My husband and I are both people persons. I used to work at the maternity ward at a local hospital, while he’s a private trainer at a popular gym downtown. He always has a story to tell about the many strange people he meets in his line of work, but it is never mean-spirited. He shares the occasional anecdote or bizarre quote. People say the darndest things.
Not too long ago, I lost my job at the hospital. They were “restructuring” the maternity ward. Most people were reassigned or fired.
It was tough finding something new, but even tougher to stay positive. While my husband went on and on about the many interesting characters he’d met, I had little to share but what jobs I’d applied to. After two months of searching, my husband had a proposition. Turns out, one of his regulars had need for a private nurse.
I’m using a fake name here to keep some semblance of privacy, as what I’m about to tell you relates to his medical history. Let’s call this client “Lucas”. Lucas is not the kind of person you think would have need for on-site medical assistance. He’s in his early 40’s and has exceptional physical health. Since the reason behind his need for a nurse was very much a personal health matter, my husband had no idea what the job was really about. There was nothing obviously wrong with Lucas.
“You can just talk to him,” my husband said. “If you don’t like it, that’s fine.”
I was very against it at first, but after two months of rejection letters (or no letters at all), I was willing to give anything a shot. It’d be nice to have something new to talk about. To share an equal scoop of “you’ll never guess what happened at work today” at the dinner table.
So my husband set up a meeting.
I met Lucas at his mansion one late October afternoon. The sun was already setting, but it was the only time he was off work. Lucas worked at least 10 hours a day, sometimes more, and often weekends. Still, it afforded him the luxury of a high-end lifestyle, with the cars and housing to go with it. Parking my Toyota on his driveway felt like an insult, and the ‘check engine’ light taunted me.
Lucas came out to meet me with a hand outstretched. He was tall and athletic, with thick bottlecap-like glasses. He covered his bald head with a black baseball cap; proudly displaying the company logo. I won’t share what it is, but you’d recognize it. Guaranteed.
I shook his hand and took a good look at him. I could tell that behind his perfectly white teeth and upper body strength, this man was exhausted. The eyes couldn’t lie about that.
“Thank you for coming,” Lucas said. “If you’re half as fantastic as your husband is telling me, we’re gonna get along just fine.”
“If I were even half as fantastic as my husband says, I’d be running this country,” I laughed. “But thank you.”
He gave me a quick tour of his three-bedroom house, taking the time to acquaint me with his lifestyle. Apart from work, he didn’t do much. Working out, going on the occasional hunting trip, swimming. Lucas worked remotely as a sort of liaison for a multinational company and had to be on stand-by if there was anything major going down. He spent a lot of time writing communiques in relation to major shareholders and handled at least two major investment relations. It was high-stakes work, with hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs on the line.
“If I make a bad call, we could inadvertently shut down a small town in New England,” he said. “That’s not an exaggeration. That’s an actual problem right now.”
And there it was. That was the quote I was bringing home to the dinner table. It felt good to be back.
After the tour, Lucas sat me down in the kitchen and offered me a glass of carrot juice. His kitchen was bigger than my living room, and it seemed like half the cabinets were empty. The man had six types of freshly pressed juice, ready to go.
“You seem to have it all figured out,” I smiled. “I can’t imagine why you’d need a trained health professional.”
“I get why you’d think that,” said Lucas, polishing his glasses. “But I have a condition, and it’s starting to become a concern. I need someone with experience and, uh, discretion.”
“Of course,” I said. “Patient confidentiality extends to nurses.”
“So any and all conditions I may or may not have stays between us?”
“Absolutely.”
I took a sip of the carrot juice, feeling a bit of a sting. I coughed.
“There’s some chili in there,” he smiled. “Spicier than it looks.”
We walked out to the terrace overlooking his back yard. He had a nice handmade furniture set, along with a barbeque, but I could tell it hadn’t been used in a while. The view was pretty neat though. There was a large open space with a decently cut lawn. You could see the edge of town to the east, and a vast forest to the west. Birch, mostly.
