It happened at night.
Naturally, I was asleep, unsuspecting. I’m normally not prepared for something unusual to happen to me if nothing unusual ever has before. There’s a certain level of routine to expect during my nights, that being a completely uneventful one, so why would the system be disrupted now?
Nothing prompted me to wake up, no bump in the night, no creaking door. Yet my eyes opened just as if I had been called, and I identified the disturbance, the “something unusual” almost instantly.
There was a man in my room.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t, partly out fear, but mostly because I was more confused than afraid. There was a man in my room, and he was floating. The light from a lamppost outside my window exposed the intruder’s form. He was perched in air at the foot of my bed, nearly on the ceiling. From under a thick lock of hair his eyes met mine and I stared in fear as the edge of his lip curled up into a devilish smile.
“You’re awake.”
Hearing him speak broke me out of my trance and I took in a shallow breath, refusing to blink in case he’d move during the millisecond my eyes weren’t tracking him. The space between us was suffocating, growing smaller and tighter, without revealing any means of escaping.
The smirk that conquered his face slid back down. “It’s rude to not respond to someone who’s speaking to you.”
He began to lower himself, and then I could see that he wasn’t floating, but dangling from some kind of rope ladder that seemed to be protruding from my ceiling. His feet touched my nightstand and he towered over me, coolly regarding me as I quivered beneath his eyes. Though he was no longer hanging from his ladder, I noticed how, when he moved, he never abandoned his grip on the strange structure of ropes and rungs.
“This is another delusion, isn’t it?” The words barely made it past my lips.
“That’s insulting.” The man stepped onto my bed, and mattress whining from his weight dismissed my question. How could this feel so real? An abrupt recollection of reaching hands and hooded eyes, which once seemed just as real as this mysterious intruder, reminded me of the countless times people corrected me into accepting that these were all merely products of my extreme and very convincing imagination.
“Why don’t you scream?” he asked, recapturing my attention with another Cheshire grin.
“Are you going to kill me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Again with the bad questions.”
I made the mistake of blinking, and he was gone.
__
Over the next few nights, I hardly slept. I couldn’t help but look for an intruder on a ladder. Countless hours of sleep were lost in fear that he would reappear, but my anticipation was just as eager as it was dreading. If I could see him again, I would be able to prove that he wasn’t another hallucination. If I could see him, for once I would be able to trust myself and not question everything I know. But he never came. It wasn’t long before I was able to fall back into my old, uneventful nightly routine, finally convinced our encounter had been a fantasy.
It would be about a week later when a familiar feeling of discomfort, the sensation that someone was watching, would awake me.
“Jack.”
I sat up in bed so quickly I saw stars, my eyes already focused on where the plaster ceiling once produced lines of rope with a dark-haired man suspended at their ends. The eagerness quickly became disappointment upon seeing nothing in his place, and my eyes fell onto where the voice of the real intruder originated.
“Dean?” The disappointment became alarm.
I stared with disbelief into the calculating eyes of my sister’s ex-boyfriend, experiencing a change in preference as I suddenly wished he were another example of my claimed psychosis.
Dean’s eyes raked over me, and I shuddered, suddenly wary of my lack of clothing, save for a half-buttoned nightshirt.
“Don’t look so surprised to see me,” he spoke again.
I blinked deliberately, hoping that he would disappear as the man on the ladder did before, but to my dismay, he was still there when my eyes opened. How could Dean be here, and more importantly, why?
“How did you find us?” I pulled my blanket higher over myself, but I still felt exposed, so long as Dean’s eyes were watching me.
Dean scoffed with one of his notorious smirks, and bile rose in my throat. “I have friends down at the DMV. You’d be amazed how much information is considered public. I saw your license was revoked recently?”
My panic was surpassed by a burning anger. Though it was years ago, I could practically feel his hands pushing into my skin again, gripping me, forcing me to comply.
“I’m calling the police.”
A glare hit my eye, and I saw the light from outside reflecting off of my phone’s screen, which was being flaunted from Dean’s hand. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
My heart began to pound in my chest. “What the fuck do you want, Dean?”
