First part: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/16epd8v/i_keep_getting_attacked_in_my_sleep/
This is my second entry. I don’t know how many of you are returning, so I’ll get you caught up as briefly as possible, but if you haven’t read my last entry, I recommend you do before reading this, because the first entry involved a recap of multiple months. Sorry if the next few paragraphs seem rash. I’m currently in the hospital, in a great deal of shock, and I’m borrowing someone else’s computer to type this, so I don’t want to waste too much time telling what’s already been told. See, over the course of the past few months I’ve been getting attacked in my sleep. I’d wake up to scratches and open gashes, and eventually those turned to gunshot and bayonet wounds. There was never any evidence of who or what caused these, the only notable thing being the M1-Garand rifle the police found in my basement during a deep search of my house, which led them to believe I was inflicting harm to myself.
They took it in for themselves as evidence and are trying to get me in trouble for making false reports. Through more items found in my basement and hours of research at the local library, I’ve uncovered things about my happenings that may get me closer to the reality behind them. To keep it short, it goes back to the Vietnam conflict, during which an American platoon ended up being led by a ruthless savage named Jack Edison. Edison went to heinous measures to “fix” his comrades so they could be rid of pity and be willing to kill the enemy, and put many of the platoon members through absolute hell by forcing their hand to take innocent lives. One of the soldiers, Donald Gerding, was so ashamed he and others surrendered to the Vietnamese, and eventually became involved with a sect called the Hòa Hảo, who helped them to put a curse on Edison that would have his reincarnated body go through the violent tortures he exerted during the war.
One way or another, I’m the one who’s fallen under the curse, and the rifle likely belonged to Edison and is acting as a conduit to the curse. See, I live in Jack’s old house, so that’s why the rifle is in my basement. I know some of you said it could all be a mistake and it just so happened that the rifle remained there and I moved in, but my dreams I’ve been having may suggest otherwise. They involved Gerding himself, face-to-face, calling me an “evil son of a bitch”, but I digress. Either way, I planned on getting the trial over with and somehow getting the rifle back in my hands so I could somehow learn more about it and see if it is what the curse was laid on, and that brings us to where we left off last time. I won’t bother recapping again, as things will likely only get more complicated from here, so I’ll be sure to link you to past submissions each time I give an update so you can understand what’s been going on.
My trial was on the eleventh. Like I said, with nothing left to lose I managed to pull myself together to get through it. I met with my appointed lawyer in the morning to talk about the coming appearance. We had already gotten a chance to meet before. She introduced herself as Eleanor Weaver. We agreed to meet at a cafe—I had nothing to hide, so I didn’t see a public discussion as very risky. As soon as I entered the cafe, she flagged me down at a distant table. I sat down and opened with the first question that came to mind:
“So, I have a good shot at this, right?”
“To be honest? There’s no way to know for sure. How it stands, it’s 50-50 at best.” Ms. Weaver answered, which initially confused me.
“What?? But they have nothing against me—literally nothing. How is it 50-50??” I pressed. She put her hands up before she began again.
“Look, I know you think the lack of evidence will work in your favor, but really it gives an equal advantage on both sides. They have no evidence you were lying, but we have no evidence you were telling the truth.” At that, I was even more dumbfounded.
“I’m lost…” I finally said. “The question isn’t if I’m telling the truth, it’s if I’m lying and really just hurting myself.” Now it was her turn to be confused.
“Uhhh, you read the charges, right?? It’s called a ‘false police report’ charge, not a ‘hurting oneself and begging for attention’ charge. Those don’t exist!! Maybe that’s the lame excuse they tossed around behind the scenes, but nowhere is it listed in the official accusation that you were hurting yourself, just that you lied to the cops, so yes, it is merely a matter of whether or not you told the truth.” Fuck, I thought to myself. I knew that I couldn’t say they falsely expressed the accusations, because truth be told I did get a chance to read the accusations. I should’ve known. Needless to say, this wasn’t going to go as expected. We’d have to come up with a good defense. The lack of evidence might push the judge to just drop the case, but, then again, with no viable evidence, who knows?
“Then what the hell is their end goal if the charges don’t say I was doing it to myself??”
“You said someone attacked you. They want to prove no one could’ve. And the lack of evidence suggests that no one could’ve done this to you. Our options are limited, and the best we can do is use common sense against them and hope the judge throws the case out.” I was hopeless, though. The way she was describing it, we could win but just as easily lose, so I didn’t know what we could use to fight it.
“What do you mean by common sense? If we have no real evidence, what good is that?” I asked Ms. Weaver.
“Listen, the legality of this aside, this whole case is stupid. Everyone knows damn well there’s no way you could shoot yourself in the stomach and make your way to bed without falling asleep, let alone bleeding out. Trust me, I get how much of a no-brainer this is, so we’re gonna do what we can and hope it goes our way, because with no witnesses, no evidence, and no suspects, this is the best we can do. It’s just important that you know this could go any way. To be honest, I’m glad we got to talk about this before, because that self-harm excuse of theirs was important to bring up”
“What? Why?” I asked.
“Because I need you to forget about it. Completely. Not a WORD of it during the trial.”
