While you sleep, p.3
While You Sleep, page 3
So there we were - it was about one in the morning and I was playing Merrytown Legends while Nick lay on my bed watching me play in a multiplayer lobby, while he started to drift off a bit. When I noticed this, I quickly shook him but for some reason, I didn’t really feel like going downstairs to do our agreed plan. Instead, I simply gazed out into the cool November night sky, looking out into the horizon.
My childhood home was right beside a highway so by looking out my room’s window and looking upward, you could see past the highway as cars zoomed by in the shadow of night. Curious, Nick looked outside as well just to see what captured my attention, but was disappointed and confused when he
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realized that I was simply looking at nothing.
At least, it was nothing for a while.
My backyard was absolutely massive - massive to the point where you could literally play a game of soccer in it and have plenty of room for at least ten players. In this backyard were two sheds and two slopes that were absolutely perfect to toboggan down in the winter. During the night of the sleepover, while looking out my window, something in my backyard suddenly caught my attention and chilled my blood cold.
Inside the shed closest to the backyard porch, I noticed that the lights were on, and what looked to be a dark, shadow-like figure was walking back and forth, seemingly looking for something. But I immediately knew that something was wrong. My two brothers had moved out of the house a couple months prior to this night and both of my parents were fast asleep in the bedroom that was directly next to mine. So, with this knowledge only came more fear. I had hoped that it was my dad getting up in the middle of the night wanting to work on one of his projects because he simply couldn’t sleep, but that wasn’t the case.
Unlike most kids, I was absolutely transfixed by what I was watching and found that I couldn’t look away from the stranger in the shed despite the fact that my heart was beating in my chest as rapidly as could be. Similar to me, Nick was also unable to look away from the shed for a good minute or so. All four of our eyes watched with a waiting intensity, almost as if we expected something even more frightening to happen. Maybe
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this figure would turn his head ever so slightly and stare up at us through our window. Maybe he would exit the shed any moment now, and we would see who this bizarre person or whatever it was, in the flesh.
But after about a minute, we had a sort of unspoken agreement where we both decided to look away. I remember us talking about what we thought it was and what they were doing in the shed but amazingly, we were able to play a bit more of the video game for a couple of minutes before we went to look out the window again. In the massive backyard, my family and I had quite the hefty ping-pong table set up that we forgot to bring back inside once the cold weather struck, so it was left out there for months on end. And it was heavy.
When we looked outside the bedroom window once more, we saw that the ping-pong table had moved all the way to the other side of the yard. At this, Nick and I simply stared at one another, and we kept muttering “Oh my god”. It was at that moment we knew that something was wrong, but we just didn’t know what to do about it. I thought of waking up my parents at the time. Maybe they could’ve taken a good look in the backyard. But I figured that if they went to investigate and ended up finding absolutely nothing, they would’ve thought we were losing our minds.
So the two of us just sat in the bedroom for a good thirty minutes, watching through the window, waiting to see if the stranger was still in the backyard or if he had moved on. Was he hiding somewhere? We didn’t really want to know the answer to that. After a while, Nick and I proceeded to head downstairs
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into the kitchen area, where we would be able to peek through a much larger window, allowing us to see almost the entirety of the backyard.
And thanks to this window, we noticed that a handful of items in the yard had been misplaced. Toy swords, baseball gloves, and pieces of firewood had all been moved around as well as the ping-pong table. The shed door, however, remained shut, but the light inside was off by the time we went downstairs. At the time, my family and I didn’t have an alarm system but we thankfully always locked our doors, so Nick and I took a little bit of comfort knowing that there was no way this person could’ve snuck into the house.
But even still, that didn’t erase all our fears - we were still terrified knowing that this entity could still be hanging around the house outside, perhaps waiting for us to go and investigate. Waiting for its prey. We all know that kids are sometimes not the brightest people on the planet, but what Nick and I did next was truly one of the dumbest things any kid could ever do. We went outside to investigate.
Nick led the way because he wanted to be the brave one which was more than fine with me. Nick crept slowly up to the shed door, where I stood a few feet back, feeling as though a hundred thousand pairs of eyes were on me, and each second that ticked by felt like an eternity. As Nick carefully pulled the shed door open, he peered inside before he took one step in. I thought the worst. Was my friend going to die in there? As a ten-year-old, I was confident that something terrible was about to happen.
