Dead Man In a Tree

Date: 12/16/2020

My parents and I and another family we knew were involved in some sort of cult. There were special locations throughout the country, and we would travel around activating them (I’m not exactly sure what that meant). Every time we heard of one, we’d gather at my family’s house, prepare all the materials we needed, then all get into their minivan and go to the special location. In the dream this was something I had done a million times, but this particular day we were going to an especially powerful/scary place, and I was terrified. I was at home. My mom was telling me about a dead body she had found in the woods near our house (in real life the “woods” are just a small tree-filled vacant lot, but in the dream, it was a big forest, with a biking trail going through it). She said that the neighbors (in the dream a creepy old couple we didn’t talk to much) wanted to investigate it with my parents. I really didn’t want to be involved with that, so I was glad I would be at school when they did it. I was in an enormous building. I know that I had gotten there with some other people, but i don’t know where they were. I was exploring the building. The part I was in appeared to be a factory, and there were massive pools of melted metal just in the floor with no barriers around them, which I had to constantly dodge. Then I went into another area, which my friend (I was with my friend now) told me used to be a laboratory where they did unethical experiments on animals, and was now rumored to be haunted. There were a lot of people, tourists it seemed, walking through the halls and looking around. There were several exhibits with living animals (I remember one cage that held dog-sized lions, which in the dream was normal) and I asked my friend why there were still animals there if the laboratory had been shut down. Then it appeared as though the laboratory hadn’t been shut down, because it was suddenly full of researchers instead of tourists. My friend and I went through several hallways trying to find our way out. My friend asked one of them where the exit was, and she said “there’s a bay window at the back” (which isn’t an exit, but that wasn’t a problem in the dream). Then I saw a staircase behind us going down. My friend asked me, “basement or bay window?” and I chose basement. It was the wrong choice, though, because the basement was completely pitch-black, so we climbed up again. The researcher we had asked kind of stared at us, since we had just asked her for directions and then gone in the exact wrong direction, but we walked past her. As we kept walking, the building turned into a middle school. We made it outside onto a big playing field, where my friend was looking for her brother to walk him home. At this point it was late afternoon, nearly sunset. She didn’t find him, so we left. By this time I could sense that something was wrong, so I suggested that my friend come home with me instead of going to her house alone. I guess I thought I could protect her better or something. As we were walking along the river, there was a massive earthquake and we were thrown into the water. A line of enormous stones rose in the center of the river, and I’m pretty sure they were singing? My friend and I were thrashing around, trying not to drown, and suddenly a man riding a horse with glowing orange eyes rode straight at us on the water. We were at home, and perfectly dry. I told my friend it wasn’t safe for her to go home tonight, and she’d have to sleep in my room. I apologized for the state of my room (it was messy in the dream, like it is in real life) and told her I would put down an air mattress. Then I pointed out the window at the neighbors house and said, “the people who live there are creepy. Don’t ever talk to them.” I went into my moms room and asked her what the hell happened. She told me that she, my dad, and the neighbor couple had gone down into the woods that morning, but my dad bailed and the neighbors were looking a little uncertain, “So, of course, it was my job to keep them all on track”. She had cut into the hollow tree where the body was and found “a surprisingly-pristine bowl of Women’s Health magazines” (I remember the exact phrasing), a tube of some unidentifiable orange goo, and the body. She pointed to the tube that was sitting on her desk. I picked it up, opened it, and squeezed a little out, but it didn’t stop and just kept pouring goo onto my mom’s desk. I got a little on my finger and it burned really painfully, even after I ran to the bathroom and washed it off. My mom was panicking and asked if I needed to go to the emergency room, and my dad was assuring her it was fine. I returned to my room incredibly rattled, and the first thing I found was a piece of paper I had never seen before taped to a shelf. It looked like it had been cut from a comic book, and it just contained a pair of eyes staring down at me. I panicked and thought it had been put there by my parents or the creepy couple to watch me, so I picked it up and put it in the trash can, then realized it could still watch me if it was still in my room, so I decided to put it in the kitchen trash. I was watching TV on my laptop on the floor of my bedroom. The show I was watching was Phineas and Ferb, but it was the last season, which in the dream was known for being very dark in tone and featuring Isabella rather than the titular brothers. At one point Isabella sat down to watch TV, and on the news were two men talking about the invention of a new substance that could bring back the dead. It was a goo in a clear tube just like my mom had on her desk, but it was purple. Nevertheless I was sure it was the same stuff used to resurrect the dead man in the tree.