I’m no writer but stay with me, I apologize for English is not my first language but i have something to say…
I make my story public, because it is liberating to accept this chapter of my life. My psychiatrist was the one who prompted me to write it in the first place. Writing is a well recognized therapeutic guideline, for this reason I took the advice of the expert in whom I decided to place my trust in one of the hardest moments of my life.
I will try not to reveal details that could give a clue regarding the true context of the events because I do not want someone else to experience what happened; for this reason I’ve exchanged names, places… even dates. The essence of the story is the same, what happened I will never forget.
I’m a big fan of linguistic art and if there was a well-paid profession that exploited that knowledge, I would probably dedicate myself to it; My passion is Ancient, Romance, Anglo-Saxon languages and particularly Indo-European-Indo-Aryan languages. The latter due to their close relationship with the precursor of modern Spanish: Latin. During my university studies I took elective courses on the origin of modern languages, I acquired many books on the subject over time and my interest grew more and more. I always considered that ancient languages have a mystical and surreal nuance, after all, the occult and ancient languages have a historical connection, you can’t talk about one without understanding the other. It may be far-fetched, but occultism gives me a very gloomy feeling, it makes me think that it is not necessarily pure fiction. Sometimes it even made me think that ancient languages are not a product of human design. Perhaps it is because it has always been difficult for me to conceive of humans in ancient times designing languages with such a level of complexity, but that is only my inexperienced opinion.
Shortly after finishing my university studies, I decided to take a gap year. Medical school can be very emotionally draining, and the next step in my career would be even more demanding. Although my passion is not medicine, my illness served as a great motivation. For years I have dreamed of very strange and incoherent things, as if this were not enough, the problem is not what I dream, but what I do while I am asleep. During my childhood, more times than I can count, I’d wake up in my backyard in the middle of the night screaming, with my clothes torn, sometimes with what seem to be self-inflicted wounds. My parents often had to apologize to the neighbors and figure out a way to reassure them. This resulted in police officers becoming a relatively common presence at these events. Conveniently Officer Villarreal’s brother, Dr. Villarreal was a renowned psychiatrist. My parents, frustrated and certainly frightened, did not hesitate to take the Officer’s word and went to the psychiatrist’s office as soon as possible. Difficult to conceive at my young age, I was on my way to being diagnosed by a psychiatric expert… and all because of a few nightmares. The diagnosis was nothing to write home about, a sleep disorder called sleepwalking, aggravated by night terrors. However, for some strange reason, Dr. Villarreal categorically ruled that he should not use conventional medication; something seemed strange to him in my case and he decided to prescribe an antipsychotic…”Zyprexa”. I think they will be able to understand the emotional traumas it caused me, at that age, all this information sinking in, and even more… trying to understand that it would be something new that I have to learn to live with.
For many years I went to therapy, which was vastly less interesting than it sounds, but I remember one session particularly very well. The night before, as expected, the medication failed to completely suppress my condition; I had a dream so vivid and so intense that it seemed to me that I lived it as if each second lasted an eternity. It happened when I was 12 years old, with the disturbing participation of Pablo; a great friend of mine, we grew up together, even our families have a great relationship. If my memory is still sharp Pablo was my first friend; conveniently, our houses were in the same neighborhood, which is why we used to spend hours playing in the park since we were little. Our favorite game (extremely cruel in retrospect) was to detach the big legs with which the grasshoppers jump, leave them at an anthill and let the ants devour them… without digressing more. My first memory during sleep is being in high school :
-Hello! Did you do your biology homework? Pablo asked me.
- We had bio homework? Don’t tease me, I completely forgot! Let me copy it please, I’ll buy you a breakfast at recess! Please! - I begged Pablo, something that was already customary because I always forgot homework and school chores.
-… You always do the same thing, and you never buy me shit. -
Pablo with an expression of loathing on his face, opened his backpack and handed me his green notebook, designated for the biology course. At that moment I saw something strange out of the corner of my eye. Inside his backpack, I could see for a short moment something that resembled a hand, but nothing common, a hand with a dark tint; perhaps the simplest analogy would be to describe it as a hand burned to char. It seemed to be desperately trying to get out of the backpack, but just as quickly as I could see it, Pablo closed the small window that showed the contents of his backpack, as if he hadn’t noticed at all.
