Downstairs, Jungkook began to shift in his sleep. He would slightly wake up and then fall asleep again. He rolled onto his back when he suddenly felt a hand pressing on his chest.
He didn't think anything of it, he was used to any of his hyungs randomly checking on him in the middle of the night. Especially if he had gone to bed not feeling well. He figured someone was just making sure he was breathing or something because he knew they could get rather overprotective. He continued to try falling back asleep, except the pressure of the hand on his chest was starting to get heavier and it was starting to hurt him. He slowly opened his eyes expecting to see one of his members standing above him, only to find that there was nobody next to him. He sat up a little bit and looked around, the only source of light being the lightening striking outside and the moon as clouds passed around it.
He lay back down on the couch, wondering if maybe he had just dreamt the whole thing. It felt extremely real though, which caused him to tense up a little bit. Probably just a dream. He closed his eyes and shifted back to his side, ready to fall back asleep.
Not even five minutes later, he felt a hand on him again, but this time the hand was on his back. His eyes shot open but he was too afraid to turn around and look. He realized this was not a dream, as he was very alert and awake at this point.
He felt the hand slowly moving up and down his back. "Hyung?" he whispered, his voice shaking. He was desperately hoping for one of his older brothers to answer him.
Silence.
Jungkook froze as he continued to feel the hand go up and down his back. The size of the hand seemed to be getting bigger. He was terrified, he wanted to yell for help while at the same time not wanting to make a sound hoping whoever was touching him would just go away.
A million thoughts started to swirl through his head. What if someone followed us here? What if they broke in? What if someone came here to hurt us? At this point he was having trouble catching his breath. He had to find the nerve to turn around and see who was touching him. He shifted his eyes to the side as he slowly turned his body to see who was there. As he turned around, lightning outside the window lit up the entire room.
Everyone woke up to the sound of blood-curdling screaming.
"What the hell is that?" Yoongi complained.
"Jungkook!" Jin screamed.
They both shot out of their bed and ran down the hallway into the living room, hearing Jungkook's deafening screams. Yoongi flipped on the lights and saw that Taehyung, Jimin, and Hobi had also woken up and ran out of their room too.
"What's going on? What's wrong!? What's wrong!??" Hobi yelled with panic in his voice.
They all ran to Jungkook, who was sitting up on the couch staring at what seemed to be nothing, continuously screaming while a non stop flow of tears poured down his face.
Yoongi wrapped his arms around Jungkook and pulled him into a hug, trying to calm him down.
"You're okay. You're okay. What happened?" Yoongi asked with a shaky but quiet voice. He had never seen Jungkook so distressed before, he became increasingly worried when Jungkook wouldn't answer him because he was screaming and crying so hard.
All five of them had surrounded Jungkook on the couch trying to comfort him.
Jimin began to rub his back but Jungkook instantly flinched, Jimin pulled his hand away startled, hoping he didn't just hurt him somehow.
Yoongi hugged him tighter. "Jungkookie, you're okay. Listen to me, okay? We're here with you and I promise you are okay."
It was like everything everyone said to him went in one ear and out the other. Yoongi rocked him back and forth in his arms. Jungkook finally stopped screaming, but he couldn't control the massive flow of tears falling from his eyes. Taehyung began using his own sleeves to wipe his maknae's tears away, but they wouldn't stop.
"Kookie what happened to you?!" Taehyung asked while also panicking. Taehyung was now rubbing Jungkook's knee. Jungkook couldn't seem to answer any of their ongoing questions because he was crying so hard that it was making it almost impossible for him to breathe. He was hyperventilating so badly that it caused him to start choking on his own spit, and then he couldn't stop coughing.
Yoongi recognized that Jungkook was having an extremely bad panic attack. He'd seen people have them before, he'd experienced them himself, but he had never seen one this scary, and he especially had never seen it happen to Jungkook. He figured Jungkook must have had a night terror because he couldn't think of any other reason he'd be freaking out this badly when he was just asleep ten minutes ago.
