Nyctophobia

When I was little, I used to keep a bag packed with my favorite belongings next to my window. I wanted to be prepared if a fire broke out. I had a checklist for how I would react in a scenario where an intruder broke into the house. Hiding the kitchen knife set was at the top of the list. At night, I would go around the house to make sure doors and windows were locked. I had a lot of fears as a child. My fears were all tangible, rational, so that I could reason out how I would defeat or outsmart potential threats. It never occurred to me that the really scary things where outside of the realm of logic.

I grew up in a rural county in the Pacific Northwest region of Washington, surrounded by moss covered woods. Neighbors were acres apart from each other. Long fields stretched between houses. There was a huge forest right off of my family’s property. A place with a transcendent property I couldn’t see, but I could feel on my skin, taste in my mouth, and hear on the edge of windstorms. It was a quiet place for the most part. Every now and then the quiet would be interrupted by the sound of gunshots echoing off of the trees. It was an eerie place to grow up. And even more eerie was the house that stood on the edge of the woods.

My parents started leaving my little brother and I home alone at a young age. We had a big Mastiff named Zoe. My parents considered her as good as any babysitter. So, when they would leave for an evening out my brother and I would be alone. We often spent the time watching television or playing with toys. When the sun went down, I never ventured further into the house than the brightest lit room. The reason being, what happened to me on a summer night when I was nine.

It was early summer around eight in the evening. The sun was beginning to disappear under the tree line and the forest was waking up. Many things were waking up. My brother and I were home alone watching a show when I decided that I needed something from my bedroom.

I traveled up the winding carpeted stairs. I had no reason to feel afraid, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something wasn’t right. The hairs on the back of my neck where standing up, as if someone leaned down to blow air onto them. I felt watched, but when I turned around no one was there, but the feeling in my stomach told me that someone was.

I reached the long hallway that lead from my parents’ room on one end, past my brothers’ room, the guest bedroom, the bathroom, down to my room on the end. And right next to my room, the door to the attic. I stopped in front of that door. I was afraid now, the flutter in my stomach urged me to run, but my feet didn’t move. My body had already accepted what my mind couldn’t. That I was in danger.

The door was old and flimsy. It was that brown paneling that you find in seventies atrocities still standing. It had a faux round gold handle that twisted to open the door. It was identical to all the other doors in the house, except it wasn’t because that’s where the sound came from.

It was so low. A shhhhhh, sound except right by my face, right into my ear. A whisper out of the mouth of someone with broken vocal cords. I reached for the knob and turned it. A sweat broke out on my body, a cold drop rolling down my back. I was afraid.

The attic had a dark colored carpeting and pink fluffy insulation lining the walls. The slanting roof made it impossible for an adult to stand up all the way, but I could. I reached for the light switch and flipped it. The dim light bulb only took care of lighting the center of the room, and left more in shadow than before it was on.

The whispering became clear then. Coming from behind the boxes somewhere in the dark cold room. Freezing room. It shouldn’t have been cold, it was June. The whispering came out of nowhere but out of a mouth that was smiling. I knew that. I knew it like I knew the sky outside was blue. The voice whispering my name over and over was smiling.

“Hailey, Hailey, Hailey….”

I backed away, but I was slow doing it, I didn’t want to believe that there was a voice whispering my name, there was no one in the attack with me. My mind couldn’t explain, my body could just feel. I felt that if I stayed in that attic a moment longer something terrible would happen to me. I let my body take over. I ran, slamming the door behind me without bothering to turn off the light. The thing that lived in the attic lived in those shadows, in the dark.

I didn’t venture out of the well-lit living room until my parents came home, and even then, I dragged my big dog into my room with me. I never heard the whispering from the attic again, but the experience left an impression on me. To this day I have sever Nyctophobia.