In movies, stories, legends, and media. You never hear about a haunted apartment. It’s either the house, the land, or the person.
I was eight years old when I was diagnosed with chronic insomnia and night terrors. It was no surprise to my doctors at the time. My mom, two brothers, and I had just escaped my extremely abusive father. We traveled from a house in Nevada to a three bedroom apartment in a crappy part of Washington state. My father made enough for my mom to stay home with all of us kids, to suddenly my mom working all the time and still having to frequent the local food bank. I was just having a hard time adjusting. It’s the trauma my dad put us through, mixed with my entire life being uprooted so we could be safe. My mom had the master bedroom, my brothers shared the room right next to hers, and me being the only girl had the room down the hall to myself.
I remember when the dreams started, or the night terrors according to my doctor. I was walking alone in a cave. It was so real I could feel the dampness of the cave on my skin, the cold would rattle me to the bones, the echo of dripping water would fill my ears. I would walk aimlessly, it was too dark to be able to tell where I was going. Every evening it was the same, but when I went back to sleep I would pick up where I left off, like a save point in a video game. Every night, for weeks, I would just walk. Then I would wake up cold, damp, and confused.
After a couple of weeks I heard crying in my dream. I was only eight and wanted to help, so I followed the sound of the sobs. The crying would echo throughout the cave. The drips, the cries, the dampness, the cold. I began to dread going to sleep. I just wanted to sleep. But I had to find the source of the sobs, maybe I could end the nightmare if I did. Eventually I saw a shape in the cave, the crying had gotten louder and I finally found the source. It took me weeks to get close to the figure. Every night getting closer and closer, but not quite reaching it.
Finally I did. A little girl around my age. Her hands were covering her face, her shoulders shuddered with every sob. I would talk to her, try to console her, do everything I could from a distance to get her to stop crying. Then one night I got close enough to touch her. I asked if she was okay, if she was lost as well? I put my hand on her shoulder….
Dead silence. No more crying. No more water dripping. No echo. Nothing. Not even the ringing in my ears I had gotten so accustomed to after my dad knocked my mom into me two years ago. The little girl moved her hands from her face and looked up at me.
She was disgusting to look at. Her face had gouges and dried blood all over it. The palms of her hands were cut and her wrists had slices in them. The worst part was her eyes. There was no pupil. The entire eye was black. They were sunken in her skull as if she hadn’t slept in weeks. I screamed in my dream and woke up with the scream caught in my throat. The girl was standing next to my bed.
She didn’t cry anymore, and I didn’t dream. I didn’t sleep. The dark circles under my eyes began to turn purple, they were becoming sunken in and my mom was worried. I didn’t tell her about the girl. The girl stayed in my room and every time someone came in, she would hide in the top cubby of my sliding closet. She would look at me with a smile, her finger to her lips as she cocked her head, shushing me. At night she would talk to me. Tell me that we’re friends, that I saved her, that we could be friends forever if that’s what I wanted. She terrified me.
My mom would sometimes find me outside my brother’s room, passed out in the hallway just outside their door. She took me to the doctor. Like I said, chronic insomnia and night terrors. But she still didn’t know about the girl. All I told her was I didn’t like to sleep. At first they tried melatonin, then amitriptyline, then trazodone. I was so tired, but every time I would start to drift to sleep the girl would wake me up. If I didn’t respond to her she would get violent. She would scream and hurt me. My mom would see the cuts on my arms. The doctors said I did it to myself in my sleep.
I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I told my mom about the girl. I told her I wanted to sleep. I didn’t care that it was supposed to be a secret anymore, I didn’t care if the girl was angry with me, or if she hurt me. I just wanted to sleep. The night I told my mom, she let me sleep with her. I took the medication and slept for fifteen hours in her bed. My mom was so worried, she called the doctor and they essentially said I had a sleep debt. My body was trying to catch up on all the lost rest. They told her to just let me rest, it’s a good sign.
The next night I was in my room again. The girl was nowhere to be found. Maybe I had to keep her a secret because if I told someone then she would have to go away. She did tell me she wanted to be my friend. I was cautious, but I was able to fall asleep pretty easily. My sleep debt hadn’t been paid back yet, after all. I woke up in the middle of the night because I had to use the restroom. The girl was still nowhere to be found, but for some reason I was terrified. I didn’t want to leave the safety of my bed.
Eventually my bladder got the best of me. I leaped off my bed towards my bedroom door and flipped on the light. I ran down the hall to the bathroom and relieved myself. As I was sitting there finishing up I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw my mom limping down the hall. Limping isn’t the right word, she was dragging one leg on the ground as if she couldn’t use it at all.
I called out to her but she didn’t respond. I stood up, flushed the toilet, and ran out of the bathroom. I looked for my mom. She wasn’t in my room, the kitchen, or the living room. A deep fear had built up in my chest. I remember running to my mom’s room and finding her in bed. I remember holding onto her tight and falling asleep sobbing into her back. But that’s not how the night went.
My mom also woke up that evening. She said my grandmother, who had been dead for seven months at this point, had come to her in a dream saying she had to wake up. My mom had this eery sense of dread. She checked on my brothers, they were sound asleep in their bunk beds. Then she went to my room to check on me, but I wasn’t there. She checked the boys again, I wasn’t with them. Then she checked the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room. Finally she noticed the sliding glass door was open. This lead to our third story balcony that oversaw the back parking lot of our apartment complex. She ran to the door screaming my name.
She reached me as the top half of my body was hanging over the edge of the balcony. She caught me by the shirt as I was going down and pulled me into her arms. My mom said my skin was ice cold, I was pale as snow, and when she tried to shake me awake I just stared at her with black eyes. She just held me while sobbing, before eventually taking me back to her room. She didn’t sleep, she just watched me.
My mom couldn’t risk another night like that. She explained to the landlord that I was sick, that I was a danger to myself and couldn’t be on the third floor. The landlord was sympathetic and let her break the lease without penalty. My grandpa had been getting ready to sell his house, he couldn’t live there since my grandma passed away. He let us move in under the agreement that my mom took over renovations and kept his things safe so he didn’t have to pay for a storage unit. My sleep schedule returned to normal. Eventually we forgot.
It’s been 18 years since then. I’ve moved several times, mostly running from my abusive father. We changed our names and have moved on pretty well. My older brother and I have families of our own. My mom remarried and I haven’t had night terrors. But ghosts don’t haunt apartments, and last night I had the most vivid dream. I was walking in the dark…