For as long as I can remember I have been involved in a constant struggle to stay awake.
Drinking large quantities of caffeinated beverages has become my norm and popping pills of questionable efficacy, consumed mainly by truckers to endure long periods of driving on lonely nights, is a daily chore.
It’s not that I don’t like to sleep. In fact, in those miraculous moments when my mind shuts down completely, with no images or ideas haunting me, I feel the weight of my life lighten, if only a little, and I renew my hopes that the condition afflicting me can be remedied in the near future. But each time the weight of my eyelids bends my will to remain in the world of the living, all expectation of a solution disappears and my terror multiplies.
The first time I dreamt of Mr. Silence was a few nights after the car accident my parents suffered, in which they both died at the hands of a drunk driver.
I had gone almost two days without sleep, in a state of denial, asking my relatives when my parents were coming to pick me up to take me home.
When the thought that they would never come back finally hatched in my mind, grief and anger took over. I cried inconsolably as I cursed my fate with futile kicks and screams asking why this had happened to me and not someone else.
When the grief finally passed, defeated by the designs of a God whose actions were incomprehensible, sleep took hold of me.
I found myself on a busy avenue, gray cars and large vans passed in front of me at high speeds. There were no other passersby around except for a comically tall and thin man in the street in front of me.
I tried to focus on his face, but the traffic was getting heavier and the honking noises were disconcerting.
The man wore a red suit that stood out against the grayish cityscape and the cars. He had a black trench coat hat and seemed to be smiling slightly.
Something about the way he smiled gave me the creeps. Somehow I knew it was not a cheerful expression but a kind of malice, as if he was expecting something terrible to happen at any moment.
In the distance I saw that one of the approaching cars looked familiar.
The bright blue glow of the vehicle’s bodywork invaded every fiber of my body, paralyzing me. My heart was pounding and for a moment I thought it was going to shoot out of my chest.
I was looking at my father’s Mustang.
Mr. Silence remained motionless but his face had twisted into a gesture even more macabre than before, it was as if my suffering caused him ecstasy, ambrosia for his black and twisted soul.
The faces of the drivers of the rest of the cars had remained blurred, indistinguishable shadows of each other. But when I looked inside the old Mustang the figures of my parents were perfectly recognizable.
They were wearing the same clothes from the day they lost their lives, my father a white shirt and jeans and my mother a long black silk dress.
They were now approaching my location, their gazes were lost in the horizon, they looked like empty vessels, pale imitations of what they had been.
Suddenly the scenery was transformed, the avenue was transfigured into two cross streets, a van was approaching at high speed to the corner where my parents were heading. Desperate, I began to shout for them to stop, but there was no use, they could not hear my warning signals.
I closed my eyes.
The sound of the impact shook my ears, I didn’t want to look, I wasn’t going to look.
I felt the presence of something on my back, an icy hand slowly rested on one of my shoulders, then the other. A shiver ran down my spine and left me in a trance.
A force greater than my will forced me to open my eyes, I struggled, but in vain.
There were my parents, or at least what was left of them. My mother had gone through the windshield and had ended up about 100 feet away from the place of impact, a pool of blood and liquids had formed around her. Her beautiful features had been obliterated. Her face had collided with a concrete wall.
I felt Mr. Silence squeeze my shoulders tighter and tighter as my dread increased. Despite the horrors I was experiencing I dared not look at him, too shocked to move, stunned with fear.
My father’s body remained in the car contorted in an unnatural position. His shirt was now red, completely drenched by the contents of his veins. His eyes reflected shock and astonishment, an image that I will never be able to erase from my retina.
I took courage and decided to confront the demon who so cruelly forced me to see such a macabre scenario.
To my surprise, when I turned around, I woke up violently from my reverie to find sweaty sheets and pillows scattered all over the floor. Just a nightmare I thought, but deep down I knew it was something else.I still felt the icy touch of Mr. Silence in my body.
Several months passed until the grief gradually became more bearable. I had begun to have trouble sleeping after that dismal episode, but in the moments when I did manage to fall asleep, Mr. Silence was not there. I was still shaken by the sharpness of the nightmare, it had felt as real as my own hands, but eventually I forgot about it and the sleepless nights were just a memory.
At least for a while…
I fell asleep. I found myself eating in a restaurant with my family. We were talking and laughing to the sound of soft jazz.
I started to feel a strange sensation, as if someone was watching my every move. That’s when I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.
To the left in a dark, distant corner sat Mr. Silence.
His eyes were fixed on me, expectantly, he kept the same sinister smile of that fateful night and he was as static as a stone.
I decided to ignore him completely, hoping that in the face of my indifference he would get bored and let me dream in peace. But this was not the case.
I tried to concentrate on the conversation my father was having with my uncle, but it was becoming more and more unintelligible, the voices had become a high-pitched whisper and the laughter sounded muffled and atonal, transfiguring into a cacophony in unison.
I felt more and more pressure to look in the direction of Mr. Silence’s, but I was determined to resist to the last consequences.
The faces of the people around me were rapidly becoming agitated and slowing down in an instant, as if someone was fast-forwarding and pausing a movie on TV. Everything was going frantically in front of me, my family was emitting guttural voices and primitive sounds that encouraged me to cover my ears, but despite this sinister spectacle, I resisted.
I did not want to give any satisfaction to that evil being who coveted my suffering.