“There are… all kinds of sleep disorders,” he said. “People who talk, walk, or scream in their sleep. Some don’t sleep at all. I have something similar, and need someone to make sure I’m okay.”
“That sounds serious,” I said. “Are we talking sleep apnea, or…”
“I got these pills, right?” Lucas said, rattling a pill bottle. “It’s like turning off a light. Knocks me out cold. It’s the only way I can sleep without being a danger to myself, but they’re a pain in my ass. The side effects are nasty.”
“What happens if you don’t take them?”
“That’s what you’re here for,” Lucas sighed. “I have a form of hypernoctambulism.”
This is where Lucas informed me of his ailment. Up until that point, I had never heard of it. A lot of people know about sleepwalking, but this was much more severe. Hypernoctambulism, or in more common words, sleeprunning.
It sounded absurd.
He showed me his bedroom. While the rest of his house was tidy, this place was a veritable mess. His king-sized bed looked like it hadn’t been made in weeks. There were pill bottles on the nightstand, along with gadgets and clothes strewn across half the bed. He had nailed some sort of straps to the side of the bed, and he had a mouthguard next to his pillow.
“I frequently run into things,” he said. “Knocked out a tooth once. I gotta take precautions.”
He explained the various ways he’d tried to control it. Strapping himself down would work sometimes, unless he managed to worm his way out. He’d tried literal chains and handcuffs, but he just ended up hurting himself. His bruises would get so bad that they eventually broke through the skin. He showed me scars along his arms.
“I move so much that it chafes all the way through,” he said. “It gets a bit better with the Velcro straps, but they’re easier to get out of.”
He showed me his turquoise sleeping shoes. Since he could take off running, he would often hurt his feet. Waking up at the side of the road with bloody soles was a nightmare in and of itself.
I could tell this was a major part of his life. He told me at length about the many ways he’d tried to fix it, and always came back to that pill bottle. He hated it. It wore him out and left him feeling dazed all day long, which was starting to affect his work. Lucas needed someone to check up on him a few nights a week to make sure he could sleep without taking those pills, and without hurting himself.
“I figured you could help,” he said. “Maybe you have some ideas.”
“Don’t you have any recommendations from a physician?”
“This is it,” he said, rattling the pill bottle. “But it’s just not working out.”
“Then I… guess I’d have to see it. You know, figure what I’m up against.”
“So you’re on board then?”
I was.
We agreed on a trial period. We’d start with three nights a week, and if all turned out well, we’d increase to five. Lucas was okay with taking his sleeping pills every now and then, but he wanted as many nights as possible without them. His job was very demanding, and the side-effects of the sleeping pills were nasty enough to completely kill his momentum. Sure, sleeprunning took its toll as well, but at least he got a proper REM-cycle out of it. Except when he hurt himself.
Eventually, we parted ways. We shook hands, and I made my way home. While I couldn’t tell my husband about Lucas’ actual condition, I was eager to talk about my day as a whole. It felt good to contribute to the discussion around the dinner table. Things were balanced again, and I decided then and there that I would do whatever it takes to make this work. I needed this.
But there was that itch in the back of my mind that told me this wasn’t normal. I’d never heard of this condition, and it seemed more than just unusual. I could deal with working nights, but I wasn’t prepared for what this job might really entail.
I had a feeling it was spicier than expected.
Two days later I returned to help Lucas with his first session. I arrived at 9pm, and he’d already prepared by then. I hadn’t planned my sleeping schedule ahead as well as I should’ve, so I’d stocked up on mango-flavored energy drinks and chocolate-covered nut bars. Lucas also reminded me that I was free to drink as much fresh-pressed juice as I’d like.
He called it a night at 10pm sharp. He seemed a bit uncomfortable going to bed without strapping himself in, but he kept his sleeping shoes on. Despite all preparations, I felt like I had no idea what was really coming. Lucas seemed genuinely distraught, like he was gearing up for a marathon.
He turned on a white noise playlist, turned down the lights, and asked me to wait outside.
“It usually doesn’t start right away,” he said. “Check in on me in a while.”
As I left, he cleared his throat and looked up from his pillow.
