You know you sometimes see a shape that seems like it’s right on the edge of your vision, then it disappears as soon as you try to look at it. That thing you see in your peripheral vision. Sometimes, it’s really there.
It sounds stupid, and until recently I’d have been right there with you. It only started recently for me. I’m a student at Oxford University. I’d been working towards this my entire life. Ever since I was young I wanted to be a palaeontologist. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and loved the films like Jurassic Park, so when I was able to get into Oxford to study it, it was like a dream come true for me.
My accommodation is located a short distance away from the main campus through a small park. It’s a small apartment where I stay by myself at the moment. I’m not big on the whole party scene and hardly go to any unless my friends force me out, so living on my own is a godsend.
I don’t mind the walk through the park, to be honest. It’s nice and refreshing wandering along that path first thing in the morning when everything is still, flanked by small trees on either side and the sounds of the birds. It helps me to get into the right mindset for studying, letting in the calmness of nature.
About a month ago I was walking back, alone, through the park. I’d been studying in the library with a few of my friends for a big assignment due in next week and I’d lost track of the time. The sun had begun to sink behind the trees, casting a large shadow over the normally tranquil park. But I knew the place well enough that I wasn’t worried. I put in my wireless earbuds and put on a nice relaxing playlist before setting off through the dim park.
The twilight gave the park a different feeling to it, and I revelled in the surroundings, the colours and the stillness. The grass had taken on a grey hue which contrasted brilliantly with the white of the path and the orange and purples in the sky.
As I walked, enamoured as I was with the vibrant colours I was seeing, I couldn’t help but feel something was off. I couldn’t quite place it. It was silly really, but it almost felt like a feeling of being watched. Like eyes just beyond the treeline were fixed on me, following my every move. It brought me back to my senses as I shuddered.
Then I noticed something, just out of the corner of my eye. A black shape that seemed to be just on the edge of the tree line. It was perfectly still, but it seemed out of place in the twilight. It seemed like a well of darkness in the otherwise dim twilight. It was as though it was a complete absence of light.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Quickly my eyes darted over towards it. I wondered if this was the source of the feeling of being watched I’d experienced earlier. Maybe there was someone in the treeline, trying to scare passersby as a joke.
As soon as my eyes rested on the location where I had seen the shape they were met with nothing, just the quickly darkening treeline as the sun dipped further and further below the horizon. It all looked the same, just trees and bushes.
I shook my head, laughing to myself about how jumpy I’d been, before continuing on my way. That feeling of being watched still followed me all the way back home. I didn’t see any more dark shapes and there was nothing out of the ordinary as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t seem to shake that unnerving feeling.
As soon as I got home, I put on the TV in an attempt to relax and shake the awful feelings I’d felt on my walk back. Within a few minutes, however, my head began pounding so hard it took my breath away. I felt so much pressure like my head was about to explode. Then there was a wave of nausea and I had to run to the bathroom, narrowly avoiding vomiting all over my carpet.
I didn’t normally suffer with migraines but this one seemed to come from out of nowhere. I forwent any thought of food at that point, the nausea and pain in my head thoroughly strangling my appetite. Opting to try to get to sleep and hoping that it would clear in the morning, I shakily made my way into my bedroom and turned out the lights.
After hours I awoke, my head clear and the nausea gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. Making my way downstairs to get breakfast, I contemplated the sudden migraine I’d experienced yesterday.
It must have been sleep-related, or possibly due to my diet. Being a student I didn’t exactly have the budget to be eating the best foods, and I had been pulling a few late-nighters due to the assignment coming up. They’re the only things I could think of that might cause something like that.
Still, it worried me, what if it happens again? It wasn’t something I’d like to go through on a regular basis. I made myself some toast and decided to phone the doctors, just to check that it wasn’t something I should be worried about. I hated the doctors, but better safe than sorry, I thought to myself.
I managed to get an appointment that same morning. In the doctor’s office, I explained what had happened while he busied himself with all the usual checks. I even mentioned the strange black shape I’d seen in the corner of my vision, just in case there was some link.
