I heard it before I could see it. A scuttling outside the bedroom door. I sat up and peered through the blackness to confirm that the hall light had been turned off. Avi must be coming to bed. What time was it, anyway? I waited for the sound of his footsteps, the jiggle of the doorknob, his cute but fruitless attempts to enter quietly. But instead, only scuttles.

 

From the scuttles then came scratches, then tiny cracks like glass. I caught something moving inside the door. A smooth surface reflected a brief glimpse of frigid, grey light from the window. Scratches, cracks, then lumbering groans scraped against the dead silence of the room. Where was the sound of the fan? It hung impotently from the ceiling, frozen in the grey light. I couldn’t even hear my own breath. My heart pounded against my chest with no sound. I could only hear the scratches, the cracks, the groans. They pressed outwards and upwards from the door. Finally, I could see.

 

A tesseract of dimensionless blackness broke through itself and consumed itself. Glass-like shards pierced outwards farther and farther, like arms clamoring for escape from an abyss, both formless and formidable. I slid back on my hands as it towered over me, the groaning and shattering growing louder and louder. It crescendoed and the blackness unfurled into the corners of the ceiling above me. The commotion was deafening. And that’s when I noticed where the deafening sound truly came from – I was screaming. 

 

I only woke up from the pain in the back of my throat. How long had I been screaming? Warm light from the street lamp poured through my window. The orange glow under the door confirmed that there were no formless black demons to be found. I fell back into the bed with a cry of relief, took a sip of water to cool my burning throat, and kicked the covers off of the bed. I was drenched in sweat. Burning up. The heat of the night pressed me further into the bed. Why was I so hot? I glanced up at the ceiling fan. I cannot sleep without it on; it’s an omen I use to identify if/when I am awake. For some reason it never spins in my dreams. I wiped the sweat from my face and the horror fell upon me – the fan hung impotently from the ceiling, frozen in the orange light.

 

No. No absolutely not. I frantically felt around the bedside for my phone. All I found was the mattress beside me, depressed with the weight of someone, or something. I lifted my head to see that it was not Avi, but a shimmering black scarab pressing a crater into the bed beside me. I instinctually swatted it off of the bed and sent it flying into the wall. I heard it crumple, then fall. Then somewhere from the floor I heard the familiar scuttles, scratches, and cracks. They grew from buzzing to ringing, from ringing to shattering, and from shattering to screams – my screams.

 

I didn’t care if I was awake or not. I shrieked and screamed until I couldn’t breathe, and when I could breathe again I screamed more. I was screaming for my salvation – for Avi to come running to the room, for a frightened neighbor to come banging at the door, for any familiar interaction to convince me I was actually awake. Avi was two closed doors away in the guest room, having fallen asleep with his cats. The neighbors were one thin wall away, thin enough to hear an innocent cough. The window was wide open, a passage out to the tunnel of townhomes I live in. 

 

No one came. My cries were met only by silence, and the whir of the ceiling fan spinning overhead.

 

Elaina