“And, uh… close the doors. All of them. Just in case.”
Lucas had an alcove in the hallway outside his bedroom where he’d set up two recliners with a table in-between. It was insanely comfortable, and a perfect setup for reading or listening to audio books. Lucas told me he was okay with me bringing something to do while I waited, so I’d stocked up on podcasts. As the hours passed, it was difficult to imagine what would happen next.
It was just past midnight when I heard a strange noise coming from the bedroom. Like a shrill groan, slow and drawn out.
Then, footsteps; quickly approaching.
I barely had the time to take off my headphones before something slammed into the bedroom door, rattling the paintings on the wall. I could hear Lucas getting up and running back and forth, like a fly trying to get out of an open window. Finally, he gave the bedroom door another smack.
This time, it gave way.
His eyes had rolled back in his skull, and his mouth was wide-open. His head was flopping back and forth like a dead fish, and his arms hung haplessly at his side. It was as if he was being pulled forward by the torso, only using his legs to keep up. For a second, he just stood there, as if pondering his options.
Then he started running.
I didn’t know whether to get out of the way or tackle him, so I did neither. Instead, he just passed me by; smacking my shoulder as he went along. He hurried down the stairs, clearing three steps at a time, and slamming into a wall as the stairs curved to the left. Some kind of diploma came tumbling down, covering the steps in glass.
Good thing he wore his sleeping shoes.
I ran after him. I didn’t even notice that I was calling out to him, trying to grab his attention. I know it is said that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker unless necessary, but he was hurting himself. I had to at least try something.
I followed him throughout his house as his flailing arms knocked over every piece of curio along the way. He groaned the entire time; the noise being interrupted with every forceful step like a stalling engine.
He accidentally pushed the doors to the terrace open and ran out into the back yard. I followed him, but he was much faster than anticipated.
Seeing him out there was… unreal. It felt like a bad dream. He looked like a flesh-puppet being pulled along by invisible strings, stumbling forward with what little control he had left. It wasn’t random either – he was going in a straight line, as if towards something. I tried to keep up, but I couldn’t run with the same reckless abandon. He was getting away, and I was already getting winded.
As he reached the edge of the birch forest, his poor motor skills caught up with him, as he ran headlong into a birch tree.
By the time I got to him, he was having some sort of micro-seizures. He wasn’t breathing. I’d left my phone upstairs and couldn’t call for help, so I had to act fast. I rolled him onto the side, put my arm under his head, and started smacking him between the shoulder blades.
Three or four smacks later, I heard his breathing return; slow and steady.
He was okay.
Lucas took his pills and dreamlessly passed the night. We scheduled another trial two days from then, giving me some time to process what’d happened, and plan ahead. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was no stranger to patients having seizures, or wandering off in a stupor, but this? This seemed coordinated. Purposeful, even.
Two days later, I met with Lucas again. A bit earlier this time, so we had time to discuss precautions and what steps to take. I could tell he was having trouble concentrating; probably a side-effect from his sleeping pills. He had trouble making complete sentences.
I didn’t have a lot of ideas. Just strapping him in would be a temporary fix, but I figured we needed something more permanent. As Lucas stepped outside to take a phone call, I wandered around his house, looking for inspiration.
And I found something.
I don’t know if it was brilliance or stupidity, but Lucas had a home gym. Among his possessions were this state-of-the-art treadmill. It was wide enough for two people to fit and had a ton of settings; including a dynamic speed based on how fast you’re running. When Lucas came back, I pointed at it.
“Have you tried setting this up?” I asked. “You could run for hours on this thing.”
“I can’t really control it,” he said. “But you could try guiding me onto it.”
“You think that’s crazy?”
“No, no,” he smiled. “Quite the opposite.”
We moved it up, set up a dynamic speed, and placed it by his bed. We had it in a direct line from bed to door, hoping he would run straight onto it. I also suggested covering the door in protective foam and installing a bolt lock on the outside; something so he couldn’t accidentally open from the inside. He was very receptive, and even though it was all just loose ideas, he wrote it all down. Lucas was nothing if not thorough.