“I’ve missed you.” Dean walked towards me. Between him and the headboard at my back, I was trapped.
Dean brushed his fingers over the side of my face, capturing hairs along the way. I was ready to throw a fist at him the closer he came to me, but I knew he was stronger than me and would easily overtake any struggle. The anticipated sensation of his hands invading my body, hurting me, was still lingering and intensifying with each second.
“I haven’t missed you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Why don’t you go back down the drain or however the fuck you got into my house before I scream and Marcy hears.”
Dean’s hand didn’t leave my cheek. Meanwhile his other one pushed my hair off my shoulder, gliding down my arm, and I could already imagine the soreness blossoming under bruises I was afraid he would leave.
“As if she’d find you before I’d be gone.” Dean chuckled to himself. “And do you really think Marcy will believe her crazy sister, who clearly was just suffering from a late-night psychotic episode?”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Maybe not, but one thing’s for sure.” The hand resting on my arm moved to my chest. “Your tits finally grew.”
Just as I was strongly revisiting the idea of punching him, a new voice chimed in: “Is this a bad time?”
Dean didn’t have a chance to answer before an arm hooked around his neck and pulled him backwards and away from me. A boot met his head from the side, sending him to the floor with a grunt and a loud thud. Groaning, Dean lifted his head and turned to identify his attacker. My gaze flew up as well until it rested upon a familiar floating figure.
The stranger’s eyes darted from Dean to find me frozen in place under my covers, and he regarded me with a blazing intensity that was visible even in the night’s heavy darkness. “Come on, let’s go,” he ushered.
Though I had spent nights anticipating a second visit, no amount of mental preparation stopped my mind from short-circuiting. “Is this one of those recurring dreams?”
Suspended on the rungs of his unusual ladder from his usual place, a spider observing hungrily from his web, he looked too frightening to be made up. Appearing impatient, and a little nervous, the man looked back to Dean, who was still disoriented but recovering quickly.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said.
Similarly to the last time, he began to lower himself towards me. I couldn’t help but stare at the point where ladder met ceiling, mystified at how the plaster there behaved more like water as it rippled around the ropes. As much as I had previously hoped he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, how could any of this not be?
“Today, please?” The ladder’s owner recaptured my attention with his hand extended before me.
I stared at it incredulously, and he scoffed and reached a little further towards me. “You’re supposed to take it. Now.”
“This isn’t real.”
Rolling his eyes, my intruder grabbed my hand, and I gasped, surprised he didn’t go straight through me. “Well, real or not, I’d take it that even in your dreams you wouldn’t want to be around with this one comes to.”
My cheeks flushed angrily, but after glimpsing towards Dean’s form, which was groggily attempting to sit up, fear compelled me to abandon all reason. I tightened my grip on the stranger’s hand and hauled myself upright until I could grasp the sides of the ladder.
The stranger began climbing upward, and I watched in awe as his head passed through and was swallowed by the ceiling. His shoulders and torso soon followed, cutting cleanly through the surface without disturbing the matter that was rolling softly in swells around the ropes. My liquid ceiling eagerly accepted the stranger while he finished his ascent. Meanwhile, I hesitated from below. Nothing about the current situation made sense to me, from Dean to the stranger to the sudden change in my bedroom interior’s molecular makeup. Eventually, I concluded that I was outnumbered by the things I didn’t understand, and at this point, going with it was probably my best option. Also, there was a good chance I was living out a very vivid, very unreasonable delusion.
Mustering all of my fear-infused strength, I headed for the buttery surface. My face came close to what looked like a wavering solution of cement, and my chest tightened with panic as my fear of murky water suddenly came into play. What unknown horrors existed on the other side, aside from whatever Marcy stores in the attic? What kind of sharks swam around in this depth I couldn’t see?
I didn’t really get the chance to form another ocean analogy before the stranger’s hands emerged from the opaque beyond and pulled me through, just as Dean’s voice called out my name.