The Dream is a story about a woman who has a strange dream, and soon the sequences of her dream start becoming a reality. The story appears in Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill your Bones. It was one of the many stories adapted for the 2019 film adaptation.
The first title card depicts the Pale Lady leaning over Lucy Morgan's bed. The second title card depicts Lucy Morgan walking upstairs inside of her home
Plot
Lucy Morgan was an artist. She spent a week painting in a small country town and decided that the next day she would move on. She would go to a village called Kingston.
But that night Lucy Morgan had a strange dream. She dreamed that she was walking up a dark, carved staircase and entered a bedroom. It was an ordinary room except for two things. The carpet was made up of large squares that looked like trapdoors. And each of the windows was fastened shut with big nails that stuck up out of the wood.
In her dream Lucy Morgan went to sleep in that bedroom. During the night a woman with a pale face and black eyes and long black hair came into the room. She leaned over the bed and whispered, “This is an evil place. Flee while you can.” When the woman touched her arm to hurry her along, Lucy Morgan awakened from her dream with a shriek. She lay awake the rest of the night trembling.
In the morning she told her landlady that she decided not to go to Kingston after all. “I can’t tell you why,” she said, “but I can’t go there.”
“Then why don’t you go to Dorset?” said the landlady. “It’s a pretty town, and it isn’t too far.”
So Lucy Morgan went to Dorset. Someone told her she can find a room in a house at the top of the hill. It was a pleasant-looking house, and the landlady there, a plump, motherly woman, was nice as could be. “Let’s look at the room,” she said. “I think you will like it.”
They walked up a dark, carved staircase, like the one in Lucy’s dream. “In these old houses the staircases are all the same,” said Lucy. But when the landlady opened the door to the bedroom, it was the room in her dream, with the same carpet that looked like trapdoors and the same windows fastened with big nails.
“This is just a coincidence,” said Lucy.
“How do you like it?” asked the landlady.
“I’m not sure,” she said.
“Well, take your time,” said the landlady. “l'Il bring up some tea while you think about it.”
Lucy sat on the bed staring at the trapdoors and the big nails. Soon there was a knock on the door. “It’s the landlady with the tea,” she said.
But it wasn’t the landlady. It was the woman with the pale face and the black eyes and the long black hair. Lucy Morgan grabbed her things and fled.
References in other media
The Pale Lady appears in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark film, where she terrorizes Chuck Steinberg.