Spirits In The Dark: Sleep Paralysis

11:59 PM

Annya was in bed, staring at the cracks on her old ceiling. Like most New York City apartments, hers had cracks, pipe noises, and roaches. And like most nights, she simply couldn’t fall asleep.

It would be nice to sleep properly and deeply, like most people do. She thought to herself.

She wasn’t sure if the loneliness bothered her, or the old apartment noises, or if it was just insomnia. She had tried all sorts of melatonin available over the counter, but nothing was strong enough to help her fall or stay asleep.

Deep, slow breaths. Classical music. Lights off. This was her plan, and that’s what she did at first. But the random Classical Music playlist she picked on Spotify was much darker than she had planned for. Not that it matters, it matches her gloomy bedroom. The dark piano sonata playing now is relaxing. It’s the Funeral March. She realizes, her eyes feeling too heavy to allow her to think of it any further. The piano becomes a distant and calming sound in the background.

A tap noise in the distance. Was this inside the apartment? Without giving it another thought, her mind wanders into sleep once more. Voices. Conversing. Or just talking over each other. It’s impossible to make out what they are saying. The city that never sleeps, the thought crosses her mind, sleep pulling her in deeper now.

The floor cracks, like someone is walking over it. Annya’s sleepy brain hardly registers the sound at first. These wood boards are probably sitting on this floor since the 70’s. This would not have woken her up, wasn’t the fact it is now the fifth step she has counted. The last step stopped disturbingly close to her bed. Yes, she was awake, but too afraid to open her eyes.

He will just leave, if he thinks I’m still asleep. And so, she laid quietly, to let the robber do what he came to do. But he didn’t move. Not one step. Whoever he was, he was standing there, by her bedside, watching her.

The only noise in the room now was of her own breathing.

After what felt like an eternity of darkness and silence, but was probably just several seconds, Annya was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Her heart was beating faster, her eyes moving underneath the eyelid was noticeable by now, seeing how agitated she was. In a split second she decides to fling her eyes open. What the… There is nothing there. Nothing but the quiet air of the night.

She sits up on the bed, relieved but confused. Carefully sliding her legs down, while studying her room. Her toes just short of touching the floor, hands shivering, her mind trying to rationalize what had clearly sounded like someone walking inside her bedroom. Annya gets up and the crack of the floor responding to her weight makes her skin crawl, reminding her of the noises of just minutes ago.

The cracking floor board noise haunts her all the way to the kitchen. She fills a cup with cold water, hands still shaking, making the water bottle feel five times heavier than it really is. Annya takes a sip of the water, then took a deep breath, and empties the rest of the water in the sink.

Walking back to the bedroom, she could swear she heard two steps at once. She stops and looks back. Her eyes now adjusted to the lack of light, see absolutely nothing but the usual inanimate kitchen objects behind her. Fuck you, Funeral March. She continues on her path to the bedroom, lays down on her bed, praying sleep comes again soon. Sooner than before, preferably.

12:37 AM

It’s been half an hour where Annya is holding herself still in bed. Intentionally quiet, trying to catch any noises. But nothing. Not a sound. Even the city outside is eerily quiet. She reaches to the night table to her left, opens the drawer to get her bottle of melatonin gummies, and eats three times the recommended dose. Even if they don’t work any miracles, a large dose should help her relax and fall asleep fairly quickly.

I wonder if melatonin causes paranoia, besides depression. At that thought, she starts feeling comfortably heavy, slowly sliding into sleep.

3:00 AM

A deafening scratching noise wakes her up.

She looks at the wall clock directly in front of her.

The noise continues, like long nails running on the surface of a blackboard. Annya tries to bring her hands to her ears, but… she can’t move.

The floorboards start cracking like earlier.

Someone is coming from the kitchen. She tries to move her head to see who is coming, but it’s futile. She can’t move, no matter how hard she tries to.

Annya’s breath becomes arrhythmic, as she fights to move her body again and again, to no avail. Despair completely consuming her when she decides to scream, but no sound comes out. In fact, her mouth is shut, like an invisible force is holding each inch of her body unwavering.

A hand reaches from behind and touches Annya’s head. The dark figure slowly moves within her line of vision. A woman, with long and black hair, wearing an old linen dress. A shapeless mass with dark grey skin takes the place where her face should have been.

The woman’s head starts to move frantically, in all directions: up, down, left, right, up, left, right, down… No specific rhythm or pattern, just impossibly fast movements that start blurring into a continuous motion.

Hands clenched tightly, Annya hasn’t stopped struggling to free herself from this locked position for one second. Fighting to control her breathing, her heart feels like it could explore and her throat feels tight -or is it vomit she feels boiling up?

The woman’s face freezes from movement. She starts touching, feeling!, her own face, like a blind person trying to find something. Eyes, nose, mouth… she touches all places where those should have been. Like being faceless was a surprise for her, her desperation escalates. Muffled scream-like sounds coming from the woman, while she aggressively pushes her long nails against her face, slicing a line, then using both hands to rip open a mouth. Fingers grabbing her newly created opening and pushing in opposite directions -left hand pulling upward, while the right hand pulls it down. The disturbing sound of the tearing skin is forgotten when Annya sees that black, thick water streams from the woman’s mouth, pouring over her dress, onto the floor.

The smell! A stench of rotten flesh, of death, surrounds Annya. She concentrates her efforts in trying to move one arm. One hand. But the woman moves even closer to her. The black water suddenly stops its overwhelming flux, becoming something a single line of drool on the corner of the woman’s mouth.

The woman bends close to Annya, their faces touching each other. Oh, God, the smell! Annya let free a scream. At that same time, the woman disappears.

She gets out of her bed, grabbing her phone, trembling while she runs out of her apartment, then out of her building. On the other side of the street, she looks up and sees the woman on her bedroom window, staring down at her from the second floor. Smiling sadly, with her freshly ripped open mouth, her right hand touching the window.

“911. How can I help you?”

“There is someone in my apartment!”

3 YEARS LATER…

Scratching noises inside the walls. Annya looks at the clock. 2:59AM. She sits on the edge of her bed and stares at the darkness beyond the bedroom doorway. Waiting.

---

This story is Story 1 of Spirits In The Dark, a book of dark tales based on real events. Read ALL tales on Kindle Vella 🖤