“Okay, I can do that—but, why?” I further asked.
“Like I said, it’s not an actual legal detail, just a behind-the-scenes explanation. It’s not involved in the accusation as it stands, so we’re not to speak of it. Now, the plaintiffs might, but it doesn’t mean we should. We can’t control what they bring up, but if we can keep our mouths shut about it, we will. The excuse may be a lame one, but it can still be used against you if it becomes involved, so the best thing to do on our end is not say a word. Got it?”
“Yeah, I won’t say anything. One more thing, though—” but I stopped myself. Ms. Weaver tilted her head to the side, intrigued by what else I had to ask. I was going to ask about the gun. If there was a way I could get it back. But it was no use. If it wasn’t a good idea to merely mention the self-harm possibility, it was an even worse idea to request the gun be back in my possession. I had already established it wasn’t even mine, and the last thing I wanted to do was switch my story up. “Nevermind…” and with that, we headed off to the courthouse for the trial. I won’t bore you with the details of the trial as I might have already done with my talk with Ms. Weaver. We won the case. It went just the way we wanted. Ms. Weaver and I put up a case and the judge immediately called bullshit on the chief. I live in a loser-pays state, so I faced no fees or court costs.
The case was over, but I still wanted the gun back. See, I wasn’t okay with requesting the gun back while the trial was going on, but now that the case was closed, I wanted to see if I could get it back anyway. I had Ms. Weaver’s contact information prior to the trial, so I planned on reaching out to her sometime afterwards to talk about asking for the rifle. I made a phone call to her as soon as I got home, and she told me there was simply no way. Every piece of evidence that doesn’t have a rightful owner to be returned to is disposed of. If I wanted to request the rifle be returned, I’d need some sort of documentation proving it was my property, which it wasn’t. Not only that, but if I asked for the gun back I’d be back under the chief’s radar for self-harm, which would risk the case being somehow reopened.
So I’m not getting the gun back. Fucking great. I thought to myself after she hung up on me. As I slumped into my couch in disappointment, I noticed the sound of a car coming to a stop, and it sounded like it was right outside my house—not like in my neighbor’s driveway, it was literally thirty feet from my property. I peered out from my front window to see it had parked on the curb between my neighbor’s house and mine. There was one person for each seat, four total. Since they were on the curb, I assumed they were just visiting friends of my neighbor’s. I got back to pouting about not getting the gun back.
Well, that was a total waste I thought to myself. It was time for a new plan. If the law wasn’t on my side at all, I’d have to take matters into my own hands. A couple people advised me to reach out to Gerding and the others, to see if I can get them to stop or to lift the curse. I thought about it for a while. I didn’t believe the witchcraft shit for a good while, and then I got stabbed with a bayonet in my sleep and now I don’t know what to think anymore. I figured if it was my last chance at saving myself from what could be an eternity of unconscious torment, maybe it was worth a try.
I spent the rest of that afternoon researching the Hòa Hảo, the Vietnamese sect Gerding and the other prisoners got involved with to put the curse on Edison. I flipped through at least twenty existing articles about them to get to know who they were and what their practices were. During my research I noticed the car outside was still on. I looked back out the window and saw the driver still hadn’t even gotten out, and neither had any of the other people in the car. I was skeptical for a bit of time, but they didn’t appear to be watching me. Their lights were still on for the world to see, and it looked like they were talking amongst themselves, so I eventually ignored it and got back to browsing. I learned a great deal about the Hòa Hảo, but here’s what was important:
The Hòa Hảo started out as a pseudo-religion, deriving straight from Buddhism in Vietnam. The reason why it wasn’t recognized for a while was because it was a mess of magic, mysticism, and of course witchcraft. It started getting its mass recognition towards the end of World War II, but by then it was nothing more than a slightly distorted sect of Buddhism. A lot of the crazy shit—the curses, the black magic, the spells, what not—were mainly a part of their much earlier practices, which is why they were so ostracized to begin with. Despite the many members’ efforts to shape the religion into a more respectable version of its former self, many other members fought to conserve the old ways off the grid, and one particular group of Hòa Hảo specifically targeted American soldiers during the Vietnam conflict.
These were the people Gerding had run into. These were the ones that laid the curse on Edison for his crimes. The group consisted of roughly two-dozen Vietnamese men and women, and the leader was named Chung Bách Du. Their sole mission was to do precisely what they did to Gerding to as many Americans as possible. They would sneak prisoners out to their hideout, indoctrinate them, and corrupt them to lay curses on their comrades, all as a means of getting revenge not just for people like Gerding, but for the Vietnamese victims of the war. So all of this was to get back at Americans for their involvement in Vietnam. Fair enough. The only question at this point was… why me?
I planned on finding that out for myself, but only the next day could bring me the brain energy I needed to continue my search. I went to check outside to see the car still hadn’t moved, but the lights were no longer on, and I was also too tired to care, so I dismissed it. Probably some drifter who couldn’t find a room for the night I thought. That night, I swear I could feel my scratches being inflicted on my skin, which wasn’t normal for me, but what was even worse was seeing them. Not like seeing them the next morning, like seeing them happen. I was back in the war. I opened my eyes to the same forest as last time, the same three men holding me down, Gerding staring down at me waiting for me to give up. I was once again subject to the mess of fire and gunshots and it shook me up no less than it had last time. I could only look Gerding in the eyes once more as he stared directly into my helpless, damned soul.
