Sleep paralysis can cause dreadful hallucinations.
This was not sleep paralysis.
But I didn’t realize it in time.
I’d had it before: Awakening to a dark figure standing over my bed. Kind of a yawn really.
Sleep paralysis is being almost fully awake but with your body unable to move because your brain shuts down movement during sleep, so that you don’t jump out a window when you’re dreaming of skiing or flying or whatever.
It can cause hallucinations. Visual and audio.
I wasn’t frightened. The figure reached down toward my face and, predictably, I struggled to breathe. It’d been terrifying as a teenager - when I had regular episodes and neither I nor my family knew what it was. I thought it was a ghost.
But I learned what to do when having an episode. I focused on relaxing and trying to close my eyes, hoping to return to sleep. And it worked. I forgot the shadowy figure and the moment entirely until the next morning, when I was eating breakfast and watching the news.
I live alone in a small house and wasn’t expecting anyone. Mail dropped right into the door slot is nearly a thing of the past, except for flyers, which I always toss into the recycling bin immediately anyway.
I didn’t go to see what had been left, thinking nothing of it, but as I was getting my coat on to leave for work I noticed the envelope was identical to one that had been left the previous day. I’d disposed of it in the recycling bin I just mentioned.
Curious, I opened the second envelope and found a page folded into thirds. When I unfolded the paper, I saw a drawing in blue ink of a man and woman, naked but with a fig leaf covering their genitals, and long hair over the breasts of the woman: Adam and Eve.
I rubbed my thumb against the ink and could tell, I’m not sure how exactly, that the drawing was not a copy but an original, which I think made it more personal.
A religious nut had left it to be sure. Someone with apparent artistic skill but no literacy because nothing besides the drawing was there to communicate the intent.
A woman living alone, unmarried, could be construed as scandalous and unnatural to those keen on Jesus. I had gone to church as a child but gave it up the second I left home.
Despite the late time and the bus I would likely miss if I didn’t leave soon, I went to the bin under the sink, and retrieved the first envelope.
The first picture made less sense to me. It wasn’t until I was on the bus that I realized what the image might mean - an indistinct, humanoid giant, black but outlined with ethereal light with His back turned on a very tiny, yet still detailed, Planet Earth.
On the seventh day, God rested. And, according to the image I studied on the bus, turned away from humans and his creation? Don’t remember that from Sunday school. Perhaps, he moved on into space, which I suppose he also created?
I almost crumpled up the drawing. Religious nonsense. Maybe fringe religious nonsense too. Could be dangerous. I packed both drawings into a single envelope and kept it in my bag. If more drawings arrived and the situation escalated into the illegal, they might be evidence.
The following night, I had another bout with sleep paralysis. It went more predictably and easier than before. I woke up. The shadowy figure reached down. I struggled to breathe. I closed my eyes, and fell asleep.
The only notable difference the next morning was a bit of soreness in my jaw, from clenching my teeth or grinding them perhaps. I thought the sleep paralysis had stressed me out more than I first accepted and resolved to make a doctor’s appointment.
My job had been incredibly boring since day one, and, with Covid, had recently become redundant. Students weren’t allowed in the library. I sat there alone with nothing to do, which might sound great, at first, but isn’t after the first few weeks of reading books, watching TV, etc. There wasn’t much other staff in the building either for many of those months.
Learning was online and only a few custodians had been left behind to look after and maintain the building. Still, I had been instructed to report to work and the library. Living on my own made the isolation worse too, of course.
Error #1
After breakfast the following morning, the third envelope containing an ink drawing arrived. I rushed to the door, flung it open, and practically leapt onto the concrete stoop.
Along the street, there were a few early commuters already, but I recognized them, and only one person stood out, a woman in a faded windbreaker with greasy hair sprung from under a fishing hat.
I knew her too, somehow, but couldn’t immediately place the avalanche of layered track pants and sweat shirts and different coloured rags tied at wrists and ankles.
“Excuse me!” I called and her pace quickened, becoming a jog for a few steps before slackening again into a stiff and awkward retreat. “Ma’am! Ma’am! A moment!”
She stopped so suddenly I almost collided into her back. Then she spun around fast, gracefully even, like she’d been a ballerina before losing it all, including her mind. Her open mouth was full of darkness and a few tiny screws, jutting from swollen diseased gums, the remnants of dental implants that must have been expensive.
I knew her from the stairs leading down to the bus station, where she begged on occasion.
“Did you-“ I started to ask about the envelopes, but then she screeched, the noise a thunderous gun shot, her bulging throat reloading another. She lunged at my face with dirt filled fingernails. I fell back onto the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding a toxic scratch I’m sure.