That night, I only stayed in the hallway for a short while, waiting for him to fall asleep. Then I went inside and watched. I’d adapted my sleep schedule a bit and didn’t need quite as many mango-flavored energy drinks that night. I made do with some chili carrot juice. Most of it was left on the table next to me though; I was too nervous and kept tapping my foot. It echoed off the hardwood floor.
Just short of midnight, Lucas started to stir. I got up and readied myself.
It was such a strange sight. In one swift motion he went from sleeping, to a sit-up, to kneeling, to full-on sprinting. I placed myself between the treadmill and the door, hoping to tackle him if he missed it. Luckily, he didn’t. In two steps, he was on that thing, and the electric motor hummed to life. At first I thought he’d be too quick and accidently tumble over it, but the dynamic setting kicked in and adapted to his pace. Seconds later, he was running at a steady pace. The bars on the side kept him straight.
At first I laughed. It was a relief to see it work. It was such a strange solution, but it was simple enough to do the trick. But all the excitement started to fade as I got a good look at him. His blank eyes, the wide-open mouth. I couldn’t get over just how alien he looked, and how misappropriated his body was. It really looked like he was using it wrong, like he didn’t know what to do with it.
And those eyes… there was something there. There was something behind them, something purposeful. It made me cold in my stomach, like I’d swallowed a block of ice. Like I was watching something profound, and inhuman.
Lucas had slowed down to a jog after about an hour, and fully stopped somewhere around 3 am. By then he just stood there, looking straight ahead with those white-dead eyes. Eventually, those eyes closed, and he crawled back into bed. By 6 am, his alarm went off.
He took a showed and met me downstairs for breakfast. I could tell he was in a good mood the way he hummed along with the radio. I told him what’d happened, and he was elated.
“This is amazing,” he laughed. “Just… amazing. You have no idea.”
He finished up some pancakes, served with cucumber water and a few slices of an orange. He plopped down on a chair across from me.
“I feel so energized. I ran it off. No bruises or broken bones, just a little sweat. This is… beyond amazing.”
“I’m glad we could work something out,” I smiled. “You think you’re still going to need my services?”
“Are you kidding?”
He dried off his hand and reached out to me.
“I’m gonna need you at least five days a week. Maybe six, if I’m busy. This changes everything.”
I considered it. It’d be a challenge to stick to that kind of schedule, but the pay he offered would far surpass what I’d made at the maternity ward. Besides, I could probably get used to it. Once I got him on the treadmill, the rest of the night was a piece of cake.
So I shook his hand and hoped for the best.
For a few weeks, I got into this really weird routine. Waking up in the middle of the afternoon, shopping for groceries, doing some chores. Dinner was starting to feel like lunch, and I had to start moving my meals around. I got really into various podcasts and YouTube channels, as I’d sometimes sit for hours on end without having to do anything.
There were a few stumbles along the way. Sometimes Lucas would slip, and I’d have to guide him back to the treadmill. Other times, he would roll out of bed on the wrong side. It was a bit of trial and error, but little by little, it started to turn into an actual job. Sometimes we’d go the entire day without talking, as Lucas would often be busy. But compared to how he’d seemed when we first met, he was much better off now. Hell, he told me his hair had started growing back. That’s gotta count for something.
Still, I could never get over the way he looked at night. Those white eyes were burned into my mind.
Then there was this one night in late November. I’d been working with Lucas for some time, and we were getting used to the routine. It was a bit tricky to navigate a working social life, but I managed to make do with the time I had. We’d figured out a schedule where I was working every other weekend, rotating the days in a way that Lucas never had to take his sleeping pills no more than two sessions in a row.
That particular night was nothing special, at first glance. I’d prepped the last episode of the podcast I was gonna listen to, charged my phone, and gotten a glass of chili carrot juice from the fridge. Lucas had settled in for the night, and the treadmill was ready to go. As he started to drift off to sleep, he turned to me.
“There’s this… this dream,” he said. “Where I’m running through a field. Just this endless meadow. I have all these friends, and we’re going home. It’s… the final day of school. First day of summer.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“It is,” he smiled. “It really… really is.”
