Friday, May 20, 2005

Terror

**I suggest turning off your lights for this post to have a better mood. Also, turn off any music or other noise.

So, I was talking with Mike about stuff in general and the subject of fear rolled around. I don’t know about most of you but I grew up terrified by my own imagination. I had an amazingly vivid imagination and consequently had some pretty scary childhood moments. I was never really scared of anything real. I guess it was more a fear of the unknown. Let me relate a reoccurring nightmare I had as a child so you could get an idea.

---The Dream---

I wake up to a loud thunderclap. It’s completely dark in my room except for the occasional lightning strikes that illuminate the whole room in those brief ultra-intense flickers from my window. Through the rain I hear these short series of clicks. I listen closely to it and realize that these rapid clicks are not rain, but something on the outside of the house. Another bolt of lightning draws my attention back to the window where I see a dark figure in the upper corner glaring in at me. A silhouette of the top of its head is all I can see. Whatever it is, it’s clinging from the house outside my window. The eyes glint like those of an animal in the beam of a flashlight. They look hollow and ethereal.

I’m terrified to look at it but I must, I know that if I take my eyes away it could move before I have the chance to look back. I blink, and it’s gone. Was I imagining it? I’m listening very intently now; searching for any sounds that may help me identify its location. The clicking returns, but now it sounds different somehow. I cautiously get out of bed and creep toward my door to listen. The clicking sounds come again but now they sound as though they are upstairs…inside the house!

I act fast. I have to leave my room. “It saw me in my room, it knows I’m here”, I think as I dash down a dark hallway and to the basement door. I have to put as much distance between whatever this thing is and myself. I can feel the cold wood of the stairs and the humid air as I run down into the dark. I race across the basement already knowing where I intend to hide, the dark corner between the couch and the wall. I press my back up into the corner and sit in the cold dark room waiting and listening.

It feels like an eternity passes and I see and hear nothing but I know its there…somewhere…in my house. Then I hear it. The clicking sound of claws is closer; it’s in the upstairs hall. I hug my knees up to me. I can feel the fear like I can feel the cold wall on my back or the dusty floor under me. The sound comes again. It’s in front of the basement door. I pray…I pray for it to pass, I pray for someone to come home and find me, I pray for all this to be over. I know none of this will happen though. All I can do is sit and be still and quite. There is a clicking on the stairs…then nothing.

I look hard through the dark and can see that it’s crouched there on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Its been staring at me all this time. Its small, maybe the size of a large dog but still its as big as me and I know if it comes for me I’ll be dead. The eyes glint again like those of an animal, but from where? There is no light down here. I’m not even breathing now I just sit and stare and it stares right back. I think that maybe that stare will hold it, lock it into place somehow. Maybe I can just sit here and keep it at bay because it knows I can see it. Then it moves but almost too fast for me to see. Its claws clicking on the floor furiously as it races toward me…

I wake up; in a cold sweat usually. I had this dream off and on for years. To this day I have a hard time with dark buildings. I don't know, I guess I'm just affraid of some unidentified thing coming after me, or maybe it's being alone. Though, I have camped several times by myself and have no fear of the woods at night. I just thought it was a creepy dream and you guys might think so too. However, If I hear a camp councilor telling this story to a group of boy scouts several years from now, I'm gonna want some royalties.

2 comments:

LJ said...

Good short story. I'm impressed.

Da Beef said...

Wow...what an imagination! I was always scared something was going to grab my ankles from under my bed and pull me under, but nothing quite as elaborate!