Thirty-Six in Here nosleep

I used to skim through NoSleep all the time, switching back and forth between this sub, /r/creepy, and other weird stuff. Like you guys I love being scared and reading or watching horrifying things happening to other people. Because there's something thrilling about watching these scenarios that are so harmless to you, thinking, 'what would I do in this situation?'

Well I finally have something to contribute. I hope you like it as much as I have been.

I'm going to a community college in a fairly small southern town. I was in the dorms my first and second semester, but since I've moved into a house with two other girls, one of them being my old roommate from the dorms. Her name is Brittany and the other girl who's a bit less important is Missy.

The house is pretty old, like it was built in the 1930's. It's in really good condition, the landlord is great, and rent is pretty cheap because an older man was seriously murdered here back in 2000-something. Ironically that has literally nothing to do with this story. Sorry. No signs of a lingering, malicious spirit or anything.

The house is built with doors leading to every room, so if you open them all it's just kind of a big circle. There are three bedrooms and one and a half baths, a tiny kitchen and living room. It's a simple set up and our yard is pretty small out front. The backyard is big and slopes down a hill, all fenced in and hidden by all the small trees that have grown around it.

Brittany and I are both English majors. I would love to teach a freshman English class where we pore over classic literature, nitpicking every single shred of symbolism, foreshadowing, etc. Brittany's more into the writing aspect of English. She'd rather write fiction and poetry, and she's good. Like really good. I love to read her stuff when she lets me, but she's a perfectionist. She will spend days writing and rewriting a short story, then end up deleting it all.

Missy is going to school for nursing and she's the most high-strung girl I've ever met. Living with her is going to give me anxiety, but again she's not that important to this story. She's here, but she isn't the main focus.

So Brittany got this idea back before Christmas to write a short children's story for her boyfriend to illustrate. He's pretty good, but he can't ever come up with something original to draw, so Britt wanted to help him out. She wanted me to help her brainstorm a few ideas one night, just to get the ball rolling I guess.

I suggested she write a story about an imaginary friend after a while. We couldn't come up with anything else so she decided to go for it. Brittany shut herself up in her room with her laptop and started writing out a rough draft. For a children's story for her boyfriend... a rough draft.

After a few hours I remember she came out to grab a snack, watch a little Broad City with Missy and I and then shut herself back up in the room. And it was like that over the course of the next few days. She would come in and out, the time she spent writing would get longer and longer. After a while she would just come out of the room out of habit. Missy said it was like how a whale would surface to fill their lungs. Brittany would come into the living room in her pajamas, sit on the couch and stare at the wall or the window or the TV and see nothing. She'd eat standing in the kitchen with the fridge door open, just chewing on deli meat or shoving her hand into the cereal boxes.

I'd already talked with her before it got too weird. Like after a couple of days of her shutting herself up I asked if anything was going on. She acted moody and pissed off that I'd suggest there was anything wrong with her. After another couple of days I asked her boyfriend. He said Brittany hadn't talked to him since she started the story. We both assumed she was just being consumed by the story, that it must have evolved into something more than what she had first set out to create.

I'm sure if I had been paying more attention - like if I had known to be looking for this stuff - I would have noticed things that were off before they started getting blatantly unhealthy. Like the escalation is going to seem abrupt but try to put yourself in my shoes. Yes in stories or movies you can see things happening in chronological order. There are always tell-tale signs that something is amiss, that something bad is going to happen. But in real life you wake up, go to school, go to work, get drunk with friends, have sex, read books, go to sleep, eat pizza... you don't wait for the climax...

Unfortunately I didn't notice anything until I came home from a closing shift. I get off at 11:30 and usually get home by 12. Missy is always either studying or already in bed. That night she was asleep.

Both of them had forgotten to leave the porch light on, and no one had turned on any of the lights in the front of the house. I used the flashlight on my phone to let myself in and then shuffled back to the kitchen. Brittany's room is right off of the kitchen. Her other door connects to my room, which connects to the hall to the bathroom, and at the end of that hall is a door to Missy's room. Missy's room opens to the living room. Full circle.

I'm at the fridge when I hear Brittany talking. I don't think anything of it while I look through the leftovers, assuming it's her boyfriend. But she's talking in this quiet, clipped tone. I couldn't make out the words at first, but I wasn't trying either. Not until I realized her voice sounded funny. It was hushed and she was speaking fast, a hitch in her voice like fear.

I slowly shut the refrigerator door and listened.

"Is it you out there?"

I waited, still listening.

"Answer me. Please. I thought you were in here."

I don't remember the exact conversation Brittany was having with herself, but that was the gist of it. Those were the parts that made my skin crawl. Something about her voice kept me frozen there in the dark kitchen, waiting...

"It can't be you. I see you in the corner."

Her voice was coming from under the door. It was like Brittany was on the floor with her mouth against that small crack under the door. There was no light coming from her room, either. She didn't even have her lamp on. No glow from her laptop.

"Brittany?"

I heard a sound like her scrambling across the carpet. Then silence. And then she opened the door. It smelled like mildew, and her hair was falling in greasy strands from the messy knot on her head. She looked exhausted, but otherwise fine.

"Who were you talking to?"

Brittany honestly looked confused. Like genuine, not faking it. "Hm?"

I let it go. I didn't press her. And it just kept happening. I would hear her talking to herself in the room. Or to someone else, but there was no one there, just like the first night. One night after I'd gone out with some friends to Chili's I came home to find Brittany sitting on the counter in the kitchen with every light in the house on. Missy was at her parents for the weekend, the one right before Christmas.

