Morning from the 29th of December

This is a recollection of one of the weirdest mornings I’ve ever had. It is a true story, so read it in the dark for a nice uncomfortable feeling.

It was very early in the morning, around 4 AM, and I awoke suddenly from a horrid dream, a nightmare. What’s so odd about this dream is that it was unlike any other nightmares I had experienced. It was a somewhat cohesive story, with an actual ending. Now it was still abstract and dreamlike, blurry and unbelievable at points, as dreams are. However, I can’t ever remember having a dream that I fully finished. It always seems to cut out when something was getting interesting or quite the opposite, when it became too terrifying. In any case, I did finish this one. It had an abrupt end with a twist, like one might see in a movie. This dream felt thought out... but not by me.

I opened my eyes and my heart was beating fast. I immediately noticed that my lamp across the room was on. I never leave the lights on when going to bed, it makes it harder to sleep. In fact, I hadn’t left a light on while going to sleep in at least ten years. I couldn’t fall asleep with it on, and if a light was turned on while I was asleep, I would wake up immediately.

I stood up and walked for the light switch. Making my way across the room, taking deep breaths to calm myself down. As I reached for the light switch, my nose began to bleed.

A shadow creaked by my door in the early morning light. It moved past my door into the bathroom nearby and closed the window. A sound that was very distinct to my ears. My roommate must be awake, I realized. She had a habit of waking early, then blaming someone else for waking her by being “too loud.” It was an excuse she developed to justify her horrid routines and the backlash of her strict dieting.

Great, I thought, now I have to explain why I’m up so early. Who knows how long this light has been on. Perhaps she was the one who turned it on?

I looked down at the door handle, holding my hand below my nose to catch the blood spilling out. That’s when I noticed that my door was locked. I suppose not, I thought while I unlocked it and twisted the handle opening the loud, poorly fitted door to my room. I walked straight out into the bathroom fully prepared to tell my roommate what had just happened to me, but to my surprise no one was there. I turned around and looked down the stairs. Not a soul, or a sound.

What had I heard and seen, I thought, As I washed my hands off and cleaned up my nose. I stuffed a tissue in my nose to stop further bleeding. Then I took one last look around the bathroom. The curtains to the shower were wide open, no one was near. Not a breath or beat of the heart, other than my own. I was confused, but still tired. I moved back into my room and closed the door behind me. The light in my room was still on. I turned and locked the door again, pausing for a moment, in a bit of a daze.

Back to bed, I thought, switching off the light.

Right at that moment I heard it again. Footsteps, walking on the bathroom floor. I watched as a shadow moved back across the hallway, right past my door.

That time I definitely saw it. There was no mistaking it. I had seen it clearly. Even being tired wasn’t enough to justify seeing and hearing that as a hallucination. It was silent in my house, and there weren’t any other sounds I could have mistaken that for.

I switched the light back on hurriedly. Then moved away from the door, looking about my room. It felt eerie, I was very uncomfortable now. I closed up my closet, opened my window blinds, letting in the dim, snowy light and looked beneath my bed. Nothing.

I went back to lie down, but knew I couldn’t sleep. I dared not open that door again. So I began writing the nightmare that, in my head, was still very clear to me. It was a dream, so I naturally knew all the characters in it. That being the case, when I awoke I had no names to remember, so I made their names based on how they looked in my dream. (Some of the dialogue was also not in the actual dream, but it was said to me by a sort of unconscious assimilation of thoughts from one character to another. I wrote all that I remembered, and got as much of the story in as possible.)

I have come up with some reasons as to why all these things may have happened to me. They aren’t very good, but it’s the only thing I can do to explain what happened that morning.

(1)It was a cold morning, nose bleeds are more common in the winter for people who have weaker nasal cavities. However, it had been a long time since my last nose bleed, and it had been this cold for several months now. Perhaps it was just my high heart rate? (Although in the end of my dream, I very distinctly remember my nose being broken.)

(2)The house is older, it creaks on it’s own. The shadows and noises may have just been a part of my imagination after all. Who could deny that? (Still, it’s odd that the creaks went from one room to another, then back again.)

(3)The light could have been switched off poorly, leaving it half off. Then switching back on in the night. We also had poor electrical in our house, with it being old and all. (However, that only really makes sense if the power was out before I went to bed, but I clearly would have remembered that if it had happened.)

Even after all those plausible explanations, it doesn’t seem like they’d be as likely to happen all at once. Some of them don’t seem to add up either. Why would the light switch back on? Why did I hear and see something walk by my door even after looking around for someone? Wouldn’t behavior like that snap me out of a hallucination? I’d never had hallucinations before?

There’s one other thing that keeps me up. Lights turned on while I’m asleep wake me up almost immediately. Meaning that my lamp turned on right after my nightmare.

It’s like something wanted me to finish that dream. It wanted me to step outside my room. It wanted to make me uncomfortable, and to keep me from my rest.

Most disturbingly, however, it knew what to do to provoke the thoughts in my mind.

It was watching me.