Hey everyone, I’ve been lurking on here for a long time, but I find myself writing this post in desperation. No one else in my life is seemingly giving me the time of day on this, and I am petrified to my core.
Not even my family wants to listen to me.
I’m sorry if I don’t sound very collected, I’m finding it difficult to even arrange my thoughts in a sensible manner, let alone type them out for you at all.
The hail outside assaulting my apartment is giving me a petulant sensory overload that is only compounding on my anxiety, making it incredibly difficult to think.
My apologies again, let me try and start from the start.
Do you remember some of your earliest memories? You know the ones I’m talking about – the ones that were formed on the cusp of your sentience, the surreal ones that could very well have been a dream and you wouldn’t know any better.
I have many of such memories; memories that I’m not sure even happened at all. Sometimes my mother and father could confirm them, but this particular recollection I am speaking of, I unfortunately have no frame of reference.
My great-grandfather was a great man and was a proud Armenian. Many of our family before and after the genocide were involved in the Armenian Apostolic Clergy. For those reading who are not familiar, Armenians as a people believe Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat and was the first nation to adopt Christianity around 300AD. I myself am not particularly religious, but I respect the deeply spiritual nature of my culture.
When I was around two or three, we flew to Armenia to visit him. A close friend of the clergy, he saved a great many holy relics during the genocide that still hung on the brick walls of his modest homestead. At the age I was, I never really appreciated the raw amount of history in that house. There were wooden carvings and prayers in languages that even adults probably wouldn’t have understood.
Our family gatherings were a beautiful thing – he always loved my cousins and I, knowing that we were the next generation of a culture that he thought was going to be forgotten. He was often moved to tears when he saw us and was not afraid to feel the full extent of his own emotions.
I remember sitting on his lap on his front porch, on a rocking chair. Although where his house sat was beautiful – a basin surrounded by Armenian highlands and forest – it always intimidated my young mind. It would be quite a few years until I found a word to match this uneasy feeling… Isolation. The homestead was a lantern; a bastion of warmth, love, and safety, but it was surrounded by a nothingness that I had never really experienced anywhere else. The moonlight did seldom to illuminate the neatly trimmed field surrounding the home, and as the sun took its last gasps before dipping below the horizon, it felt like the darkness squeezed the homestead.
The religious iconography in the house always calmed me down. Just outside this loving oasis lay an unknown I was not prepared for, the crucifixes and statues of Mother Mary watching over me eased my young mind as I tried to sleep.
I was a very anxious child, and still am an anxious person to this day. I was scared easily, and my cousins would take great pleasure in torturing me. They would feed me lies about what the darkness outside held – if I didn’t finish my dinner, for instance, the ghosts of the lions who ate martyrs long past would smell the thrown away food and come searching for the ungrateful.
These little tales would upset my sleep, but I remember there was one story my cousin told me that I could not purge from my little mind. One I could not shake. It was night, and through the window it was so dark that not even the nearby tree line could not be seen. The window in question was strangely high up on the wall, and just below it lay a holy relic. In a faded gold frame, in what appeared to be a very old and distant dialect of Armenian, was the Our Father Prayer. I didn’t really see anything significant about it, aside from that it was written on an ancient piece of parchment, that looked as if it would fade to dust if ever released from its golden tomb. My cousins, like sharks smelling blood, latched onto my curiosity.
“What do you think that is written on?”
“Paper?” I asked.
“No, Dede told me that it is written on the skin of a goat. Every now and then, the skinless goat will come to the window and stare through it. Sometimes, if it feels like it can convince you, the skinless goat will tap its horns on the window and ask for it back. You’re sleeping on the couch tonight, aren’t you? Across from the high window?” My cousin chuckled, finishing with a wry grin, “Dede thinks the goat is the devil himself, unable to leave the possessed goat until the prayers are wiped clean from its skin – “
It was at this point that Dede (my great – grandfather) berated my cousin for scaring me again. It was strange however, as it was not a usual scold. He screamed many things at my cousin, showing a side of himself far from the loving figure I had come to know. I hid behind the couch, only making out a few words.
“I trusted you! You have passed it onto him now! He is a child! What the fuck were you thinking!” He boomed as my cousin shrank further and further into his tiny teenage frame. This was the first time I had heard a swear word.
