I’m a twenty-three year old man. Old enough to have all the adult problems that we used to fear as kids, and young enough to remember everything I hoped adulthood would be. Age cured me of most of those dreams, but some stubborn part of my youthful wonder clung to me with a stern grip when I walked into my first apartment.
It smelt funny. It was small. The wallpaper clearly hadn’t been redone since the cold war, and the noise from the road outside was maddening.
But that small part of my childhood that had so stubbornly followed me these last five years of my life finally screamed for joy when I unpacked my bags. It was mine. I could sleep where I wanted, do my washing as I wished, and dammit I would leave the dishes to soak overnight if I damn well wanted to.
It was shitty and cramped, but it was mine. A few small, very dignified tears may have streaked my cheeks at the thought. It is not unmanly to cry, but the ugly cry that may or may not have followed my first entrance to the house after moving in was anything but pretty.
Looking back, it was probably my bedroom that was the best part. A king single, the only thing in my price range that could fit my massive frame, was the only furniture. At the end of the bed, looking out to the road, was a single window. To the left of the bed, directly facing that door, was a small closet.
I was overjoyed at seeing it, and was already thinking of ways to organise my stuff into it when I sat down on the bed. It had been a bitch to put together alone, but the comfort had been more than worth it.
My first night in my bedroom was something that I don’t think I will ever forget, just like my last.
Living life on my own, going to work and slowly moving everything from my dorm and parents house into my new place was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I might be an adult in name, but the kid in me loved that feeling more than anything else.
It lasted a week.
It was a lazy Saturday. Normally I would catch up on all of the cleaning that had been building up over the week, but it was my first weekend after the move in and I just wanted to relax. The tv was set up, and I had a few movies that I had been meaning to watch for a while now on Netflix. It was exactly what I had alway dreamed of when I imagined living on my own.
Normally I would do it in the living room, but some small part of me just adored the thought of my room so I decided I’d put in the effort to set the tv up in there for a change of pace. I moved everything in over the course of a few minutes, and finally left myself on the bed with a bag of microwave popcorn and some crappy movies lined up that promised a good time.
The movies drew on, and the hour eventually got late. The sky went from a gorgeous slew of reds and oranges hinting at pink, to the midnight blue of a night sky free of street lights. The window at the foot of my bed looked out into a beautiful starry night. The only light in my room was the blue glow of my TV playing yet another movie that promised to keep me awake into the ever-darkening night.
It was the peaceful contentment of a family game-night, sunken in the deep quiet that goes beyond sound. My room was not quiet, mind you. The TV was loud enough to hear without being so loud that it would wake the neighbours. It was a quiet that was deeper than that. It was the quiet that you fear as a kid, when you’re up late at night watching cartoons on adult swim. It’s a quiet full to the brim with emptiness.
The only sound was the TV. No cars crossed the main road in their inane rumbling, nor did birds call out their song. There were no creaks of a settling house, as apartments, even crappy ones, are built to better standards than that in this age. No. It was silent of all else but my TV and the movie it played.
I’m not sure when I noticed it. It’s one of those things that can go unnoticed for quite a while if you’re lucky enough not to think about it. But once I did notice it, it was maddening. Some part of me knew. Knew that beyond all shadow of a doubt there would be something, anything that would break that quiet in a moment. It built an anticipation that was enough to send my heart into overdrive. It thudded against my chest in what I could only recall dimly as outright terror,
Adults don’t get scared at night. Adults don’t fear the dark. They do not, in the darkness of their own home in the middle of the night, turn the volume of their TV up to drown out the screaming silence that promised to crack with every passing second.
The TV couldn’t drown it out, of course. It was never the silence that was the issue. The silence was a symptom. It is not silence that terrifies you, after all. Much in the same way that it is not the fall that kills you. It is the sudden absence of silence that you fear. It is the promising stillness that kills you.
Silence was never truly the issue. Much as it is not the night that frightens you nor the dark that transforms the world into a nightmare made real. It is your mind that does this. It is panic.
So when my home, my beloved home, grew quiet in that bone-deep way that we all remembered to fear as children, and my TV could not liven it, I grew scared.
Then a creak. A single, elongated creeeeeeeeeeak that screeched into the eerily quiet night. My closet door, fastened tightly closed before I even moved my TV into the room, opened. Slowly the door reached toward me, keeping my view away from its innards. I knew I could step up from my bed. I knew, logically, that I could walk toward it at that moment and close it without ever looking inside.
I knew, that beyond all shadow of a doubt, I could not look into that closet.
I could not tell you what part of me that came from. It certainly knew no origin from anything that I could tell you about. It was not some logical thought, backed by reasoning and empirical evidence. It was a maddened thought birthed of a fearful panic.
I eyed my closet door, nearly willing it closed with the force of my stare. It was tall and wooden, just like any other million closet doors in the world. The knob was brass, and the grain of the wood moved in lines and circles I could normally lose myself in. It stretched ever outward. Reaching, clawing its way open to give me a view of its insides.
Then my window started looking at me.
