by Yvette Villegas
Growing up, we were all scared of something, whether it was of spiders or the monsters who lived under the bed. As a child, my fear was one of the most basic childhood fears of all: the dark, or rather, what lurked in that darkness. No matter how many nightlights or stuffed animals I had, one thing that always helped me get through it all was my blanket because I could hide under it. I remember pretending that my blanket was the shield that protected me from the dark and it comforted me throughout those sleepless elementary school nights. Eventually, I stopped being so scared and finally outgrew this silly fear; at least that’s what I thought until that night.
I remember that night just like any other. It was sometime during June; I had just moved in a week or two previously and we were finally getting settled in. The warm air of the summer breeze blew right in through the crack of my window, and I could hear the cicadas in the trees. My room was dark, but I could still make out the figures of everything: the big wooden dresser, the bathroom door, the mirror that caught the reflection of the tree branches outside, and even the posters that covered the walls like stickers on a car bumper.
I was lying down on my bed sinking into it like water on a kitchen sponge. My bed was draped with black blankets, black sheets, and even black pillows, as I was at that phase in my life. I remember the bed being really big and it was extremely comfortable as well. I appreciated having the bed all to myself since my sister and I had always shared a bed since we were kids. There I was fifteen years old with my own bed in a new house and I was excited. I looked over at my sister on her white bed only three feet away from mine; she looked like an angel on a cloud. She of course had already fallen asleep and soon I was to join her. My eyelids began to feel heavy as if they were being pulled down by anchors and finally, I closed them. The last thing I heard was the sounds of my sister as I dozed off into unconsciousness, ready to relax from the long day of summer fun that I had. I don’t know how long I slept but what I do know is that it was interrupted by something I can only describe as otherworldly.
Suddenly, my eyes opened again, and my body was filled with some sort of emotion that confused me as I didn’t know what it was. My eyes scanned the room and for some reason, everything seemed darker than before: the dresser stood in silence, the door looked ominous as if there were someone waiting for me behind it, the mirror stared back at me with the branches of the tree now looking like the claws of a monster. Hell, it even felt like the eyes of all the people in the posters laid on me and that’s when I heard it, that awful voice.
The voice was deep and sounded like something straight out of a horror film. “He’s here…”, the voice said to me and that confused me even more as I did not know who “he” was. The voice was so loud that it felt as though someone said it directly into my ear and that raised up the hair on every inch of my body. I couldn’t even begin to describe the amount of terror that I felt.
At that very moment, a terrible chill ran down my spine and the atmosphere had completely changed. By this point, I knew two things: One, the emotion that filled me was fear, and two, it wasn’t just me and my sister in that room together anymore. I felt the blanket slowly being removed from my body with the feeling of protection accompanying it. Then I finally saw “him”. He stood at the end of my bed just inches away from my feet. He was a tall and dark figure, and I knew he was staring at me although I couldn’t make out a face on him. He had an evil energy surrounding him, and even though he didn’t say anything, his presence was not pleasant. I knew he couldn’t be real, yet it felt like he was right there in the room with me. Panic filled me. I could not move even though I tried so hard; I was trying to kick or even just move my fingers, but I had no control of my body. It was almost as if there was a two-thousand-pound weight against my body, crushing me into my bed and not letting me move a muscle.
When it comes to the phrase “fight or flight” I have always been the type of person who chose flight and that’s how I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t run away. All that I was able to move was my eyes. I was absolutely horrified, and I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. I looked over at my sister and screamed her name but there was not a single sound that came out of my mouth. The screams that I could hear inside my own head were blood-curdling, that’s why it surprised me that no one else could hear them. I felt my throat getting raw from all the screaming I did, yet I was completely mute, not muffled by a blanket or anything. It felt like I was conscious, but my body wasn’t. I looked back over at him and knew he was mocking me as I lay there in fear of him. He started to get closer and the weight against my body got heavier with each step he took towards me. It felt like he was only inches away and right then I shut my eyes and tried to convince myself he wasn’t there. I continued screaming for my sister to help me, but she couldn’t hear me, no one could.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I jolted straight up and looked around my room. He was gone but I was left sobbing so hard that I could taste the salt of my own tears. I had never experienced something like that before and I never wanted to experience something like that again. After a few moments, the child in me stood up, walked over to the light switch, and flipped it on. The room felt comfortable once more and I felt a little bit better. I looked around at everything that had scared me before as just being the normal things they were: it was just a dresser, just a door, just a tree in a mirror and just some posters.
I thought back to myself being a child so scared of the dark and it really made me wonder, “Did I really get over that fear or was it deep down inside of me all along?” I don’t remember when I fell back asleep that night, but I do know that it was right next to my sister who stayed sound asleep throughout it all. It felt just like the old days, only now the bed we shared was much smaller. For some reason, lying by her again comforted me and brought me back to how it was when I was 6 and she was 4. Something so insignificant as lying by my sister meant the world to me at that moment and it stayed that way for a while after that traumatizing night.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first experience I had with sleep paralysis and although what I felt may not have actually been real, it sure felt like it to me. Sleep paralysis is described as a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. Some feel pressure against their chest while others see a mysterious figure. I think it’s funny how we think that there must be a scientific explanation for everything we go through. We’d like to believe that there were never any monsters under the bed or things lurking in the darkness but instead these ideas that we created with our minds. Maybe that is the case, maybe that child inside of us is still lingering around somewhere in the back of our minds, creating things that don’t exist. But just maybe, it’s something more than that because that wasn’t the last time someone had sleep paralysis in that very bed…
Leonardo Magazine 