I can say this now, as an adult, without it sounding arrogant: I was never a fearful child. In fact, I had always thought myself to be the bravest among my friends: the first to leap and to fall at the behest of an enthralling adventure. I was always the first to tempt the fates, pressing a foot over the threshold of a house, long thought haunted. On one sleepy, rainy, occasion, to be the only one of my friends to stick my arm into the gaping chasm of a twisted, rotting tree, unsure of what horror my fingers might pull from deep within its bowels.
But, despite my bravery, I had always had an affinity for sleeping in my parent's bed. A dark bedroom, cast in slow moving tufts of shadow, was nothing for me to fear. I felt comforted by the warmth and weight of my parents sandwiching my tiny body. Like a valley hidden between mountains, they shielded me from all offenses as I slept.
As an adult, I can now admit that I enjoyed these nights more than any other. Tucked away like a secret, listening to the heavy breaths of sleep rising and falling like a slow moving fall wind, twisting and twining its way into my bones. My mother emitting shuttering breaths every so often baiting my falling eyelids to snap open, suddenly alert to a shift in sound within the room, only to have them fall shut again. Slowly. Sleepily. Into the land of sweet dreams that often associated with childhood.
But, the next sound that jostled me awake was something different. It wasn’t the sound of long, dreary breathing, or the rustle of sheets as my parent's bodies twisted and turned beneath their shelter. It was a hum. A soft hum, like the haunting melody from the refrigerator seemingly, only ever sung at night. The soft hum, and the downward cast of warm breath kissing my cheeks.
That night, my eyes tugged open slowly, the blackness of the room brimmed with the shadows of flickering streetlights outside the windows, burning brightness into the dark like a magnifying glass amplifying the already harsh luminescent. The fractured haze of the clock on the dresser across the room was a bright blue beacon, measuring dreams in minutes and hours. My eyes fell on its digital imprint.
2:47 AM.
A soft yawn caught my throat, the lingering shimmer of sleep daring to pull me back toward it. But, the sound was out of place; Strange enough that I turned my head, slightly, in either direction. My father’s back faced me. The covers tugged up to his chin, a scrabble of curly black hair peeking from beneath. My mother’s eyes were closed, her mouth ajar, deep breaths encouraging the bellowing rise and fall of her chest as she slumbered. Surely, it was one of them. The warm breathing and the soft hum filling my dreams as I fell back to sleep. The next morning, my parents and I rose in the same uneventful manner as we usually did— with the false shock and feigned surprise they emitted in finding me tucked away in their bed. And the quickly disposed of interest as to why I was so fond of sleeping in their room. I just smiled my biggest smile, rubbing my eyes to add to the cuteness, and all complaints and concerns fell in the wake of the mention of breakfast.
That night, my parents went through the motions of tucking me into my bed, despite knowing it would only be a few hours before I slipped in with them. My room was a bright, wondrous thing. The walls were a soft, mint green that caught the sunlight as it spilled in through my windows at sunrise. And, at night, dousing it all in a darkness that seemed to glow when moonlight pressed in against the paint. Toys and childhood epithets of all shapes and sizes littered corners and shelves. Most of them were torn and one-eyed and ragged from old age and overuse. But, I loved them all the same. Speckles of starlight glittered against my ceiling, the soft bog of a nightlight casting an ominous glow across my floor, igniting beady, black eyes and bright tutus carefully doused in glitter.
My room was my haven. It had never been a dangerous place for me. Sleep always came quickly, under the dutiful watch of my nightlight and my favorite stuffed dinosaur, T-Roar. But still, I found myself waking only an hour or so into my slumber, sneaking past soft and quiet toys for the sanctity of my parent's bedroom. Not out of genuine fear, but with the disillusion that they’d disappear in the middle of the night or evaporate during the waning hours of sleeping and waking. It was an irrational fear, I know that now, but my concern nonetheless. A child’s fear. And it was my job, as their daughter and dutiful protector to guard them as they slept, from all things wicked.
My room was the place where my parents had taken years and breaths and whispered that they loved me, before tucking me in. It was the fortress that shielded my young imagination from the harshness of reality. Above all, my bedroom was my space. My parent's bed, I shared with them, but in my room, I was the queen.
And still, I crept in slowly that night, making sure to close the door with near silent precision before crossing the room to slither up into the bed. Sliding under the covers, I let out a content sigh, allowing sleep to pull me back into its depths, once again.