I began to pinch myself to try to wake up, but it was useless. I tried to stand up and run, but a force held my legs and my movements were languid and extremely slow.
The horror became unbearable. I screamed out loud for it all to end.
Mr. Silence now stood upright absorbing my misery, as if levitating he approached my table. One by one he touched my relatives and their bodies contorted and melted into a putrid and fetid miasma. He rested his eyes on mine with a triumphant look at my weakened condition.
I found myself too perplexed to try to avoid it and sank my gaze into the depths of his being. Images appeared before me, as if I could perceive the macabre events of his past and the uncompromising nature of his character.
Somehow I could sense that Mr. Silence was not finished with me, this was only the beginning of the game for him.
I woke up screaming…
I couldn’t speak a single word, my mind fluttered in the nightmare and when the sun went down again giving way to lethargy I didn’t want to sleep. The same scenario repeated itself for days, I fought and fought against sleep.
At times I lost consciousness. The minutes ran slowly and my eyelids felt heavier and heavier.
When I finally slept it had been 4 days since the incident. No images came to my mind and I woke up fully rested, but I never felt calm in my sleep again.
The years passed, but not my suffering. There were periods of months in which Mr. Silence would become a distant shadow, and I would wait in stress for the fateful day when he would show his horrifying visage again in my state of greatest vulnerability.
Sometimes I thought I saw him in my waking hours, sitting in some corner of the bars I used to attend, always with that smile capable of unsettling even the bravest man. Other times, I could feel his hand on my shoulder along with the sensation of an icy cold running down my spine.
My whole life changed because of those experiences.
I started working the night shifts, hotel receptions, 24 hour parking lots, security guard. I designed a routine and a life based entirely on sleeping as little as possible.
At one point I considered the option that it was all a figment of my imagination or some mental illness as a result of the enormous trauma caused by the loss of my parents. I went to numerous psychiatrists and psychologists, underwent all kinds of check-ups and sleep tests, but the only unusual feature of my psyche was the perseverance of the Mr. Silence figure and my dread of falling asleep.
Ultimately, the specialists labeled my problem as sleep paralysis caused by PTSD.
For a while this diagnosis made sense to me. I started taking the medication prescribed by my doctor, and little by little I slept longer and longer. First half an hour, then an hour, and so on until I reached 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Mr. Silence was completely absent from my life. The treatment was working, it was evident that it was all in my head. Or so I thought…
Six months of peace passed until my illusion of having a normal life vanished completely.
One morning I received a message from a user of an anonymous forum where I used to narrate my nightmares in search of relief. The message contained a series of attached files including antique books, stories and articles translated from a huge variety of languages. It was also accompanied by a strangely long number, a telephone number perhaps?
Some of the translations chronicled the death of people from a strange sleep disorder that eventually ended up causing the afflicted person to go into a state of generalized insanity. It was described that those suffering from the condition ended up wandering around at night babbling about a smiling man who followed them even in their dreams, forcing them to see abominable images of death and desecration.
Other more ancient and obscure texts spoke of the existence of a twisted being capable of controlling the dreams of men and transforming them into visions of terror, they called him somnia comedentis (devourer of dreams).
But the most interesting of all was undoubtedly the translation from German of an interview with a man named Johann Fichte who suffered from this disease in the 18th century. His account of the events, the particularities of the nightmares and the grotesqueness of the visions of death were completely compatible with my own experiences.
And to top it all off, his account was accompanied by a drawing of the being responsible for his fears. The image hit me like a sledgehammer, I had before my eyes the sinister and unmistakable smile of Mr. Silence.
Sweat ran down my forehead.
I had lived 6 months of tranquility, but now a question arose in my mind: If what I had just read was real, why had Mr. Silence disappeared from my dreams?
I feared the worst. Perhaps all this time he had been toying with me, waiting in the shadows for me to let my guard down so he could return again and take away what little sanity I had left. If this was the case, I had to act fast, I needed more information.
I picked up the phone and dialed the strange number, with no hope of getting an answer. My head was spinning at the possibilities.
To my surprise the number was real. The phone rang for a long time until finally a tremulous voice answered.
“I was expecting your call” The voice mumbled.
“Who are you? Where did you find the information you sent me?” I asked anxiously.
“My name is not important. Listen to me Sam, you don’t have much time. It will interfere with your dreams again, but this time it will be different. You will no longer be able to distinguish between reality and nightmares. It always happens this way.”
Judging by the sound of his voice, I was talking to an old man. He spoke in a measured manner, and took a deep breath before each sentence. For some strange reason, his voice inspired in me a feeling of comfort, as if I was speaking to someone I knew.
“You must act fast. Did you see the address? Stop everything you are doing and head there, it is extremely important that you bring all the items on the list, otherwise the procedure won’t work.”
“The address? Procedure? What the hell are you talking about? You’re scaring me and you’re not explaining anything” I said almost shouting “Wait a minute, how do you know my name?!”
“Time is of the essence. All your questions will find answers at the end of the path. You can’t go back to sleep until you get to that address or it will all be in vain. You won’t be able to resist his presence one more time, not in your current state. The instructions are in one of the files, please check carefully again. I’m so sorry this happened to you Sam.”
The call was cut off abruptly. I tried the number again, but the phone had been disconnected.
I couldn’t believe what was happening to me, what should I do, trust the stranger or try to ignore everything he said and go on with my life?