HAG - A Story of Sleep Paralysis Part 2

When Ellis woke in the morning, he felt changed. He had never been frightened before, not really. He had heard stories of monsters and seen scary cartoons, but they never affected him. He never needed to sleep with the light on, or never had any real nightmares. The kind of nightmare he had had before was more frustration than fear induced. Nightmares like being stuck on the ceiling while his friends played with his toys on the floor. Dreams he would tell his mum and dad about in the morning as they ate their breakfast.

But this was different. This seemed real. And at breakfast the next day, he tried desperately not to think about it, there was no way on Earth he was going to discuss it. He wanted it buried.

But he couldn't bury it. He carried it with him, eating at him. It haunted him all the following day at school. His parents, teachers, and friends had noticed he wasn't himself, but when pressed on the issue, he wouldn't dare speak. Ignore it, and it would go away, that's what he thought. But it wouldn't. Memories of that haggard old face flashed up throughout the day, nauseating in its vividity. But the day was nothing compared to the night.

Young Ellis had tried everything to postpone bedtime that night. The BBC comedy One Foot in the Grave was on after the nine o'clock news. He loved One Foot In The Grave, he told his parents. He begged them to let him stay up and watch it, and for once he got his way, too. He guessed they sensed that sullenness in him, he had been particularly quiet today, and clingy too.

When he finally got put to bed, he heard the story, heard the bedtime song, and then asked for his light to be left on. His mother obliged and left him. She had returned numerous times throughout the remaining evening to turn his lights out, and he had been sat up, reading, and drawing. She was cross when she finally told him, "Go to sleep or the light goes off!" And he lay there, in the light, thinking of anything and everything just to put her out of his head.

Ignore it and it would go away. And it appeared to, too.

The days got better as the weeks went on. She was barely a thought in his mind soon, and even the nights too seemed to lighten as the weeks went on, that feeling of ominous doom faded as the memory became more distant. It didn't seem real anymore, it must have been a nightmare after all. Surely. And one day, many weeks later, in a moment of bravery, he even bought it up to his friends. But he wished he hadn't.

His friend Jason Mills had seen her too, and he could tell that Jason wasn't lying either because as soon as Ellis began to tell the tale, as soon as he described the sense of dread, the being fixed in the bed, he saw the color drain from Jason's face. This, in turn, turned Ellis's guts in his stomach. His beliefs that she must be a dream obliterated. If Jason had seen her too, then surely, she was real. She had to be.

Jason, in turn, told Ellis that, unlike Ellis, he had discussed it with his own parents, and to his surprise, his mother had declared that she had also experienced the same thing when she was a child, and she assured her son that it was only a dream and that it was shortlived, and only happened once or twice in her childhood years. Whether this had been true or just a way of making her son feel safe remained to be seen, but Ellis was to have a different relationship with this ghostly apparition.

To Ellis, hers was not a fleeting visit. About a month or two after the first experience, she returned, and it was just as frightening as their initial meeting. And then she came back again, and again, and again. Sometimes frequently as twice a week, sometimes months apart, but she kept coming back to him, all through his childhood, and into his adult life too. She became his obsession, she directed the path he took in his life.

He researched her and found out that she had been around for centuries, and was well documented. It was a phenomenon known as Sleep Paralysis, depicted in paintings, many believe also the explanation for shadow men and alien visitors. But whatever she was, Ellis was determined to get to the bottom of it, unravel her secrets, and defeat her forever.