The hum woke me again. This time, it was louder and more pressing. Falling awake, my lips chapped and my throat dry, I breathed in an exhale of warmth, harsher than the night before, forcing itself into my lungs. It made me cough, breathing in something so severe.
I sat up in bed sharply, the room cast in near total darkness save for the glow that habitually leaked in from outside that, like a cat slinking over a ledge. I stared at it for a moment, a shudder racking my skin as the warm air bubble popped above me, sending heat trickling down my skin like an egg had been cracked into my hair.
I cast my interest upward, staring into the blackness that hung strung above the bed. The room was dark, but soft thistles of light gave way to the distortion in the pitch black. The spot above my parent’s bed was black. Blacker than black. So dark that a shadowless, lightless closet would have trembled in its presence. Darker than the corners of the basement. It was like looking into the universe, devoid of stars.
I rubbed my eyes slowly, my body inhaling slowly and exhaling harshly as the spots dispersed from my vision to reveal that black hollow that hung overhead. It was motionless, like everything else at night. The only disturbances in our house being the soft moan and creak of the house's bones as it tussled, entrapped in its sort of sleep, the chorus of my mother’s soft snores, and the midnight explorations of our fat tabby cat, Sebastian.
But, surely, there was nothing too different about that darkness. It was night time, and I knew that at night, all the shadows seemed to come to life. Piles of clothing took the form of a hunched, gnarled creatures, sliding so slowly across the floor that it barely seemed to move at all. That the dresser, from this odd angle, looked much like a cave, the mouth open and hungry, waiting to swallow any little girls who happened upon its path. But these were just silly things. Stupid nighttime things, as my father called them. Because, as he’d told me before he’d stuck a nightlight into the wall in my bedroom, there was no such thing as monsters. And even if there were, they wouldn’t be interested in a brave girl like me.
So, with barely any effort, I went back to sleep. The warm breath the emanated from above lapping at my cheeks as I closed my eyes, tentatively.
The following night, I woke with more of a start. The warm breath of air I’d fast grown accustomed to, hit me like a slap in the face. Shocked and shaking, I sat up, glancing toward my parents, completely unperturbed by the shake of the bed.
The hum was back. Louder than ever. A throng of bass twanging beneath the long murmur of noise, like a baritone, slowly chiming into a song, rising toward the climax with thunderous speed.
Louder and louder and LOUDER.
My head started to spin.
The room was warm. Warmer than usual. The baked breath of the wind that had teased my face for the past few nights had grown into a fog of heat, permeating with such ferocity that the windows, across the room, were misted over.
Drawing in a breath, I tried to steady myself as well as my young mind knew how. I grabbed the covers, my fingers curling into it as it rose and fell, wanting nothing more than to be free of its restriction.
Struggling to move, I discovered that I was trapped. My father’s weight pinned the blankets on one side. My mother, on the other. The only way out was up.
Wiggling, I wormed my way from beneath the constraints of winter comforts. My hands grasped the headboard as I struggled to pull myself completely free.
The humming suddenly stopped.
But it wasn’t the abrupt halt of the sound that caused fear to swell in my brain.
It was the gooey, thick to the touch substance that, back then, I could only equate to store bought slime. It met the underside of my hand, just as my fingers curled against the headboard.
I pulled my hand back quickly. My gaze cut through the darkness, trying to distinguish between the sticky substance that lathered my hand, slipping between my digits like irritating fabric and the grim darkness that dressed my skin. But nothing came to mind. The only thing I could think was that maybe the cat had gone number two on the headboard and I had just had the distinct misfortune of putting my hand down in that exact spot.
Bravely smelling it, I cringed, vomit pushing up my throat as quickly as I could swallow it back down. The substance was vile. It was a lot like the smell of garbage that had been left to fester beneath the blistering summer sun for hours. Or, like my Great Uncle John after he finished throwing the ball around with his dog, Pudge. Whatever the smell was, it made my nose burn like nothing I had felt before. And, I knew, that it was most certainly not cat poop.
I let out a miserable moan. I hollowed my mouth and breathed in, desperate for the taste of a fresh, fall gust of air, to come traipsing through the window. But, the window was closed and I was still there, stuck, between my sleeping parents, suffocating with every breath that I drew.
I was sure I was going to die. That my parents would find me come morning, smothered by parental affection and the thick blankets that my mother always pulled out of the closet, come the end of summer. Even when the last dregs of the season lingered, the blankets were tossed over every bed, weighing down thin mattresses with expectations of a colder-than-normal, winter. And it was there, wrapped in accidental affection and some foul smell, that they would find me. DEAD!
