Part 3 was here -
http://thelivesofothers.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/someones-watching-part-3/
My Father wasn’t convinced that anything was going on. He was a huge skeptic and figured that my brother was just picking up on what I had been describing in my dreams.
My mother objected, but I was told never to talk about that stuff around my youngest brother again.
I always thought that it was weird that my father didn’t believe in stuff like spirits and ghosts or whatever it was that was around us. I mean, he always dragged us to mass on Sundays, and he knew all the responses to the priest. How can you believe in one thing you’ve never seen and not another?
There were arguments between my parents. My mother wanted to get a priest in or a spiritual medium or anyone with any kind of knowledge. My father wouldn’t have any of it. All I really remember was that since my younger brother was moved out of my room, the dreams and visions were back.
Night after night the dark figure would haunt me, in every sense of the word. Despite my room having double glazed windows, and being extra insulated against heat loss because it was an extension, it was always freezing. It’s a cliché that the air gets frosty around paranormal activity, but until you experience it, you can’t understand it. The temperature drops immediately, your breath fogs in the air and a chill runs through your very core. Even with three layers of pyjamas on and two duvets, you would still feel as if you were on a polar ice trek in the nip. The very fact that you can’t explain it makes you fear it all the more. The fact that you know something is about to happen sends you into such a state of helplessness that you just want to cry.
I’d always try to sleep with the light on. This was tricky, because the light switch was on a timer. This meant that it would only stay on for three minutes at a time. So every night I battled with the task of trying to get to sleep before it went off, or getting up, in the dark to flick it back on and start again.
One night a new trend began.
As always, the light went out before I could doze off but I didn’t dare close my eyes before I was sure I was about to sleep. Footsteps. Not the familiar footsteps of my mother going to the kitchen to make herself a cocoa. These were inside my room. They started near the door. Deliberate and slow. It wasn’t a huge distance from the door to my bed, but it was enough to hear more footsteps that I cared to.
They weren’t loud, on the contrary. They were the sound of bare feet on carpet. You wouldn’t think you’d hear that, but when there’s nothing else to hear but your pounding heart and the footsteps, you’ll hear them perfectly. One by one they got closer to the bed. My eyes bulged and my face froze. I had never known fear like it. One last footstep that landed on the side of the bed I had my back to. I could feel someone’s presence in the room. That’s a feeling we can all relate to. The feeling of being watched, or knowing there’s someone else there without having to see them. The eerie feeling of another being in the room with me was so over whelming that I thought I’d pass out with the sheer terror of it. In my mind’s eye, I could see the dark figure looming over me as always, but this was different. Up until now it had just been in my dreams. Now it was, or at least seemed to be, happening for real.
With the footsteps stopped, the silence in the room was broken shortly after by a heavy breathing. A deep and forced breathing, almost like someone in a deep sleep and just a second away from snoring. Even in my panicked and frightened state I had some of my wits about me. I thought to myself:
“It’s your own breath you’re hearing. Don’t panic”
Then my brain kicked in and suggested that I stop breathing for a moment to test that theory. Internally I counted down from 10 to 1 and told myself that I’d stop breathing to see if I could still hear it. I’ve no idea how long it took me to make that countdown, but it wasn’t quick.
Eventually in a sink or swim moment and a battle with myself I took a deep breath and held it. The only part of my body that I willed to work were my ears. For a second there was silence around me. I could still hear my own heart beat, and it was going from a fast drum roll to a slow druming as I held my breath longer. Just as I was assuring myself that my mind was playing tricks on me it happened.
It wasn’t a growl, but like a whispered growl, if you can imagine that. I wasn’t holding my breath voluntarily any more. The growl was followed instantly by and exhale. I felt the crotches on all of my pyjamas soak through as I wet myself. The breath from that exhale brushed across the back of my neck. I was frozen. I thought my chest would explode. My legs wouldn’t work, my feet wouldn’t work. I couldn’t will my self out of the bed. My eyes hadn’t closed or even blinked this whole time and the deathly silence outside of the breathing behind my and my thumping chest was chilling in itself.
The breathing stopped after a few moments and a feeling of relief ran over me. Then a draught came from under my two duvets before I could realise that they had been lifted off of me. Not entirely, but enough to let me know I was no longer able to predict what was going to take place. I tried to scream, but nothing would come. I couldn’t even sense the fogged air of my breath in front of my face. I tried to force a noise, any noise that would bring my mother to me, but nothing. Not even a squeal. I felt hopeless, like I was paralyzed. The cold from the room around me came flooding into my bed from under the raised duvets and I suddenly became aware of my shaking and shivering. Some of it from the cold, but honestly I don’t think my body was as aware of the cold as much as my mind was aware of this situation.
I was crying at this stage. Actually I was in hysterics, but the sounds of desperation that would have come in handy at a time like this were no where to be summoned from. In my mind I kept telling myself it was a dream, but I could wake myself up from my dreams. I suppose you can’t wake up when you haven’t been asleep to begin with. I prayed to whatever god would listen and begged for this to end. I was this quivering, blubbering mess and all I wanted was my mammy.
Another breath, heavy and deliberate snapped me out of my prayers. This one was right in my left ear. The breath was cold and it clouded me and my senses. I felt a pressure on the matress behind me, like someone had just sat on it. I know I wasn’t imagining it because the matress sank a little and caused my motionless body to shift were it lay.
That did it.
