Creepy Dream

 This afternoon (2-2-2011) I woke, truly terrified from the following dream:

I had been visiting someone at a 4-5 story apartment building.  It was a large cement structure with an external cement staircase.  Each landing in the staircase had a locked door leading to the apartment floor where all of the residents' personal apartment entrance was.  I was on the top floor and could clearly see over the city from where I stood on the landing; and this is where my dream began.  I do not know who I was visiting and have no recollection whatsoever before I passed through the door onto the landing to make my long descent to the street.

I stepped onto the landing, and as the door slowly closed behind me I turned to face the long flight of stairs before me.  Halfway through the last set of stairs, perhaps 8 stairs before me, I saw a haggard old woman ascending towards me.  She was not the least bit winded from the previous four and a half flights, and would surely complete this last flight without any effort at all.  She moved smoothly and steadily; but something about her strength or maybe it was her endurance that made me ill at ease.  I looked at her as she looked at me.  Milky black pools met my stare, and immediately I knew she was not natural.  In an instant I knew that I should lock the door to protect the residents, but the instant I had that thought, but before I could act; she said with a very stern voice "do not dare to lock that door."  I shuddered and grabbed my keys to lock it, my hands were shaking but I couldn't get the key into the lock.  She had reached my side before I could succeed and I stepped back to see what she would do to me for defying her; for trying to impede her progress; she walked past me and opened the door and slipped behind the narrowing gap as the door slowly closed behind her.

I turned to the stairs and quickly descended; or so I thought.  Dream skip.  I am walking down a hallway, much like I imagined the corridor to look behind the door I exited at the beginning of the dream.  I must be there.  I must be near the haggard old woman.  That thought was confirmed when I heard her say my name; not the name I answer to now, but the name I was given: Tammy.  I looked around to find the voice, but it seemed an ordinary hallway with apartment doors running the length of the wall to my right.  I kept walking until I was startled by an open doorway, it was dark, but I could see that right at the entrance was a spiral staircase descending into even more blackness.  It made me immediately ill.  There was the woman looking at me as she stood on a stair, having already begun her descent; she was looking up at me standing in the doorway.  I had another instant thought to shut the door, to shut her in; and again, before I could act; she sternly advised me: "You can not shut death's door."

I woke, completely horrified by the dream.  She (the old woman) had no interest in me, conversely; she was also NOT threatened by me either.  When she told me not to lock the door; I knew she was evil, so I was CERTAINLY going to try to lock the door!  I am not going to obey someone with evil intent...?  I am not sure what to think of it, it was more than the tacos I ate for breakfast.  very strange.