Nightly visits

Nightly Visits.
I can remember clearly the day it started. The night it started.
The day had been a normal day, if a bit windy. The weather forecast was one of storms and gales all over the country: rain and sun alternated at surprising speed.
I hadn’t done much that day. I had gone out for a walk in the park with the dog and then I had gone back home: I had a deadline for a book.
Well, yes, you may say that I was a bit stressed. It was my first book and I was very excited: I had been offered an advance by a publishing company, oh, a small sum, nothing to dream about. Still, it was to be published.
It was late at night when I put the last word on paper. I was elated and exhausted. It was very dark outside, as dark as it can be in London: in reality, it’s never dark in a city.
I could see the park from my window, suffused in the whitish lights of the lampposts. The noise of a car. There seemed to be no life, no other noise, but me and the night.
I felt a mixture of satisfaction and anxiety for the imminent publishing deadline. Was the publisher going to be happy? Was the public going to like it? Was it enough? Was I enough?
Some strange thoughts and memories passed my head by I thought nothing of it. I compressed them somewhere in my being, be the head or the stomach or elsewhere, and I forced myself to go and get some rest.
I even drank some relaxing drops, something called Avena Sativa; I fell asleep solid.
Yes, I can pinpoint that night as the first time the old hag visited me.
It’s a recurring nightmare. It always starts in the same way and it ends in the same way, yet it is not less terrifying because of it. The fact that I know exactly what is going to happen and how, doesn’t make it less scary, less uncomfortable; if anything, it makes it more so.
So that’s what happens. I am sleeping and I know I am dreaming, but it all feels very real, as if I was awake, which I am not, because it’s a dream. I am lying in my bed and from the door of my room I can see a dark shape coming in.
It’s dark but I can see it’s an old hag. The hair filthy and gray down her shoulders. Her body slim, emaciated, decaying. Her face is elongated and spectral. Her hands are the most scary part of all: they are skeletal, and her nails long and curved.
She stands there and she looks at me intently. I lay down, incapable to move, as if paralysed. I try desperately to jump up, move, go, scream, cry: but I can’t. I am the mercy of the hag.
My limbs don’t respond, I feel cold. There is a deadly silence. I can see some of the whitish light from the park filtering through the window, and I want to scream, ask for help, hit her: I can’t.
She then starts moving, very slowly and deliberately towards me. She is fixing me. Each and every step she takes I feel the fear mounting and becoming finally terror, when she towers over me.
It’s dark and I can’t see her face clearly, but the few details I do see make my skin crawl. Each and every time I notice something which had escaped me, a glimpse in her eyes, a wart, her wrinkled neck. I can never see her clearly though, only a detail, a glimpse of her horrible hands.
I am in a sweaty terror and can’t move and she –listen to this, just listen- she then proceeds to sit on my chest, she is about to put her hands around my shoulders, sit on me; I can’t breathe and I think I’m about to die...and I wake up.
After the nightmare, I always look around to make sure I was dreaming. The room is invariably the way I left it the night before, nothing had been touched, nothing has happened: it’s just a nightmare, a dream.
It feels as if it was real, like a parallel universe that is trying to tell me something: the hag the shadow I don’t want to see.
Night after night, the visitor descends from wherever she is from and comes to see me. I hate sleeping now, for fear of meeting the hag. It has come to the point that I have started suffering from asthma in my dream. My fears are simply strangling me, taking my breath and life away, night after night, with a chilling methodical streak.
Week after week, month after month, year after year. If she doesn’t visit me for a day, she’ll be back the day after and I’ll be even more terrified and powerless.
A few nights ago, there was a turning point, touching wood: I hope she won’t hear me, wherever she is, the hag.
As usual, I took my drops and went to bed. I am working now on my second book. The first was a moderate success, encouraging still. There is nothing like seeing your words printed on paper and people reading your book on the tube. You want to scream: ‘Do you like it? Do you like my book? I wrote it? What do you think, do I look like a person who writes books? Do I?’
So I wrote a few more pages for one of the chapters, wrote as long as I could to be fair: I don’t want to sleep, not anymore. Not at night, when the world is silent, even in London. Words weren’t coming anymore. I felt emaciated, I looked parched.
Cautiously I switched the table lamp off, hoping that the night would bring counsel. Deep sleep, no dreams. Absolutely no dreams. I drifted off, fighting the urge to do so.
I wouldn’t be able to say how long after, but she did come.
As usual, I was in my bed in the dream and could not move. The horrible shape appeared at the door. There was no room left for feelings, only fear. She might have inspired disgust, or hate, or revulsion but I’ll never know. The only tangible thing happening was my terror.
Was she feeding off it? Was it why she came to visit in my dreams, was she a dream? What was this thing, this horrible thing? Did she inhabit my subconscious somehow? What put it there?
She was towering over me, her dark shape visible in the semi-dark room. I could feel her eyes watching my face and I knew she was going to sit on my chest soon. Each second felt like an hour.
Funny enough, this time she was even more deliberate and slower than usual. Slowly, one of her skeletal hands reached out, but instead of directing towards me, the hand and arm made a detour towards her head. She placed the hand on her head. It must have been her left hand, or the right actually, thinking of it. But it’s irrelevant.
I tell you, by then, I was sweating, positively. My heartbeat was faster than usual and I could not breathe. My lungs were clogged by anxiety. I tried really hard to move but I simply could not.
The hag then bent towards me and I could then see for the first time her face clearly. I looked in disbelief.
It was my face! It was MY face. IT WAS MY FACE..
I woke up, needless to say deeply shocked. I could not sleep for the rest of the night: I switched all the lights on. I took out my favourite books and made some herbal tea, and took some more drops. Even tried to write a bit more.
I believe it’s a turning point because I haven’t seen the hag ever since. It’s just a couple of months, and she could come back, so, well, touching wood we are over it, but you never know. I’ve finished my second book: my editor is very happy with me and says we’ll make a killing with this one. Hope so. We live in hope.
The night is still too silent for me. I can’t get myself to enjoy it as I should. There is always that atavistic fear of the hunted animal in me. Can the hunted be the hunter? Deep down I fear that the hag will be back one day.
Seeing the hag’s face has sparked a whole new series of questions: who is she? Why does she have my face? Is it me then or what does it represent?
As if becoming shy from having being discovered, she has not appeared since. Maybe it’s true that what scares us most is our own brilliance and talents. Maybe an old hag is also very wise, although very scary.
Either way. I tell you, if I could walk the dog at night, I would: nights are simply not for sleeping anymore.