They always say it's a bad idea to Google medical symptoms. They say you should seek the advice of a real doctor. But after the past few nights, what doctor would believe you?
There is a place between wakefulness and sleep that most visit only briefly each night. It can be a place of great ideas, total clarity, intense peace and boundless imagination. It can also be a place of horrific hallucinations, bottomless anxiety and paralyzing fear. Thankfully, most people only visit this place once in a night.
But not you.
You return to this place over and over again throughout the night. It's not quite a dream. It's not quite reality. But it's opened a doorway to somewhere beyond your cozy bedroom. And there are things stepping through that doorway. Strange things.
You assume it's all in your head at first. You assume that waking up at 3 a.m. to the sound of your bedroom's doorknob twisting is just the remnant of a dream.
You assume lots of things. All of them are wrong.
Because doors aren't supposed to open on their own, not even in a house as old as this one. And there's no reason that the shadow of a person should be cast against the open door. Just like there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to move.
You can only watch the shadow as it watches you, its form darker than the night surrounding it. It lasts only as long as it takes for you to retreat back into the ignorance of sleep. Maybe it's better not to know what comes into your room at night.
You search online for answers about "shadow people" visiting bedrooms at night. It only makes it worse. You learn how shadow people are bad omens. Some say they come from other dimensions. Some say they are demonic. Some say the worst ones wear hats.
Hats!?
You say none of that sounds true. But a part of you knows it is. Because they keep visiting. Night after night.
You meet a friend for coffee and explain what's happening. You go over how you live alone in your house, and that there's no good reason for these things to happen.
"You're probably dreaming or upset. Is there anything you want to talk about?" your friend says.
But this is the thing you're upset about. This is the thing you want to talk about.
So you change the conversation to the weather. And you Google "sleep paralysis" when you get home. And you learn that this is somewhat normal. And you wait. Maybe things will get better.
Or maybe they won't.
The sound of the door opening continues waking you at night, but that's not what terrifies you anymore. What does is the feeling of the sheets being ripped off the bed, exposing your paralyzed body. You look for a source, but find only the shadow featured against the open door staring back at you.
It's trying to tell you something. You can hear it if you'll only listen.
But you don't want to listen. You don't want to know.
In a moment, the paralysis relents, and you pull the sheets back onto the bed, praying you'll find sleep again soon. You squeeze your eyes shut until you convince yourself that you really are asleep, only to be woken again by the feeling of the sheets falling to the floor.
Night after night.
Night after night.
Night after night.
Until whatever it is spreads to the ceiling. It happens the same way. You wake from sleep in the middle of the night to see what you swear are insects and spiders crawling across the ceiling. They start small. There are maybe two or three following the grooves of the ceiling.
Then they're joined by several more, until there are writhing lines marching above your head. But marching to where?
You can't tell, and you don't care. You want to go back to sleep.
Night after night.
Night after night.
Night after night.
"There must be a light at the end of the tunnel," your friend tells you when you meet again. "There's no way this stuff isn't in your head."
You wish that were true.
Then you show your friend what you found one morning on your cell phone. It's a picture of you, asleep in your bed. But you live alone.
Your friend doesn't know what to say. Neither do you.
"Maybe you live in a haunted house?"
Maybe.
Maybe you've opened something you don't know how to close.
You try a psychic next. You spend good money for a house call. The psychic is supposed to be the best in the business. After some sage burning and a few expressive headaches, the psychic tells you there's nothing to fear. The house is clear. No ghosts. Never were.
You show the psychic the picture on your cell phone. Isn't that proof enough?
"Call the police," the psychic says. "Someone broke in."
But the police don't know what to make of it, either.
Nothing in your house is missing or out of place.
No, that's not quite right.
Things are off. You didn't notice them at first, but they're there. Little things.
It's in the way the carton of milk in the fridge finds its way to a new shelf in the mornings.
It's in the way the napkins on the counter disappear faster than they should.
It's in the way the kitchen sink reeks of piss.
Little things.
Little scratches coming from inside the walls as you curl up on the couch to read.
Little whispers from the other side of the shower curtain while you soap up in the mornings.
Little goosebumps on the back of your neck at odd times throughout the day.
Little crumbs of food in the hallway each morning that crackle beneath your bare feet.
A little feeling that these little things aren't so little.
You tell your friend about your discoveries, but find little comfort.
"Sounds like you have a mouse problem," your friend says. "You've had a bad streak of luck lately. Maybe you need a vacation?"
But you know better.