When I removed my forearm from my eyes, I saw the homeless woman walking away again.
“Crazy bitch,” an older man, built like a fit, hip Santa Claus said as he reached down and took my hand without asking, pulling me up and onto my feet. “Never seen her do something like that before. Poor soul.”
He shook his head and took off running, a jogger, another featured character in my life but out of the usual context. I saw him most mornings but from a greater distance, a part of the scenery, not a person who could speak and help me up after being attacked by another out of place, supporting character.
I went back inside, locked the door and decided to call in sick to work. As I put down my cell, I noticed it: A barely visible boot tread imprinted in the loose dirt of the mat by the door. I don’t own any such boots and the size of the foot exceeded mine by an obvious few inches. The print disintegrated when I crouched to get a closer look by removing today’s envelope, which had been partially covering it and then I was sure I had only imagined the boot print anyway.
“Crazy…” I did not repeat hip Santa Claus’ description of the homeless woman. Swearing is too crass. But the sentiment, even in thought, helped to pin down the disruption she had caused.
She was crazy. I don’t know why she had chosen me for her strange drawings but then maybe it was vain to assume I was the only one. Maybe the whole neighborhood got personalized and vaguely religious ink judgments.
I could ask if I ever ran into a neighbour, not that I likely would. Covid created recluses afraid to be anywhere near another person. Hip Santa had been taking a risk by doing the decent thing by helping me up.
I had never introduced myself to the neighbors when I first moved in, long before covid.
Despite the morning disturbance, I had a lovely day, reading and tea and a grey sky eventually thundering and pouring, filling the streets and gutters, drowning ideas of going outside with common sense: No one should go outside in such weather. Best to stay in and finish your book.
The night brought sleep undisturbed and I felt rested and revived the next morning, and no envelope slipped through the mail slot. All was well again or so I thought.
The next night I awoke to the shadowy figure again, paralyzed but not deaf. The previous episodes had been silent, as far as I can remember, but then maybe I had chosen to forget the ominous whispers in the dark.
“And then you will choose me,” the figure hissed, troubled by something beneath its hand, breathing heavily through a mask I thought. “To erase another of your chosen, great one, is not blasphemy because nothing is holy to you.”
Pressure fell against my chest, my face and I tried to speak, to protest, but couldn’t get my tongue to work. It felt heavy, blocked, like the inside of my mouth had been filled with foreign objects.
The figure’s hand turned and something seemed to be happening near my face. I panicked and tears washed my cheeks and spilled over my lips.
It laughed then, a wicked, guttural, dehumanizing expression, and brought its approximation of a face to hover close enough to smell sweat and something burning, not wood but something more primal. I had smelled it before and would again but for the moment I could not place it.
The episode ended the same as before. I fell asleep and awoke wearied. My jaw felt very sore and appeared swollen when I looked in the mirror. Time to see a doctor.
But then I heard the squeaky hinge on the mail slot door announce the arrival of the third envelope. I opened my door and peeked carefully around the corner to see the same homeless woman walking away.
I called into work again and got a joke from the receptionist about not bothering to call “because who would notice?”
I came in through a direct entrance to the school library and left the same way. So of course I didn’t see anyone often. Neither did she and the joke, I’m sure, had been about all of us in general but it felt personal at the time, so I hung up without saying goodbye.
The conversation with the doctor’s office had been equally uplifting. An appointment couldn’t be arranged for two months and would probably be virtual.
“Unless you want to speak with the nurse practioner,” the receptionist at the doctor’s office ventured.
“Can she prescribe medication?” I asked bluntly.
Silence. Then, “um, yes.’
“Wonderful,” I answered. She would call at 3 PM. Between the morning and then, I sat in the kitchen, clutching a seemingly eternal cold cup of coffee and pondering the third image, alongside the other two, placed in sequence of their arrival: God turning away from his creation; Adam and Eve, fig leaves intact; fish and birds filling a lined page in every available spot.
The drawings were clear but crude, drawn by a novice, not meant to inspire but for exposition. What could be meant by delivering the days of creation in reverse? Was the world to be unmade? Was I? Maybe the homeless woman knew. I was scared to approach her again.
Perhaps drugs would help. The nurse called at three as promised.
“I’ve never heard of anyone with sleep paralysis waking up with a swollen jaw,” the nurse explained calmly - trying to be calm - trying to ensure I remained calm.
