R/Nosleep (Get Spooked)

Paperweight

By: u/eternallyks

Growing up, Mother showed me and my sister how to balance a pebble on our foreheads when we were lying in bed at night. We had to try our hardest to keep it there through the night and into the safety of morning, she reminded us, so that the evil fairy would not take us away while we slept.

The evil fairy, she told us, was evil but not very bright, and she knew that people put paperweights—like pebbles—on light, flat things to keep them from flying away. And since we were both light and little and lying flat on our backs, the fairy could easily have taken us away like the wind if not for the fact we were safely weighed down by the pebbles on our forehead.

Mother always tried to smile when she told us this story, though now I think that must have been hard for her to do. We were young enough to believe her, young enough to not be scared, only afraid of disobeying her.

The pebbles had to be right where she could see them, glowing faintly in the dim radiance of our night-light. This, she told us, would be our protection.

Sometimes, when we were still learning to balance, Mother would dab a bit of white glue or toothpaste under the pebble to hold it in place, and we would have to wash it off in the morning. We couldn't do more than that, no ribbons, no elaborate restraints, since anything of that scale would clue in the fairy that this was no longer a paperweight, just an extension of ourselves, like a headpiece, and readily take us away.

Claudia, naive and pure as she was, giggled every time our mother told us this disturbing story while tucking us into bed in the room I shared with my sister. I used to laugh as well, at least in my mind, but later on I was old enough to notice the tired look in Mother's eyes, the dull gleam of fear, the way she never missed a night to remind us—warn us—of our little bedtime ritual, even when she was working overtime at the factory and would be home late, later than our bedtime. She would call Mam, our grandmother, after dinner and have her remind us of our little routine before bed. She insisted on it.

Mam thought it all rather silly, telling us that our mother had always been a very imaginative little girl, and that she was allowing us to grow up the same way. Whatever she thought of it, she let it continue, always dismissing it as a bit of good-natured foolishness. But I knew otherwise.

Mother was trying to tell us something important. But she wouldn't tell us more than what she told us every night, even though she could tell I was beginning to believe her and could be trusted with the truth. Perhaps that was the truth, nothing more or less.

As a good elder sister, I tried to help out and make sure little Claudia did as she was told. I tried to take it as seriously as I believed Mother took it.

Even as early as then, I knew that for as long as I lived I would follow the pebble ritual at bedtime. During the daylight hours I could still almost feel the cool, reassuring weight of the pebble on my forehead as I went about my business. That sensation was the feeling of having survived another night.

It grew to become a palpable feeling. It was almost like I could glance into a mirror and see the round impression on my skin. It was a mark of honor, of duty, of memory, of life.

Despite all that, I'm not quite sure if I ever obeyed out of any real belief, at least not when I was younger. Call it superstition. Old habits, perhaps. Or a reminder of our mother after she had died, even before Mam did. I'm sure Claudia would have continued to follow in my footsteps, if she were still around. I was quite sure of that. But I wasn't sure of other things.

I wasn't sure if all this time Mother had been hiding the warding-off ritual underneath the guise of a children's game. She kept it up for as long as she could, while the age of gullibility still hung over us. She said that we could stop when we were older, when we were "too big for the evil fairy to carry away, pebble or no pebble."