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I Had A Bad Dream

Writer's picture: James YearyJames Yeary



Yesterday, I cleaned out my childhood bedroom for the last time.


Most of the things that I found there and packed away into bulky carboard boxes didn’t surprise me much—old track shorts, that pair of pink and white sketchers, the flip phone that I’d begged for when everyone had seemed to have one except me. Those things were to be expected, but it was one small item that made me think back to the worst dream that I’ve ever had.


I’d had nightmares before, everyone does—at least one or two that they can remember, a few that were much worse than they’ll ever admit. You know, those ones that always seem to be way back in your memory somewhere even several years after they happen. Who knows why we have them, it’s probably something to do with your subconscious or your sleep patterns or something like that. I mean, there has to be some reason, right?


There wasn’t anything too strange about the day leading up to it—it was a Friday in ninth grade, and I walked home from school with my best friend the same way I always did. The suburbs just outside of Manchester, New Hampshire were quiet enough that you could usually walk near the double yellow line in the center of the road without having to worry about cars. It was one of those breezy late spring afternoons— the air was still cooler than summertime, but it floated those wispy little pollen pieces that come off when a bud erupts into a flower, and the sun had started to feel hot on your hair the way it does when the last hints of winter finally start to let go.


Because it was Friday, that meant the usual lounging in my room and listening to music on my new Bluetooth speaker—my bedside window was open and the sounds of the neighborhood drifted in on the afternoon wind, landscaping trucks and distant conversation that faded into the smell of barbeque and the chatter of bird calls by the time the lavender evening rolled around. This was not a neighborhood where people worried, or had locks on their doors, or owned guns or security systems. We ordered pizza for dinner, and I remember watching the halogen lights of the delivery car swing into our driveway through the open window opposite my bed, the restaurant logo glowing on the roof of the old sedan against the darkening sky. Then it was the hustle of feet around the kitchen and the stack of cardboard pizza boxes and the overlapping commentary beneath the newest episode of America’s Got Talent. There were commercials for cleaning products and orange juice, and a news break that talked about a prison fire somewhere across the state.


The thick steam of my usual post-dinner shower mixed with the night air that had settled over the street, and I took my time—I thought about my plans for the weekend, I thought about how I’d done on that literature quiz earlier on, I thought about my friends and I thought about my standing in the group.


The soft glow of living room lights and the flicker of televisions made my street look like a postcard as the sunset slipped away and the brightest couple of stars and planets started to speckle the atmosphere. The string lights that I’d hung across the frames of my closet doors gave my bedroom a soft artificial daylight that I kept going until the last texts had been sent and the last series episode had been finished on my laptop—it ended on a cliffhanger, but I made the decision to stop there, not wanting to sleep Saturday away accidentally. I set my phone alarm for 9 a.m., and placed the device under my pillow as always, a strange habit that I’d picked up almost immediately after getting my first smartphone the year before. Even back then, before the nightmare, I had trouble falling asleep right away. I tossed and turned for hours some nights, fidgeting with the pillow and checking social media out of habit when I couldn’t get myself to drift off. I tucked myself in around 11 and must have eventually managed to fall asleep around midnight or so. Despite all of that initial tossing and turning, I rarely had bad dreams, and I’d never sleepwalked or anything like that.


I know now that when I opened my eyes next, it was around 2:30 in the morning. I remember my bedroom feeling much cooler than when I’d fallen asleep, even under the pile of blankets that covered my body. The first thing that I noticed was the slow drifting movement of the fabric curtains that hung on either side of my window; the gentle push and pull of the material made them dance in a slow hypnotic sway that could’ve only been possible in a dream. My next clue was that I couldn’t move my body when I tried—the only way I could interact with the world I’d slipped into was to move my eyes from side to side, examining the silent bedroom and wondering what kind of dream this was. I didn’t panic, I was in too much of a haze to do anything but watch, as if I could do anything else. I remember the sound of the clock ticking away in the corner of my room, but time didn’t seem to match up with the seconds that it was throwing out into the dream world. My mind was too lost inside itself to recall the name of the artist that we’d studied in class, but he had painted clocks melting and dripping like honey—I imagined my clock doing that, running down my wallpaper and spilling onto the carpet. My face was probably blank and neutral, but in my waking dreamland I smiled a bit, it was dark and beautiful and different, the clock turning to shadowy molasses and puddling up by the door.