Afterwards, my Dede gingerly plucked me from behind the couch, and made all things right in the world. He said, through a lying mouth but truthful eyes, that I had nothing to worry about. He shut the blinds to the high window, said a prayer I did not recognise, turned off the lights and went to bed. The whole house fell asleep.
Sleeping on the couch that night, I tried with every fibre of my being not to look at the window. The blinds were closed, but I was still absolutely petrified of the mental image my cousin put in me.
I woke in the middle of the night, to a distinct sensation that even today I struggle to find a word for. I was scared, but not the childish fear of being scared of a fictional monster. It was the fear I now imagine a gazelle would have, drinking from a lake whilst a lion lay only a few feet away, in hiding. The gazelle has no reason, no evidence to indicate that it is in danger, it just… Knows.
It was the deeply instinctual fear of being watched.
Something was staring at me through the window.
I was paralysed with fear. I obviously didn’t open the curtain to see what was through the window, I couldn’t face it, but I knew there was something there. It was the inexplicable feeling that something was wrong and I felt powerless to do anything about it. I sobbed into my pillow for hours and hours, the fear never waning.
This went on, night after night. My Dede, God bless him, continuously asked me if there was anything wrong, but I didn’t want to tell him I couldn’t sleep because I was scared. I was too embarrassed, you see – I didn’t want anyone to know how deeply my cousin scared me. Night after night I lost more and more sleep, only ever really resting from collapses of exhaustion.
Then, maybe a week or two later, Dede passed away. I still feel as if this was completely unrelated to the situation I am telling you all but I can never really know. He passed peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by loved ones and with a smile on his face.
This, to my horror, meant our stay in Armenia was to be extended.
The feeling of being watched never truly went away, but I was able to accommodate it enough to finally have a decent rest.
That is, until the night my family forgot to close the curtains.
I slept as usual, rolled over away from the window.
Tap.
I felt my blood run cold. Tears welled up in my eyes as I chalked it up to my imagination. I desperately tried to steady my breathing, as to not induce a panic attack.
Tap. Tap.
I lost control of both my breathing and my mind. I squeezed my teddy bear tightly and hid under my covers, sweating profusely from the heat that had built up. I was almost suffocating myself with the stale air under the blanket because my mind simply couldn’t take facing what was outside of my little bubble.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I reached a point of utter desperation. I was soaked in sweat, borderline suffocating, overloaded with anxieties until my very being was nothing more than a flaky tremble. I said every prayer I had been taught in my mind.
Hail Mary full of – Tap. Tap.
I tried again, Hail Mary full of – Tap. Tap. Tap.
Our Father –
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
In my young mind, I reasonably concluded, that the only way to stop my fears was to look at the window. The tapping could have been anything mind you, it could have even just been the creaking of the house. For my own sanity, I was left with no choice but to finally throw the covers back, and look outside the window. This would be the moment I outgrew my childish fears. I felt an amazing rush of cold air as my overheated body was finally relinquished and took a gasp of the most beautiful refreshing air.
Then, I looked out the window.
And it looked back at me.
I felt a sharp digging in my chest, a nervosity and fear that I had never experienced before, and dived back under the covers.
It was looking directly at me.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I only saw a tiny glimpse of what stood at the high window before I dived under the blanket, and my cousin was not lying. It was indeed the skull of the goat, wrapped in red, wet, steamy flesh. Its teeth were exposed and bared, impossible to tell if it was smiling or that’s just how its face looked without skin. It had four black horns, two jutting up like blasphemous unicorn horns, and two more that were gnarled and curled. Its eyes were massive, with two black rectangular irises, that dug into me even under the blanket. What horrified me even more is that the window was so high up on the wall…
There was no way a normal goat would be able to reach that high.
I shuddered, with the realisation that it was far bigger than a normal goat and must have been standing on its hind legs.
Tap.
It spoke.
“Sam…vel”
Its voice was distinctly inhuman, as it gurgled and dripped its words forth through an exposed and fleshy goat larynx.
“Sam…vel.”
It persisted with its halted and blasphemous voice.
“Sam…vel…Abraham…yan”
Samvel Abrahamyan.
My name.
How did it know my name?
I got up out of bed, and walked towards the high window. Being the age that I was, the high window completely dwarfed my frame. The eyes of the creature followed me the entire time, and looked down at me, as I looked up at it.