“You have to start doing your own homework, if Professor Ever finds out, they will admonish us both.” Pablo said between his teeth, as if he was nervous that someone would catch us.
-It’s the last time I’ll copy your homework I promise, please, you also know that I’ll make sure of making it impossible for anyone to notice we copied, not even the “great” Professor Ever.- I said it in a mocking tone, both knowing that he was an intimidating guy when angry.
As we walked down the hall towards the classroom we noticed the prefect in the distance, he took us by surprise, our completely thoughtless and instinctive reaction was to open the first door that crossed our eyes. It looked like one of our high school classrooms; but something was wrong. Terribly wrong, chills running down the spine kind of wrong. The first thing I noticed was the immediate and disturbing absolute silence, it took over the entire environment in a split of a second, I could no longer hear the children outside playing, or the whistling of the wind, not even the old silence’s buzz was perceptible by my ear. It took me a few seconds to realize, the fear that silence awoke in me was very little… the image in front of my eyes had no comparison. The paint on the walls peeled off with surreal slowness, leaving gaps in the wall, as if they were void; And if that wasn’t weird enough, the little scales floated toward the ceiling until they disappeared. Beams of “light” pierced through the windows, indescribable, almost impossible to put into words, something that seemed inconceivable. Beams of “black” light seemed to flood the room through the windows, which rather than illuminating the space, it darkened it even more with each passing second, gradually eliminating the color of all objects to the point where I only saw black and white. Finally, that “luminosity” settled at ground level, behaving like a very dense liquid, slowly covering every surface in total darkness. The chairs and tables were torn into pieces, the wood rotted, and worn; they even seemed to be in that state for decades. On the blackboard, which was in a deplorable state, there was a message written with what seemed to be a thick and dark liquid, like asphalt tar; and it went something like this: “वल मान वतावि नाशराक्षस अंधेरा” (it took me months of writing in my dream log to be able to transcribe that little sentence of symbols).
My first reaction was turning to Pablo, who I thought was next to me, but to my surprise, he was behind me and didn’t look like him anymore. Every single cell of my body was paralyzed, I could feel the panic going through my whole body again and again, my brain screamed run away!, but my body remained static in front of a humanoid figure, which with much, much imagination still mimicked Pablo’s figure; the first thing I noticed was his eyes, or rather, the absence of them; in their place were those hollow spaces dark and deep as the bottom of an old well. Unfortunately, it didn’t take me long to notice the features of his face, as they gradually transformed, almost resembling a reptile; his skin with a pale gray-blue hue. No description would do justice, no adjective would suffice to describe the image before me; he had traits that no being in this world could bear; arms thin as “bones barely covered by skin”, so long his hands curled at the ground. Before I could continue appreciating the aberrant figure, which used to be Pablo, an intense and short buzzing dropped me to my knees and made me shut my eyes, when I regained control I dared to open my eyes only to find myself on the ground; I felt as if my brain was being aggressively shaken nails digging inside my skull. While trying to recover my posture I realized that dark light had flooded about half of the classroom, I could barely see my hands; With great difficulty I could see that monstrosity approach my ear, my body still paralyzed and unable to move a finger I saw it closing that little distance between us and with a voice so deep and at the same time subtle, that no creature could emit, it yelled the following: “valrayani vinashma yuttrma” and all of a sudden everything went dark; Or at least that’s what I managed to remember.
An image of darkness that slowly clears… the first thing I could distinguish was my mother in front of me, given the expression of terror on her face and the tears rolling down her cheeks, I would have thought she had seen Death herself, however it took me very little to realize, my mom had been trying to interrupt my sleep (despite Dr. Villarreal explicitly advised against such action).
What happened?.- I spoke as I felt a drilling pain in my head.
-ARE YOU OKAY!? .- My mother shouted with a voice breaking like autumn leaves.
-Yes, I’m just confused, I was with Pablo at school and suddenly…- My father suddenly interrupts:
-We were very worried! - My dad said with an aggressive tone, which he often expressed when he was in a stressful situation.