Seconds, minutes and hours might as well have all been the same thing here, and it was impossible to know how many had passed before I noticed the pair of shoes resting beside the door frame. They looked like bulky work boots, something that didn’t belong in my bedroom—but this was a dream, and there must have been some reason for it. I have heard that dreams can be symbols from your subconscious, signs for things that have been on your mind without you even realizing it. That particular area of the bedroom seemed darker than the rest, this strange obsidian curtain that hung there for no apparent reason. As I let my vision drift upwards from the odd set of boots, I felt the first hint of fear register somewhere in the back of my mind. The boots kept going, forming the shadowy mass of two legs as if someone were standing in them.


I wasn’t sure, but I thought that I smelled something burning.


I didn’t understand, I had known for sure that I was alone in this dream—there had been the melting clock, and my room, and that was it. Some dreams had characters, but this hadn’t been one of those, I was positive. The floor seemed to be moving underneath my bed, pulling me forward towards the doorway and that strange dark corner with the boots and the shape attached to them; the pocket of fear was growing in my mind and I tried moving my arms and legs. Nothing happened. I was paralyzed, gliding across the carpet on my mattress and into the domain of whatever it was that was inside my room with me. I started to tell myself to wake up, this peaceful wonder of the dream was entirely gone now, and I could feel full-fledged panic erupt in the synapses of my brain as I was pulled deeper into the orbit of those dark boots and the shadowy figure that they belonged to.


All I could manage was the slightest of whimpers, my throat almost entirely closed from the swell of primal fear that had risen inside my body. Wake up, wake up, wake up—I screamed to myself, feeling my face contorting into anguish as I drifted closer and tried to free myself from the invisible grasp that held me down against the bed. As I drew up directly in front of the corner, I saw the Shadow Man for the first time. The legs continued upward into an emaciated frame with a narrow head that cocked sideways a bit, a scarecrow that had been put together with the fabric of night instead of straw and cotton. He stood over me like a skyscraper, his face smothered beneath a smokey haze that hung around his head and bled into the ceiling and the walls. A single orange eye pulsed in the dark air and regarded me with admiration—not the loving kind, or the caring kind—the admiration of a monster to its prey, the appreciation showed to something about to be collected, possessed. I felt my heart racing out of control, it felt so real, so tangible for a nightmare…the murky dance of the dream world had distilled itself into raw terror, and I felt more awake than I’d ever thought was possible while dreaming.


Wake up, please let me wake up, wake up.


I struggled to move my limbs, but they might as well have been made of lead. All I could do was ram my eyelids closed, shutting out the room and the dark corner and the boots and the Shadow Man who stood over me, watching in silence. In the void that existed behind my eyes, all I felt was the cool air against my face and the uselessness of my arms and legs, held by an invisible gravity from another world. This worked for what could have been seconds or could have been hours, every time I felt the urge to open my eyes to see if the Shadow Man had gone yet, I resisted the temptation. I tried to force myself back into the deep part of sleep where dreams and nightmares didn’t happen, where there was nothing but empty space and calm. I tried and tried, but my heart kept hammering in my chest and my legs would not move. For a while, I figured that I would just have to outlast the nightmares, outlast the Shadow Man, outlast the whole thing. I can wait. I can wait longer than any of this can. The sun has to be coming up soon. I can wait longer than you. I could feel tingling movement over my body all of the sudden, and a bolt of hope grew inside my mind—the cool outside air was brushing against my legs, and I felt as though the weight was lifting. I was waking up. That hope didn’t last long. A short moment later I realized why I felt light, and my chest burned with fear.


I was being lifted out of my bed.


Bony fingers had wrapped themselves around the backs of my knees, I could feel them through the cotton of my pajamas. I was entirely off the mattress, being pulled up towards the ceiling by long arms that came from that horrible shadow corner. Another ragged hand stretched behind my shoulder blades and cradled me like a child. My eyes were still closed, but I could feel a warm tear leaking down my cheek as I felt the fingers of one hand begin to stroke my hair. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. The dim ambient light of the room flooded into my vision as my eyes bolted open.


