I killed a man once.
Almost forty years ago today, in the year of our Lord 1987, I travelled to Portland, Oregon with my brother’s family. My brother was then living in Seattle with his wife and their newborn daughter, Jessica. They had a nice house between Seattle and Tacoma, and I was visiting them along with my young niece, who was my brother’s daughter from a previous relationship. We had flown into the USA, making a stopover in Chicago before completing the journey to Seattle. I liked going to see my brother because he was 18 years older than me and we had not really grown up together.
We were visiting his wife’s family, who lived in Portland, and were to stay overnight in her parents’ house. The family was rich, and their house was huge. It had a grand entrance, very high ceilings, a huge staircase in the center of the house, and a grand kitchen. They even had a swimming pool in the back garden. Looking back as an adult, the architecture was a boastful early 20th century display of wealth and taste. For a 15-year old Icelandic boy, this was the coolest house I had ever been in.
The night we arrived, they ordered pizza for everybody and rented a new movie on VHS called When Harry Met Sally. The evening went great, the pizza tasted good and the movie was funny and entertaining. After the movie was over, we were shepherded up to the second floor, where they had prepared the bedrooms for us to sleep overnight. It was a simple setup: a small bed for me with a blanket. Good enough, I thought. I was tired and soon fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was alone in the bedroom. My brother and his family were gone. I called out for my brother, but he didn’t answer me. I could see a faint light in the hallway coming from under the door. I went into the hallway, and the carpet was now thick and white, like something from the late 1960s. The hallway looked mostly the same as it had the night before, but it now had ruby-red wallpaper. I walked around to the other bedrooms to find the others and ask where my brother and his family had gone. I knocked on the door of the next bedroom, but there was no answer. I knocked again and called out to them. Nothing. I tried the other bedrooms as well. Still nothing. I decided to open the doors and look inside. There was no one there, and the beds had not been slept in.
This was strange, very strange. Where is everyone? I called out in English as loud as I could: “HELLO! HELLO… WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE… ARE… YOU?” Then I heard some noise coming from downstairs. I called out “Hello!” and walked towards the staircase. I heard someone coming up the stairs. The stairway hall was dark, with only pale moonlight shining through the windows. Heavy footsteps were moving fast. “Hello?” I said. “Who is it?” No one answered, but the footsteps sounded closer now. I could see the dark shape of a large man coming up the stairs. He could see me now too. “Hello?” I said. “Where is everyone?” He didn’t answer me and apparently wasn’t planning to. Then he reached the top of the stairs, and I could see him clearly.
I could see that he was a tall, burly man in his late thirties with thinning black hair. He was wearing black pants, a white shirt, and brown shoes. He stopped for a brief moment at the top of the stairs and looked at me. I could see the surprise on his face as he looked me up and down. He also seemed to be checking around me, almost as if to see if I was alone. His expression looked mean and angry, almost hateful. His head was tilted slightly forward, his mouth closed, his eyebrows furrowed in attack mode, and his nostrils were flared as he breathed heavily.
“Have you seen the others? Do you know where they went?” I asked him. He looked a bit startled by the question, but then he started walking very fast toward me. I spoke to him again: “Sir, are you okay? What is your name?” No answer. Instead, he came right up to me and tried to grab me. I jolted back from him and yelled, “Get off me! What the fuck is wrong with you?” He kept coming and tried to grab me again, so I pushed him away and ran down the hallway. The hallway was a long corridor that ended in a large bathroom. We had used that bathroom the night before. It had white tiles on the floor, green tiles on the walls, two sinks, and seemed intended for a large family. The toilet area was separate, and an old bathtub sat in the corner by the windows. By instinct, I ran for the bathroom so I could lock myself in and lock him out. I was running now, and the man was running after me. I was younger and faster than him, and he was much heavier and therefore slower. I looked back at one point when I was getting close to the bathroom, he was maybe ten yards behind me.
I flew into the bathroom and locked the door in a flash. The man ran straight into the bathroom door, but it held. He slammed into it again, and it still held. I frantically looked around for anything to use as a weapon. I had no plan, and he seemed seconds away from getting inside. I flung open all the cupboards. The bottom drawers by the floor had some old things in them, cleaning supplies and scraping tools. He started to kick the door, and I could see it beginning to give way. He was almost inside and would be in a few moments to harm me or kill me.
Fuck that, I thought to myself. I ripped out the rest of the stuff in the drawer, and suddenly a screwdriver and an old kitchen knife popped out. They dropped on the floor in front of me. I grabbed the knife in my right hand and the screwdriver in my left. I stood up right away and faced the bathroom door, ready for whatever was coming. The door crashed open as the large man kicked it in with all his might. He stormed inside the bathroom and made an attempt to grab my head. My instinct for self-preservation was now fully in control. I countered his attack with the kitchen knife in my hand. I yelled at him and swung the knife over my head at the same time as I dropped down to prevent him from grabbing my hair. The power of my swing came from pure terror and maximum adrenaline. Before I knew it, the man stopped moving and stood there for a few seconds, completely still. It was then that I saw the kitchen knife had gone vertically into his open mouth and through his head. The blade stood straight through the man’s front teeth, and the tip protruded out the back of his skull. He didn’t look good. Then he fell to his right onto the floor.
The next thing I know, I am in bed. This time I woke up for real. It had all been a dream. A very strange and vivid dream. This wasn’t like any dream I had had before, nor since, for that matter. The dream had felt very real. Too real. Something bad had happened in this house. At breakfast, the entire family was sitting there eating. I curiously asked if someone had died in this house. They said no, no one had died in the house. I asked again if they were sure no one had died there. They said no again. I told them I had suffered a nightmare during the night. They said that people had heard me calling something out in Icelandic. I told them that someone had been murdered in that house, but they brushed it off and told me again that no one had died there. Then we all went along with our day as normal. I did not bring the matter up again with the family. They were all nice to me, and we said our happy goodbyes at noon. After that, we travelled back to Seattle. Despite what they all said, I am sure that someone was murdered in that house, on the second floor, by that man. The man that I had killed in my dream. I could feel it. I can still feel it.
A.G. Munson