Yoongi repositioned himself so that he was sitting behind Jungkook and he wrapped his arms around Jungkook's chest, leaning him backwards onto his own chest. It was a technique he had seen from a movie once where a kid was having an asthma attack and his dad made him follow his own breathing. He figured it was worth a shot to try that, he just wanted Jungkook to at least stop choking before he made himself pass out.
All the members were watching, still trying to ask Jungkook what happened, while also offering reassuring words that he was okay.
"Listen to me, you have to just breathe okay? You're making yourself sick. There is nothing to be afraid of. Whatever happened or whatever you heard or saw was just a bad dream okay?" This was the part of being a hyung that Yoongi hated, seeing any of his younger brothers in pain and feeling like there was nothing he could do to fix it.
Jungkook was still pouring out tears and hyperventilating. He was having a really hard time breathing now as his nose and throat were completely full of mucus. He must have swallowed more mucus the wrong way and gotten it stuck in his throat, because suddenly he couldn't breathe at all. He tried to suck in breath through his mouth but nothing was coming in.
"Hyung! Do something! He can't breathe!" Jimin screamed.
Jin and Yoongi both started patting Jungkook on the back, trying to hit hard enough so that he could cough up the mucus but also trying not to hit him so hard to the point they hurt him.
Taehyung had taken a seat next to them on the couch, not knowing what to do or how to help. Jungkook wasn't able to answer their questions and now he couldn't even breathe. Jungkook was the only member he had who was younger than him. His only little brother. As he sat there and watched, he started to cry too.
He wanted to take the pain away, the scared away. Whatever had hurt or scared his maknae, he wanted to find it and hurt it back. In this moment he felt like a failure of a big brother. He felt so much guilt for letting Jungkook stay on the couch to sleep. It's a scary house, and he was sick. I shouldn't have let him sleep by himself out here. I should have told him to come into our room for bed. Maybe he'd be okay right now if he knew he was sleeping where he knew he was protected. These were just some of the thoughts eating away at Taehyung. Instead, Jungkook was sitting on this couch choking on his own tears and Taehyung couldn't help but feel like he was to blame.
The youngest finally coughed up more mucus after a couple seconds of Jin and Yoongi patting his back. He sucked in a big breath.
"Oh thank God!" Jimin exhaled. He ran his hand down Jungkook's cheek trying to wipe away more tears. He ran his fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head. "Please breathe, we promise you're okay."
Yoongi pulled him back into his chest and wrapped his arms around him again. "I need you to listen to me. Feel my breathing. Try to copy it, okay? When I breathe in, you try to breathe in. When I breathe out, you breathe out too."
Jungkook nodded. Yoongi began to take deep breaths, hoping this would help.
He was finally catching his breath. In, Out, In, Out. Feeling Yoongi's chest moving up and down was soothing, and he could feel his hyungs heart beating against him, which comforted him. This went on for a few minutes and Jungkook slowly began to calm down.
What began as screaming, hyperventilating, and choking turned into just silent tears steadily streaming down his face.
Yoongi felt a huge wave of relief at the fact the technique he just tried had actually worked. He doesn't know what he would have done if Jungkook started choking again. He wanted to break down and cry but forced himself not to. He knew the other members saw him as the bravest of the group , so if the bravest of the group cried it'd be the end of it for the rest of them. He didn't want anyone to worry more than they already were.
As Jungkook began to calm down, Hobi started rubbing his maknae's chest. "Jungkookie, can you please tell us what happened now?" he asked softly.
Without saying anything, Jungkook turned around and pulled Yoongi into the tightest hug he'd ever given in his life. He was still so scared, but felt so safe in his hyungs arms. Yoongi squeezed him back.
Jungkook wanted to stay in his arms forever. He didn't know how to even begin explaining to them what he just witnessed. He was afraid to even say it out loud because he felt like he would be reliving it and he just wanted the image to disappear.