He turned away and sighed.
“Makes you want to run.”
As he fell asleep, I got ready to steer him towards the treadmill. I was waiting for the sit-up, the kneeling, and then the sprint. It was routine by then, but I still couldn’t get over that unsettling feeling I got when watching him move. It’d given me countless sleepless hours.
When he started to stir, I was already up on my feet; waiting by the treadmill. But I could tell something was off. He was slower than usual. More deliberate. In a controlled motion, he sat up straight; his head hanging loose against his shoulder.
For a few seconds, we just looked at one another. Those white eyes rolled back in his skull. I could see his chest rising and falling, quickly, like a panting dog.
He closed his jaw, straightened out his head, and looked right at me.
“Hello.”
The way he said it… it made me shudder. It was barely his own voice anymore. It sounded feminine; dripping with hatred. Lucas’ body language shifted as he rolled his shoulders.
“Release me,” he continued.
“Go back to sleep, Lucas.”
With a series of fluid motions, he stood up in the middle of the bed; those white eyes still fixated on me. I could feel that block of ice churning in my stomach. I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t having a nightmare. It was right there, and it was something far beyond what we’d planned for.
“You run.”
He grabbed a glass of water from his nightstand and hurled it against the floor. In one movement, he got off the bed and swooped up the largest piece of broken glass; wielding it like a dagger.
I wasn’t waiting to find out what he was going for. I hurried out the door, shut it behind me, and used the bolt we’d installed to lock him in. I heard a deep thud, followed by a sharp tapping as the broken glass pierced its way to the doorframe.
I realized I’d left my phone in the other room. The pounding on the door stopped, and I heard footsteps fading away into the distance.
For a moment, I thought it was over.
Then, a loud crash.
I only had a few seconds to react. There was this strange droning sound, coming from Lucas, and I could hear it from outside. I figured he’d made his way out and was heading for the forest.
But no. He was coming back inside.
I heard approaching footsteps making their way through the kitchen. I considered my options.
I could go into his bedroom, get my phone, and call for help. But no, the lock was on the outside of the door; he could make it inside long before help arrived.
I could hide. But for how long? Where?
No, there was only one real option.
Running.
I hurried down the stairs and headed straight for the front door. I knocked over a metallic urn on the way, along with a chair and a vase with a dry blue sunflower. I could hear Lucas gaining on me, dragging something sharp along the walls.
I looked back, but only for a second.
His hands were outstretched, as if coming in for a big embrace. He held his sharpest knife in his left hand; usually reserved for cutting oranges. It scraped against the wall, leaving a long straight line in the wallpaper. His head was swinging haplessly side to side, again deemed useless by whatever force was pulling him forward.
And those eyes were still white as death, accompanied by an absurd grin.
Every other step, I heard him spit out a growling “Run!” at me. He was much faster but had little to no control over his movements. He kept bumping into things, stumbling, and slipping. Every time I turned a corner, I gained a few seconds. But he was clever, and I couldn’t just run circles around him. It felt like no matter what I did, those footsteps were coming closer.
I decided to take a gamble. It’d been particularly cold outside, and the grass was slippery. He didn’t have much traction with those rubber running shoes. I figured with enough twists and turns I could make him slip.
I burst through the back door, past the terrace, and into the open grass. Lucas followed, repeating the same word over and over and over, with every step.
“Run! Run! Run!”
He ran out into the grass, but quickly stopped. It was as if he realized he wouldn’t be able to run on this surface. Instead, he dropped to all fours; his head dangling like a bag of groceries. He didn’t need to look at me. He knew exactly where I was.
I turned to run, but it was already too late. He was gaining on me. I heard the gallop of hands and feet coming closer, then nothing.
A breath later, I was knocked to the ground.
It felt like the world turned on its head as he slammed into me. I fell, hard, twisting my ankle in the process. I had the wind knocked out of me. For what felt like an eternity, I laid in the grass counting my breaths. My mind was disassociating; forcing to imagine myself somewhere else, doing something different. Something far away, where the grass was warm, and the air didn’t hurt.
