Читать книгу Real Hauntings 5-Book Bundle - Mark Leslie - Страница 8

I have night terrors. About an hour after I fall asleep, I wake up convinced my bedside table is out to get me, or incredibly suspicious of the sweater hanging off the back of my chair. I once thought an exercise bike was trying to kill me and that my bed was full of rats, and that only locking myself in the bathroom would save me. Sometimes I’m able to convince myself it’s highly unlikely that hundreds of spiders are marching up and down my bedroom wall, and other times I rise up in my sheets, trembling with fear, sure it’s all real. I’ve woken up with my hand on the bedroom door handle (readying to flee), my entire body drenched in sweat. I’ve jumped out of bed and run from the room, screaming so loud and long my husband had to slap me awake. I’ve seen things. Weird things. And they all seemed incredibly real at the time.

It’s a strange nightly ritual, one I rarely talk about, because upon waking in the morning the events of the night often seem blurred and far away, dreamlike, unreal. The fact is that when I’m experiencing a night terror I am technically still asleep. I can see the room around me, just through a horror-movie lens. It’s like a waking nightmare in which all the everyday things I look at in the daytime come alive at night and try to kill me.

I have also seen people who aren’t there.

One time, sleeping over at my then boyfriend’s apartment, I looked up and saw a thin wire extending from the window to the top of the bookcase. Then I saw a little man on a little bicycle pedal his way across the room on the tightrope before disappearing. He was pink. Once I saw a hunched old woman staring at me from across the room with hatred in her eyes. She turned out to be a stepladder. On another occasion a demonic face came bulging out at me through a solid wall that I maybe, now that I think about it, shouldn’t have painted red.

Each of these experiences is uncanny, a lot like seeing a ghost. I see something, a terrible thing, but once I flick on the light it’s gone. I feel a presence in the room with me and have the irresistible urge to run. I panic, without quite knowing why. I stare into the face of someone who shouldn’t be there, gritting my teeth, willing them to go.

This isn’t real, I tell myself. But I don’t quite believe.

I’m not a die-hard believer in ghosts. I’ve never had an encounter with a spirit. I don’t have one of those stories to tell. But I have seen things in the dark. I have known the fear of being in the presence of something inexplicable. And as a result, I’ve always been attracted to creepy stories, the ones that make the hair on your arms stand on end, the ones where the girl turns around and screams at something only she can see. Because I’ve been that girl.

I hope you enjoy this series of tales of the ghostly, ghastly, and gruesome from my hometown. I know that Mark and I enjoyed writing them. And most of all, I hope you can put them out of your mind before you go to bed tonight so you can sleep a tranquil, dreamless sleep, uninterrupted by any unwanted visitors. I myself will be going to bed in the suburbs of Montreal with one hand on the light switch, as usual, lying in wait for whatever — or whoever — might come around, ready to scream.

Shayna Krishnasamy