“Have you had many patients with sleep paralysis?” I inquiried respectfully
“More than you’d think. Uh, to me this sounds like the paralysis is only a part of your sleep troubles especially if you say you’re waking up tired. Have you noticed anything in your house moved or disturbed when you wake up?”
The boot print came to mind. “Why do you ask?”
“Could be sleep walking.”
“But why would my jaw-“
“People can do almost anything when they sleep walk. I knew a kid who jumped through a window. Cut her up and she almost died.”
I was beginning to panic. “Well what should I do? What do you recommend?”
“I’m not a specialist. I can give you a referral-“
“That’ll take months,” I snapped, “Please help me.” I’m sure I sounded crazy because she asked me to take some deep breaths and talk to her some more to make sure I hadn’t neglected to tell the full story.
“And the pictures keep coming in the mail?”
She was doing her best to keep the doubt and judgment out of her voice. I could hardly believe it, so I understood her skepticism. “Stress can make people emphasize the importance of, well, unimportant things. If you weren’t so tired you’d probably write it all off on some religious nut.”
Hearing myself unintentionally quoted helped and I began to relax. The nurse wrote a prescription for a sleep aid. “And you might want to visit a dentist if you’ve been grinding your teeth so much your jaw is swelling. Just to be sure it’s not the early signs of infection. If it is, they’ll give you antibiotics.”
“Thank you.” I felt much better, aside from the ache in my mouth, and decided to be proactive and call the dentist. Covid restrictions had shuttered a lot of offices but not mine, luckily, though there were a number of restrictions making appointments hard to come by.
After hearing the details of my condition, however, and the possibility of infection, the receptionist somehow made space that afternoon.
In the chair, as it lowered and sprawled into a lounger, the muscles in my chest and face seized and I panicked, visibly.
“Whoa, easy,” Dr. Albright soothed. She’s been my dentist for years. There was nothing to be afraid of. I explained I’d been stressed lately and having trouble sleeping and she made a comment about the pandemic being hard on everyone.
“Open wide,” she said. I hadn’t really noticed the tension relaxing until then. But her face contorted with confusion and concern the moment she looked inside. “Did you have an accident?”
“Pardon?” I murmured, tongue struggling to form words around latex fingers.
“Your front teeth and one incisor appear to have been crowned,” she said. I grasped the arms of the chair and accidentally bit the doctor. She retracted her fingers and refrained from cursing.
I apologized and the two of us discussed what she’d apparently discovered.
“I don’t have crowns,” I said. “I’ve only ever had one cavity.” I kept touching the new additions, trying to feel a difference. Breathing deeply became impossible. My swollen jaw. The figure over me. It hadn’t been sleep paralysis. “Someone was in my house. Oh, fuck. No. It can’t… I can’t… why?”
Dr. Albright’s eyes were wide open and she’d lowered her mask to publish her disbelief. “How?” She wondered. “They would have had to drug you.”
“Why?”
We each seemed to prioritize motivation and logistics differently.
“I’m calling the police,” Albright said. I didn’t object but didn’t want her to leave the room. I was sinking beneath the panic. She shouted for the receptionist who then made the call. We waited and there wasn’t an ETA for the police so the minutes dragged.
“Hey,” she said, gently, holding my hand, “let me look again.”
“For what? What?!”
“Shh,” she whispered, “I just want to see about the resin they used. A crown… if done improperly, could negatively impact your health. “
“You want to see if I’ve been poisoned!” I practically accused her.
“Not exactly,” she promised, “but let’s just be double sure I shouldn’t be calling for an ambulance too, okay?” She reached into a cabinet and plugged in a device. “This is a uv light, you might- Jesus!” The uv light slipped from her gloves and hit the floor.
“What?! What is it?! What the fuck!?”
We both panicked and it took two police officers to calm us enough to explain what Albright had found: Three days of creation had been tattooed to the crowns, the seventh, the sixth, and the fifth - with fluorescent paint.
The mirror told me these images were identical to the ink drawings coming in the mail. The cops had never seen anything like it and I was so psychologically wiped out by that point, I just laughed and laughed like the world had ended and nothing but death remained.
After a car ride and a series of interviews I can hardly remember, they placed me in a hospital room with an officer outside the door. Another or maybe a dozen watched my house for signs of the invader dentist. With generous amounts of drugs and liquor, I slept and woke to the officer bearing news: No one had been spotted trying to enter my place.
I saw doctors and more dentists over the next few days. Gradually, disbelief and panic dissipated and I felt the urge to get out of the room and walk and think and be alone.
I declined the company of an officer to escort me to the drug store in the hospital, so I could buy a toothbrush and antiperspirant; one followed in plain clothes and at a distance anyway.