-Mom, what happened? -
Sobbing she replied:
- We don’t know! We heard you scream and we went down immediately; we found you on the floor “gasping” for air. -
-KATHERINE! Stop scaring the child! This is not the time for your dramas. You’re fine, we got worried about seeing you rolling over and screaming. We should probably call Dr. Villanza. -
- Oh Gerard! It’s Dr. Villarreal, you already know.-
-Katherine! Do you really choose this moment to correct me!?…Ugh…Sorry…Son, are you sure you’re alright? .- Said my father, noticeably irritated.
Despite his efforts to hide it, I could see my dad’s obvious preoccupation, which was disconcerting as I had never seen him like that before.
-Yes dad, it’s just my head hurts a lot, can I go to sleep?.-
“Yes son,” he said with a hard expression on his face, I could see the muscles of his jaw tensing. His rather monotonous words I could see his discomfort, perhaps sending me to sleep would make him believe that the situation was under control somehow.
Trying to go up the stairs to my room, I noticed that every muscle of my body ached and my ears were ringing, heart pounding my chest but that didn’t stop me from hearing my parents arguing about taking me to the nearest hospital emergency room. …
When I finished telling my dream without any kind of inhibitions whatsoever to Dr. Villarreal, I couldn’t help noticing the expression on his face, he was surprised, terrified but above all, wrapped in interest, he wouldn’t take his eyes off me, but not in a weird way. He talked to me a bit afterwards, and asked to speak to my parents alone immediately after the session ended. The next day my mother decided that I would not attend school, and naturally like any other teenager, I did not resist the decision; It seemed strange to me because my mother would never propose that I lose a single second of my education.
The next day began peacefully, only to be interrupted by my mother…
-Son! Come down please, there is someone I want you to meet.- Each word vibrating with an anxious note.
-Eh.., yes mom, I’m going.- Turn off the TV, reluctantly went down to the first floor.
To my not so pleasant surprise, my mother invited a priest to visit us. Father Ernesto, an old, robust man with an unkempt appearance, with so many gray hairs that his hair looked like an ashtray, a thick and carelessly grown beard, with an appearance as boring as his voice. He extended his hand to greet me and introduced himself.
-Hello little one, your mother told me that you have had problems last night, maybe you need to be closer to the presence of God, but before we speak, do you mind if we pray together?
-Mom, why did you bring this guy? - I sharply interrupted Father Ernesto.
I said it, as sarcastic and slightly offensive as I could.
-SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BRAT! Show some respect! .- The glare that my mother imposed was even more chilling than my night terrors, that woman at any moment could turn into a beast.
It’s okay Katherine, don’t worry. How about we talk son? .- The way the priest spoke seemed very strange to me, he sounded father-like.
-Mmm okay I guess. - I answered with the intention of dimming my mom’s mood.
So I talked to him a little about the dream I had, what I saw, I felt; beyond an exaggerated reaction of the priest, I noticed him calm and quite composed. Without saying a single word, he took out of his pocket a small book, the bible, I suppose; He began reading some sentences, while I looked at my mother, expressing with my eyes the embarrassment that the moment caused me. I felt very uncomfortable during the entire “ritual” or whatever he was doing; however, the sensation reached such a degree that it was almost unbearable, I gradually began to breathe hardly and heavy as if the air had thickened, I felt fear because something was very wrong, this sensation was not normal; my hands felt heavy, and they did not seem to respond to my command, the room seemed to be cold despite being a hot summer day, fortunately I managed to hide it without anyone noticing, because I did not intend to dignify the priest and his “divine” words . I was never a believer and much less devout, however the terror that caused me to believe that what happened merely suggestion, made me reject any premise that came out of Father Ernesto’s mouth.
I wish I could say that this was the only time I dreamed something as dark as that, but it is not the case; although the dreams were rarely the same, they all seemed to have similar characteristics. Known scenarios, characters representing loved ones, and invariably at some point in the dream everything ended up being distorted, in a bizarre and gloomy environment that takes over everything; always accompanied by a strange figure, speaking in a dialect impossible for me to understand. I would be lying if I said that my passion for languages developed from these events, however something deep inside of me knew that the symbols had to be real, there must be a hidden message behind those symbols waiting for me to decipher it, although I’m very scared of what I might find. The brain cannot create such stuff out of the blue, and I’m sure I have never seen those symbols before.
I’ll keep in touch soon, thanks for reading this…