Like a burning sensation, as though I knew someone was watching me. It burrowed into me. I switched my view to the window at the foot of my bed. My glance passed the TV quickly, when had the movie stopped playing? My gaze landed on the window..
The night, so clear and magic before now seemed so much emptier for it. The streetlights. Where were the streetlights? It was so empty. The stars were there and the road hadn’t moved, but the night was darker. The stars didn’t light it as they should.
It was like a fog had crept up in the night to steal my vision. I could see the road, but I couldn’t quite make out the lines on it. The white paint was invisible in the darkness. The night was too thick to see it. It was too dense to make out. All that I could see were the myriad monsters that my mind painted onto the black canvas.
So I didn’t see the eyes, and I was grateful for it. I knew, through that same part of me that had told me I could not look at what was inside of my closet, that I could not look at what was staring at me from my window.
My awareness was brought to my door next. My beautiful, amazingly closed door. I always closed my door when I went to bed. No matter how old I got or how mature I became, the door stayed closed. I couldn’t look out into the darkness as I slept, even on a night that was alive.
On that night? I had never been more grateful for that habit. Because as I looked into the wooden door set neatly in its frame, I could have sworn to you on the lord’s own name that something behind it wanted in. It wanted desperately to be inside of my bedroom at that moment, and I knew more than anything else that I did not want to let it.
And then something, no, the thing, tapped on the door. It didn’t knock. The door didn’t shake at the hinges with the effort. It tapped, lightly, against the wooden door. A single, faint little tapping at my bedroom door in the middle of the night. It wanted in. It desperately wanted to pry its way into my room. It wanted me to open my door and look at it and finally just get in.
But I just sat there. Listening. Listening from my bed like a frightened little kid.
And just like a frightened little kid I sought the refuge that only the innocent can afford. I pulled up my thick blanket over my head, and I shook like a newborn foal standing for the first time.
All the while, it tapped at my door, and it watched me. It wasn’t coming from the window anymore, nor the closet. It was everywhere. It was everywhere that wasn’t my little blanket that shielded me from the dark of my room.
So I lay under my blanket, listening to the inane tapping grow ever more furious, tempting me to just get up from my bed and let it in.
I don’t know why I shut my eyes. I don’t know why I chose to hide under my blanket like the fool I was. It was the action of a scared child, too afraid to face the dark and see that there was never anything there in the first place. But I don’t regret it. Even when I felt as though my blanket itself was gone, and that the minute I opened my eyes I would see it, I didn’t regret it.
I ran away and hid. I ran and hid from something that I couldn’t see. I felt my hot breath on me in my blanket, feeling the stare of something right in front of me. It was as if as soon as I opened my eyes I would be looking right into the eyes of something else that had entered my domain.
So I wept, and the tapping ceased. The quiet settled. Alone in the dark room, under my blanket, a chuckle. Not mine, but it’s. I didn’t feel the blanket move, or my bed shift. But it was right there. Right next to me, it laughed.
Never before had I known such an exquisite panic before.
It was like being chased, but never being able to see your pursuer. You can feel them on your tail, right about to catch you but never quite reaching you. It follows you like a violent burn against your every thought as you will yourself another single moment out of its grasp. But it keeps coming. It keeps to the very edge of your tail. Like Asop’s tortoise ever following a hare that can’t escape it keeps to your tail.
And that chuckle. It was so close. So near the end of its game. My breathing hitched. I felt my heart against my chest as I grew hotter and hotter under my blanket. And the tapping. That inane tapping. It kept going. Kept begging me to let it in. But the laughter demanded. It wanted me to look at it. It demanded that I look at it. Commanded that I opened my eyes and saw it in front of me, watching me. Smiling.
And then, like a wave crashing down on a sandcastle. Relief. It was done. My TV played again, and the cars rumbling sounded from my window. The upstairs neighbour resumed practising for their audition as rockstar, and the birdsong crept back from the abyss.
Finally, I breathed out, and flung the blanket from my body. The cold air rushed onto me as the heat-filled blanket was launched off the side of the bed. I had escaped. The chase was done, and I wasn’t caught. I hadn’t looked at it.
“Next time,” the voice whispered.
And I didn’t need to know that I shouldn’t open my eyes.
Time passed for a moment. Silence fell upon the room as a rueful chuckle was let out. Like before it was everywhere, but right in front of me most of all. The voice laughed again, shrill and high as it was.
And my door closed. My closed door, shut. The very door I had closed as I had every door in every room I had ever slept in, shut itself as it cut off the laughter. So I wept. I really wept. I shook and wept like a child and I have no shame in it.
I don’t regret what I did in panic. I can’t, because I knew I would do it all over again. I would look at my window, and stare at my door, and hide under my blanket all over again. And when the unknown came knocking there too, I would hide behind my eyes like the coward I was.
I moved out that day. My name might be on the rental agreement, but that house isn’t mine anymore. Nor is that room, or bed or TV. I left every single thing I have ever owned in that apartment, and I’ll be dead and buried before I ever see any of it again. I ran like a child would, and I’d do it again.
I don’t sleep at night any more. I stay awake and I watch. I look out into the darkness searching. I’m looking for eyes.