I was an only child until I was twelve years old.
One night, I was lying in bed, staring at the glowing green stars scattered about my bedroom ceiling. I had always had trouble falling asleep; according to my parents, I nearly drove them mad as a baby. I was finally beginning to drift, the plastic sticky stars blurring in my vision and swirling into a celestial light show. I felt my thoughts begin to fall apart, drifting and breaking and reconnecting to form the bizarre visuals of hypnagogia.
Suddenly, a voice broke through my groggy delirium. I heard myself huff as I shifted slightly in bed, not fully realizing what had awoken me. The memory of the voice echoed in my ears and it had been so soft, it had melded into my half-dream state so well that I figured that’s what it must have been - a dream. I let myself drift once again.
The voice spoke a second time. This time, it startled me, and I jolted up. I propped myself up on my elbows, lifting my head, alarm coursing through me. It was the same as before; soft, feminine. My eyes darted around the shadowy room, looking for something, anything, to explain what I had just heard. And then I found it.
In the corner of my room behind my floor lamp I saw a black figure. I felt my heart freeze in my chest as my eyes made sense of what I was seeing. The air in my lungs was suddenly gone, whatever left stagnant as my body locked itself into a terrified stupor. They say it’s fight or flight, but there’s a third option; freeze. Prey animals often do it. A cheetah may walk right past a kudu calf lying still in the grass and not give it a second glance.
Unfortunately for me, the velvety black mass of darkness in the corner did not need movement to detect me. It shifted, its amorphous form slowly taking shape. Spindly arms snaked from its “body” as it twisted and writhed into something else.
Coming out of my daze, I finally found my voice and began to scream. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I was relieved when I heard the thundering of footsteps. My father crashed through my door, flicking the light on. The shadow in the corner retreated; I saw as its limbs retracted into itself before it melted into nothing. It was as if it was never there.
My dad, though, didn’t see this. I was an incoherent mess, pointing and crying and telling him to look. But he saw nothing. His attempts to calm me did little, but I knew there was nothing I could say or do to make him believe me. He was insistent that it was just a bad dream. Once he had gone, my room was normal for the remainder of the night. I know because I would only fall asleep when dawn broke.
The next morning, exhausted, I wondered if perhaps I had just had a nightmare. I began to feel silly and my cheeks grew warm when I thought about how, at twelve years old, I had woken my dad screaming about monsters in the night.
But it wasn’t a nightmare, because it came back again that night.
Thus began a new routine; I’d see it, scream, and my dad would come running. He’d turn the light on, see absolutely nothing, try to console me, and leave. But after a few weeks of this, he began to grow concerned. He asked me multiple times if I had been hearing voices or seeing anything other than the shadow. Every time, the answer was no. Every time, I could see the disbelief in his eyes.
I heard him on the phone talking about psychiatrists and hallucinations, exhaustion heavy in his voice. At this point in my life, I had only been exposed to the media’s version of psychiatry and psychiatric facilities. When I thought of a psychiatrist, I thought of being thrown into an all-white room, strapped down to a bed with men in lab coats trying to give me injections filled with neon green liquid.
And so the next time I saw the shadow, I stayed silent.
I could, for the most part, accurately predict now when it would come. I felt the time approaching as I lay in my bed, a knot of anxiety coiled tight in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if I would have the resolve to not cry out. Please leave me alone. Please leave me alone. Please.
It came, just as I knew it would. That blacker-than-black darkness manifested once again into the corner and began to take shape. I felt paralyzed with dread. The only thing I could do was wait. I began to ponder if I would rather be attacked by a demon or if I would prefer the men in lab coats.
For the first time, it completed its transformation, its limbs fully extending, a head forming from the dark. A child. The shape of one, anyways. I felt the tiniest bit of relief - I was expecting it to morph into a giant monster with large teeth and claws. But it was just a small, lanky child draped in impossible darkness. It stepped forward and I shrunk towards the wall. The moonlight that had been filtering through my window came to an abrupt and complete stop when it touched this shadow child. It was like its body just absorbed any and all light.
It stood there for a while. We just stared at one another - well, I stared; it had no eyes. And then it spoke.
“Hi.”
It had the same voice that I had heard that first night, that soft, feminine murmur. I could feel myself breathing harder, my breath loudly escaping my nose in panicked huffs.
“Please don’t scream.”
I whimpered.
“Shhhhh. You have to be quiet, or I have to go away again.”
Then go away!
I tried to find my voice. I sputtered and shook my head, pressing my back to the cool wall, finding myself a bit more grounded. “P-please leave me alone,” I breathed.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.” Yes.
“Don’t be. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk to you. I have no one else to talk to.” Its head drooped, and it looked… sad. I was a bit taken aback; it was strange to see this supernatural being act so human.
“D-don’t you have… parents?”
I felt stupid even as it was leaving my mouth.
“Not anymore,” it replied, sighing. “I’m all alone. But then I found you. I like your room, and you have cool toys. I just want to play.”
I was baffled. Was I crazy?
“What are you?”
Looking back, that was probably a rude question, but in all fairness, social etiquette tends to escape you when you are face to face with a child made entirely out of shadow.
She explained to me that she didn’t know. I say “she” because it was in this conversation that she told me she used to be a little girl, but then “something bad happened,” and she was lost for a long time. When I tried to ask for details she would clam up and subtly threaten to leave, but at this point I was too curious.
We talked through the night, mostly about what she was like when she was human. She liked Polly Pocket and Legos. She talked about the colorful lunchbox she would bring to school, giggling about how the other girls were jealous. She gushed over the way it had rainbows and kittens on it. She was younger than me when she became… this. She said she was sad because it was almost her tenth birthday, and she never got to have a party.
When I asked her her name, she told me to mind my own beeswax - her words - and told me not to ask again, or else. That did make me a little nervous. Even though I was far less afraid of her now, she still wasn’t human, and I couldn’t forget that.
At one point, I looked up at the digital clock on my nightstand, which displayed that it was around 3 AM. I had school in the morning and I felt a jolt of panic when I saw what time it was.
“I have to go to bed now,” I told her.
“But I wanna talk more!”
“I have school in the morning.”
She pouted, at least as well as she could without a face, but after a moment she brightened again.
“Well, I can go with you!”
“How?”
Despite having no mouth, I could practically see her grin.
“Hold still.”
I tried to protest, but within an instant, she was moving. She was faster than any person should be, moving like a predator as she pounced. Fear shot through me, and all sense of companionship that I may have felt was immediately forgotten.
I tried to scream, but she held my mouth shut, her fingers like icicles as they pressed into my skin. With sheer horror, I noticed her featureless face was beginning to expand. A cold fog seemed to envelop my brain as she moved it closer and closer to mine. Her hand slipped away from my mouth, but I hardly managed a pathetic squeal before I was engulfed in darkness.
It was dreamless sleep, if it was sleep at all. I was half aware of myself as my consciousness drifted aimlessly through the void. Everything and nothing rippled in and out of existence, reality tearing and bending and stitching itself back together in my mind’s eye.
I woke up to my dad’s voice.
“Girls, get up! We’re already half an hour behind!”
I sat up in bed, confused. Girls?
In that same breath, I started to notice a warmth beside me. Unease built in my chest, a deep nausea brewing in my stomach.
Beside me lay me.