Listen to the Trees and Other Curious Tales

The silence of the night is wrapped very closely by a heavy darkness, a very unique darkness. Deep in this cavern of velvet emptiness something stirred; a sound, a movement and my senses are aroused.

An impression of something has made its mark upon my consciousness.

I have awoken yet still, I am asleep. Something has stirred the mind cradled within this head of mine that is still laid upon its soft pillow. I am sure that the something, whatever it is, is not kind, but of what it is exactly, I am unaware. I cannot bring my thoughts to focus on what it is within my room.

“I am asleep, surely, but perhaps I’m not. I am not awake, whoa, perhaps I am,” these odd words run through my obscure and feverish thoughts.

I don’t wish to know if this is reality or a bad dream. I choose the latter and try to hide myself from whatever I imagined caused me to stir. The quilt is pulled over my head and I try to ignore my feelings of unease.

Again something stirs in the darkness.

I think I can sense it and I’m not sure if I did not hear it. I have to lower the quilt from my eyes and feel compelled to look, even though I do not really want to, towards the sound.

Is it in my room, in my senses, or perhaps it’s my imagination, a dream, perhaps all of these things? Is it anything at all or the remnants of a bad dream not properly separated from the reality of waking?

I’m now sure that whatever may have occurred, I am truly awake and not dreaming anymore.

What has spoken to my mind sufficiently to pull me out of whatever it was that I was dreaming of, is still there, of that I am now certain. And it is of a malevolent kind of entity that I seem to know instinctively. I can feel it, know it, sense it, it is not nice but I still do not know what it is that disturbs me so.

In the dark of my bedroom I can sense that a further darkness, some sort of shape, a cold chilly shape, coldness, a chill darkness exists but of what form I cannot tell.

Is there an impression I can take or perhaps bring together from my perceptions, from within that darkness, within my room to know what this is?

Now it is no longer there.

It has moved, changed place without a sound; perhaps a shuffle, perhaps I heard nought.

What is that? My senses come to a heat as I am sure that that was a cough and a splutter, a clearing of a throat. Does it want to speak; does it wish to speak to me?

A thousand spiders crawl upon my skin, especially over my face. Each individual hairy leg causes the fear to rise within me. I wish the spiders to go away and leave me to my terror, not to add to it. Is something touching my face? No, it’s the spiders, but that cannot be, there are surely none, but there are. Within my awoken consciousness something is crawling upon my skin.

I feel a heat as my body trembles to exude its salty liquid; my sweat is everywhere. I am drowning in my own sea that threatens to take the bedclothes with me. I am floating in a sweat that I cannot stop as this natural response to my fear takes hold. I am afraid, so afraid and I lay in saturated bedclothes.

And now something else; another darkness, another shapeless darkness passes through my door into the bedroom. I cannot see it, yet I can; I saw something come through the door despite the darkness. I am aware that it is there, that it is moving deeper into my room to meet with the other one, the one that started the dreadful torture of my panicking person.

I sense that my sanity is being assaulted by the ‘somethings’, the two beings of darkness that have joined forces down past the foot of my bed, within the deeper darkness of my room.

Am I going crazy? Is the fear driving me into madness? Are these somethings good, nasty or evil incarnate? I do not believe in evil, this is nonsense, yet I can smell the overarching presence of something terrible. The only word I know to describe the dreadful presences, the two dreadful dark presences and their accompanying foul smells that burn into my nostrils, is ‘evil’.

I hear myself repeat the words, “evil”, “go away”, “not me”, “leave now” but only in my thoughts as I dare not speak them out loud for I fear the darkness will have me in ways I cannot yet imagine.

I am terrified and the wet bed sheets, the soaked pillow upon which I dare not stir my head, tells me my terror is real.

The darkness, one of them or both I do not know, approach the bottom of my bed. I cannot see it or them, I dare not look, but the cold that overtakes me and condenses my sweat into a river of cold salty sea is very real.

I am swimming in my own secretions and slowly starting to drown.

What kind of foul smell is it that attempts to make my head instinctively twitch away from my burning nose with a repugnance that cannot be described?

The smell is that of a foulness, of some decay, of rotting human flesh, of many years stagnation, all of which I do not believe I have ever experienced or perhaps barely at all. Yet I recognise each in the dreadful stench which flows unrestricted into my body with each gasp for air.

From the great, foul darkness that has hesitated at the foot of my bed, I feel its touch through the increasingly wet quilt. I try to scream but nothing comes out, it has me in its grip, it has my whole attention, I dare not pull away; I cannot pull away, I am truly frozen in terror.

From one great darkness, or is it two, another cold blast of the foul smelling air reaches to smother my frozen form.

I can only bring the word “ghoul” to mind, or has it been placed there by the terror at the foot of my bed that continues to rest its hand upon my leg?

I cannot think clearly, my thoughts are coming in bursts synchronised with my gasps for a clean air that is being denied. I feel a suffocation of breath and thought which is only alleviated by the understanding that my body is still alive and able to operate without my intervention.

A ghoul, a ghoul, the only word that I can bring to mind, a mind saturated with the terror of that word. I try to call out loud hoping that in some way it might cause the darkness to accept that I have recognised it for what it is and that the call might drive it away. What I can name might remove the advantage that it seems to have over me. The pool of salty sea in which I am immobilised increases by the second and I feel a different sort of drowning coming on.

Oh the terrible cold that drives the perspiration.

The bed is starting to tremble, to shake and the dark form remains in contact with my leg, never loosing its grip.