There's just no way to prove it. There's only your fear of going to sleep each night, while whatever hell you've unwittingly unlocked continues to seep into every crack and crevice of your life.
You wonder if you did something to deserve this. Did a sacred utterance mistakenly fly from your lips during a stutter, letting loose an unholy evil? Did you cross someone who put a curse on you? Is your house the scene of some terrific tragedy years ago?
No. None of those things are true.
What is true is the sound of the door opening yet again at night, waking you from a painfully needed bout of sleep. This time you've had enough. You struggle to sit up in the bed, but your body won't respond. The shadow person watches your face contort in frustration. It lacks a face, but you can tell it's amused.
But you're not amused.
"What do you want?" you say to the shadow person in the doorway. Your words come out in a tumble of whispers. The door starts to shut, and the shadow person dissipates as it always does.
You regain your ability to move, and you reach for your cell phone. But you don't call for help. You turn on the phone's video camera. Then you slowly make your way out of the bedroom door, out into the dark of the house. You turn on every light as you make your way around the house. But you find nothing.
You spend the night on the couch in the living room, finally getting a decent spate of rest.
In the morning, you wake and reach for your cell phone. Its battery is almost dead. You must've left it on overnight.
You make breakfast and review the video you recorded last night. It continued recording after you fell asleep on the couch. You watch in terror as a shadow on the video moves past the couch while you slept. It heads into the kitchen, opens the pantry door and steps inside. You nearly drop the knife in your hand you're using to spread peanut butter. You look over your shoulder.
You're standing next to the pantry door.
You stop the video and listen. Something catches your ear. It's breathing. Light breathing.
No. It's not just breathing. You hear a deep, husky chuckle, like someone trying to keep from bursting into laughter. And it's coming from the pantry. The one only a few inches away.
You wonder if it's only your imagination. You've been wondering that for a long time. So you raise a knuckle to the pantry door, and you knock three times.
And three knocks respond from the other side of the door.
Now you're paralyzed in place, and you're not even asleep. You rarely go into the walk-in pantry. It's unfinished. It's full of holes and exposed studs and wiring. You barely took the time to check it out before you bought this house. Now you wish you had. Because there is someone behind the pantry door.
And that someone has been coming in your room at night.
That someone ripped off your sheets.
That someone took pictures of you sleeping.
That someone ate your food, stood outside your shower and pissed in your sink.
And all this time, through the fog of that place between dreaming and reality, you thought this house was haunted.
It's true you weren't alone, but this is no ghost. This is someone living in the walls.
This is someone who can't hold in the laugh anymore.
This is someone who isn't just knocking on the door anymore. This is someone who is trying to push the door open. You push back, but the force is too strong.
You're not ready for the door hitting you in the face. Between the confusion and the blood from your busted nose, you can't see who steps out from inside the pantry. But you feel him squeeze both sides of your ribs, spin you around and toss you into the pantry. It's dark as he follows and closes the pantry door behind you, trapping you inside.
That's when you remember the knife in your hand. It's only a butter knife, but it will do. You lunge with the knife, hoping you'll get lucky and connect with something soft on his body.
You're both surprised when the pantry receives the coat of paint it never had before in the form of his blood. It's more blood than you thought a person could hold, and it feels warm and all too human as it runs down your arm. It's like a wet hug. You leave the pantry and let the light of the kitchen shine in.
You see the weathered man dead on the sticky floor, his expired body looking like a glove with no hand. You're bothered by the way you're not bothered by the sight. The feeling only lasts a minute. There's a certain satisfaction to it. You killed him. You did. No one else. You took your house back. You took your life back. You proved everyone who said you were crazy wrong. It's the best you've felt in years.
No more fear. No more sleepless nights. No more feeling powerless.
And you did it all with a knife you use to spread peanut butter. You put it right in his fucking throat, and he died, just like that. There's nothing magical about it. It's simple. Satisfying. Like popping a zit.
You find a place to dump the man's body far from where someone would ever find it. It takes a long time, but you manage to clean the pantry out, too. You sell the house a few weeks later. The new buyer only gave the pantry a passing glance. You tell the buyer to store food in the cupboards, because the pantry is unfinished.
And also because you're not planning on moving out.
Because now you're the one up at night eating food.
You're the one pissing in the sink.
You're the one standing outside the shower.
You're the one opening the bedroom door at night.
You're the one ripping sheets off the bed.
You're the one who can't wait for when the pantry door opens, for the light to hit your eyes. And you'll think to yourself how it looks like the light at the end of a tunnel. But you'll know it's not.
It's the end of the light in the tunnel. And you're the one to make it dark again.
The End