It Happens After Midnight

Something wasn't right.

I felt it in my blood, rushing like a river in the summertime. My hands shook and my heart pumped faster and faster. I sat alone in my bed, staring at the doorknob, waiting.

The tick of the clock sounded far away, like my head was submerged in the deep water of the sea. Tick-tick-tick...

"It's nothing, Martha. You're making yourself crazy," I whispered to myself. My words seemed to bounce off the dark walls as if someone else had spoken them.

I wanted morning to come. I wanted the sun to peek through the curtains, filling my room with the warm comfort that the night sucked away.

The ticking was louder now, but I thought, how could that be? I pulled the blankets over my shoulders, shaking. I knew what would happen in the next few minutes.

The doorknob would jiggle, like someone was trying to get in. Then, the door would creak open, revealing the dark, shadowy figure of a man with unnaturally long arms and a horrible, twisted neck. It would creep along my wall and stop just beside my window. As if the moonlight was poison, the figure would slither to the floor and slide beneath my bed. Then, it would speak to me.

"You never go to sleep anymore," it whispered in a scratchy, gurgling voice as if its throat had been raw and dripping with blood.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to will myself to free my mind of this awful creature. But it came every night like clockwork. It was right, I didn't sleep anymore. I had no knowledge of what would happen to me if I did.

"Close those pretty, pretty eyes of yours, Martha"

Its voice gave me shivers and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. If only I had the courage to jump out of bed and bolt out the door. I never did, for fear of it grabbing my ankle and pulling me under to meet with it face-to-face.

"You'll begin to hallucinate if you don't sleep"

I looked to the door that was slightly ajar. If I could only...

"Perhaps you already have"

Now it was playing mind games with me. I knew it was trying to pull me into its trap, where I would be utterly helpless...right where it wanted me.

Tonight was the night. I knew I had to do something, tell it to go away. I couldn't go many more nights before the sleeplessness took hold of me.

But when I opened my mouth to speak, there was nothing. I tasted the metallic rush of blood and the salt of the ocean. The ceiling above me spun out of control until the blackness took over.

In the distance, far, far away, like my head was submerged in the deep water of the sea...someone spoke. "We're losing her, we're losing her,"

That's when I felt the air rush back into my lungs and when my eyes opened I was no longer in my bedroom. I was laying on the cold, wet sand surrounded by seaweed.

A woman I have never seen before knelt beside me and put two fingers to my neck. "She barely has a pulse. We need to get her to the hospital, now!"

Over the next few days I slowly learned what had happened to me. It turns out I had been asleep and the dark figure in my room must have been merely a nightmare. In my sleep, I had wandered into the ocean, nearly drowning myself.

But that night, as I lay in my hospital bed, I heard the doorknob jiggle, just a little.