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A few seconds went by, and I didn’t know what to do besides stand there, waiting for any sign of life from my friend. I didn’t want to call out his name either, just in case this stranger was somewhere nearby, and by my voice, he would then know exactly where I was. Then, Nick thankfully steps outside of the shed, telling me that all was clear. It was an absolute wave of relief and we both felt a lot better knowing that this person wasn’t still in the shed. But there was still that twinge of fear that crept into our minds. What if he’s still here? Did we miss him?
We walked up to the porch, just about ready to head back inside and call off our all-nighter and get some much-needed rest when we heard what sounded like a calm, careful voice whisper my name. “Calvin”. Nick spun his head around instantly, his face and probably my face as well, contorted with a look of horror. We were really dumb kids but we weren’t dumb enough to go near the source of the sound, which sounded as if it were coming from around the corner of the house. We both raced inside, locked the back door, and headed upstairs, going to bed.
The next morning, we woke up and all we could think about was what we saw in the backyard. Usually when Nick and I had a sleepover, the next morning we would spend some time playing some more video games, watching YouTube videos, and getting ready to say goodbye to one another but that morning was different. Everything felt so strange and different because everything was different. In a way, it kind of brought us closer together because more than ten years later, we are still talking about that night and what happened.
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We even talked to my dad that morning about the incident and he insisted that he was not outside in the shed at all. My brother was sleeping at his girlfriend’s house that night. So what in the world could’ve possibly happened? Why did this stranger head inside my shed? Was he looking for something specific? Surely he was, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone inside the shed, but to this day, I have no idea what he could’ve been searching for.
Because Nick and I were so exhausted by the time this happened, we are also still unsure whether or not we really did hear my name being whispered, but we believe that it did happen because both of us heard it. Auditory hallucinations occurring in two different people at the same time would surely produce different noises. What Nick would hear and I would hear would be totally different. But we heard my name whispered at the same time, and coming from the same place.
It’s been well over a decade since this incident has happened but every single time I think about it, I get more and more creeped out by it. I sometimes wonder where this stranger is now and what he’s doing. Has he done the same exact thing to other people? Is he still living in the very city that I still live in to this day? These are questions I don’t think I want to know the answer to. But nevertheless, this still keeps me up at night, and some part of me thinks that one day, he’ll be back.
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THE FACE
On August 24, 2019, in the city of Newryst, heavy rain was falling and served as a curtain call for all who were outside, trying to enjoy their last little bit
of summer before the inevitable chill of Autumn air whisked through the streets. Street vendors were hauling their carts out of the rain’s ferocious path, a couple walking their poodle were briskly walking with their hoods pulled over their head to block the rain’s direct force, saying “Come on, Sandy! Let’s get to shelter!”. Meanwhile, a handful of toddlers seized the opportunity to splash in the puddles on the sidewalk, even though they weren’t dressed properly, because to hell with rain boots.
And then there was Ellie Anderson, sitting in apartment, tapping a ballpoint pen against the tip of her lips, deep in thought, before eventually writing down all of her thoughts which proved to be therapeutic.
If you were to tell Ellie as early as one year ago that she would write in a journal every week just a year down the road, she would have laughed and called you stupid. Ellie thought journals were for young, love-struck pre-teen girls
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who couldn’t help but swoon over the guy that they’d never date because he was too out of their league.
She only started writing in a journal because her therapist told her to do so. “I know you’re very hesitant with the whole journal entry thing, but I think it would do you a lot of good. Please, do me a favor - just go home after our session today and write down one short entry. Just one”, Dr. Ackmann pleaded.
“What do I have to write about that’s interesting? Everything in my life is shitty, so I really don’t think that writing about just how shitty it is will make anything remotely better”, Ellie retorted.
But later that night, after finishing up watching a brand new episode of Supernatural, she found herself sitting on her couch in the middle of her living room, twiddling her fingers and looking around carelessly. Her eyes eventually fixated on an old notebook that she didn’t even remember having placed on top of a dresser next to her television set, but alas, there it was.
She started writing about all of her thoughts and feelings. She found that once she picked up the pen and wrote just one sentence, every little ounce of emotion she had bottled up inside had spilled out onto the pages. Before she knew it, she had written up four entire pages.
Sure, almost all of it was incoherent ramblings that went on and on about things that didn’t really seem to matter anymore, but she found that Dr. Ackmann’s words were right ever since the day she recommended the journal idea. Writing down her
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thoughts genuinely did help her.
