Real Horror Stories

Nyx

I've always been a night person.

Even as a small child, I can still remember my stepmother affectionately referring to me as 'her little night owl' when she'd wake up to use the bathroom and find light pouring out from beneath my doorframe. This natural tendency towards the nocturnal wasn't particularly enjoyable during the school year, especially as I entered high school and was expected to reach my bus stop by 6AM sharp. For somebody who got their second wind at around 11PM, it was incredibly hard to convince my brain to wind down and go to sleep rather than stay up all night going on my favorite internet forums, working on my old-school Geocities-hosted blog, or chatting the night away with internet friends I'd made on the other side of the globe. Many nights, I'd end up netting only one or two hours of sleep - if at all. High school was little more than a blur of drowsy days and nerdy nights, yet somehow I still managed to successfully graduate on time.

After I moved on to college, my devotion to the night became easier. Online courses had just become commonplace, so I managed to take almost my entire courseload via the web. I got a job stocking a nearby grocery store overnight, and daylight became less and less of a familiar sight for me.

When you live your entire life in the dark, it ceases to frighten you. My friends would ask me how I could manage to walk my dog at 4am without any fear, or if I didn't get a little spooked by how quiet my dorms and apartment buildings always were as I went about my daily business. For me, the answer was always the same: I wasn't scared at all. This might sound odd, but the best allegory that I can think of is that warm, cozy, yet closed off feeling one gets during a snowstorm. You're inside, safe and warm, though admittedly cut off from the world. Living almost entirely at night is similar; I find it so familiar and easy, but I'm still aware that my city is almost entirely asleep when I'm awake. I'm somewhat isolated, yes, but it's a comfortable solitude, not a painful loneliness.

I'm explaining this to you so that you understand just how serious what I'm about to tell you is. I'm not the kind of person who hears bumps in the night or sees monsters in shadows. The nighttime is my natural habitat, and I have always felt secure. So when I tell you that tonight, the darkness has managed to make me experience fear like no other, you should realize how unnatural that is.

~~~

It started like any normal day - er, night - for me. I woke up around 10PM and got my coffee perking. Seemingly fitting with my preference for night over day, I also favor incredibly dark coffee. The blend I made today was called Eclipse; both appropriate for its color as well as seeming like a strange portent to what would come later.

As I was frying up some bacon and eggs to go with my coffee, a loud crash from my living room rang through my apartment. It was followed by a strange crunching sound, and then a long, drawn-out creak. I almost dropped the pepper mill that I'd been holding, before coming to my senses and peeking around the corner into the living room.

It was, of course, completely empty. I live alone (well, except for my dog, who was currently perched on his dog bed in the kitchen and cocking his head back and forth at the noise) and keep my doors and windows locked at all times, and furthermore my apartment is what is called "shotgun" style - the front door and back door directly face each other, with the kitchen as the link between them. If anyone had come inside, they would have had to march right past my breakfast preparations. I can be spacey sometimes, sure, but even I would have noticed that!

As I peered around the room, attempting to figure out what could have fallen and broken and caused the mysterious noise, I felt the strangest sensation. It was as if someone had just brushed past me. I'm sure that sounds incredibly by-rote ghost story league, but it wasn't the cold and clammy touch that most people claim to feel. This was... pleasantly warm, and the touch felt as if someone was gently rubbing the most luxurious, plush velvet across my cheek. It was a strange conflict in emotions; the logical side of my brain was terrified by the combination of inexplicable noises and now a seemingly ghostly presence, yet something about the touch felt so wonderful and safe - it was somehow nostalgic, actually. Like all the good times I'd had staying up way too late and having fun during high school, the pleasure of a nighttime stroll with only my dog and my thoughts as company, the perversely satisfied feeling of seeing my neighbors having to scrape nighttime frost off their cars in the morning while I was winding down my day and only had to worry about which book to curl up with in bed - somehow, this one touch embodied all those emotions at once. I was struck momentarily dumb as my brain tried to work out exactly how to feel, but before I'd fully decided one way or the other, I found myself turning around.