I rolled where I sat, shimmying down, first, and then rolling onto my stomach, using my arms and legs and to push me upward and free of my prison. My back facing the ceiling, I felt the warm, rank air start to thicken, my head cranking up to come face-to-face with its source.
It was black. Blacker than black. Like the sky, if every light and every star had gone out. But it was moving, like tar, slow across the ceiling, the only semblance of light, or features coming from the gaping hole lined with sharp, pointed teeth, all white and gleaming and cutting through the darkness like daggers. Like… fingers in front of a flashlight. Like, something I had never seen before.
It moved, slow and deliberate, the mouth heaving heavily, its teeth vibrating beneath the pressure. The only real source of light, filtering in from the window, catching me on all fours in the bed, between unknowing, sleeping parents, staring into a hollow, hungry chasm lined with jagged teeth and the soft, ringing hum that I had grown to hate, ringing from somewhere deep in its… throat?
I choked back a scream— swallowed it, and tried to force my mind to disregard the urge only because I wasn’t stupid. I had seen movies. I had heard campfire stories. When faced with an impossible creature of unknown origin and ambiguous intent, the last thing I wanted to do was scream.
But still, I was just a kid, barely through elementary school. So, the scream came up like vomit, my hand shooting over my mouth to muffle it, the foul smell causing thick tears to cloud my eyes.
I watched through watery vision as the creature moved against the ceiling, no discernible features aside from that broad, angry mouth that twitched and hollowed around each long, breathy hum. Long strips of what I could only guess was saliva, slipped along my cheeks. Chills shook me from my toes to my fingers as I let an arm support my weight. It started to tremble beneath me, threatening to collapse me back into the safety of the blankets I’d been so eager to escape.
My would-be screams turned to whimpers and the creature squirmed. Could it hear me? Or see me? If it had eyes, I couldn’t tell. It was just black….
I shut my eyes hard; half convinced it was only a dream. That would have been the only reasonable explanation, even to a child of few years and even fewer real world experiences. Monsters are made for stories, but this was real life. So, whatever it was that hung above me had to be some figment of my imagination. It was the only reasonable explanation.
Opening one eye, I could see the outline of the black monster, vibrating against the ceiling, its body turning and oozing until a funnel of it started to drip downward.
Both eyes opened as, I shrieked, pulling myself back into the bed, a shaking hand gripping my mother’s arm with enough force that she should have woken. But she didn’t. She slept soundly, her noisy breathing being drowned out by the sloshing ripple and flow of the monster's body as it slouched downward.
Thinner and thinner. Closer and closer. The smell grew. The hum became a near scream. It was loud enough that I could feel my skin vibrate as it came closer.
I grabbed my father’s arm, but he rolled away, mumbling curtly before falling back into the dreariness of deep sleep.
That was it. I was even more sure of it— That was how I would die. Smothered to death, not by pillows or love, but by the black blob that had spawned from the ceiling. And, like a nightmare, it inched closer, my body unable to resist the scurry of whimpers and soft trickles of screams that my throat let free.
Closer now. So close I could see that the black was not ooze, but fur. Fur so dark that I could only imagine I’d instantly become lost inside of it if it dared to touch me.
Closer.
CLOSER.
So close now, that the smell made my head spin.
I pinched my eyes shut, the fur grazed my cheek as I laid on my back, flat on the bed, atop the blankets, and trembling as a stream of warmth slid down my leg and up my back.
The humming was too loud. It flooded my ears. I could hear it more clearly. And, the creature, from its mouth or its fur or whatever limbs or muscles or skin composed its body, spoke.
“Sleep.” It commanded.
And not another breath or syllable or touch of bristly fur against my face was needed to usher me into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning, I didn’t wake until my mother woke me.
I opened my eyes, the events of the night before nearly lost like a quickly forgotten dream. It was only when I heard her calm, concerned voice asking, “Love, did you wet the bed again?” I knew it hadn’t been a dream. Nor a figment of my imagination. But a nightmare made lucid and real with breath so foul and fur so black that I feared it crept into the corners of the room, waiting for me to stumble upon it. I sat up too quickly, knocking my head against my mothers, sending her off the bed with a flurry of curses.
“S-Sorry, mom.” I whimpered, embarrassment heating my cheeks.
“It’s okay…” She sighed, calmly. Always calm. Always sweet. Surely, she would believe me. “Another nightmare?”