That night, she went to bed just like any other night. Except for Ellie, every night was hell. She never thought she would be envious of those who could go to bed regularly but ever since the previous year’s events happened, she tosses and turns in bed for hours at a time. No matter how long she closes her eyes and tries to block out any distractions, it almost never works.
In between these states of sleeplessness, Ellie frequently has hallucinations of a man standing in her room with a featureless face repeating the words “You did this. You did this.” over and over again.
She saw this man appear in her house on a bi-daily basis, and it was getting to the point where she simply could not take it anymore. Some part of her mind kept reminding her that this man was not real and that he was only a figment of her worst imaginations. Nobody on the face of the Earth could look like that, even in her wildest dreams.
But reason eventually gave way to insanity. Perhaps if this man hadn’t come to her room to stare at her and taunt her with his words this one night, she would’ve let it all go. But sometimes, all it takes is for something to happen one more time in order for a person to finally snap and say “enough is enough”.
Ellie knew all too well that sleep was not going to come to her that night no matter how long and hard she tried to shut her eyelids and force herself to drift off. It just wasn’t going to happen. Sleep and Ellie were not a match made in heaven, but
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rather, hallucinations and delirium were.
Throwing her legs off the side of her bed, Ellie stalked over to the kitchen countertop where she proceeded to grab the sharpest knife in the block which happened to be a massive butcher’s knife. Even though she couldn’t see the man at the moment, she knew he wasn’t gone. Not yet.
There she was, back pressed up against the kitchen fridge, the knife being held limply in her right hand as she swayed on her feet in a tired and dazed manner. She shut her eyes involuntarily for just a moment which then gave an opportunity for the man to appear without her noticing.
Alas, there he stood, tall in his black trench coat. His bald, featureless head seemed like it was pointed directly at her but was, in all reality, probably looking somewhere else. Ellie couldn’t tell because this thing had no eyes and no nose. Even when it told Ellie “You did this. You did this”, it didn’t have a mouth to pronounce the phrase. It was almost like the words were being translated into thin air.
Although a bit apprehensive about it, Ellie walked briskly over to the man in the dark clothing, knife at the ready, eager to finally get rid of the unwanted visitor once and for all. But as soon as she got within striking distance…
Whoosh.
The figure transformed into a cloud of black dust, which left Ellie coughing vigorously for a few seconds. The air in her
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apartment suddenly smelled like rotting flesh that had been left out in the cold for hours. Ellie stared out her apartment window at which point she saw the figure once more, but this time, it was standing in the middle of Cunningham Park, adjacent to her room.
Fuck this, Ellie thought. She knew that if she decided to give up now and simply head back to bed, this figure would just come back the next night to do this routine all over again, if not that same night. She needed to put an end to this and she needed to do it now.
But what was interesting to her at the moment was that now, it seemed as though the figure was no longer quite featureless. The man had matted dark brown hair, and she could’ve sworn that the man looked strangely familiar.
Ellie had read somewhere that every person you see in your dreams is somebody that you have already met in the past, or, somebody that you will meet in the future. But this man was never a part of Ellie’s dreams. Who could it be?
Throwing on her coat and heading downstairs, Ellie opened the door and stepped out into the cold Autumn night, the city absolutely deserted except for a few taxi cabs driving by, dropping off passengers at their designated location.
Ellie stalked her way into Cunningham Park but ultimately stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t see anything suspicious at all. There was no sign of the strange man anywhere but rather, a typical view for a forest - trees scattered about, some
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pieces of candy wrappers and plastic grocery store bags lining the ground while a couple of lamp posts kept things illuminated.
The world had grown so incredibly silent that Ellie became apprehensive about even stepping one more foot inside the park. She thought she should be hearing something at that moment
- maybe some pigeons or the sound of cars driving by in the night - but everything was so mute that she would’ve been able to hear a pin drop.
Nevertheless, she trudged deeper inward with the knife now gripped more tightly in her hand, the only sound audible to her that of her shoes kicking sidewalk under her feet.
Maybe I should just go home now, Ellie thought. There was a rumbling sensation of unease slowly building deep inside her. A feeling that refused to leave. But just as she turned around, she felt a grip as strong as an industrial press squeezing down on a piece of metal.
It was a pair of hands squeezing her throat so hard that it eventually caused Ellie’s windpipe to completely give out. Ellie slowly felt the life draining from her body as her skin was turning a purplish-blue color.
