The Raven

The Living

My life on Earth was fairly normal, well at least I thought it was normal. I had an average family, a life similar to many others except for one small detail, I was often terrified.

Yes, all children are usually afraid of something, but for me, it was more than that. I had a terrible feeling that someone was in my room when I knew I was alone. Besides that, I had horrible nightmares that made me wake up screaming so much that my father would have to come into my room to calm me down.

No matter how many times he told me the monsters weren't real, I didn't believe him. It's not that I thought he was lying, I didn't. I just thought even though he was my dad, and I usually thought he knew everything, this was an exception. Monsters were real. I knew that even though my father didn't.

I thought all the children knew that, but adults weren't able to accept it with their rational minds. They were narrow-minded, and logic didn't allow them to imagine anything beyond what the scientists knew.

But I knew, I knew all too well that the monsters were real. However, not long after I started going to school, I learned that not all children knew what was for me common knowledge. They thought it was weird that I still believed in monsters, so I stopped talking about them in public.

Nevertheless, in my dreams, they always came back, sometimes even when I was awake. There would be a rustle in my room, and I would try to convince myself that it was just a plastic bag, but I knew the truth.

The demons were in my room. Not the demons that could be seen, but something similar to ghosts, echoes of the monsters that were only visible to my terrified eyes. After some time, I stopped screaming out loud because I realized that it scared my parents. I didn't want them to worry about me, but my soul kept screaming. I kept waking up at night terrified, alone but not completely alone.

Loud breathing could be heard next to my bed, and sometimes I was too afraid to open my eyes because I knew what I would see. Usually, it was huge red eyes surrounded by complete and utter darkness. Sometimes, it was just a terrifying shadow in the corner of my room moving slightly as if trying to approach me. They never touched me, but it didn't make them any less terrifying.

Then there were the ravens. Everywhere I went, they seemed to follow. It was like a huge group of them was following me around, watching me. Always watching. Sometimes they would come closer and stare at me with their huge black eyes. I could see pure hatred in those eyes, but I suspected it was just my imagination since I was so scared of them. 

They say that you are usually scared of animals that attacked you when you were a child or something similar, but that wasn't the case with me. Since I can remember, I always had a kind of paralyzing fear of ravens, no one understood why. 

When I was a baby, if I saw a raven I would cry and scream uncontrollably until it went away. As the years went by, I learned how to control my outward reaction towards them, but my fear never went away. My family thought that I had conquered that phobia, but the truth was that it was only getting worse. 

From time to time, I would be unable to move or think if too many of them were watching me or just surrounding me. One time, one of them flew to the tree branch right above my head and cocked its head as if studying me. I stood there transfixed and horrified at the same time; it seemed as if it was analyzing me. 

After staring at me for a while, it started making a horrible sound that made my hair stand on ends. Was that the sound ravens usually produced? I wasn't sure, and I was afraid to find out because knowing somehow seemed worse. 

If I went to a forest, all the branches of the trees were usually covered with black ravens, so much so that it was difficult to comprehend. Even some other people started noticing the sheer amount of ravens around us, not that they thought that it was in any way connected to me. I knew better. I didn't know how or why but I knew that the ravens were there for me.

It wasn't easy for me to live, what people would consider a normal life, but I did my best. I tried focusing on other things, to run away from my fears. Studying hard, seemed to help, because it tired out my brain, and the things that go bump in the night didn't wake me up as much as they used to. Even the ravens were a bit less noticeable to my tired brain because I would get up early and go to bed late. I guess it was occupied with other things. 

Even though studying and reading seemed to help, from time to time my brain had enough time to notice the ravens watching me through the window during the classes. I would notice a scary figure sitting in the chair in my room singing some creepy songs. Those songs were even more repulsing because they seemed like some perverse versions of lullabies. They had quite the opposite effect. 

One time I was sleeping and upon waking up I couldn't move. My whole body was completely paralyzed and there was someone... There was someone in my room. It was a dark shadow, sitting in the corner knitting and singing the chilling lullabies. 

I wanted to move like never before in my life because I felt that if only I could move I would make the creepy lady go away. My heart was beating so fast that I thought it would come out of my chest. Trying to focus, I tried moving my fingers and when I finally managed that I could, step by step move my whole body. 

When I was finally able to move, the dark shadow was gone, and I spent the rest of the night trying to calm my self down enough to be able to go back to sleep. 

It took me a while but I finally realized that my life was anything but ordinary. That became even more evident on my first university day when it finally happened.