I nodded, unsure at first. I didn’t know why I was lying, but I did it inherently like it was as natural as breathing. Maybe, because I knew that telling my Mom about a nightmare that had been so real to me, would only be dismissed as the result of an ‘over-active imagination’ or ‘childhood foolishness.'
After all, kids were silly and foolish and did and said ridiculous things just for the sake of it.
Whatever that was that I had seen— felt, couldn’t have been real. I slept in my parent's bed to protect them and not to quell my fears. I was too brave and too resilient to let my nightmares get the best of me.
But, the rest of the day seemed to drag on painfully slow, hurtling toward the inevitable moments of sleep that would take me when night fell. I had decided, before lunch, that I would sleep in my bed. That whatever nightmares threatened the sanctity of my parent's bedroom wouldn’t be interested in following me to my room where I was the queen and wholly impervious to the threat of monsters.
And so, I laid down in silence, a dawn of energy saving light flickering through the crack in my doorway. The beam dispersed behind the clouded figures of my parents moving about the house while they spoke intensely about adult things. All the while, I nestled beneath my covers, the ones from the storage closet, waiting to see if my nightly tormentor would arrive, seething across my bedroom ceiling.
I woke slowly. The ill-tempered, malformed monster slimed and inched across my ceiling, soft whispers breaching through in a language I had never heard before. It wasn’t the English, to which I was accustomed, or even the sultry quickness of Spanish that I heard around me every single day. It was dark. And hard. And it was a sound that seemed only right coming from a monster comprised entirely of darkness.
I closed my eyes hard, figuring the sight for an illusion. My bedroom was my safe space, after all. My room was off limits, especially to fat, greasy monsters that tormented me both inside and outside of my dreams.
Fear gave way to anger as I shot up in my bed, the covers and blankets avalanching downward into a haphazard pile on my lap. My hand shot up as I gathered all my bravery and pointed at the thing glaringly. I opened my mouth. My words were hollow as they strung along hot-headed temperance, “YOU! You’re not supposed to be here!” My voice was a hurried whisper, as not to alert my parents. I kept it short and to the point, lest I’d lose my courage.
The growth shifted and twinned, shying away from the wiggle of my finger like a scolded puppy. It heaved and moaned, black, thick limbs absorbing into the form until it was just a heap of black.
Feeling my courage plateau, I rounded my lips around the start of another harsh sentence when it shifted… strangely.
It dripped from the center, half of its darkness swelling into a drop, like the last strained leak from a disabled faucet. It moved unnaturally, even for of it, as the black furry skin started to shudder like static. The hum it carried grew louder as it moved closer.
My entire body froze, my eyes locked upward as the droplet shaped ooze spread. It stretched thin and wide before it fell at the sides, cocooning me where I sat in my bed. All the courage I’d felt before and the pride I’d felt in watching it shy away, dissolved into little more than a painful rumble in the pit of my stomach.
It draped around me in sheets, shadowing the fading light that spread through my bedroom window. Curtains upon curtains of the blackness fell, steadily dimming the light until it doused me in complete darkness. I drew a hard breath, the smell and taste of the monster filling my lungs. I blinked back the sting of the stench. I finally let my hand fall, snatching at the blankets and tugging them tightly over my body, a protective shield between me and the darkness that had eaten me whole.
“It’s not real. It’s just a dream. Just a dream…” I felt myself gasp. My heart hammered in my chest, a stampede of hooves like in the old westerns my father watched when no one else had claimed the television. My heart was steady, but I wished that it would let me ride it far, far, far, away from this…. Whatever it was. “Just a dream. Just a dream…”
The sloshing and swirling faded. Through the hard-woven fibers of the blanket, I could see only black surrounding me. Swallowing hard, I inched the covers from over my head, curling them just above my nose. Just enough to take a peek.
The darkness persisted, but what I saw lingering in it almost made my heart stop.
A face. So white that it shined through the darkness, glared at me. It was close, but it looked far away, beady red eyes cutting through the white like strikes of lightning slipping through a cloud. Its mouth was broad and gaping, filled with rows of sharp, jagged teeth. Its tongue lapped at its canines hungrily leaving a string of black ooze to drip from the sharpened points.
Cringing, I tried to tug the blankets upward, but they wouldn’t move!
Caught on something. My foot, maybe? Or… something else, entirely?
Inhaling roughly, my entire body shuddered through each breath, a tremble shaking my gaze, my fingers lost all their strength, failing to fight with the blanket as something tugged at it in opposition.
