Nightmare in the Flesh

I awoke with a start from a nightmare. I couldn’t remember what it was but it had been something very terrifying. My breath caught painfully in my throat and I sat up like a bolt in the bed. My eyes hadn’t adjusted yet but I could tell something tall was standing at the door. I reached over to shake my husband, silently but firmly, all the while keeping my adjusting eyes on the figure watching us. Just as he woke and moaned a groggy “Whu? Hunh izzit?”, the thing in the doorway lumbered away with a lopsided gait.

“There’s someone in the house,” I hissed through my teeth. My husband was wide awake now. Wordlessly and calmly, he got out of bed, went to our wardrobe and fetched a baseball bat from behind his hanging suits. I shadowed him closely as we went methodically room by room, turning on all the lights and inspecting every potential hiding spot.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in Micah’s room. I let out a short gasp when he flipped on the lights.

The stones were scattered all over his room and the bowl shattered, as if someone had kicked it violently. The fork we had placed beside was embedded in the wall opposite the closet door.

“What the hell?” I groaned low and quietly.

“We’ll come back to it, but we need to search the rest of the house,” whispered my husband calmly. Always stalwart. We swept the rest of our home, finding no other damage, and, perplexingly, no indication of a break-in.

We checked on Micah, he was still sound asleep in our bed.

We returned to our son’s room.

Shivering, I asserted, “I swear I saw someone standing in the doorway, honey.”

My husband was inspecting the closet door frame. I watched him helplessly. He let out a low “whoa” and called me over. “Look at this.” He pushed aside Micah’s clothes giving us a better view of the back wall of his closet. There was a gaping hole. It looked like something had dug outward from behind the wall.

“I’ve never noticed that before. What could have done that?”

“A raccoon? a ‘possum?” My husband didn’t seem too concerned. “Either way, we should call an exterminator. Ha! I reckon Micah really has been feeding something.”

I allowed this hypothesis to ease my strained nerves a bit. I desperately wanted there to be a rational explanation for the night’s events. I was about to suggest we go look up prices and reviews for pest removal when Micah shrieked.

Every mother knows the different kinds of screams. And this was definitely a pain scream.

I sprinted back to our room. Micah was red from thrashing violently. He was swinging and kicking at the air. I grabbed him and nearly shook him, commanding him to tell me, right away, what had happened.

“CHOMPY BIT ME!” he was screaming at the top of his lungs. He really sounded like he was in pain.

“Where!?” I demanded.

He pulled up his shirt to expose his torso. I couldn’t find any marks to evidence a bite or any other injury. I searched carefully, which was difficult with him hyperventilating and whipping his head around to see all corners of the room. He was terrified.

“Mickey... you’re ok."

He shook his head with tears streaming down his face.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. You just had a dream.”

“YOU CAN’T SEE IT!” he roared fiercely, then started wailing with renewed insult.

I sat back and watched him let it out. He cried for ten minutes; the cry of a child who has realized the world isn’t fair but keeps screaming at it anyway. His cry was an accusation hurled at the universe, pathetic and unanswered. Eventually exhausted, he wrapped his arms around himself and laid over on his side, gasping in fits. He seemed to be consoling himself, and, after one last hitching breath, lay calmly and slowly closed his eyes.

I turned to my husband in the doorway.

“He’s fine. It was just a nightmare.”

He came over and put his warm, comforting hands on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and allowed myself to relax.

“I’ll call someone in the morning, first thing.” he promised sweetly.

And with that, we got back into bed. I teetered deliriously and deliciously on the brink of unconsciousness; loose-flying, misfiring half-thoughts zipping around unrealized, becoming white noise - when suddenly one reared up and yowled. The Old, Other voice boomed out “BUT WHAT WAS IT?”

I shot up and glared at the door. “What was it?”, I whispered to myself. The thing at the door. Sweat was beading on my forehead and my palms were clammy. It wasn’t an opossum or a raccoon; that’s for damn sure.

“I imagined it,” I rationalized out loud.

The Old, Other was silent. Like the silence before a storm.

I laid back and quickly fell into a black, dreamless sleep.

***

I was almost finished preparing a grand, balanced breakfast and was feeling cheerfully domestic. My husband had scheduled an appointment for that afternoon and I decided to let Micah stay home from school today. He was sleeping unusually late and I was relishing every minute of the extra, morning alone-time.

He finally lumbered down the stairs in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes.

“Good Morning, Sunshine.” I sang.

Right away, I knew something was wrong. His face was sallow, his eyes sunken and darkly encircled. He was moving slowly, pained. He didn’t smile or greet me.

I rushed over to him. “Mickey, what’s wrong?”

