The Dark Thing

I was sleepwalking again. I hadn’t sleepwalked since I was twelve years old, right before my parents died. My entire childhood had been afflicted with sleep issues, progressively worsening until I was not only sleepwalking but having night terrors as well. Near the end, these would come every night. Then my parents were murdered--by whom, I guess we’ll never know. The murderer was never caught--and I moved in with my Aunt Eve and Uncle George. I never sleepwalked or had another night terror again. Until now.

I called my aunt to tell her of my discovery.

“When did this start?” Aunt Eve asked.

“As far as I can tell, the very first night I moved in. Some drawers in the kitchen were left open.” A very unnerving thing to wake to in a new place.

“Oh, Mia, if you’re sleepwalking then…”

“I know,” I said before she could finish. “I could be having night terrors again.” There was no way for me to know for certain since I lived alone and I never had any recollection of my nightmares.

“You’ve gone so long without them. I can’t help but wonder if it’s all the stress you’ve been under getting the house built and moving in. I know how you are. You don’t rest enough.”

“You’re right. Maybe you should postpone your trip out here. You two can come see the house another time, when I’m sleeping better.”

“Absolutely not. This is all the more reason for us to go. We’ll be there next week as planned.”

We finished our conversation and said our goodbyes. I sat down on the edge of my bed and thought about what was alluded to but what wasn’t said. Neither one of us wanted to mention the Dark Thing. That is what “It” had come to be known as, whatever “It” was. All my aunt and uncle would tell me about it was that it was something I had been afraid of in my dreams and it always accompanied my night terrors, but I knew there was more judging by the subtle, knowing look my aunt and uncle would give each other as they told me about it. I knew they were scared of the Dark Thing, too. I had never asked why. I guess then I had been afraid of the answer, but I was older now. If I was having night terrors again, I had to know if the Dark Thing was back. The hairs on my arms raised and my skin tingled. I had to find out what my aunt and uncle wouldn’t tell me.

. . . . . .

That evening, before getting in bed, I set up a digital recorder on my side table. I hoped it didn’t record anything. However, in the morning, I plugged the recorder into my computer’s USB port, opened up my audio software program, and immediately saw a two minute and 47 second blotch of activity right in the middle of the seven hours recorded.

I used the slider to mark where I wanted the recording to play and clicked the Play button. At two seconds the room was immediately filled with a wretched, guttural scream that I didn’t recognize as my own. I covered my ears in horror but this served uselessly against the wailing.

Then it was gone, just as suddenly as it came. All I could hear was me sobbing softly. This lasted for two minutes. That’s when I heard a whisper that sounded like I had placed my mouth right next to the recorder’s microphone, “Remember.”

. . . . . .

For the next week, I couldn’t concentrate on work and I was too uneasy to have any kind of decent sleep. I decided against recording myself again, even though the sleepwalking continued, and rather focused on my aunt and uncle’s arrival. I was overwhelmed with relief when I saw their Uber pull up in the drive. Everything was going to be okay. I hurried outside to meet them.

I could see my aunt and uncle in the back seat of the car. They were staring at the house but something was off. They looked…shocked? The excitement of their arrival quickly turned to concern. I went to the door and helped my aunt out of the car. We didn’t even hug. Aunt Eve immediately grabbed my hand and, never taking her eyes off the house, led me to the middle of the yard.

“Aunt Eve. What’s wrong?”

“Oh Mia,” she managed to stutter. Uncle George had come up and put his arms around his wife and, just like Aunt Eve, couldn’t take his eyes off the house.

“You guys. What is going on?” I asked uneasily.

Aunt Eve raised our hands to her chest, near her heart, and for the first time since she got here actually looked at me. “Mia. You’ve built your childhood home.”

. . . . . .

I awoke in a sweat, heart pounding, but more disturbingly, I was standing over my aunt and uncle’s dead bodies sprawled on the floor of the guest bedroom. I backed up until I couldn’t go any farther, though it seemed the walls were closing in, pushing me closer to the carnage I so desperately wanted to stop staring at. All of a sudden, the scene changed right before my eyes to one of the past and then back to the present, back to the past, again to the present. I remembered.

I had stood like this in my parent’s room all those years ago. They had lain on their floor just as my aunt and uncle were now, barely recognizable, their faces nothing but blood and matter. I looked up into the corner of the bedroom’s ceiling and just as I remembered, there hunched a dark figure, darker than the shadows it hid in. I remembered the Dark Thing.

The End