Without ever answering Hobi's question, the only words that left his mouth were "I want to go home. Now."
He sounded desperate.
"Right now?" Hobi questioned. "It's almost three in the morning. We can't go home right now."
"Please. I want to go home. I don't want to be here. Forget the vacation, I don't care anymore. We have to leave. We have to go home. Right now. Hyungs, please."
The members glanced around at each other. Jin spoke up, "I can call in the morning about being picked up, but we can't leave right now. Nobody at the company would be awake to answer our call."
Jungkook looked at his oldest hyung with pleading eyes. " Can you please try to call right now?"
Jungkook would have called himself but being the youngest, he didn't have much authority when it came to these kinds of things. The only people his manager really listened to were Jin because he was the oldest and Namjoon because he was the leader. He looked around. Where is Namjoon?
"Okay, okay. I'll shoot them a call now but I can almost guarantee nobody will pick up." Jin ran back to his room to grab the little red flip phone his manager had given him. He dialed a couple different people but none of the calls would go through, they'd all fail after two rings.
Jin ran back into the living room. "My phone isn't working. Can someone else try?"
Everyone grabbed their phones and tried dialing numbers. None of the calls would go through.
"Maybe it's because of the storm. They can create crappy service. Jungkook I promise we will try again in the morning okay?" Jin went to put his hand on Jungkook's back to reassure him but as soon as he did, Jungkook tensed up and scurried back into Yoongi's arms.
"Kook-ssi...can you please tell us what happened?" Jimin asked pleadingly.
Jungkook knew if he didn't speak up they would never stop asking. Not to mention, after what he saw he was also scared for his hyungs too. He wanted them all out of that house.
"A hand..." he began.
Everyone was listening intensely now that Jungkook was finally beginning to explain what happened.
"A hand was touching me. It was hurting me. It wasn't a small hand either it was a big hand. Like not a human hand." Silent tears were forming and began rolling down his cheeks again.
"It's okay, you don't have to be afraid anymore okay? Nothing can hurt you," Hobi spoke gently. "What about this...hand?"
"It...it kept touching me. At first I thought maybe it was one of you but I opened my eyes and nobody was there."
"So you thought you felt a hand touching you and it scared you that badly?" Jin asked, seemingly a little confused as to why something that seemed so mundane would cause so much panic.
"No not just a hand...there was someone ."
"Someone? In the house? You just said there wasn't anyone there," Yoongi replied. Everyone was becoming seemingly more confused by Jungkook's story.
"I know! Just listen to me!" He continued through tears, "A hand touched me and I looked and there was nobody there. So I tried to fall back asleep but then the hand came back and I asked who was there and nobody answered me. I was too afraid to turn around but knew I had to incase someone had broken in or something. So I turned around and there was...someone."
"Who did you see?" Jimin asked. "Do you think there is someone else in the house? Like someone broke in?"
"No."
"So then who did you see?" Jimin was persistent.
Jungkook started to breathe heavily again and Yoongi instantly pulled him into a hug. "It's okay. Whoever you saw isn't here right now and nobody can hurt you with us here."
"I don't know who I saw. I don't know if it was even a someone. Or if it was a...something. It was shaped like a man but too tall to be a man. Like 10 feet tall. And it didn't have fingers or a face. It was just darkness shaped like a man. It was so terrifying. Facing me. I couldn't move or scream. It kept walking towards me and then suddenly it just caught on fire."
Everyone looked around at each other with a concerned expression, speechless.
Jungkook continued, "It was burning, and burning, and I was getting hot. It kept coming closer and I could feel the heat from the fire was starting to burn me too, and that's when I started screaming. I don't know what is in this house but we have to go home. I don't think we're safe here," Jungkook finished, with tears streaked all over his face.
Nobody really knew what to say, until Taehyung spoke up. Grabbing his maknae's hand, he began to gently rub it. "Kook-sii, have you heard of sleep paralysis?"