Sleepless: A Collection of Weird Stories

The Noises

Lately, I've had trouble sleeping at night. It started a few weeks ago when I'd wake up and see the same cookbook on my bedroom floor. Somehow, it fell from my shelf. I didn't make much of it at first, but after the fourth day I was starting to feel disturbed. How could this happen so often? And why? I opened the book-it was the old cajun cookbook that I purchased at a book fair during my trip to New Orleans two years ago. An old, folded blank paper bookmarked a page of recipes for crawfish dishes. I tried going to bed, but felt very uneasy.

One night I stayed up past my usual bedtime, and then I heard it, the sound of the book fall to my wooden floor. I was terrified to look, so I didn't. I covered my head with my blanket and hoped that the book shelf was just unevenly built. Then something happened, I heard the sound of another book fall. Underneath my bed sheets, shaking, I tried to imagine that the uneven level of the shelf caused a second book to fall. I told myself it was a coincidence, but after only a moment, another book fell. I tried relaxing and taking deep breaths, but then I heard the sound of countless books falling one by one in a perfect quarter note rhythm. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. It was like a loud metronome that madly sang me to sleep.

In the morning, I rushed to my bookshelf and saw something truly shocking, only the cajun cookbook on the floor, and nothing else. How could this be? I was convinced that something else was here, something supernatural, but I wasn't going to let it win. I couldn't let it. I had to put my foot down, but this "something else" creeped into my head. Every night, I unintentionally stayed up past my bedtime. I felt like someone was literally forcing my eyelids open. Night after night, I couldn't close my eyes until I heard the book fall. I lost sleep and was late to work so much that I eventually lost my job, but I didn't care. I had begun to feel as if I might hear books drop at all hours of the day and checked the shelf, obsessively. Finally, one night after not being able to close my eyes and hearing the book fall again, I'd had enough. I was determined to finally grab it and light it on fire. I've seen enough old horror films to know that this plan wouldn't work, but I could no longer stand it. I picked the book up from the floor, and the old paper bookmark fell out. This time, it wasn't a folded blank sheet of paper. It had neat handwriting. I grabbed it, unfolded it slowly since the sheet appeared to be very delicate, and saw that it was a recipe for a cream called "See the Noises."

I went into my pantry, refrigerator, and restroom, and it appeared that I had all the ingredients. As a result of my newfound madness and curiosity, I decided to follow the instructions on the sheet and make this cream. In the end, it resembled gelatinous broth fat. The final instruction asked for me to rub it on my opened eyes for one minute, and let it dry for an additional minute, and remove it afterwards to "see the noises." Temporarily distracted from my fears by intrigue, I decided to follow through with the final step. I took a glob of mixture in my palm and brought it up to my eye. I wanted to blink but couldn't, so I went ahead and smeared it. To my relief, it stung only slightly. I waited the required time and tugged at an edge. It wouldn't budge. I held down the corner of my eye and peeled off the dried recipe with more force. Nothing could have prepared me for the burning sensation, as if I had skinned my eyelids off. The painful screech that I was about to release would certainly have bursted my vocal chords, but I was rendered speechless by what I saw. Pure white. After being blinded for seconds that felt like hours, I began to see outlines of my furniture and home. I blinked my sore eyes and rubbed them with the edge of my shirt to wipe off the excess cream. I noticed something at my feet. Surrounding me were bright white creatures no more than a foot tall with long white hair. The room was full of them. They looked humanoid and stared at me, serious and attentive. I saw them control everything around me without making the slightest sound. I walked, or at least thought I walked, to put the book back on the shelf, but in reality they moved my feet for me and elongated themselves to hold my back upright. When I extended my arm to place the book on the shelf, what I saw were three little white beings holding my arm up, and place the book back up for me. Every command my brain made to my body, was actually my brain realizing that these beings were manipulating my every move.

I laid down, or rather they laid me down to bed, and they held my eyelids open. One of them reached for the book shelf, took the cookbook, and slammed it to the ground, as if revealing that it had been responsible all this time. After my initial shock, I relaxed my thoughts and breath and finally addressed them, with the assistance of one of these creatures moving my mouth. I asked them, "What are you and why did you want me to see you?" They replied, I presume telepathically because they didn't have mouths: "We are the Noises. We show ourselves and the truth to every living thing." Before I could ask why I had to use the cookbook, they continued, "everyone and everything sees us in ways most convenient to them." Finally, I asked why I'd never learned about them from any history book or person. They said, "because a living thing can only see the Noises the night before they die."

Now, I'm typing this while they move my hands and eyes for me. I begged them to let me write this all out for everyone to read. They agreed on one condition, the same condition they gave the person who wrote the recipe, that the only ones able to read these words can now see the Noises.