Ever since I can remember, I could never quite wrap my head around the idea of people being afraid of the dark. It seemed nonsensical to me - as ridiculous as being afraid of flowers, or ice cream. I always liked the dark. I simply felt more comfortable at night, with the lights off. I didn’t have night vision or anything, but somehow I was able to instinctively navigate my way around dark rooms, and avoid stepping on or bumping into things. I remember once I was playing with legos and left them all over the floor of my room before going to bed. I woke up at 3 AM and walked across my entire room, in pitch blackness, to get to the door, without stepping on a single one. Somehow I just knew where to step to avoid them, without needing to look. It seemed perfectly natural to me.
That’s another thing, I’ve always been a night owl. My parents would constantly scold me for sleeping throughout the day and staying up all night. Going to school was a chore, because I felt tired most of the time. I would often nod off in class, to the ire of my teachers. We went to many doctors and therapists and tried a whole bunch of drugs and other treatments to correct my sleep patterns, but they never helped. My body usually just felt tired and drowsy during the day, and awake and active at night, as if that was its natural state.
As you can probably imagine, I was considered the weird kid in school, so I was a common target for bullies. I earned the nickname “Sleepyhead” in Kindergarten, which was eventually replaced by several ruder appellations as I got older. It’s not like I wasn’t able to make friends, though. In second grade, a boy named Gregory invited me over to his house for my first playdate. I distinctly remember the conversation we had while he was showing me around his room.
“And here’s my action figure collection. I’ve got Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, GI Joe, Transformers, Star Wars, Batman…”
I eyed the rows of toys on the shelves with only mild interest, and soon found my attention drifting, until I noticed something odd plugged into an electric socket near Gregory’s bed.
“Hey, what’s this?” I asked, bending down to examine the strange device. I had never seen anything like it before.
“Huh?” Gregory seemed puzzled as to what I was referring to, so I pointed towards the object again. “That’s just my nightlight,” he said nonchalantly.
“What’s that?”
Gregory laughed. “You seriously don’t know what a nightlight is?”
I shook my head. I had never heard the term before in my life.
“Well it’s just like a small lightbulb that automatically lights up when it’s dark. It helps me fall asleep.”
“But isn’t it supposed to be dark at night?”
“Well yeah, but I’m used to having a little bit of light ever since I was a baby. It makes the room less scary.”
“That’s just dumb. Why would you want a light at night? That’s like wanting a glass of ice cold water in the North Pole,” I said. (I was only 7 years old and didn’t really know how to filter my thoughts yet - or come up with sensible analogies.)
“Hey, lots of kids our age still use them!” Gregory objected, sounding defensive. “If anything, you’re the weird one. I can’t believe you’ve never even heard of a nightlight. Do you always sleep in complete darkness?”
“Yeah,” I replied, an unstated “Duh” conveyed by my tone.
That playdate ended early. Gregory and I eventually returned to being on good terms again, but that is one memory that has always stuck in my mind.
As I got older it became more apparent to me just how common it was for people to be scared of the dark. It was even common for grown-ups, which I found hilarious. I couldn’t count the number of times I had accidentally jump scared my parents by making a noise or brushing into them in the pitch-darkness at night when they got up to use the bathroom or something. When I first heard the song “Fear of the Dark” by Iron Maiden, I found the lyrics to be so ridiculous that I couldn’t believe that they were being sung by a grown man, let alone a band that had a reputation for being “cool”. As you can imagine, this didn’t quite endear me to my metalhead friends who first introduced me to the song.
At one point I decided to do some research on this, out of pure curiosity. The internet was a lot different back then - Wikipedia either didn’t exist yet, or was too little-known to be mainstream, but I was still able to find the information I was looking for, using my old PC with the dial-up modem. I found out that it had a name, “Nyctophobia”. (It was also sometimes called “Scotophobia”, but I just remember thinking that was a silly name since it sounded like it meant the fear of Scottish people…)
The website I found said that scientists speculated that it was an evolutionary adaptation, a relic of our ancient past where we were constantly on the lookout for predators, which could much more easily ambush us at night. The reason people were afraid of the dark, they said, was because anything could be lurking in it, ready to attack you, and you wouldn’t be able to see it coming until it was too late.
That seemed backwards to me. The dark felt comfortable, and I had never been afraid of anything sneaking up on me (probably because, due to my strange sixth sense, nothing ever could). The fact that other people couldn’t easily see me at night made me feel at ease. In fact, I actually felt a bit nervous when it was too bright outside (or inside), as it made me feel exposed and self-conscious, almost as if I were naked, as it seemed that everyone could so easily see me in every detail.
When I described these feelings to my parents and my psychologists, they often opined that it was just a phase that I would eventually grow out of. Not that I would eventually become afraid of the dark, but that I would start sleeping on a more normal schedule, and become more comfortable during the day. But as I got older, my nocturnal patterns just seemed to intensify.