He didn’t look too concerned as all of his checks had come up as normal. When I’d mentioned the shape in the corner of my eye, he explained that it was most likely a visual migraine, a condition that affects one eye and results in a temporary blind spot. It can last as little as a minute or as long as an hour and can sometimes precede a standard migraine. It can be caused by lack of sleep or poor diet among other things, he went on to explain.
Although he wasn’t worried, he still sent me to book an eye test at my local opticians. Just to be sure, he said. I went straight from the doctors to the opticians, wanting to get the tests out of the way so I could get on with my day. While I was relieved that there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with me, this was becoming time-consuming.
The opticians went through the usual “Is it better with A or B” and looked at the back of my eyes with the torch. The bright light burned my eyes and I could see the veins in the back of my retina superimposed in my vision. I shuddered a little at the snakelike paths that they weaved over one another. Stuff like that always creeped me out.
After what felt like too long, the optician turned off the torch and proceeded to tell me there was nothing wrong with my vision. They agreed with the doctor that I was most likely just experiencing a visual migraine due to lack of sleep. Either way, I wasn’t going blind, which was one of my main worries when I woke up this morning. They told me to rest up and the migraines should go away within a few weeks.
Thanking the optician as I left, I was elated that all I had a clean bill of health. I carried on with my day and let the odd events of the previous evening drift from my mind.
About a week passed before something like that happened again. I was standing in the courtyard in the middle of the university campus, chatting with a group of my friends. I was midway through hearing a story about the previous evening’s drunken antics when I started feeling like I was being watched again. I knew there were a lot of people around us but this felt different, like someone was staring directly at me, fixed on me.
Just as I became aware of the feeling, I noticed a black shape in the corner of my vision out of my right eye. It was under a large stone archway in the entrance to the science block. The shape seemed larger than before, covering more space in my peripheral vision, blocking out a larger portion of my sight.
It was still, the same as before, absorbing the light around it. I could make out the shapes of people walking towards it, then vanishing into blackness as they appeared to pass right through it. Something about it made my hair stand on end again. It seemed almost closer than before somehow.
I was snapped back into the conversation as my friend Toby slapped me on the shoulder asking “Yo, you still here man?”. I shook off what I’d just seen, trying to act cool, like that black shape hadn’t unnerved me. “Yeah man, I’m fine”.
Tentatively, I looked back over to the archway where I’d seen the shape. There was nothing there, just the throng of people entering and exiting the building. There was no sign that there had been anything there at all.
Less than 10 minutes later my head felt like it was spilling open again and I nearly vomited in one of my classes. I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom to find a place to throw up. This felt worse than the first time. It lasted longer too, only begging to ebb away a couple of hours later.
That feeling of being watched was still there too. Not as strong as when I saw the shape, but it was unmistakably there. It followed me as I made my way around the campus, only clearing when the migraine subsided.
This happened to me a couple more times before I started to get really concerned. One time I was visiting my parents, we had just sat down for dinner with the rest of my family and I noticed a darkness out of the corner of my eye. It was standing on the other side of the window across the room, still as a post, making it look like it was nighttime outside with the way it absorbed all light.
When I turned to look there was nothing, the same as the last couple of times. I began dreading what came next. Within minutes a migraine took hold of me, a strong feeling of pressure in my skull, my eyes feeling like they wanted to pop from their sockets.
Then came the nausea and I had to run up the stairs as fast as I could to the bathroom, leaving the rest of my family sitting around the dinner table. All the while it felt like there were eyes boring into the back of my skull, even when I lay down in my parents’ guest room to try and sleep it off.
It seemed like the migraines were getting worse and worse. I even went back to the doctors, who ran their checks again, revealing nothing. They prescribed me some medication for the pain and nausea, recommending that I sleep more and consider what I was eating, but that was about it. The meds did nothing to stop it, they didn’t even help when I was in the throes of one.
I’d noticed a pattern whenever these migraines would come on. It would always be when I was distracted, in the middle of studying or talking to my friends, when my guard was down. I never noticed anything when I was actively aware of my surroundings. They seemed to be worse at night time though. That’s when the shape always seemed closer.