I want to scream, just scream out loud, but nothing comes amid my efforts to keep breathing, foul air perhaps, but breaths that alleviate my panic to cease, to leave life and succumb to where the darkness will take me.

I know its intentions; it wants to take me alive, to take me to wherever and to a place, whose mere hint of, drives a cold stake straight through me. I must not think like this, I must survive on my own terms but these are now subservient to the wishes of the darkness, the ghouls, or whatever they may be.

And then the grip tightens as I feel certain, no sure, that the two princes of darkness (where did that come from?) combine to pin me down.

The trembling of the bed is becoming fierce as it now rises violently in the air to be brought down firmly back to the floor. I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out. I know that they are trying to break my spirit through terror but I must not let that happen for then I will be weak and easily taken, dominated and subject to whatever foulness these two malignant dark forms determine is appropriate for me. I must not succumb, I must not.

I still want to scream, to make others aware of what is trying to take my life, for surely that is their intention, a living soul for the terrors of hell.

I do not believe in hell nor of evil, yet here is it assaulting me. I have to give credence to the words, or perhaps that is the intention of the dark forms, to make me recognise what they are despite myself, to break my will.

I still cannot turn my drenched face to look in their direction; I am too terrified of what I might see, yet I try, but I cannot move a muscle in my entire body, I cannot utter a single sound, I must lay here and suffer their torment.

Then a cold finger touches my face, a very cold finger.

A deeply traumatized mind attempts to yet force a scream of some sort from deep within my cramped and un-breathing lungs; I cannot breathe never the less utter a sound. I am panicking for air, any air, foul or otherwise, to stop this submission to a dreadful death; my chest is hurting severely, I must breathe.

The dreadful touch upon my face I am certain belongs to an incorporeal long since departed entity of some sort, a soul that has been lost to its own avarice of demented depravity.

In my bed I am flying up in the air again to be slammed down even harder to the floor of my room, my breathing has stopped yet I am aware of what is happening to and around me; am I now some sort of living dead. The coldness of that finger’s touch upon my face intensifies and worse, I feel it start to slide into my mouth and down my throat and still I am unable to scream.

The aching cold within my throat is now deep within my lungs where the pain is terrible and I am sure I cannot tolerate it for much longer.

The bed slams once again down to the bedroom floor and I swear that I heard a malicious, deep throated cackle from the entity still holding my leg while the rest of me is tortured surely to death itself.

The penetration of my lungs by that finger, from the cold presence at my head, sears into my being, into my soul, with intense pain of a sort that I have never felt before.

In this new intensity of suffering I finally manage a scream, a choking, suppressed scream, but a scream none-the-less.

As I do the shaking of the bed ceases, the obscene assault upon my person stops and I am left trembling in my soaked bed sheets.

Have I have been dreaming a terrible dream, a nightmare which went too far but thankfully, is now over? Has this terror been real but now has let go of its grip upon both my person and my fears.

I try to gather myself, to accept a reality, to glance at the digital clock on my bedside cabinet where sanity may lay. The time is four twenty five, an awful time in the morning to be awake when work beckons in some three or so hours. Expecting work is a calming thought, it tastes of reality and I am steadied.

My pillow is soaked and short of leaving my bed to change all the sheets and the pillowcase, I simply turn the pillow over and pull back the quilt to let some cool air wash over my frame to remove some of the perspiration.

I dare myself to look past the end of the bed into the darkness of the room and see nothing. The trembling of nerves at doing so is replaced rapidly by a feeling of calm, of a surety that I truly was dreaming, enveloped in some malignant nightmare that had its hold on me, a hold that was only too real and terrifying.

Those dreamt apparitions have really left their mark on me. I must try to go to sleep and dream of something else, something pleasant. The daylight will be appearing shortly to creep through the curtains bringing a sense of sanity with it.

I try to relax, to sink into the softness of the bed to let my head take a new route to the depth of sleep, of light slumber, I care not which.

I have to take a compulsive final glance to the depth of my room to satisfy myself that all is well, is normal and calm, before finally putting the nightmare into the rubbish bin of experience. All seems calm and peaceful as it should be.

The room is naturally dark with curtains that block out the street light and I adjust my eyes a little to penetrate the gloom.

But there, there, there is something, hiding in the gloom, which makes a slow movement, a very real movement. This is not a dream, I am wide awake but the fear of the nightmare returns suddenly into my mind.

I freeze for real now as the dark form, the shape of which I cannot properly make out, moves towards the door. Without the door opening, the darkness, the evil form, if evil it be, surely it is, passes through it in complete silence.

How am I to sleep now?

What is it that has decided to haunt me for real?

Is this a single one-off experience or will it happen again or perhaps even after that?

What is it that wants me and what for?

~ o ~

Author’s Notes. 

This is a story taken from real experience, a common and unpleasant experience that myself and others have no wish to repeat.

It has not happened again, as far as I am aware, and I truly hope that in my case, it never does.

 The story is an amalgam of a few events, all along the same theme, which brought night terrors to several terrified souls, including myself.

Perhaps there was some commonality being brought to us, all friends, for some reason, but we all came to the same sane conclusion that we had simply suffered from dreadful nightmares.

The final view of something or other in the darkness of my room, I can testify to. It has never occurred again and I feel, from something deep inside, that it never will.

I have, however, changed the curtains to something less opaque and have learnt to sleep with some light entering the bedroom.

I have also discovered that a regular small nightcap of my favourite whiskey tends to work wonders for a really good night’s sleep whereas the hot cocoa did not.

~ o ~