Back when we were six, my brother developed a notorious sleepwalking habit among his various other disorders. So much so that dad child proofed the doors to our room and closet (after an unfortunate pissing incident involving a soiled pile of clothes) so that when we were awake, we could leave, but asleep, no dice. It was one of those plastic coverings that you had to squeeze and turn simultaneously, y'know, the ones that are impossible for anybody under the age of 18 to possibly hope to open due to the sheer amount of pressure it took to turn the damn knob. I'm being facetious now, but I really hated that damn child proof bullshit.
But, due to his sleepwalking, he was kept on the bottom bunk.
Some nights, he'd wake up and try to leave the room, tugging on the door and only succeeding in making an unnecessary amount of racket, only to fall back asleep at the foot of the door after his failure. Before the child proof door, there were only a select few places he'd go, but it became a game of hide and seek with him. I found him inside the toy box once, and I just remember thinking... "how did he even fit himself in there?"
When these incidents happened – and that was at least three times a week – I took it upon myself to get him safely back in his bed when I actually caught him, so long as he didn't wander past the stairs, which thankfully now wasn't very possible.
I hated the stairs. Well, not so much the stairs as the hallway that my room was at the end of leading to the stairs around the corner. That place was hellish at night.
Yes, I was terrified of the dark. More so of my own wild imagination spurring the darkness to life with monstrous intents. I was sure we were plagued with a closet residing boogie man or a homicidal shadow dweller, maybe even the neighborhood serial killer. My father, God bless the man, every night before bed, he'd open the closet door, reach up and pull the dangling string to turn the light bulb on, – the switch had shorted on our sixth birthday- and search the closet for my own reassurance. Sometimes, he'd even make a show of it and enter with a baseball bat or a plastic gun, threatening the monster hiding in there. Every time he did it, there was nothing in that closet.
There never was.
My brother wasn't afraid of the closet like I was. On the lower bunk, sometimes he'd climb the ladder and sleep with me after I'd been sitting up and staring at the closet for what seemed like hours. It was like my fear woke him up.
They say twins have inexplicable bonds.
I always had this strange sensation like I was being watched, or perhaps the feeling of knowing someone's talking about you... I knew I held something's attention. And that thought kept me up in such discomfort for what seemed like hours. In reality I probably had the attention span to stay up thinking for half an hour before succumbing to sleep. And stranger still, it wasn't every night.
In hindsight, that made me feel uneasy. If a child is afraid of the dark, weren't they afraid of it every night? Don't get me wrong, I feared the dark, but obviously I was safe under the covers. Most nights, it was merely a childish fear. And some nights, that fear evolved into uneasiness I can't explain... like violation of my privacy. And no amount of blankets made me feel better.
Something was there. And it was watching. I knew it was. I always expected to see a pair of glowing eyes behind the blinds of the closet door. But I never did.
One night in particular stayed in my memory all the way into adulthood.
The first detail that's strange in hindsight is that I was already asleep. Something woke me up, not violently, but suddenly. And I still have no idea what.
There was this cold that had settled on the room. And not like a winter cold that could freeze water, but this stale, stiff cold – like an abandoned house.