“No… Let it go,” I pleaded. I knew it was the monster. It’s yapping mouth opening and closing, red eyes taunting me.
My eyes moved downward, the light from its face illuminating its tendril fingers as they gathered my blanket into its palm. Four impossibly long fingers.
I had no idea what to do! Whatever this was, it was real. I could see it and taste it and smell it in the air. It had haunted me in my parent's room, but even in there, it had never come this close. I was trapped within it, listening to the rustle of its fluid skin turning over and shifting in the darkness around me. I was stuck inside of it, and I was too afraid to even to touch it. I couldn’t pretend that I was brave anymore.
Or, maybe, it was my fault? Being brave had brought it closer. Talking to it had only seemed to agitate it. I should have told my mother. I should have warned her. I should have just stayed in my parent's bed where the thing could be seen but had never dared to come this close.
The face drew closer, swaying like a dangling marionette, dislocated from any sense of structure. It hung in the darkness as the moon. My eyes were attracted to the full mouth where its teeth hung, strung like lanterns against a deep, dark abyss.
It was going to eat me. I knew it. I was so sure of it.
I pinched my eyes shut, a warm stream tickled the insides of my legs, moistening the sheets, again. But the discomfort was nothing compared to the shocking burn of its hot breath exhaling against my face.
“It’s not real. It’s not real,” I told myself, my voice barely higher than a church mouse.
“I. Am. REEeeaaAAllLL,” it seethed, each word falling like heavy footsteps in the dark, set to echo endlessly, rumbling through my body in slow-moving waves.
I opened my eyes, the blinding whiteness of the creatures face in full form only inches from my own. A flat, almost featureless, white face. Its wide mouth stretched into a sinister smile that took up half of its face. Its eyes, merely slits were long and a dull, hard red, like a drop of dried blood. Black dripped from between its teeth, the skin of its face to flat and stretched even, to give it lips.
A scream caught in my throat, itching all the way down to my lungs. The smell of the monster's breath was enough to make me gag, but no noise or reflex moved through my body. I sat there, still as a tree on a windless night. My eyes were wide. My heart so loud now that it was the only thing that I could hear. What should have been the warm press of wet pajama pants only felt cold against my skin.
That was it. I was dead. I was so, so, SO, dead.
And then, the monster did something terrible.
Its mouth stretched open wide as a cavern, its black tongue lapping wildly at its teeth like waves cresting against a restless, rocky, cove. Wider and wider it opened until its mouth had stretched clear across its disembodied face.
Leaning forward, it hummed and chuckled as it swallowed me whole, from head to torso and then further. Swallowing me until the darkness became dizzying. My feet flipped over my head as I toppled endlessly. My heart ceased hammering, and my eyes pinched shut. Everything went silent. And dark.
The soft kiss of sunlight sprinkled through my window was my saving grace. Safe in my bed, the first peaks of the sunrise spilled in through my bedroom window.
I could hear my mother down the hall, snoring softly and the rustle of our restless of the cat surveying the house as it woke and yawned into the new day.
I didn’t move, at first. I stared at the ceiling. It seemed entirely reasonable. Mint green with stars peppering it for as far as my eyes could see.
Nothing black or oozing. And nothing with sharp pointed teeth and a flat, white face. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
I sat up and pressed my hand under the sheets to access the damage done by my late night accident. The sheets were dry, but crisp, in desperate need of washing.
All in all, it was the only thing that appeared out of the ordinary.
Well, except for the feel of a warm breeze kissing the back of my neck. I rubbed my fingers over the spot finding nothing. Letting my hair fall back, I kicked back the covers, neatly strewn over the bed, stopping only to recognize that the breath of warm air was coming from, seemingly, nothing.
Whatever it was, I haven’t been without it since.
Even in my dreams, I can feel the warm, hot hum of the monster that haunted my childhood.
After that night, I was never comfortable sleeping in the same bed as anyone else. Some nights, I even sleep on the floor, further out of reach of my ceiling.
The older I got, the more used to the warm feeling, I became. And some nights, when I close my eyes, I can hear the hum and the slush of oozing flesh creeping around me, covering me from head to toe in darkness. My persistent nightmare…
I’m not scared of it anymore. It’s become a terrible constant in my life. It doesn’t speak now. It just breathes. It just hums. But it has yet to tell me what it wants.
Submitted December 30, 2016 at 01:54AM by ofasghard http://ift.tt/2iJV9Vu nosleep
