I Never Sleep Alone

It was still early autumn and most of the leaves had not turned yet. We were too busy moving into our new apartment to notice the change of seasons. Actually, it was our first apartment together, so as you can imagine this was one of the most exciting moments of our life. Our new home was definitely not too fancy; old, small and located in a ‘’don’t go out at night’’ type of neighbourhood. Yet, all of this was sheltered from our view by the magic dust of happiness and youthful ignorance. Away from our parents and finally fully in control of our private lives.

The first month flew by. We finally had some organization of our stuff finalized and the apartment started to feel more homely. I never knew how much junk I had until I had to move it all to our new place. Mostly books and journals, but also a lot of clothes. I was not the only one, my boyfriend accumulated a relatively large amount of miscellaneous things too. So we had to find a place for all of it. My favourite spot in the entire two rooms that we had was the couch. Yes, in my free time, I was a real couch-potato. Always on the left side of the two-sitter, looking out over the room and facing the door opening. There, I would curl up with a hot cup of tea, our cat lying with his back against my leg and just read for hours on end. We often worked at different hours and sometimes would not see each other for an entire week. I did a lot of night shifts at that time in a nearby hospital. After the shift, I would go home and immediately crash on our extra large two-person bed and just sleep for as long as I could, before going back again to the ward in the evening. The bed was way too big for the space that we had, so the moment I walked into the bedroom I could let myself fall on it. Obviously, this was very convenient at some moments, but it had major downsides as well. For starters, it was really difficult to clean around the room and we had no space for any other important objects, for example, a closet.

Somewhere in mid-October, my boyfriend started a new job, he said that this one paid better and as a young couple, we really needed some extra money. The only problem was that he also had to work night shifts from now on. So far, I had never spent a night at the apartment alone and I did not look forward to this. You see, as a child I had horrible night-terrors. Almost a couple times per week I would have the feeling that I had woken up and that I was not alone in my room anymore. Someone was there with me, watching me from across the room or I would hear something moving around under my bed. At these moments I would start yelling and my grandmother would immediately come to my rescue. During these events, I would really feel like I was awake, but of course, this could not be the case and it was in the end just nightmares. Eventually, these dreams stopped and I almost forgot about them.

Until I turned thirteen. Around that time, it started happening again. Only this time, I had a larger bed. It was not exactly a two-sleeper, but it was larger than a single bed. One night, I was woken up again by a scratching sound. It came directly from the wall next to me. I opened my eyes and immediately I saw a hand coming from the wall and reaching for my face. It all happened so fast. I recoiled and fell off the bed. Full of adrenaline, I jumped up and hit the light button. There was nothing there. Well not exactly. I still find this a strange thing to explain, but when the light turned on, I saw the hand slowly disappear. It didn’t go away immediately like I thought it would. Again, I tried to rationalize this and put this incident away as a mind game and just a nightmare. I didn’t even link it to the nightmares I used to have as a child.

Unfortunately, these dreams didn’t go away this time. Almost every night I would hear some sounds of scratching or something moving around under the bed. And one particular night, it all got worse for me. I woke up again, but this time it was not from a scratching sound. It was a heavy kind of breathing that I heard right behind me. Someone or something was lying next to me. I did not dare to turn around. I just stayed as still as possible and prayed for it to go away. It didn’t. I still heard its heavy breathing and almost felt its ‘’body’’ touching mine. There was nothing else to do. With a fast reach, I grabbed my phone and turned it on, while simultaneously rising up and shining the light on the intruder. It was a woman. She vanished slowly as well.

As every thirteen-year-old girl, I had a lot of posters and pictures hanging on my wall. Mostly from rock bands and movie stars, which I enjoyed at that time. My room was a mess and I also loved to watch horror movies at night on my laptop. These were the cause of my nightmares according to my parents. I couldn’t give up on horror movies, I loved them too much. But I did decide to get rid of my posters and clean up the room a little bit. I also surrounded my bed with books and stuffed animals to keep the intruder away from lying next to me. This kind of helped. I still had often nightmares, but this could probably be blamed on the horror movies, however, there were no hands from the wall anymore and no uninvited women.

