Wednesday, March 03, 2004
The writing came more easily yesterday. I did 1,222 words (lately, my words counts have seemed somehow peculiarly significant) on "Rappaccini's Dragon." It stands at 8,687 words, total, and is like to go to ten or eleven thousand before I find THE END.
I think I'll share an odd little "ghost" story sort of a thing, which I wouldn't bother to include here if it didn't, ultimately, stand as such a textbook example of "night terrors," of the sort that leads some people to believe they've experienced something far more profound (alien abduction, angelic visitation, out-of-body experience, etc.).
Monday night (actually Tuesday morning), Spooky and I were reading on the bed, with my cat, Sophie, curled up between us as she is wont to do. I decided to check my e-mail one last time for the night, so I left the bedroom and walked down the hall to my office. I didn't bother to turn a light on. I had the glow of Pandora and Hinderance (the Color Classic and iBook, respectively) to keep me company. So, I was logging into mac.com and I hear something at the door. I glanced left (I have to turn my head because that's my blind eye) and saw Sophie slink into the room, her claws clicking on the concrete floor. I said something to her, something like, "Hi, Sophie," and she slipped behind my chair and headed off towards the far end of the office where I store supplies and comics and the like. Five or ten minutes later, finished with my e-mail, I logged off and headed back to bed. Coming down the hall, I called out to Kathryn (Spooky), "Did Sophie leave?"
"No, she's right here," Spooky called back.
In a moment, I could see that for myself. Sophie hadn't moved. Besides, Spooky pointed out after I told her the details of the encounter in my office, Sophie's claws are kept clipped short and don't click on the floor. At this point, we make some jokes about ghost cats. We've both seen odd little things in this apartment, never anything that seemed malevolent, and so I let it go.
That's the prologue.
I had a hard time getting to sleep and slept fitfully. At some point I finally dozed off, only to be awakened by bright lights shining in through the slats of the blinds on the bedroom windows. These were very, very bright lights. We're talking blinding, searchlight-bright lights, for what seemed like at least half an hour. In and of itself, the brightness didn't seem strange to me, only annoying. I tossed and turned and cursed for a bit, then gave up and wandered off to the kitchen. I don't recall the walk to the kitchen, but suddenly I was there, having a glass of water and staring at the digital clock on the microwave. It was a few minutes after six a.m. While I stood there, drinking my water and staring at the time, I became aware of someone/s whispering very close to me. As with the light through the bedroom blinds, I wasn't disturbed by this, only annoyed. I apparently went to the bathroom at this point (I have only the fact that the bathroom light was left on to attest to this, as I don't actually remember doing it). But I do remember heading back to bed.
At this point, my very undreamlike memories become very dreamlike. That is, up until this point, nothing had felt like a dream. I felt completely awake.
The hallway connecting the front of the apartment to mine and Spooky's bedroom is a simple L-shaped corridor, less than 50 feet in length. Jennifer's room is located at the crux of the "L," and before that, you pass my office and Spooky's sewing room, which face each other on either side. But somehow, in the space of that 50 feet, I became disoriented and "lost." I was unable to determine which direction I was headed. It was extremely dark, and finally, it got so bad that I was no longer sure I was even in the hallway. Perhaps, I thought, I'd wandered, somehow, into my office or the sewing room (though I'd opened no doors). And the whispering from the kitchen had returned, only it had grown louder. And, suddenly, there was an almost suiffocating sense of dread. It became hard to breathe and my muscles responded sluggishly. The more I looked for a way out of the hallway, the more lost I became and the more difficult it got to move. At some point, I realized that the "ghost cat" was in the hallway with me. I could hear its claws clicking on the hardwood, and, every now and then, I'd catch a glimpse of it. Becoming increasingly frightened, I tried repeatedly to call out to Kathryn and Jennifer, but I couldn't seem to make my mouth work properly. This seemed to continue for at least half an hour. At a normal pace, it takes me less than twenty seconds to walk the length of the hall.
At approximately 6:30 a.m., Spooky woke and found me sitting on the edge of my side of the bed. She asked if something was wrong. I didn't reply and she went to the bathroom, as she urgently needed to pee. When she came back, I was still sitting there, my eyes shut. Again she asked if I was okay, and my eyelids fluttered. She tried to persuade me to lie down, telling me I was asleep and I insisted that I was, in fact, awake. I repeatedly told her that I was lost. At one point, as she was trying to get me to lie down, I raised my arms across my face and cowered, repeating "Don't hit me!" This went on for some ten or fifteen minutes, me talking in my sleep, etc.. Finally, after many assurances that I wasn't lost and no one was going to hit me, I woke up. My chest felt as though someone were pressing in on it and for several seconds I had difficulty breathing. It was almost 7 a.m.
I have no recollection of sitting on the edge of the bed, nor of any of the things Spooky tells me that I said.
Jennifer reports only that she heard me walking about in the hall about this time (she gets up for work about seven). The bathroom light was on, and the glass I recall drinking from was by the sink, half full of water. So, I'm fairly confident that I really was in the kitchen around six a.m.
In almost all respects, my experience, for all the fear that I felt, for all it's seemingly supernatural overtones, and despite the conviction that I was awake, conforms to the phenomenon of "night terrors" and or simple sleepwalking.
Except for the "ghost cat." On that count, we have no explanation. As with most of my previous paranormal experiences, the cat is a small thing, of little or no consequence.
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There's new manga up at Nebari.Net. Check it out.
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