I was up and out of that bed so fast I was in the hall way before the duvets hit the floor. I stood there in the fully lit hallway about to pass out from the fright, but for some reason I still couldn’t make a sound. Something just wouldn’t let me. I was just elated to be out of that room. I sat on the stairs, and just waited to calm myself down. My mother was in the living room and I wanted to be able to tell her what had happened, but I had to get it clear in my own head first.
She always waited up for my father to get in from work. He worked in a famous hotel in Dublin, so there was no telling when he’d get home from whatever celebrity party he was hosting. This usually meant that she’d fall asleep, curled up on the couch while the snow danced on the screen when the night’s programming had finished.
As I sat on the stairs trying to compose myself, I heard a voice coming from the living room. It was far too late for the tv to still be on. This was before the days of Play TV or any late night tv for that matter. We didn’t have a phone, so it wasn’t that either. I pushed the door open and saw my mother as expected, curled up on the couch asleep. But she was talking. I’d never seen anyone talk in their sleep before and it kind of strangely comforted me in a way. Here was my mother sleep talking, kind of funny which made her a person to me, not just my mother or a figure of authority or comfort. It calmed me. Just as I was about to think about going back to bed, she spoke again:
“I thought you were going to be home later than this”
There was no response, just the flicker of the tv snow.
“So are you off tomorrow?”
Once again, silence.
“Ok, but we have to talk about all the stuff that’s been going on”
Silence still, but this time in response the door to the living room was thrown violently open.
For a second I thought I’d been busted by my father, but instead the fear had me gripped again. Beside the couch my mother was curled up and asleep on was my father’s favourite arm chair. It faced the tv and was basked in the glow of the tv. Everything seemed normal about that, except it wasn’t my father sitting in the chair. The dark figure sat motionless in the arm chair, facing the tv.
My mother was talking with it. She didn’t know it, or if she did, she didn’t realise I was there watching the whole episode. I ran for the hall door and bolted for the street. I stood there under the street light and didn’t know what to do.
I remained on the grass verge in front of our house for what seemed like the longest time. When my father eventually came home I hadn’t even noticed the sun coming up.
He was confused and a little pissed off to see me outside the house at such a weird time, shivering and smelling of pee. He demanded to know what had happened, but I couldn’t tell him. I knew it would just make him angry, so I lied and said I’d had a bad dream and didn’t remember how I got outside.
Even though he had just worked a 16 hour day, he took me to my room, flipped the matress, changed the sheets, washed me and gave me clean pyjamas and stayed with me stroking my forehead until I eventually drifted off to sleep. I have always loved him for that.
The next day, my father was still in bed when I stumbled up to find my mother in the kitchen having lunch. She asked me why I was outside the house. I broke down and told her everything. She looked sympathetic all the way through and cradled me as I bawled my eyes out until I got to the part about the figure in my father’s chair, and the things she’d said.
She went still and the blood ran from her face. I asked her what was wrong and I’ll never forget it:
“I was convinced I was talking to your father. He came in from work, sat in his chair and we had a conversation. I know it was a conversation because he answered me. He answered it all.”
We sat there and just sobbed for what seemed like an age. I asked her what was happening and she couldn’t tell me. But she did say that she was going to try and stop it.
She said that an old hair dressing friend of hers had always been into the spiritual so she’d call her and get her around. Over the years she had apparently honed her medium skills and was able to pick up on energies and aura. All sounds hippy to some people, but she was our proverbial knight in shinning armour. I knew my father didn’t want this, but I wouldn’t dare tell him. If there was a chance that she could put an end to it all, I’d risk lying to him. Or at least keeping the full truth from him.
My mother called her friend and arranged for her to come around that night. My father was due to be off, but his assistant had called in sick, so that meant another party to host until all hours.
We passed the time by watching the tv and trying not to let on to the other two boys what was going on. At about 9pm, with my brothers in bed, the door bell rang.
My mother rushed to open it and with me following her like a shadow, she pulled the latch and opened it up. The woman on the other side was in her 40’s and dressed just like you’d imagine her to be. Long flowing skirt, sandals, the works. I would have given a knowing smirk if I hadn’t just been put at ease by her smile. She hugged my mother with a genuine sincerity. She looked at me and knelt down to meet my eyes with hers. She stroked my face and made me feel completely safe, just with the look in her warm eyes and the glow from her smile.
“Don’t worry little man, we’ll get to the bottom of this”
With that, a gutteral noise literally shook the house to it’s very foundations. It was a deep, rumbling animalistic noise. The kind of growl that you’d hear in a film and think the engineers needed to take it down a notch. It echoed through every room in the house and ran a chill down the spine of everyone who heard it.
Our visitor didn’t look so calm and collected any more. She looked as terrified as I felt and I wasn’t to be comforted by the look on my mother’s face either.
The woman put one foot across the doorway, but before it touched carpet the noise erupted again. This time it was louder and shook the walls. So much so that pictures came off the wall. It was all topped off with a thump from the ceiling above us so violent and loud it was as if someone had dropped a double decker bus on the floor upstairs. My mother ran upstairs to see if the boys were ok, and to see what that noise was. She came back down saying all was ok and nothing was out of place.
The woman had turned a shade of white I’d never seen before. She had taken her foot back and placed it where it was before and took a step further back, off the door step.
She looked at my mother and said:
“It’s not safe for me in there. It would be best for us all if I didn’t cross the threshold. You need someone else”
Then she looked at me, her eyes filling up:
“I’m so sorry”
That was the last we saw of her.
The next and final part coming soon……