I had had a few drinks already so I probably wasn't as alarmed as I should have been. Brittany looked terrified, and those circles under her eyes were deep bruises.

"What's wrong?" Even the back porch light was on.

That was when Brittany proceeded to tell me what had been going on for the past week or so. According to her it started the day she began writing that story. That she'd had this dream that all the shadows in her room started to move towards her until she couldn't breathe. She woke up and felt like she was being watched. Watched from the corners of the rooms, from the closet and from the ceiling.

She hadn't slept a full night since then. She would nap during the day, in class, between classes, and stay up at night. Then the shadows started talking, whispering to her, moving from one place to another where there was no light to cast a shadow.

Brittany said she could see them in the mirrors, too. Shadows getting closer until it felt like her chest was starting to expand, threatening to explode open.

One night the whispers started out in the corners and got closer and closer to her until they were screaming in her ears. Brittany said she woke up and could see it.

"It?"

The shadows had taken a form. Just a shadow person in the corner, in the closet, in the corner, under the bed, in the halls, in the shower, on the back porch, behind me.

"What do they want?"

I was freaking the fuck out, but on the other hand where the fuck were these shadow people? I hadn't seen them. Missy hadn't seen them. Not that I didn't turn to look behind me...

Brittany slid off the counter and shrugged, keeping her back pressed against the countertop. "I guess they want to know how it ends." Exactly what she said.

"What, Brittany? The story? Are you still writing the story?"

She said she wanted to end it, but she couldn't. She couldn't keep writing the story. The shadows never stopped whispering and she couldn't sleep, she couldn't think. I asked if she had spoken with her boyfriend and she said no, she tried but she couldn't talk over them.

"But you can now?"

"They're quiet right now." She was looking up at the ceiling. "The lights."

It was already 2 AM by that point and I was yawning after every other word. I offered to let her sleep in my room, or we could keep the door open between our rooms if she wanted. She did.

So together we literally walked through the house turning off lights until just her lamp was on, the bathroom light and my bedroom light. I told her goodnight, showered, brushed my teeth and shut off the bathroom light. I won't lie. I stood there feeling that bristling down my spine in the darkness, just imagining all these shadow people behind me, pressing up against me. Then I ran to my room and shut the door to the hall.

And there was Brittany, sitting in the middle of her bed, cross-legged, with her lamp on.

"Goodnight," she said to me.

"Goodnight." I shut my door. I turned off my light and got in bed.

I laid there until I fell asleep. And then I woke up again. However long later, and heard it... whispering... I listened, waiting for it to go away, for it to disappear like a dream.

"One in here, two in here, six in here, eleven in here..."

I opened my eyes and saw a deep dark emptiness. A dark hole. And realized it was the darkness of Brittany's bedroom. Her door was open.

"Twenty-two in here..." the whispering was real. And it was right next to me.

Brittany was standing beside my bed, her back to me, her head moving around slowly, as if following someone.

"Brittany?"

"Thirty in here... thirty-four in here.... thirty-six in here..."

"Thirty-six what?"

"Turn on the lights." Her voice was choked, not a whisper, just a whine. It scared the hell out of me. My heart started to pound. "Turn on the lights, turn on the lights, turn on the lights!" She was sobbing, crying like a little child, begging.

I nearly toppled out of bed trying to untangle myself. I turned on the light as fast as I could get to it and looked around. Just Brittany, tears wetting her cheeks, her eyes wide and terrified.

"Brittany what's going on?" I asked, exhausted and freaked out. I wondered if I should call her boyfriend, or the cops. Was she having a real mental meltdown? I mean, yeah, clearly, but I wasn't sure. How could I be sure? I couldn't call the cops if there was nothing wrong. Couldn't I get into some sort of trouble for that kind of thing or something?

I ended up calling her boyfriend. I got him to come over and help me get her back into bed. We talked her down, and he decided he would stay with her, make sure she got some sleep.

I was helping Brittany into a new pair of pajamas and then getting her into her bed while her boyfriend made us all some tea. He was in the kitchen when I sat down on the edge of her bed.

"Brittany, when you were in my room, what were you counting?"

"Thirty-six," she said, looking at me apologetically.

"Thirty-six what, Brittany?" I looked back at my open bedroom door.

"Shadows...people... their voices... whispers...."

"How - how many in your room, Brittany?"

She looked up at me, then behind me, back at the corners of the room, the closet, up at the ceiling, down at the floor. Her eyes were circling her sockets, around and around, pausing here, stopping there, looking and seeing and looking away and seeing and circling.

"Ninety-four in here. Ninety-seven in here..."

That was the worst night. Her boyfriend said she never went to sleep. She just kept counting and crying and whispering to the shadows. Every now and then she'd get quiet and she'd stop breathing and he would turn the lamp on and she'd suck in a deep breath, gasping and pressing her back into the pillow, eyes wide open.

It hasn't gotten any better. New Years was a disaster and now Missy knows. We take shifts I guess. The count is higher than ever, and I'm up to seventy-three. She still hasn't finished the story yet.

I don't know what to do. I've discussed it with her boyfriend but he says we'll wait until after school starts this semester. See if classes help. Maybe if she gets out of the house for a while...

She's in her room now, doors shut. The whispering is going to make me crazy. I've got my earphones in right now, but i know as soon as i take them out I'll hear that counting again.

Submitted January 16, 2016 at 11:15AM by witchpages http://ift.tt/1n27wtH nosleep