Six days of creation. On the seventh, He rested. But the tattoos, the drawings had been made and delivered in reverse. An un-creation? Nothing about the invasion of my home, my mouth made sense and the invader, a skilled yet obviously insane dentist, accredited or not, had gone to great lengths to commit this deed.
I ran my tongue over the crowns.
She came to mind next, she and her broken, dirty mouth. I skipped past the drug store and walked right out of the hospital. The bus station isn’t far. The plainclothes officer still followed at a respectable distance, which emboldened me to confront the homeless woman, the deliverer of the drawings, the one with broken screws in her gums where crowns used to be.
As I descended the steps, I found her seated on a blanket, smoking a cigarette and openly drinking whisky from a plastic flask.
Wary, her bloodshot eyes studied my face and I hesitated, suddenly uncertain as to how to proceed. She raised a hand just as I was about to speak.
“You already know,” she said. Then she turned away and leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes, sleeping or pretending to anyway.
And she was right. I already knew what I had to do.
I walked directly to the plainclothes officer and told her about the homeless woman’s involvement. She was known to police, going by the name Moolah, but only as a figure on the streets, not a criminal.
Someone had dropped the first drawing with delivery instructions and a fifty dollar bill. It happened twice more and Moolah didn’t question it.
The detective I spoke to said she disappeared after that first interview, which didn’t surprise or bother him it seemed. Guess they forgot to check the bus station.
I went home. I waited.
He came while the police were watching my house. He must have been hiding inside. Then I thought I could flee. He didn’t use drugs to keep me under that time, just handcuffs and some kind of bit to stop me from biting him.
He looked like a regular dentist, dressed like one. I got to ask him why that time and he answered matter of factly, as if explaining the procedure for a filling.
“I have to do something noticeable so it can see me. If I can get to the end of the pictures and separate you from the creation, light to dark, and then kill you, it will know and remember and it might be enough to get noticed by a great one. Then I might ascend, and be conscious forever.” I remember his chuckling afterward when he added, “I’m not a young man anymore.”
I told him he was evil, screamed it I think, and the light atop his goggles shook back and forth. “The great ones and their threads are beyond good and evil. The only metric by which we are measured is memory and service. Will it remember us? If so, then it may take our consciousness into the beyond. If they are pleased or amused or both.”
He shrugged and sighed a little as if my questions were trivial and he’d answered them before.
After he’d finished his work, he walked right by the police officers in their cruiser, parked on the street. They pretended not to notice.
I would have to fight him and thought I could. I’d trick him into thinking I was asleep and hide a knife under the blanket. I thought he was old. He said he was. But he still surprised me and I ended up rolling away without my weapon.
That’s when I really knew what had to be done. That’s when I took Moolah’s advice.
I scrambled away and into the kitchen where I slammed my teeth against the edge of the granite countertop and felt surprisingly little pain. He screamed and grabbed me around the waist but not before the incisor popped out of my mouth and onto his shoe.
He shrieked such baleful despair. I had ruined his work. Maybe. After a few moments, I felt the jab of a needle and pressure from the plunger. Then I passed out and the second day of creation had made it to a canine.
Error#2
He had gone ahead with the work but the result looked forced, completed with less care and enthusiasm, little more than two shades of colour on the tooth, the separation of heaven and earth, unremarkable when compared to the detail of God and Adam and Eve and the tiny animals that seem to move around the false enamel.
Moolah never fixed her teeth for a reason. I understood.
The next night I waited by the window until he came. He saw me and stared, gripping the stairway railing hard. I showed him the pliers first, and he frowned and narrowed his gaze.
And then I smiled and showed him all the black screws and my empty gums. I had to remove them all, you see, I had to destroy the canvas.
He turned and left and all I have is peaceful rest, an empty mouth, and a bag full of teeth.
But I don’t smile anymore.
I was reluctant to share my story until I saw AP Cleriot’s flier asking for residents of Bridal Veil Lake to share their strange encounters. The other stories seem like more direct interventions by the evil things lurking in our little tourist trap.
But, apparently, the overall investigation contains many such incidents of people serving these creatures. I still don’t know if I believe it or if I simply desire an explanation for the demented dentist. He is still out there, remember, and the police are complicit or powerless to stop him.
I received a package a year after I pulled my teeth, my crowns, and there’s an address, and a fifty dollar bill. I’m still by myself and haven’t fully recovered from the psychological impacts of isolation. I still read and shop at work because everybody seems to have forgotten what I do.
AP and his associates told me to throw it all away, but I don’t know.
What would you do?