Nightmares

I almost didn’t notice him get into my bed, but I slowly fell into lucidity. My body was still sleepy, and gravity always pushes harder on the weary. He’s only six, and his weight didn’t shuffle around the bedding too much. It was still dark outside, probably very early morning, and the room was all darkness and irrelevance beyond the bed. My bleary mind gave everything an oneiric quality.

“Dad?” he said in his tiny voice.

He had always called me daddy until then. Probably trying to act older to compensate for being scared, I thought. “Dyl?” I replied, my voice groggy. “What’s wrong buddy? Did you have a nightmare?”

“No. I’m just waiting,” he claimed. He was sitting on my chest, I realized. I found it strange.

“Waiting for wha--“ My question cut off as ostensibly a cloud moved away from the moon, lightening the room some. I felt as if I was stabbed with a million syringes of adrenaline and all my blood leaked out the holes all at once, leaving me feeling cold. Dylan was sitting on my chest… but it wasn’t Dylan.

It looked like my son, sounded like my son, but this thing wasn’t my son: the father-son familiarity was replaced with an aura terror. The shadows cast from the moon shaded his eyes, but it was no natural darkness. The sockets that should have held his innocent eyes were now caverns into some profound doom. I felt that if I stared at them too long I would be sucked into my own death. They were like twin sluiceways oozing out the hatred and horrors of Hell. Looking into them was a promise of what was to come. Soon. Whenever it decided.

What before felt like a sleep-weary body laden by the comforting weight of my son was now my very soul trapped by a universal dread. I felt insignificant being so close to that insurmountable hatred. I was the tiniest of nerves on a flayed man’s body. I was the smallest cinder in a funeral pyre.

It grinned at me with Dylan’s little mouth, and I somehow knew that my understanding was what it was waiting for. Just another small torment before it took me to eternal torment. I felt a frantic vibration run through my entirety, like that of a fly enclosed in the hand of a cruel child. My world grew black  under that evil pressure…

I woke up with a violent jerk, not knowing whether to feel scared or embarrassed. Such was always the effect of sleep paralysis for me. I slowed my anxious breathing, calmed my horrified heart. I should have known better. I hadn’t had sleep paralysis in years because it only happens when I fall asleep on my back. If anything, that’s what the terror of the night was waiting for. It seems to be the rule I have to break to gain its punishment.

“Dad?” a tiny voice said from beside my bed. I felt the blood drain from my face. “You were making noises,” Dylan said.

I breathed out a deep, relieved breath, grunting out a small chuckle at the irony of Dylan’s consolation. “Sorry, buddy. Bad dream,” I said as I flicked on my bedside lamp. 

The light cast shadows over its eye sockets and they looked like the caverns into some profound doom. It was grinning at me with my son’s mouth, and it said, “It’s time to go.” The evil that accompanied those words felt like it could only come from the mocking maw of the devil Itself.