His eyes were bloodshot, his lips swollen. His whole face seemed a bit inflamed. His cheeks were exceptionally puffy. When I tried to feel his forehead for signs of fever, he snapped his head back and made a huffy groaning noise with his mouth shut, as if to tell me not to touch him.

I tried not to panic in front of him; it would just make things worse. But I am, above all things, an academic. And I knew that while it was possible for a child to start losing their baby teeth as young as 6.

“Ok Micah, let me see your mouth. Can you open up for mommy?”

He shook his head. It wasn’t defiance, it was terror.

“Please, sweetheart, just let me look. You open your mouth and I won’t even touch. I just need to see.”

He shook his head more weakly and I could see tears leaking sloppily out of his eyes. He was in pain.

It took every ounce of resolve - because the last thing I wanted to do was frighten or hurt him - but I grabbed him tightly and bent him back over my lap quickly and tried to pry his mouth open. He screamed with his mouth closed and kicked and thrashed.

“Micah! Open your mouth!”

I got a grip on his jaw and pulled down. It was so tightly clenched it felt locked. I let him go, unable to hide my surprise. Micah’s teeth weren’t falling out, they were growing larger.

“Micah, we’re going to go see Dr. Rosenbaum.”

I rushed to the kitchen and called Dr. Rosenbaum. He is a very competent, fast and thorough medical dentist, and well worth the higher prices he charges. He made himself available immediately when my husband knocked his front teeth out in a mountain biking accident. He saved the teeth and my husband’s flawless smile. I wouldn’t go to anyone else.

He always gave his cell number for long-time customers and answered their calls himself.

“Lindsey! Lovely to hear from you.” He enthused, though I could tell he hadn’t yet had his morning coffee.

“Dr. Rosenbaum, thank you for taking my call. Please, I have an emergency. It’s my son.”

He must have heard the wavering, sick fear in my voice.

“Take a deep breath, Lindsey, it’s going to be ok. Tell me what’s happening.”

“Two teeth fell out. His face is swollen. He won’t open his mouth. He seems feverish but his forehead isn’t hot. I think he’s in a lot of pain.”

“Ok. I’m heading to my office right now. You meet me there.”

“Oh, thank you, Doctor. I’ll be right over!”

I bundled Micah up, whipped him into his car seat in record time and scooted off to Dr. Rosenbaum’s office. I whisked him over to the door. Rosenbaum was standing in the entrance fiddling with his keys.

Once inside, he cupped Micah’s face gently and looked him over. Micah was practically reeling like a drunk. He was very out of it.

“Micah, can you open your mouth for me?”

He would not.

“Ok. I’m going to help you very carefully open your mouth. If you're a good boy, you can pick a toy afterwards. ok?"

Micah shook his head insensibly. When the dentist tried to very gradually pry open his mouth open, he shrieked with his jaw clenched shut and took a swipe at Rosenbaum.

I apologized profusely but the doctor put his hand up to gesture that it was ok.

The thing I like the most about Dr. Rosenbaum is that he treats “High Fear” patients. What that means is, for an extra fee, he will put you completely under for any and all procedures.

“Lindsey, I’m afraid of possible infection, given the inflammation I’m seeing. I need to see in his mouth and I would like to take x-rays. But I don’t want to traumatize him, and I agree with you that he is in obvious pain. I’d like to…”

“Do it.” I cut him off.

He nodded once and led Micah calmly back to his office. I could hear his muffled voice beyond the partition. “Alright, little man. You lay back and I’m going to put this cup on your nose. This is a magic cup and if you can count to ten, you can travel to any place in the world. Ready? 1… 2…”

And with that he started shuffling about his work. I heard the “hmm”s and “mm”s of his learned deliberation. “Oh my, that is unusual” wafted out into the waiting room. I clenched my hands even tighter. I heard a sharp “OW! Son of a…” caught before he could finish it. Then the soft, heavy slide of the protective vest and the rhythmic clicks of the dental x-ray. It felt like an eternity before Dr. Rosenbaum entered the waiting room.

His hands were trembling. His face was white. He wouldn’t look at me.

“Lindsey,” he barely whispered. “In all my 37 years of practice, I really don’t know what this is.”

Nothing in my life… No great fight or triumph or flight or grief could have prepared me for this moment. He handed me the X-ray.

The teeth had indeed fallen off. But what was taking its place in my 6 year old boy was what I can only describe as a set of canines, sharp as knives but still jagged, like a dagger.

I froze. In the three X-rays Rosenbaum took, the teeth almost seemed to get larger and larger.

“I’m… hungry”, I heard a wail from the other room as Rosenbaum’s eyes began to turn red.