EIGHTEEN
Sometime that night, or early the next morning (I couldn’t tell which), I woke up staring at the ceiling. The room was dark, but I could make out shapes from the light that seeped in through the windows.
I couldn’t move.
My eyes were wide open and yet my body parts refused to function on my brain’s command.
What was going on?
I could hear Jason’s labored breathing from across the room, so my ears seemed to work fine. But it was as if all of my body had decided to shut down on me. All except my eyes and ears. I could make out the bookshelf and the dresser that Jason and I shared. I could even see gray outlines of the clothes that hung in our doorless closet.
I was paralyzed and very frightened.
Am I dead, I thought? No, I’m not. I can’t be.
Was I dreaming? Was this room that I was seeing really just my room in my dream? I didn’t think so.
I tried to call out for my mom, but my voice box had ceased to function as well. Next I tried looking over at Jason, but my head wouldn’t turn and my vision was cut off at just above his bed. Slats of light hung on the wall like skeleton ribs from the lamppost’s glow coming in through the blinds.
I became more anxious as time crept by. I don’t exactly know how long I lay there motionless, but it felt like several minutes had passed.
Maybe a prayer would help, I thought and I decided to give it a shot.
Dear God, I don’t know why I can’t move right now but I’m really, really scared. Pleas help me.
As I began to plead with God to help break the paralysis that had taken me, I scanned the ceiling from corner to corner.
Please wake my mom up and let her know I need her. Please let her come in here and try to wake me up.
I found the dresser in my vision as I lowered my eyes from the ceiling. The second drawer down had been left opened a bit.
Please let Jason get up and come check on me. I’m scared right now and I want to be able to move.
Looking left from the dresser, I saw clothes on hangers and the three boxes where we kept our toys and baseball cards in the closet.
God, help me. I need my mom. I don’t want to be like this anymore.
Moving my vision a little more to the left I found the door on the left side of the room. Closed. I could hear nothing beyond it but still prayed my mother would come in to check on me.
If you help me God I promise I will be a better boy. Please, please, please, please. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
As I finished the last part of the prayer, the far corner of the room nearest the foot of my bed came into view. And something was standing there, motionless.
My heart began pounding harder than I had ever felt it pound before.
Oh, God. What is that?
I stared at it for a few seconds to see if it was real or if I was just imagining it. It stayed perfectly still.
After a few moments had past, I tried to convince myself that it was just a jacket hanging on the wall behind the door. But I knew better. There weren’t any hooks there to hold a jacket up with. It wasn’t clothing. It looked like a person.
Still not breaking eye contact with it, I tried once again to scream.
Nothing.
God, why can’t I move? I’m so scared right now. Please help me. Please.
Jason kept at his heavy breathing a few feet over, unaware of the new presence in our room. I wished he’d wake up. I wished the thing in the corner would go away. God, what was it?
It felt like hours had past since first spotting the shape. I hadn’t heard it make a sound or seen it move. But it looked like it was just standing there staring back at me.
What did it want?
Trying to close my eyes didn’t seem to work. They weren’t drying out like I thought they should either. It was as if someone was playing some cruel joke on me, and had taken away all my strength and left me with just two of my senses.
My heart pounding, not slowing down, the thing in the corner and I stared at each other. Then a thought occurred to me. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me. Yes. Of course. You idiot. The lamp on the desk to my right must be casting a shadow from the street light outside. That had to be it. My heart started to slow a bit. If I could have voiced a laugh I would have.
Just a shadow.
Then it moved.
Crack!
My heart instantly leapt in my chest. It looked as if it had just waved at me. Lifted its hand ever so slightly, no more than a foot or so, but waved none the less.
Or had it?
Did I blink? Maybe that was it. Maybe I finally blinked and it just looked as if the shadow waved at me. Please let that be it. Oh, God, let me be able to move.
My body still frozen, my eyes alive and wide, my ears taking in small subtle sounds from the room, my heart hammering in my chest, my brain praying furiously to God for help. There wasn’t a thing I could do but look on.
I stared at the shape in the corner, willing it to be a shadow, praying that it would just disappear and that I would be able to move my body again.
The shape’s outline became more defined to me the more I stared at it. It was tall like an adult. Its hair appeared to be long and dreadlocked and it wore some sort of hat. Like a farmers hat. And overalls or suspenders attached to pants.
Crack!
It moved again. This time it looked as if it had taken a step toward the end of my bed, coming closer.
Crack!
Closer.
Jason! I screamed in my head. Jason, wake up!
Crack! Crack!
I could hear weird breaking sounds every time it made a movement, like knuckles popping and it was now touching the footboard of my bed with its thighs. Its face was a black shadow but I could feel its stare. There was something hungry about its presence.
Crrrack!
One leg came up, and its knee came down on the edge of my mattress. I felt my feet move down a couple inches from the pressure.
It’s climbing up here. Oh, no, please leave me alone. Go away. Jason!
Crack, crack, pop.
The other leg came up and over. The other knee went onto the mattress and I felt the bed sag another couple of inches.
It was know kneeling just past the footboard; the bottom halves of its legs were folded back so its feet were touching its rear. Arms at its side, it stayed in that upright position for what seemed like an eternity, looking down on me.
My heart was beyond jackrabbit speed, now. I had given up on the praying and wishing. I just waited, scared out of my wits, to see what it would do next.
Then it began to do a weird, slow knee-walk up toward the top half of my body, one leg on either side of me, popping and cracking and creaking the whole way until it straddled my pelvis. It gently sat down on my lap, face still in shadow, staring holes through me.
I think at this time I was close to passing out from sheer fright. I wanted to cry but nothing would come out.
Then some sort of defense mechanism in my brain started to turn itself on, because I thought, if I could move right now I would try and kill this thing. That’s what I wanted most now, to kill it.
Suddenly its arms came up and out over my body making noises like crushed bubble wrap. They came down in a CPR position and made contact with my chest. Then it started pushing. Hard.
The air was suddenly pressed out of me and I thought; This is it. It’s got me. I’m going to die.
I couldn’t breath. I could only think. And my last thoughts before passing out were; I was a good boy. What did I ever do to deserve this?
It was the first episode of sleep paralysis that I experienced in my life. It wasn’t the last, though. I know that what happened in my room that night wasn’t real. But it sure seemed that way back then.
The brain does a funny thing to the body when you fall asleep. It shuts down all motor function so you don’t act out your dreams. Sometimes people wake up and feel a paralyzing sensation
but still have limited eye movement and see their dreams before them. Sometimes they see a being set upon their chest and feel a crushing weight. Centuries back they called it ‘Old Hag.’
It was just another one of the many events that I went through that strange summer-while I slept. Or tried to at least. I don’t know if it was part of the Dark Dream, but I’ve always thought that whatever the thing with the dreadlocks and the overalls was, it had come out of the Dark Dream, to prepare me or warn me of things to come. To let me know that evil was on its way.