. They played on the streets, the nearby forests and in the schoolyards like any other children do.
Once Goofys son heard the bigger boys talking about something intriguing on their own street. The boys were talking about a haunted house, the old theater. The children gathered around, listening closely to the story, how you had to find the right way, through the old apartmenthouse, to the theater, and from there you had to find the staircase that lead to the attic. Two of the stairs were in a bad shape, rotten away by time and mold, and one should be aware of them.
When you finally got to the attic you had to crawl through a crumbled doorway, to a room at the end of the attic. And in that room, you had a view to the old dressing room, where the ghost haunted.

Goofys son was the oldest of the bunch. He said he wanted to do it, to go there and see that ghost. The bigger boys just laughed and went on their way. But the friends.. they sat down to talk and device a plan. They would have the guts to go there, they would surely find that way, if there was a way to find.
They would gather tomorrow, after the school on the play yard and start looking.

The children looked at the old, sadly ramshackled apartment building in the middays sunshine. Its whole yard had grown wild with bushes and grass and wines, and they half covered the once white picket fence. The paint had long faded and peeled in the unforgiving sunlight, leaving the deformed planks grey and colorless. All the windows were half boarded, and you could see the glasses had shattered behind the boards.
The journey begun at the large hole in the fence, leading the children to the one window you could climb into the house safely. The apartment building had once hostet several apartments, and was now devastated and hopelessly empty. The band of friends had to search for some time to find the way, with so much room to cover. There were some discarded, broken furniture and old, almost unrecodnizeable items lying around the rooms, forgotten and left behind by the people that had once lived there.

It was Donalds twins that found the narrow door that lead to the theater, in a old dressing room, in one apartment. The children sneaked in, tension building in. They had found the way! Would the story of the ghost be true too? Suppose no one really thought about it thoroughly, because they all wanted to find the attic.
The old theater was a huge place. And even more badly devastated as the apartmentbuilding. The big rooms were filled with almost unregodnizeable mounts of old seats, benches, tables, old stagegears, props, dust, fabrics and cobwebs that hang from the cringing ceiling boards and almost broken off lamps. There were stacks of old handbills and stageplay backupcopies and old manuscripts of the plays.
The shadows were already running long when the children found a safe way to the staircase that lead to the attic. No one really noticed, the adrenaline was rushing in their ears, whispering of adventures. Two of the stairs had to be skipped, they could see them clearly, as the boards had wasted away, revealing darknes under the staircase.

The atticfloor was mainly a huge frontspace, the end of the wall had several halfly boarded up windows, the glass stained with dust. The children sneaked a look through down to the street, that seemed to be a world away from this dreamlike, odd place.
Mickeys son noticed it first.
"Look, the sun is setting already."
They all froze, fear beginning to brew. Felt like the whole building would have woken to a malicious life. Everyone could feel the hair in their necks standing up. There was something. A presence. Like someone was watching them. Shadows in the corners grew darker, the old stuff seemed to creep a little closer. Walls were creaking and the roof was banging in the wind. A whispering, lingering sounds seemed to float throught the space.
"Lets get out of here. The boys told that no one was supposed to go here at dark." They all were afraid, even Goofys son. But he was the oldest, the biggest, and he surely wouldnt be called a chicken.
"We came this far. IM going to go to that room, IM going to see if there is a ghost there."
The confidence of the biggest spread through the others too and they all agreed to go. They found the partly collapsed doorway at the back of the space, and one by one the children crawled through it to the next room. The room was small and threathningly empty, it had no windows, the only thing in there was a old painting, hanging from a wall. The painting portraited a figure, that had its eyes torn into peeping holes.

Goofys son beconed the others closer, looming closer to the holes, pushing his face to the painting, taking a look, being more brave than he actually felt.

The room was an old dressing room. Clearly the same room the boys had told about. There was a mirrortable, with all kinds of jars and bottles, covered in dust. On the stool was a pile of discarded clothes, dusty and half eaten away by time and moths. On the old cuppoard were several wigs, resting on faceless dummyheads. Old outfits from long forgotten shows were resting on broken and cobwebbed mannequins around the room. The threath in the air seemed to grow heavier.
On a broken bed were many old dolls, some sitting, some lying around, made of all kinds of materials, expressionless button eyes staring into emptiness.
There was also a realsized marionette doll hanging from its strings from a roof bar.
It was a girldoll, with a faded and ragged, once blue balletdress on. Beautiful, blond hair had been curled to big waves around the head. The wooden face had perhaps once been shiny and polished, now they were faded and somehow lost all expression. The glasseyes in the eyesockets had once been lovely blue, now they were milky and terrible to see, peering blindly into the room, surrounded by dusty lashes.

Goofys son felt the fear gripping his heart, rounding his chest. The marionette was pretty, but still terrible. He wasnt even able to gasp when the marionette started to slowly dance, dangling from the strings. Its jointed chin started to fall and rise slowly, as the marionette started to sing and old, melancholic loveballad from an long forgotten play. Slowly the marionette twisted and turned, its limbs moving in their joints silently, the ragged dress moving ghostlike in the air in the midsts of the movements. The others could hear the song too.
It told a story of a young girls love, of a man who died tragic death, of the girl, dying of a broken heart.
Slowly the children realised the sorrowfull song wasnt the only sound they were hearing in the attic.
Inbetween the words there was a low murmur, whispering of a hatefull voice, curses and threaths of murders and torture, sick rites and sacrificial deaths. As the children begun to understand the terrible words, the voice seemed to grow louder.

Panic stuck like a lightning. Donalds twins were the first to reach the collapsed doorway, screaming as they went. The voice had grown, booming like a terrible growl, filling space and mind alike. The walls were trembling, the air weighed a ton. Mickeys son reached the doorway before Goofys son, who had half frozen, looking the marionette from the peeping holes. As Goofys son finally turned, the whole attic shook and he fell on the floor. Mickeys son streached his arm through the doorway, realising it was moving towards the floor unnaturally slow, closing the way out of the room.
Goofys sons scream was shrill with terror as it came through the floor and pulled him under, and everyone heard it even through all the noice.

The remaining children escaped through the dark theater and apartmentbuilding, filled with horror and panic.