Now in my early twenties, all the past events seemed ridiculous to me. I told myself that I should be able to manage to stay at home alone and that I would have no problem entertaining myself with books, gaming or movies. I couldn’t entirely shake the feeling of uneasiness about this, but I tried to think about other things the whole week. It was a busy work week for me and when the night of my boyfriend's first night shift came, I was glad that I had a day off and I wanted to do something nice for myself that evening.

I think it was around nine o’clock when I reached out to take a book from my bookshelf and I felt some breathing in my neck. It wasn’t the wind, it felt warm. And I could swear that someone was standing right behind me. I dropped the book and turned around. I lost my balance and fell to the ground. There was nothing there. However, it shook me to the core. I was convinced that I was not alone in the room. I was not a child anymore and I knew what I felt. The rest of the evening was awkward and long. I tried to read, but I could not relax. Eventually, I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Nothing else had happened and my cat did not give a notice of something strange. They say that cats should be able to sense negative energies and ghosts. Here… I said it… Ghosts. Is that what was happening to me in the past? I was never in full denial of the supernatural, but I couldn’t really believe in it, since the events from my past were so vague. I decided to just go to bed and not scare myself even more with this nonsense. I took the cat with me though.

I woke up because my boyfriend came into the bed, so I turned around to face him. It should be early in the morning, but I was too tired to open my eyes. Did I sleep so badly? I felt warm breath on my face. Something wasn’t right. I smelt smoke. Opening my eyes I realized that it was still night and this was not him. I couldn’t scream or move. Just stare. Stare into something that once was a man. But now, lying next to me, he was on fire. He burned from the inside out, the fire did not touch me for so far I could feel it. His torso was an open cage. I could see his burned heart, still beating. I regained some control of my muscles and rolled myself off the bed. I hit the floor hard but there was no time to think about the pain, quickly I turned the LED lamp on from my make-up mirror. He was still there. Turning his head towards me and smiling. I just sat there staring at him and seeing how he vanished slowly before my eyes.

It was enough. I refused to sleep alone in the bed. So every night that my boyfriend had to work, I would sleep on the couch with the lights on. I thought I solved the problem.

A couple of weeks later, we had a weekend together. No work or other responsibilities. We decided to go to the movies on Saturday and also grab some dinner. It was a good start to the weekend. We didn’t have quality time for some while now and were both in need of some fun. That night we came home late and immediately fell asleep.

It was a loud bang! I thought the whole neighbourhood would have woken up with me. My eyes were quickly open and I was surprised to find my boyfriend still sleeping. What did I hear? It sounded like something heavy fell in the kitchen. Maybe something did fall from the counter and it just seemed louder in my dream. Before I could rationalize it some more, I heard something from the kitchen again. Someone moved in there. But not normally. It seemed like someone was crawling. First at a slow pace, but then it picked up the speed. I heard the loud claps it made while putting one hand before the other on the floor, dragging its legs along. The door of our bedroom was open. I thought my heart would stop. I couldn’t watch and I couldn’t turn away. Finally, it reached the door opening. It pulled itself up using the doorframe and sat in a Slavic squat. It was my nephew, who at the moment should have been in Russia in his own bed sleeping. Yet, I was staring at him right here in my apartment in the Netherlands. He smiled. His face crooked and changing with the second. Getting more deformed as I watched. The smile got bigger and showed his razor-sharp teeth. I sat up in bed and continued watching him while he crept towards the bed. We were face to face now; I could hear his teeth grind against each other. His eyes were locked into mine, bright red but empty. I was nauseated by the rotten smell of meat coming from his mouth. But I knew that he could not get in. The bed was full.

I never slept alone in our double bed again. I did not want to invite them. We now have moved multiple times already and I know that all old houses have them. I call them the ‘’lingering people’’. They stayed behind and couldn’t move on. They like to trick us but are further harmless. Empty spaces invite them, so keep that in mind.