I was studying one night in my room, alone. It was dark other than for the light of my desk lamp, the sun had long since set but I was too engrossed in my work to get up and turn the main light on. I liked to work like this, by the light of my small desk lamp. It helped me block out distractions and concentrate on what was in front of me.
After some time, I saw a shadow in my peripheral vision. Resigning myself to the fact that I was about to be in for another night of pain and nausea I began to close my notebook. Only this time the shadow did something that made my stomach sink. It moved. Slowly at first. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it looked like a section of it was stretching out, slowly getting closer and closer towards me.
I shot a glance in it’s direction, This time it didn’t disappear as normal, and I was able to make out more of what it was.
It was a large, dark shape, almost resembling a man. It seemed almost fuzzy around the edges, as though the light was warping around it, becoming one with the darkness in the room. Tendrils of blackness were spreading throughout the corners of the room, obscuring the figure even further.
I could make out its thin, spindly limbs, knotted with sinuous muscles. The joints were at odd angles, giving the creature the appearance of something akin to a four-legged spider. Terrified, my eyes made their way up to its head.
Atop a long, snakelike neck sat a grotesque, reptilian face. Its eyes seemed to bore into mine with an intense hunger, glowing with a strange light that contrasted with the darkness that made up its body. Its mouth was spread wide in a toothless grin, the same glowing light emanating from deeper within its throat.
Its hand was reaching for me, stretched out in a longing gesture, tipped with dagger-like claws. I was terrified, what was I seeing? Visual migraines were not supposed to look like this, at least I didn’t think so. It seemed to linger there, imprinted on my vision before vanishing as it had each time before, leaving nothing but the dark empty space where it once stood.
The migraine came on immediately this time and knocked all sense from me. I didn’t have time to process what I’d seen, the pain in my head was too much. I turned the desk lamp off and staggered to my bed in the hopes that it would go away with sleep. All the while that I was trying to sleep, tossing and turning, I could feel those same glowing eyes staring at me from somewhere. Try as I might, I couldn’t find the thing responsible. My room was silent and still.
After several hours of tossing and turning, I finally managed to drift off, only to be awoken a few hours later by my alarm. I forced myself out of bed, my head still throbbing slightly from the migraine last night. This was getting too much now. I tried to call the doctors, to get another appointment and update them with the latest development, but by the time I’d gotten through there was nothing available. You’ll have to try again tomorrow, they told me. Thanks for nothing.
I went to my lectures, barely able to function. The pain in my head was slowly fading but I was just so tired. All of my friends said I looked like hell. I felt like it too. All the while I was keeping an eye in the corners of my vision, my eyes darting side to side for any sign of another migraine coming on. I couldn’t take another one, not so soon after the last.
The rest of the day went on without incident, other than me nearly falling asleep in a particularly warm lecture hall while a monotone professor droned on about ancient Pangea, reading slides from the whiteboard. As I was about to make my way home, my friends cornered me, wanting to go to a local bar after to get some beers. I just couldn’t, I wasn’t the most sociable person anyway but today I was far too tired.
I excused myself, enduring their pleas for me to come with them, and made my way home through the park. Even though it was still light, I couldn’t help but think about the dim twilight of that night when this had all started. This was where I first saw that odd shape in my vision, hiding in the trees. I’d had my first migraine when I got home.
My thoughts drifted to the previous night, what I’d seen when I looked at that dark spot in my vision. That horrific, reptilian-looking thing reaching out. I wonder if it’s normal to hallucinate shapes in the darkness when you have a migraine?
All of the way back I was scanning the trees, conscious of the edges of my vision, watching for any dark spots that might appear again. My eyes darted frantically and I picked up my pace, not wanting to linger. Much to my relief there was nothing, the park was empty and I made it home without so much as a single blur in my vision.
As soon as I got in, I went upstairs and collapsed on my bed, forgoing my evening meal for the sake of a decent sleep. I doubted I had the energy in me to cook anyway. As soon as I landed on the soft covers of the bed I was out cold, I didn’t even bother changing or getting under the quilt.
