The man in the hall is watching me again. Mommy says he’s not real and he can’t hurt me. But I’m still scared. If he isn’t real, how is he here? How can he chase me down the hall when I get up to go to the bathroom?
I would roll over so i don’t have to see him, but if i do that he might get me. What if he gets me and I don’t know until it’s too late? That scares me even more. I have to watch him. I have to make sure he stays out of my room. I watch him until I fall asleep.
I wake up screaming. Mommy comes to check on me. I latch onto her and try telling her that the man was in my dreams. He was going to get me. I know he plans to tonight!
But she doesn’t understand. “Honey, ENOUGH. There is no man and nobody will get you. You need to go to bed.”
“Please Mommy! Don’t leave me!” I wail as soon as she stands up.
Ted walks in. He’s had enough. He grabs my arm, squeezing me tightly and pulls me away. We go through the whole house.
“Ted, PLEASE! You’re hurting my arm!” tears and snot cover my face as I beg him.
“No. You have had enough chances. This’ll calm you down eventually.”
He opens the door, dragging me down the steps behind him, then lets me go. As soon as he lets go, I grab onto him. I’m afraid of the dark. But he pushes me back down.
“No. This is where you sleep tonight.” He walks away, closing the door behind him.
“No. No. Please! Ted! I promise I’ll do my best to be good! I will never do it again, just let me out! Mommy? Where are you?” I don’t think they can hear me anymore, so I try to calm down. Maybe after I calm down they’ll let me out.
I try to focus on the floor squishing under my feet. The wet socks. Anything but the darkness and whatever lurks beyond. It works. But he didn’t come. Will he ever? I start getting scared again. I see shapes in the darkness.
NO! Let me out! He’ll get me! ‘’ I scream over and over, thrashing my entire tiny body into the door until I black out.
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Do you ever think of your childhood? How do you feel about it? You see, most of us can look back on those memories fondly. For those of you that had a more complicated upbringing, you had at least one person you could talk to. Confide in. Not that either? Okay, maybe a handful of good memories spread throughout your mostly miserable life. But when you have nothing and nobody? It makes you something inhuman.
I have had hallucinations and nightmares for as far back as I can remember. Granted, the earliest age I can remember is roughly seven. Before that, I have no idea what happened, but it doesn’t really matter because that person would have been erased anyway.
I remember how scary it was trying to go to sleep at night. The shadow man always stood in my doorway watching me until I fell asleep. He never spoke, and as long as I stayed in my room he just watched. I would eventually fall asleep, but it never helped. The shadow man is replaced instead by dreams of Mom dropping me off on the side of the road in a large unfamiliar city, monsters chasing me through a forest, my step dad Ted accidentally killing my mother or brother.
So I developed insomnia as well. As a small child. Sometimes I would get confused about what was real from the combination of fear and sleep deprivation. For a while my mom would get up with me. She would comfort me until I fell back asleep. I am a parent myself now, so I understand how exhausting this could get after a while.
But they didn’t get me help. One night everything built up. I was so scared. I don’t know why but I was convinced that the shadow man was going to get me that night and I was inconsolable. Mom stayed with me for a little while, holding me. Then Ted came to check on her. He decided he had had enough of my bullshit.
He turned on my light and grabbed me by my arm. He dragged me out of my room, down the hallway. Through the kitchen. And then he lifted me up and carried me down the basement stairs. He shut the door and left me alone with only the darkness and my own darker thoughts.
We had a nice beautiful house, but Ted loved starting projects and hated finishing them. The basement had two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. The only things in the basement at that time had been the mostly finished kitchen, an office setup in one bedroom, and carpet.
The basement was so cold and dark sitting there in my nightgown. It had flooded recently and I could feel the carpet squishing under my feet. I felt a terror unlike any I had ever known and I screamed, cried, and threw myself at the door until I passed out.
I remember waking up, but not as well. The door was open and I was free to walk around the house. Ted was gone. Mom was taking care of my baby brother. She didn’t say anything about it, so neither did i. After the night before, I was afraid to bring it up, thinking I would get thrown back down there.
From that point on, I tried my hardest to control it. Everything would be okay as long as I didn’t disturb them. I was still afraid of the man. But I wouldn’t even try to go past him to go to the bathroom. I held it until I fell asleep. This made me have accidents. After having them several times, I was given pullups. At 7. Instead of getting help. On the rare nights when I couldn’t control myself, I would scream or cry. But never for help. Never again. On those nights it was back to the basement.
Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of my journey. A small piece of what turned me into the creature I am. That isn’t the important part though. What is important is there are so many stories out there about monsters. There are so many people who are about whether supernatural phenomena truly exist. The funny part about that, is those things were created by people.
We created those things to take our minds off of ourselves, for there is truly nothing scarier than a human brain. We are selfish, we are cruel. We try to hide it. We try to excuse it. Rebrand it as boundaries. But when you see the little boy covered in bruises, the woman killed and thrown in an alley like a used garbage bag, the countless innocents who have to die for power or wealth; WE create the nightmares. Then we make them a reality.