The Night Terrors

By Adam Mullen

With eyes closed, I waited in the deafening silence of my darkened bedroom, afraid to welcome the terrors that lived between waking and sleep. As my thoughts slowed, the bed began to vibrate with unnatural intensity. The strange sensation often plagued me as I tried to drift across the void separating me from slumber.

As the bed pulsed beneath my still body, shadows danced along the walls, performing their nightly hellish ritual. As their movement painted flames of darkness across the room, they summoned the damned and the tortured, parading them around me. Silent horror crept across my face. Without warning, the bed stopped. The shadows fled to the corners of the room. Silence swallowed me once again. I knew what came next.

He always followed. The man forged from nightmares and woven from shadow. The gatekeeper. The master of the void. He visited most nights, keeping me awake beneath my sheets with my eyes squeezed shut, pretending to sleep. A sudden chill in the air announced his arrival. I lay motionless, wishing for sleep to carry me away, but I knew better. The only way to cross the void was to face what came for me now.

I opened my eyes to see the king of shadows standing above me. His body appeared to melt into a dark mass with only his eyes remaining. They were black voids that threatened to consume everything, including me. He whispered cold, dark, ancient words into my ear. His voice churned my insides into a pool of misery. I drew a deep, ragged breath and gathered my strength. No shadow would have dominion over me.

Before the nightmare could wrap me in its veil, I shattered the spell he conjured, forcing him back where shadows belonged, just like every other night. It was harder tonight, though. He had lingered longer than he ever had.

Finally, I closed my eyes and let sleep take me. A single thought came to mind that tomorrow night, the battle would begin again but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to hold the darkness back.