Tuesday, 14 September
Another postcard from Leonard arrived this morning. The picture on the
front is Ivan Albright's The Picture of Dorian Gray and the message on
the reverse includes a quotation from the novel of the same title by Oscar
Wilde:
‘“I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere
personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb
my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.” Thank you for your
friendship and take care, my absorbing muse...’
God bless him for trying to make me feel better. I showed the postcard
to Alex because transparency is the only way that Alex will learn that there is
nothing sinister going on between Leonard and I. Speaking of Alex, we had a
long and exhaustive conversation on Saturday evening about our future together
and we have agreed to put past disagreements behind us and make a fresh start. Alex
has promised that he will be supportive of both my postgraduate studies and my
work with Leonard and I in turn agreed that I will overcome my fear of leaving
the flat and we will socialise more often as a couple. There will be no poor
excuses for staying at home from this point onwards.
I was confident that things were improving between us and I hoped that
this might bring an end to my recent troubles, but I had another disturbing
dream last night that has called my optimism into doubt. Perhaps my recent
argument with Alex has affected me more profoundly than I realise and the
stress of our confrontation has triggered these nightmares once again, but, whatever
the cause, I brewed a cup of Leonard’s Melissa Tea at home this morning and the
flat smelled like the workroom at Elmfield House for a short while, which I
hope has helped to fumigate the place of these terrible things.
The events of last night went
as follows. Alex arrived home from work in a foul mood and he complained that his
day had been extremely stressful, so he went to bed early and I followed him to
bed about an hour later. I locked the front and back doors and all the windows
in the house but, since it had been an exceptionally hot day and the air in the
bedroom was stiflingly warm, I left the bedroom window on the latch and opened
the curtains a little to allow a cool breeze to come into the room. I was desperately
tired but I had been reading The Omega
Course and my mind was occupied with all kinds of wildly inventive ideas,
so I lay awake contemplating these fantastical schemes until I eventually fell
asleep.
I remember the subsequent
dream vividly. I was lying on my back in bed, the room was in semi-darkness and
Alex was sound asleep next to me. I could hear the hum of the alarm clock on
the bedside cabinet and everything seemed so incredibly lucid that for a second
I thought that I was awake, but upon attempting to move my arms I realised that
I was unable to lift them and I was actually in a deep dream-like state. The
normality of the scene was reassuring, but within a matter of seconds I
realised that something was deeply amiss. I was seized by the unsettling feeling
that I was being watched by a presence somewhere in the room and I remember expecting
a person to step out of the shadows - Amber maybe, or Leonard - but it was not
a familiar presence, nor was it an entirely friendly one. In fact I recall that
the escalating air of unpleasantness and menace that was building in the room unnerved
me to the point that I tried to rouse myself from my sleep in order to prevent
the scene from playing out any further.
My attention was drawn to a
strange noise coming from the landing outside the bedroom; it was a soft,
muffled noise and not dissimilar to the sound of shuffling feet. Although I reassured
myself that I was dreaming and safe from actual physical harm, the thought that
we had a burglar was terrifying and my heart began to race. I knew that I could
not wake Alex without alerting the intruder to our whereabouts in the house and
so I lay silently in bed, staring transfixed into the shadows at the foot of
the bed and watching the half-opened door with baited breath.
The shuffling noise on the landing
grew louder, stopping intermittently and then progressing nearer until the sound
finally reached the bedroom door. It stopped for a second and then, to my
horror, through the door came a tall, dark shape. My eyes struggled to focus on
it at first, but it looked like the shadowy outline of an exceptionally thin person
who was hunched over quite unnaturally. I noticed how the shape melted into the
gloomy recesses of the back wall and so I calmly reassured myself that I had
mistaken a simple trick of the light for a ghostly apparition, but when the
shape began to move once again I realised that it was not a shadow and that a
solid and tangible creature was moving around in the darkness at the far end of
the room. I then caught sight of what looked like an elbow and a thin arm swinging
in an oddly disjointed fashion like the loose limb of a marionette puppet and
the shock of it caused me to scream, but my tongue blocked the sound from
escaping and my throat was so tight that only a barely audible whistle squeaked
out.
I watched, in a mute silence,
as the grotesque silhouette shuffled further into the room where it settled, still
and unmoving, at the bottom of the bed for sufficient time to allow me to take
stock of its appearance and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I caught sight
of details on its body which confirmed that this was no trick of the light; its
head was in shadow but its torso was wrapped in a grey gauze-like material that
hung loosely from its shoulders and I could see the outline of an emaciated
human ribcage underneath. I closed my eyes for a second, hoping that I could
erase the gaunt figure from my dream, but when I opened them again it appeared
to have moved even closer to the foot of the bed. I took in a deep breath and
tried to scream once again, but the sound evaporated silently into the air as
it left my throat. I even tried to kick out at it with my feet but I was completely
paralysed and unable to move my legs.