But nothing happened. Looking to my right, I saw Lucas lying face down, having micro-seizures. He’d had a bad fall, and I could see the edge of the knife poking through his collarbone. He must’ve landed on it.
“Lucas?” I wheezed. “Are you… you?”
No response. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. In the faint light coming from the house, all I could see for certain was the edge of the blade; covered in red.
I slowly got up on my knees. I kept holding my stomach, feeling like I was going to be sick. That block of ice felt heavier. I crawled over to Lucas. The second I put my hand on his shoulder, there was a loud snap.
But not from him.
I turned towards the forest, where no less than a dozen people were staring at me. White eyes gleaming from loose-necked skulls. Men and women, young and old.
“We,” said one.
“Got” said another.
“You” said a third.
I turned to run, but I couldn’t put any weight on my foot. Instead I fell and was overcome with a dozen hands. One of them grabbed my hair, another my leg. They started pulling me away; dragging me into the forest, leaving Lucas to bleed out in his back yard.
My screams echoed through the birch trees, rattling the leaves. I remember feeling bark against the palm of my hands and moss under my fingernails. There was nothing I could do. The ice in my stomach exploded into a full-blown shiver as my body went into a panicked shock.
At some point, it stopped.
I was pressed against the ground, deep in the woods. We were in a small clearing, where something had broken the ground apart. There was a chasm ahead, at least 20 feet deep.
Something down there was moving.
My captors had surrounded me, but one of them stepped out to the edge of the chasm. In-between my screams, I could hear my assailant talking.
“Yes,” it said. “We join.”
“Eo!” groaned the others, in unison.
“We run.”
“Eo!”
“We are blameless.”
“Eo!”
Four of them pulled me up by my arms, holding me aloft like a scarecrow. All the fight had run out of me, leaving me panting and crying. I could barely see them. All the light from the house was far gone, and the moon was partly cloud-covered. And yet, even then, I could see the reflections in their white eyes.
“An offering.”
Maybe Lucas was the intended offering. Maybe stopping him over and over made them consider another. I peered over the edge of the chasm and saw something stirring; ivory white and worm-like. A myriad of black spots in groups of two, like a hundred empty craniums looking up.
“Eo!” they chanted. “Eo!”
I felt a hand loosening its grip, as something eagerly stirred below.
Then, a gunshot.
Lucas’ shotgun was meant for hunting quail, not people. That doesn’t stop birdshot from packing one hell of a punch. As the abductor to my right took a blast to the solar plexus, he lost his grip on me, and tumbled into the chasm.
The white worms massed into a frenzy. I heard tearing, biting, and bones breaking as the mass of white turned a pinkish red.
They dropped me flat, and I started slipping downward. Putting weight on both my feet, even my wounded one, I managed to steady myself. Still, I was inches from completely losing myself. I heard another blast and flinched so bad I nearly lost my grip.
They scattered, running in all directions, laughing along the way.
Dragging myself back up, I took one final look into the chasm.
It was empty.
We made our way back and called for help. Turns out that accidentally stabbing yourself was enough to snap Lucas out of it. When he did, he called for help, got his shotgun, and followed my screams into the woods.
Neither of us know what was down there, in that chasm. It used to be some sort of pond that’d been drained, leaving this large hole in the middle of nowhere.
We filed a report for an attempted abduction, but it was difficult to keep our story straight. I tried to tell it like it was, but Lucas switched a few events around to make it more believable. When things stopped adding up, the police chalked it up to some kind of home invasion gone wrong.
There were no arrests.
In a strange twist of fate, this somehow cured Lucas of his sleeprunning. He explained it like a deep-rooted feeling that whatever had been trying to lure him out had sort of… lost interest. Maybe they were looking somewhere else, or figured he wasn’t worth the trouble.
But even now, long after the fact, I still have nightmares about it. I remember feeling so helpless, watching the world pass me by as I’m drawn deeper into the woods.
And sometimes, according to my husband, I’ve started sleeping with my eyes open.
And when I do, my eyes are white.