It wasn’t until several hours later that I awoke. It was still dark in my room, the birds not yet singing to signal that the sun was rising. I lay there, staring into the blackness of my room, enjoying the silence, when my stomach began to roar loudly, protesting the fact that I’d not eaten for several hours.
Checking my watch, I noted that it was only a few hours before I would normally be getting up to go to university anyway. I may as well get up and start my day now, I thought. I rolled out of bed and made my way down the stairs to the kitchen. I was starving.
Making my way over to the fridge, hoping that I had some leftovers in there that I could have as a quick breakfast, I noticed it. There, just in the corner of my left eye, was a large, black darkness. It seemed to be covering the area where the kitchen door would be.
No. Not again, I thought to myself. I really couldn’t deal with another migraine! As if drawn towards it by some mysterious pull, my gaze wandered towards the shape.
It didn’t move again, just like last time, and I could make out even more of it now. It was still that gaunt, sinewy body with a snakelike neck and spider-like limbs, only this time I could see the smoke-like darkness billowing from it, as though its very presence was creating the absence of light in the room. Absorbing it and leaving nothing but darkness in its wake. It was closer this time too, looming only a few feet away.
It was terrifying, the way its glowing eyes followed me as I slowly closed the fridge door and backed away. The way its long clawed hand began raising up and extending towards me. Each finger clicking and jerking into an outstretched, open hand. The way its limbs seemed to jerk and contract as it took shaky, uncoordinated steps towards me.
It’s not real, I kept telling myself, it’s just a hallucination before a migraine. Just ignore it, it’s probably just your subconscious. But it didn’t stop me from staring at the thing, the feeling of abject terror in my stomach.
I continued backing away until my back hit the wall of the kitchen. I was stuck, there was no way I could get out of the room without walking through that thing. As much as I knew it wasn’t real, there was something that told me that wasn’t an option I wanted to take.
As if sensing that I was trapped, a thin grin seemed to spread across the thing’s toothless face, revealing that faint glow from within its mouth. It took another jerky step towards me, closing the distance between us.
I closed my eyes, praying for this to be over and for the inevitable headache to come so that I could just deal with it and get on with my life. What felt like an eternity passed. I was too afraid to open my eyes, just in case it had not passed yet.
Then I felt something that made the blood drain from my face. A large, thin hand wrapped itself over my shoulder. I could feel the gnarled knuckles along the fingers, I could feel the dagger-like claws pressing against my back in a strong grip.
I opened my eyes and screamed. The thing was inches from my face, a gleeful grin plastered across it, like a child enjoying playing with a new toy. It was real. It was real! It wasn’t just a visual migraine. What the hell was this thing?
Then, it slowly began to open its toothless jaws, the light within growing brighter by the second. This is it, I thought, whatever this is, it’s going to eat me. It kept on opening them, stretching them further and further apart. It looked so unnatural, the way that its jaws seemed to disengage, getting wider and wider. The light from its throat grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding. I couldn’t see anything at all. Not the creature in front of me, not my hand in front of my face, nothing.
I woke up on the kitchen floor, the blinding sunlight coming in through the windows, bathing the whole room in its radiance. I tried to sit up, my head was pounding. The migraine was there but it felt even worse than before, like I’d been hit with a shovel. I raised my hand to the back of my head, and when I took it away my fingers were coated in thick, crimson red.
I must have hit my head pretty hard when I fell to the floor. Then I remembered. The creature. I backed up against the wall in panic in case it was still here somewhere, hiding. My eyes darted wildly around the kitchen, looking for any sign of it. As my shoulder touched the wall behind me I felt a searing pain in my shoulder. My shirt had been torn, slashed in the places where those claw-like fingers had held me, leaving small puncture wounds in my skin underneath.
There was nothing, the kitchen was empty, as was the rest of the house. Panic and fear pulsed through me as I ran back into my bedroom. Now I’m typing this to you all. I don’t know what to do. That thing is real.
I don’t know what it wants but it seems to be getting closer each time I see it. It’s real and I don’t know how to stop it.
Please, help me!