Perhaps sensing my distress, the
figure seemed to become agitated at that point and it swayed gently from side
to side several times and then lurched forward. It was then that I saw its
face. I honestly cannot begin to tell you how distressing that moment was. My
most perverse nightmares could not have birthed something so unspeakably
repulsive and even now recalling its appearance sets my stomach on edge. It had
the features of a hideous old woman; the skin on her face was tight and shiny
and the muscles were deeply sunken into the bones of her face to give the same
emaciated effect as severe burn marks. She had wispy patches of grey hair on
her head and there were large bald patches and deep lesions on her scalp that
looked terribly sore. Her eyes were unnaturally large with a stony-grey sheen like
polished marble and since there was no pupil I could only determine the
direction in which she was looking from the position of her head. And, most
disturbingly, I recall that her eyes shone, not in the sense that they had any
internal light of their own but her eyes caught the occasional shaft of light coming
into the room from the street outside and they shone out like cat’s eyes into
the darkness of the room.
My conscious mind was
screaming at me to wake up from the dream but, as hideous as she looked, I was
physically unable to look away from her. Then I felt a heavy weight at my feet
and I realised that she was making contact with the mattress. I watched,
horrified, as she climbed very slowly and with great difficulty onto the bed as
though her legs did not accord her a great amount of strength. Each movement
was painfully slow, which made the whole experience even more distressing. I
tried to draw my legs up and away from her but I was unable to move them as my
entire body was paralysed and when she made contact with my right ankle the
muscles in my right leg spasmed in response. I could feel her touch! Waves of
nausea washed over me and when my focus began to blur I remember reassuring
myself, calmly and deliberately, that it was only a dream, but in truth I
feared that I would black out at any second and I desperately wanted to remain
conscious in order to witness what was going to happen to me.
Then, through the thickening
fog of panic that was building around me, I watched as she began making sharp
and reptilian-like advances towards me, dragging herself along and pulling the
bedclothes down with the long nails of each hand that she placed on the bed. She
seemed to struggle to make progress at first as though she was climbing a
slippery vertical wall, but then the speed of her movements quickened and before
I knew it she had dragged herself up the length of my body and nestled her
entire weight on my chest. The cold and clammy soles of her bare feet were flat
upon my chest and she squatted in a tight ball, curving her spine and leaning
her weight forwards so that she could peer down at me with her luminescent
eyes.
I closed my eyes and turned my head to the side and pressed it into the
pillow to block out the sight of her, but I could feel her heavy weight rising
and falling when I tried to breathe. And she just sat there pressing
down, all the time pressing. An intense pain radiated outwards from my chest and
into my spine, into my neck and eventually into the top of my head as it became
increasingly harder to breathe. After a minute or so I opened my eyes and glanced
upwards to steal a glimpse of her and I saw that her face was extremely close
to mine and her mouth was stretched wide open in a silent scream. That image
has burned itself into my memory, never to be forgotten. The inside of her
mouth was jet black and it was filled with a thick, black viscous liquid like a
gaping wound and she had one row of sharp needle-like teeth. Her breath was so incredibly
foul that my stomach heaved upon smelling it and I started to choke and gasp
for air and then, as I felt the bile burn painfully in my throat, I realised
that this was not a dream and I was actually fully awake.
The shock of this realisation
sparked a surge of energy that burst throughout my entire body and I suddenly
regained the use of my limbs. I began gasping for breath and trying to scream
and I dug my heels into the mattress, pushing as hard as I could against her
weight. Then, as I pushed harder and harder, there was a sudden release and I
shot fully upright in bed. Alex jumped up and shouted out, which caused me to
scream out loud for first time throughout the entire ordeal. He put his hand
out of the bedclothes, took hold of my arm and asked what was wrong. I searched
around the room - if I could see anyone or anything unusual then there was not
a chance that I would let him go back to sleep. But the room was empty.
I told Alex that I'd had a
nightmare, to which he huffed, gave a lazy smile and then extended his arms out
to me. I was pleased that he had reacted in this way and he didn't complain or
ridicule me as usual, so I lay back down and wrapped myself around him, making
sure that the bedcovers were pulled tightly around my head.
I didn’t get much sleep last night. Even though I realise that dreams
can be compellingly realistic at times, I had an agonising pain in my chest throughout
the remainder of the night and when I closed my eyes I could still hear the sound
of the audible bang that had echoed around the bedroom walls when the woman hit
the floor.