“Leave… Leave me alone. “ I stuttered in an utterly unconvincing voice. The creature grinned. I could see its tendons move as its muscles clasped back, showing banks and banks of teeth running all the way down its throat.
Its eyes flicked down to the prayer on the wall and then back to me.
“You… You…”, it swallowed, the teeth within it clicking against each other as its throat moved, “know… What… I want.”
My head felt light and I felt distant from my eyes, “No… Please,” I squeaked, as fresh tears ran down my face.
“Give… Or… I…I…” It swallowed its own wetness once more, “Never… Leave…”
It turned its head, and tapped on the window once more with its gnarled horns. I rocked back and forth on the floor, with my eyes squeezed shut, desperately trying to say the Our Father in my mind.
“He… Won’t… Help… Only… Me…”
I kept breathing faster and faster, it felt like my body was on fire from the fear.
Tap.
“There… Only… Me…”
I felt sick, sicker than I had ever felt in my life. The room spun and wobbled as I tried to swallow but couldn’t. The lion had sprung at the gazelle.
Tap. Tap.
“Only… Me…”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I looked to the statue of Mother Mary, and her soft eyes looked back at me. I bunched my fists with all the resolve my small body could muster.
“Do you promise to leave my family alone, if I give you the prayer?”
A strange expression crossed its face – deliberating, thinking, pondering – before its oily, sickening grin stretched back across its face. Its eyes became wild and wide, excited even.
“Yes… Bother… Them… Won’t…”
I unlocked the window.
An impossibly long hand like tendril that looked nothing like the leg of a goats gently pushed the window open. The arm was long and wrapped in a pungent red coating of viscera.
It plucked the prayer off the wall.
The creature held the frame between two fingers, and almost lost grip of it as it slid down its greasy wet hand. The hand left and closed the window behind it.
I quickly ran to the front porch, to Dede’s rocking chair, and saw the first licks of light steam over the surrounding mountains. I saw the creature skulking off to the woods.
You see, at the high window, it had been kneeling down. It stood impossibly tall, as tall as the ancient trees that surrounded the house. Even through the darkness, that impenetrable wall of the unknown – it seemed to glow the faintest red, perhaps like a used glowstick.
It turned back towards me just before the tree line. I didn’t have to see its face to feel its eyes or its toothy grin.
“Many… Thanks… Sam…Vel…”
It took a bow, and disappeared into the woods.
Now, r/nosleep, the story I have just told you is one that I have never, ever thought to be real. I’ve lived through enough of my anxious years, I’ve had enough nightmares to realise that this event didn’t happen. There was nothing separating this from the countless other fever dreams I had at this age. No one ever seemed to question that the prayer on the wall was gone, either. Honestly? I forgot about all of it, especially the prayer on the wall. My cousins just figured we lost it whilst packing our Dede’s possessions, none of them taking any of his stories of the prayer seriously. After many years, we forgot about it entirely, not even being sure if it truly existed, or if my cousins just made things up to scare me.
That is, until I found an old family photo of Dede’s old homestead. It was a picture of all of us, happy and loved.
With a faded gold frame hanging on the wall behind us.
Beneath the high window.
I am terribly sorry for that rant, but this catches us up to where we are now. Seeing that photo has seemingly activated some old fearful memories. Through the hail, I am hearing a tapping on my window. However, unlike my naïve child self, I know this to simply be sleep paralysis.
This is because when I put my noise-cancelling headphones on to block out the hail, I can still here the tapping. As if it’s right next to my ear.
That’s one reason how I know it isn’t real.
The other reason is because my apartment is on the seventh floor, and I don’t have a balcony.
Have you guys ever experienced something like this? It’s getting harder and harder to chalk it up to my mind playing tricks, as I’m not in bed or anything while I’m typing this, so I can’t really attribute it to sleep paralysis.
One last thing I can’t shake from my mind, is that supposed ‘deal’ I made when I was a kid. I made it promise to leave my family alone…
But not me.
Maybe that’s what it was smiling at.
I don’t think about that though, as I feel like indulging in that ludicrous fake memory may just make my anxiety worse. Anyways, I’ve been prescribed some new sleeping medication, so I’m going to try and go to bed. The hail outside has died down, so I’m going to leave the window fully open too. Can’t tap on what isn’t there!
I’ll get back to you all tomorrow and see if it’s stopped. Otherwise, I am very eager to hear any advice you guys have on getting a good rest.
Goodnight.