Not a Dream

Something happened last night that shook me up really badly, and I'm still trying to put it aside. Needless to say that I look like complete shit today and feel even worse - I'm spacey and shaking and extremely jumpy.

Truth be told I've been just sitting here, letting the start of this post go untouched because I simply don't know how to even type it out. How do I put into words the sheer terror I felt early this morning, or explain the reason why I broke down crying in my parents room at five in the morning?

I'll do my best to tell this story, but I can't guarantee that it'll make sense.

It was like any other night when I went to bed last night, and yet on any other night I wouldn't jolt awake at 4am.

I should be more specific: On any other night I wouldn't hear something knocking on my door at 4am.

I tried to ignore it at first, because it was four in the fucking morning and obviously my parents wouldn't be knocking on my door because my parents are sleeping at four in the morning. Maybe it was my imagination, maybe it was some water-hammer phenomenon that the newspapers talked about once when I was much younger.

It wasn't.

I knew for a fact that I was very much awake due to the adrenaline coursing through my veins (thank you, biology class), and the added fact that I could feel the sheets on my bed, my now-erratic heartrate and the perspiration on my skin due to breaking out in a cold sweat told me that this was most definitely not a dream.

So if it wasn't a dream, why did I still hear knocking on my door?

I know just about every inch of my room, and I can tell you that I could definitely recognise the sound of something knocking on a wooden door.

It might not sound scary reading it like this, but imagine lying on your bed in a dark room (it's four in the fucking morning after all) and hearing something knocking on your door. You're an only child, and the only other people in the house are your parents, both of whom are asleep. Where does that leave you?

I'll tell you. That leaves you completely paralysed by fear, unable to do anything but lie there with your eyes screwed shut because you don't want to open them for fear that you might actually see something. That leaves you trying to force yourself to go back to sleep because it's about two and a half hours till daylight and if you can just survive till then oh god why isn't the knocking stopping oh my god it's knocking slightly faster.

It left me praying to God with everything I had. I'd never prayed before besides asking for some help every now and then, mostly because I didn't actually know how to pray and I didn't feel worthy since I was a freethinker. None of that meant anything at that moment because I was praying with every fibre of my being, begging for help to just send it away, whatever it is please please just send it away please God please.

I hadn't realised I was sobbing, but my hair and pillow were wet with what definitely wasn't perspiration.

As I repeated the same thing over and over in my mind (send it away please God, please send it away whatever it is) the knocking stopped. I barely allowed myself to hope that everything was over before it started again. This time I didn't bother with coherent thoughts, mentally screaming anything and everything in my mind and praying as hard that I could that God could hear me, that I was somehow just in a really bad, hyper-realistic dream.

Several times the knocking ceased and several times it started again. I wasn't crying anymore, but my mind was nowhere near fine and I was shaking like a leaf. It wasn't until about 5am that I decided to make a break for it to my parents' room, since I hadn't heard the knocking for about ten minutes and felt safe enough, like God would shield me from whatever the fuck it was for the time I needed to run to their room.

I made it to their room, woke my mum up and promptly had a complete breakdown. I was in really bad shape, speaking gibberish (I literally couldn't string a proper sentence together) and crying and shaking - it was no wonder that my mum was alarmed. She tried to comfort me, but her telling me that it was probably just my imagination made me even more hysterical - I know I have a very strong, overactive imagination, but I also knew that I hadn't dreamed up or imagined any of what had happened.

My dad told me the next morning that I'd probably invited something because of my tendency to watch horror game playthroughs even at night, and although it wasn't what I wanted to hear, it made it slightly better to know that he sort of believed me when I said I hadn't been dreaming.

I've always been very careful with things like the occult - I love the Gothic culture, and I love Pagan topics too, but I've always made sure to steer clear of things from the other side because it's always better to be safe than sorry when there's even a chance you'll be dealing with supernatural beings. I've always been extremely careful.

So why did that happen, and (this scares me the most) is it going to happen again? I honestly don't know. But what I fear is that I may have brought something home with me from work, because the building I work in has quite a few religious artifacts, and some shops straight-out advertise that they sell occult goods from places like Thailand (if you've watched enough Thai horror films you'll know why I'm scared). I've been avoiding those shops like the plague since day one, but I'm still scared because what other explanation is there?

It wasn't a dream. I know this whole post sounds crazy and maybe you'll just think I'm a raving lunatic but I know what I heard, and it was not a dream or some figment of my imagination.

I'm fucking scared, I really fucking am.