Dark Dreams

The First Time

The first time I saw him he was running down my hallway at night... through the blackness, the details of his crumpled face sharpening as he approached. His mouth open, angry. The sound of my scream filling the void of his silence.

No... but that's not right.

The first time I saw him he was outside my window, two storeys up. Impossible. My dad told me it'd been him putting up the Christmas lights. At 1 a.m. In his pyjamas. Some parents will lie to calm their children. Some parents are just as scared but better at hiding it.

The first time... the first time. Maybe I didn't see him at all. Maybe the first time, he saw me.

It's common enough for your brain to replay the things you've seen during the day. One time I saw a green head floating in a closet on a kids show and it scared me so bad I ran sobbing down the hallway to my mom, and thereafter developed a keen awareness of closets. But those nights... those nights I wasn't replaying anything from the day. It was no green head in a closet. It wasn't kids shows twisted into nightmares.

I wasn't asleep. I wasn't half-asleep. I was lying in bed in the dark, likely high on sugar from one of the inappropriate bedtime treats my mom gave me... And that man. He came barrelling down the hallway towards me. And when he started he didn't stop... night after night... getting closer to my doorway each time. I knew if he'd make it through the door he'd jump on me. I didn't know what he'd do after that... My brain would only follow the story to that point, and then like a safety shut-off it'd stop.

So I learned to talk to the man, to shape my scream into words. I told him to leave me alone. I told him I wasn't afraid of him (I was very afraid). And one night, the man stopped coming.

Years later, my mom told me about a recurring nightmare she'd have as a kid. She'd hear a man rapidly stomping up the stairs towards her room. He'd burst through the door and jump atop her. She called it "Run and Jump on Me".

I wonder if we can inherit nightmares. I wonder if my man was once my mom's... if all those years inside her head gave him just enough substance to seep through the walls and run down the hallway towards her daughter's room, to peek in through the second-storey window. I wonder, if I had a daughter, would she have the same experience, and if so, how much stronger would the man be this time around?