When I was thirteen, another weird thing started happening. I would often wake up with scratches on my hands and face, as if I had been cut with knives. I could never remember how I got them, but they didn’t hurt, and I didn’t consider them a big deal at first, as they only appeared once every week or so. My parents, however, found it concerning, as they probably should have, but we were unable to determine the cause. My mom suggested that maybe I was accidentally scratching myself with my fingernails while I slept, but these cuts were way too long and deep to blame on my short nails.
I mentioned before about being a frequent target of bullies, and even after my fourteenth birthday, that hadn’t changed. There was one kid in particular, Cliff, who seemed to have it out for me this year. Cliff was aptly named, as he was built like one, wide with broad shoulders and a full head higher than me. He was so big that he had actually become the quarterback of the football team, the first Freshman in the history of our school to do so. He weighed almost 300 pounds, and it was pretty much all muscle. Everyone said he had a future in the NFL. And, as you can probably guess, he was a real jerk too. He had already beaten me up twice since the school year began, but no one wanted to believe any accusations against the school’s star athlete. He didn’t live that far from me, so it was always a game of cat-and-mouse avoiding him on the way to school and back. One morning in late October, I wasn’t careful enough and he spotted me.
“Hey Scarface!” he shouted, laughing from across the street. Ever since the mysterious scratches had started appearing on my face, that was one of Cliff’s favorite names for me. “What’s up?”
“Leave me alone, Cliff!” I replied, trying to ignore his mocking tone, but he just laughed again.
“That’s no way to talk to me, Scarface. You need to learn some respect!” I prepared to run as I saw him drop his backpack on the sidewalk and start to cross the street towards me. As soon as I took off, he started sprinting after me.
I got maybe a few yards into the thin forest before Cliff caught up to me and slammed me against a tree.
“What the hell is your deal, anyway?” he snarled. “Fucking emo kid, obsessed with staying up all night and cutting yourself all the time.”
I struggled to break free, but it was hopeless against the bully’s size and strength.
“If you’re so gloomy and emo, does that mean you’re suicidal too? Maybe I’d be doing you a favor by putting you out of your misery.”
I gulped. I was fairly sure he was just talking shit and wouldn’t actually try to kill me - he knew he would get caught. But still, that wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear.
“Please, Cliff,” I muttered. “Can you just-“
He cut me off by wrapping his hand around my throat and starting to choke me.
“Can I just what? Come on, speak up, Scarface!” he mocked, as all I could manage were faint gasps and gurgles. He then balled his other hand into a fist and hit me right on the nose, the force of the punch causing the back of my head to slam against the tree. I groaned in pain, but Cliff wasn’t satisfied, his sadistic grin twisting into a frown after a second or two.
“And that’s another thing that pisses me off about you,” he said, as he landed another punch right to my face. “How come you don’t bleed? Any other kid would at least have a bloody nose after just one hit like that, but not you. You got some kind of disease or something?”
Cliff’s hand had now loosened around my throat enough for me to wheeze out a reply. “I… do bleed…”
“Yeah, not very easily. Last time I had to wail on you for a good 15 minutes just to get a trickle of blood. Let’s see if I can beat that time.” He hit me again and I cried out in pain. As he was pulling back his fist for a fourth punch, a shadow suddenly fell over both of us.
We looked up. We were only in the very edge of the forest, and most of the leaves had already fallen from the trees, so it was fairly bright out. That meant that the sudden darkness, caused by a cloud moving in front of the sun, made a sudden and rather dramatic contrast. The darkness felt refreshing, and my pain seemed to diminish. I looked at Cliff, and something in my eyes seemed to catch him off guard, as he let go of me. I wasn’t quite sure what had come over me at that moment. I was no longer scared or even angry. I looked at the bully who normally towered over me, and at that moment he somehow seemed very small. A thought suddenly came to my mind - we were still playing cat-and-mouse, except this time, I was the cat.
Cliff seemed a bit unnerved, but quickly recovered, the cruel sneer soon returning to his face. “What’s that look for, emo boy? Don’t tell me you’re actually going to fight me? Bring it on you little bitch, I’ll beat the-“
I don’t remember what happened next. Literally, my memory just cuts out there, as if it were part of a recording that was just erased. I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t actually conscious during the next few moments, or because my subconscious mind blocked it out. But the next thing that I remember, I was standing in a spot a few yards away, and Cliff was nowhere to be be seen. At least, until I looked on the ground.
I remember thinking I should have thrown up, or at least felt like it, upon seeing his partially eviscerated body lying in a pool of blood on the forest floor, but I didn’t feel nauseous at all. Shocked, yes, but this somehow also felt… natural. Like I was doing something that I was meant to do. I looked back down at what remained of Cliff. His head had been nearly separated from his neck, and he was covered in what appeared to be slashes, stab wounds, and… bite marks? I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth, but I knew that it wasn’t mine. I raised my hands with the intention of trying to examine my teeth, which felt much longer and sharper in my mouth than usual, but stopped when I saw that my fingernails had somehow extended into 6 - inch - long claws, dripping with blood and small bits of viscera.
“What the fuck…” I muttered. There were no mirrors nearby, but I thought that might be a good thing, as I was terrified of what I might see if I looked in one right now.