The open window stared back at me, framed in the center of my nightmare world and drifting closer by the second, the curtains that flanked it dancing in the late-night breeze that rolled in from the street. It was growing closer because I was being carried there. I let my vision drift upwards. The face of the Shadow Man was sunken and cloaked, smoothed craters of darkness obscuring his eyes and nose—his mouth was dimly illuminated by the streetlight glow, and it was a crooked grin with ragged lips and empty spaces where certain teeth should have been. That orange glow was pulsing in space next to the head, and I thought that the world looked wispy and foggy as it grew and dimmed in brightness. Something was burning.

The Shadow Man’s grin permeated my core, it haunted me and shocked me into a state of complete panic. Please wake up. Please wake up. I needed this nightmare to end, it was the worst I had ever had and I needed to wake up. The window was close now, we were there, and we were about to go through the open space, out into the nighttime and the deeper layers of the dream that contained what I only imagined was deeper horror. I could feel my body trembling and realized that I had won back the lucidity of my mind.


Was I awake?


The Shadow Man seemed to know this as our eyes locked for the shortest of moments—the streetlights played across his entire face now and his eyes were wide and full of evil, and they were also tinted with panic; he knew what I knew. As the outside air threatened to envelop me completely, I felt my lungs fill with air, and any hesitation evaporated into the shadows of the bedroom. I screamed as loudly as I could, my voice pierced the room and rocketed out into the street, it pushed through the door and the walls and sent a shutter through the arms that cradled me. The invisible ground raced up to meet me, and my body crashed into it, ripples of pain shooting through my abdomen. I was fully awake now, hot tears moving down my cheekbones as I pulled myself into a fetal position on the bedroom carpet and sobbed.


The swinging of metal hinges and the glare of the halogen lights flipping on didn’t make me feel any better—my parents rushed into the room and suddenly had me sitting on the spongey edge of the mattress. They asked me if it was a bad dream, they asked me what it had been about, and they asked me to drink a glass of water. I’d fallen out of bed; it had been a bad dream and I’d fallen out of bed. I couldn’t do much else between sobs than to nod my head very quickly in agreement. It had been so real, he was right here. He was right there next to the melting clock in those boots, and he had seen me and tried to take me. My father nodded slowly, gesturing for me to take another sip of my water before rising to his feet and walking over to the window. He took a glance out the open space with his arms crossed before leaning over the metal radiator and reaching up to pull the glass pane downwards and shut.


It’s getting cold out, you’re gonna wake up freezing in the morning.


The glass pane clicked into place, sealing the dark breezy nighttime outside and away from us. We stayed that way for a long time, sitting on my bed as I told them about how real he had been, how I was almost gone. They told me that they understood, that sometimes it felt so real and that maybe it was a little stress from school.


Sometimes you can be stressed about something without even knowing it.


That test coming up, and the track thing next week.


Do you smell burning?


I thought I smelled something burning.


It’s just the radiator.


Just the radiator.


By the time we had finished and I had been put back to bed, I could see the first hints of dawn splashing themselves across the sky, deep cobalt instead of complete darkness, the slightest chatter of birds somewhere far away. The next morning, we only talked about the bad dream for a few minutes while my father made coffee and my mother made tea. The weeks that followed weren’t strange at all—if I’m being honest, I had forgotten about the dream no more than ten or twelve days later. I wouldn’t even be right to say “things went back to normal” because they had never really left “normal” to begin with.


It wasn’t until yesterday, all these years later, that I’d actually think about my bad dream again. We were moving—a more rural piece of property a bit farther north that wasn’t too far from where I’d applied for college. I was told to do a final sweep of what had used to be my bedroom. Check under the bed, check along the walls, anywhere you could’ve forgotten something. The floor was bare, the only thing left staring back at me was the box spring of the mattress that I’d slept on since I was a small child. I ran my hand through the dark places beneath the bed and came up with nothing but a handful of dust and lint. I got down on my stomach and checked between the wall and the carpet, behind the old dresser and over to the window.


The metal radiator stood in silence at the base of the glass panes, and I almost didn’t check for anything there. My hands were already covered in dust. Laying prone, I swept my left hand underneath the chilled coils of the heater, and my hand caught on something—it felt like a piece of garbage, whatever it was.

How did that get between the window and the heater? I pulled it towards my body and scooped it into my palm to throw in the black plastic bag I had sitting out in the hallway.

Hoisting myself up onto my feet, I opened my palm to see what it was.


It was a half-smoked cigarette.


Image Credit: Stefan Koidl



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