“Who’s the crazy one now, you EVIL SON OF A BITCH?!” Gerding screamed my way as he prepared to pierce me with the bayonet again. As he began to aim, I dreaded the pain that awaited me. I remembered every ounce of the agony this had caused me last time, and that dread spun into an involuntary panic that sent me thrashing around with all my strength. Just as the tip of the bayonet reached my uniform, I managed to kick a leg free and cut my knee as I knocked the rifle out of Gerding’s hands. I continued my lashing and managed to get my right arm free from the soldier on my right, which I then used to get the left soldier off me, driving my fist into his face. He fell back and I bridged myself to start crawling out, and the right soldier tried getting back on me, but I took my leg and kneed him in the gut.
He doubled over and threw up. I was still in the midst of getting up, so the surface of my face was unfortunately met with a few nasty splashes of barf. I gagged as I got up, but I nonetheless started running off into the woods. I heard the cock of Gerding’s rifle as I ran into the woods, not even being able to hear all the branches snapping beneath my feet because of the constant gunfire. Just as I thought I was once again going to be shot with a full-metal jacket round, something else happened. A shell exploded to the left of me, sending my flying to my right and landing back on the forest floor. The flame from the blast was so close as I soared I could feel it burning my cheek slightly, and the noise shocked my ears to total hell—I couldn’t even hear myself hit the ground. Once I was on the ground, I finally woke up. I knew I’d be waking up to a ghastly burn on my cheek, something of that nature, but what I woke up to in addition to that was so much worse than imaginable.
I felt the sharpest stabbing of anguish in my entire life throughout my entire left leg. All my leg muscles were being shocked with waves of pain and my lower leg had gone numb because of it. I screamed out loud before instinctively screeching out for help. I reached down for my leg to realize my bedsheets were soaking faster than ever with blood. When I looked down, my entire mind broke. My lower left leg had been blown off from the shell explosion. I could see all the open flesh as my blood seeped out of and down my open stump. I savagely cried out in terror and shock, thrashing both my legs around despite the perpetual pain in my mutilated one. I convulsed uncontrollably, sobbing in absolute horror until I felt myself slipping out of consciousness, either from blood loss or mere shock.
As I drifted off, I was kept from passing out by some sort of noise in the distance coming from inside my house. My heart began racing a bit, but I didn’t stop drifting off as I was still losing blood. The noise got closer, and I made it out to be the clamoring of three or more people. Through a wavy blur in my vision, I saw my bedroom door being kicked open by one of the people, and the four of them all came rushing over to me with handfuls of bags and tools in their hands. Before I finally fainted, I got a glance at who my tenders were. I recognized them as the residents from the hospital that had treated my gunshot and stab wounds before. They’d been carrying medical supplies, and they began working desperately to save my life.
When I woke up, I was thankfully alive. I was back in the hospital, surrounded by the residents from before. I had never gotten the chance to meet them individually any of the times before, but they’d known enough about my situation to be concerned for my well being. They’d all taken sick days off so they could begin teaming up to make sure I was safe. Last night was when they’d start watching over me. They were the people in the car—they were there to make sure I didn’t die. I’m undergoing a six-week recovery plan, but with the surgery I need, I’ll only need to be in the hospital for five days. Once surgery is done, I’ll be back home and straight back to learning more about the Hòa Hảo and about Chung Bách Du.
The residents granted me internet access. One of the surgeons who worked on my gunshot wound, Dr. Golden—he’s the one who lended me his laptop to type this update out. I gotta say, I’m not pissed about being stuck in here. The residents are supportive, very. I got to know all of them pretty well being stuck in this hospital bed 24/7. There’s Golden, the surgeon who worked on my wounds, Lopez, the temporary resident—she’s also Golden’s assistant—Stillwell, the nurse who watched over me, and Brandy, the oncologist who collaborated with Golden for the help with the different surgeries. Great people, gotta say, and they also saved my life three times, so there’s that. Also, if I ever get attacked, I’ll have instant treatment, and they get to save my life again if they feel compelled to.
All jokes aside, I wanna thank the people who reached out to me last time. I’ve done a lot of this on my own, but I appreciate your efforts to help guide me through this. I hope more of you will consider doing the same thing. You know, I said I’m glad to be here, but that was the biggest joke of them all. I’m actually in total, utter shock at what’s just happened. I don’t know if I’ll need therapy, but regardless a missing leg has never been easy to adapt to, I severely doubt it. That being said, I would really appreciate it if more of you pitched in. Even just the sharing of a few thoughts, ideas for courses of action, anything that might help, because no matter how little your help may be, I still need it. My fucking leg is gone. Who knows how much time I have left at this point? I’m not crazy. I know that now. But I’m in danger, the type of danger I can’t face alone. I’ll get back to you sometime once I’m out of the hospital.