Present company...
Night before last as I sat watching TV with my wife one of the cats (The Dumb One) took the opportunity to get my attention by nuzzling and purring in my ear. Normally I would've found it cute, but on this occasion I nearly jumped out of my skin. Without intending it (or maybe the conniving little bastard did intend it) he had just invoked a very visceral response to a particularly intense nightmare I'd had the night before.
I'm not prone to nightmares. In fact I rarely remember my dreams. When I do awaken from a bad dream I usually realize it was just a dream when I look around my room (it being far removed from the setting of the nightmare), and I roll over and go back to sleep without delay. This dream was very different in almost every way from my usual dreams both benign and nightmare.
Most of the beginning of the dream is just a blur in my memory; perhaps that part did adhere to my usual patterns. I remember settings both indoors and outdoors as well as a few familiar faces.The part that I do remember began as a transition from an indoor setting (a hardware store, I think) to an outdoor setting at night (the storefront of the hardware store).
The first thing that was unusual about the scene was the fact that I wasn't in it. That has never happened before that I recall. It seems I dreamed in third-person limited. A woman stood there waiting. She was tall and somewhat overweight (bordering on obese), and she had medium-length, dark hair. She was a complete stranger to me; I've never seen her before in my life which is also odd. I usually dream only of people with whom I'm familiar. In the way that a dreamer "knows" things in his or her dreams I knew that she was an employee of the store and was awaiting a ride home. The store was closed and the lights both inside and out were off. She was alone and concerned but knew that she could get back into the relative safety of the store if she needed to, so she wasn't afraid.
A two-lane road ran along the side of the store and parking lot separating the store from a large, empty field. On the opposite side of the road the woman saw a car parked at the curb. She hadn't noticed it before and it wasn't the car she was expecting, but she decided to go and have a closer look at it. She knew that it was a bad idea to leave the awning whence she'd been waiting. She crossed the street and found the car dark and empty. The doors were locked. She walked around the car once, then she stood at the rear of the car and looked out across the field turning her back to the store.
Like a flipped switch the feeling of the dream changed suddenly from concern ("You know you shouldn't be doing this") to terror as I (the dreamer and observer) became acutely aware of an intense "presence" behind the woman. I could feel something there. Something more "real" than the rest of the dream. Something that scared the hell out of me.
In reverse angle I could see over the woman's shoulder. A handful of shadowy figures silhouetted by the light over a rear entrance to the building stood scattered in the street and side parking lot. They didn't move or say anything, but I could feel them communicate without emotion: you let us get between you and the door.
I've had dreams before in which I've felt a Presence. It usually arrives without warning, and the feeling of it is so intense that I become lucid in the dream, realize it's a dream, and awaken suddenly. I didn't awaken from this dream. I did however dream that I had awakened, and in my bedroom the Presence was physical.
I was laying on my left side. My right ear was to the ceiling, and over it loomed a creature that could only be conceived in a dream. It was distinctly humanoid with skin that looked like scar tissue: shiny and irregular in color and texture. It had no eyes, no nose, no ears, and no lips; its teeth were bared in a perpetual snarl. A single, dingy bandage wrapped around its head where its nose should be.
It was a dream. Just a dream.
But I could feel it's hot, moist breath on my ear as it leaned closer, its clenched teeth barely an inch from my ear, its breath rapid and raspy as it breathed through its teeth - into my ear. Its Presence the most "real" thing I've ever felt. This thing was hostile. It wasn't just malicious. It was malevolent, and it shook with fury as it made certain that I knew it was there. My every instinct begged me to lay still, not to move, not to react in any way. I tried twice to lash out, to force it back, but both times the action died a coward's death as my arm wouldn't move, and I continued to cower into my pillow. Knowing I had only one chance to get it right I screamed at myself for my own weakness and committed to action. I swung my right elbow hard intending to connect, but my arm caught in the blankets and didn't move as quickly as I commanded.
I screamed in anger and frustration. I screamed to give my attack every bit of force I could. I screamed so loud that I woke myself up as in the physical world my arm finally came free of the blankets. I scared the crap out of my wife who was until the sudden movement and noise asleep next to me.
In the very real darkness I could still feel the Presence.
I had to apologize and explain that I'd had a nightmare. I had to force myself to lay back down and pull the blankets back over my arm as I tried desperately to convince myself that it had indeed been just a dream. As I closed my eyes I could still feel the Presence, and my right ear still felt hot and moist. I forced my eyes closed. I forced my breathing to become regular. I forced myself not to acknowledge the Presence I could still feel in the room. I could see into most of the shadows in the room. We were alone.
I forced my eyes closed. I rolled so I wasn't laying in exactly the same position I had been in my dream. I tried to clear my mind, but in the blank recesses of my imagination I could still see the creature. I could still feel its intent. Finally after almost forty-five minutes of trying to fall asleep I decided that I was being unfair to wife each time I rolled over in bed and awakened her. It was 4:00 am, and I needed to be where there was light. I forced myself to move calmly and confidently through the room to the door even though I could feel the Presence in every dark recess.
As I opened the bedroom door a large shadow just on the other side of the threshold moved quickly out of sight to the left of the door frame, and I nearly screamed again. A moment later the shadow reappeared, but this time the fear passed quickly. Her black coat darker than the unlit living-room Chloe (the dog, a black lab/german shepherd mix) had heard me stir and was awaiting me on the other side of the door bleary-eyed but still acting as though she was excited to see me.
I turned on every light in the room and put on a pot of coffee to prepare myself for what I knew would be a twenty-two hour day.