[Jake.Ashworth]

The People
He sat there in his bed, the pure white cover pulled up to his nose. He peeked over the edge into the darkness. The dream had become so regular that it almost didn’t bother him anymore. Something was different about tonight though, when she was done she didn’t leave.
Jason watched from just above his covers, his whole body was shaking and he could hear his strained whimpers. He always felt dirty after she came to him. It had been years sense the first time Jason had seen the woman.
Jason was just fifteen the first time she came, he could remember it clearly because it was almost the exact same every time. He opened his eyes to the darkness of night. Jason had never been scared of the dark before but that night he felt terrified. He laid still looking into the dark room, his eyes shooting around looking for anything that might have woke him. His room was pretty standard for a teenage boy, he had a small wooden dresser and desk against one wall and his bed against another. On the other side of the room was his closet, the door slightly ajar. He started to think to himself “There’s someone in there.” He had never thought that before and he was way too old to believe in the boogeyman.
He listened closely for any movement but there was nothing. Actually now that he was listening he realized there was no sound at all. Normally he could hear his parents TV from down the hall, his father stayed up very late. His eyes creeped back across his room to his window. He could see a dim light shining through from the moon sifting through the trees. The window was wet and he could tell it was raining but he couldn’t hear the rain.
His heart started racing and he could feel a cold sweat forming on his brow. He tried to sit up but couldn’t move at all. Jason strained with ever muscle in his body but he couldn’t even lift a finger. He felt the panic setting in and didn’t know what to do, he couldn’t hear anything and he couldn’t move.
A light flickered on in the hallway and he tried to yell out to his parents. His mouth opened and stretched wide but no sound came out. He could feel the sharp pains in his throat like he was screaming at the top of his lungs but there was no sound. His eyes darted around the room expecting to see something but there was still no movement. In the light from the hallway that was seeping through the crack at the bottom of his door, he saw a shadow.
At first there was a sense of relief, his father must have heard him from down the hall. Jasons body relaxed as the door knob turned and the door opened slowly. He tried again to sit up and couldn’t, as the door swung open and the light from the hall crept across his dark bedroom. As the light spread through the room he noticed that it was kind of muted like it was pouring in through a mist.
His eyes where a little blurry from the change in the light. He blinked fast and hard trying to get his eyes to adjust. As they came back into focus he saw a dark silhouette standing in the doorway. It was not his father, the silhouette was short. Jason couldn’t make out any features, and it didn’t move at all. The panic flooded back into his body, he didn’t know who this person was. The figure stood there as still as a statue as Jason did everything he could to get out of the bed and run.
Still he couldn’t move at all. The dark figure stood there for what seemed like hours. Jason’s mind was blinded by the flood of panic. There were a thousand thoughts shooting through his mind, “Who is that at the door, is there something else in here with me, why cant I move?” His head throbbed like it was being crushed between two bouldars. He felt his eyes being drawn back to the figure.
It stepped began to move forward into the room, not walking but gliding across the floor very slowly making no sound. Jason tried to look away but his eyes were locked onto the figure as it got closer. His hopes raised with the thought that he may at least be able to see who it is.
As the figure got closer the hope of recognizing the person faded. The silhouette stayed just that, solid black like a shadow. It moved up the side of the bed and to his side. Another wave of panic flashed over Jason, again his body tensed up in hopes to get away. Then in a flash the shadow was on top of him. Pain shot through every inch of his body, he could tell the entire bed was shaking violently back and forth but he could feel nothing but the intense pain as it racked his body. He wanted to scream but couldn’t make any sound come out.
Tears flowed down his cheeks as this thing attacked him. There was so much intense pain that Jason thought he must be bleeding out. The room spun and then a loud piercing shriek shot through his head, it was so high pitched he thought his eardrums would burst. Every muscle in his body tensed up and a final round of pain rolled over him followed by nothing.
When he woke up in the morning he was tucked neatly into his bed just as he was when he fell asleep. The whole night was a little blurry but he could remember enough to know something happened. There was a little panic as he remember not being able to move but when he tried to lift his hand it moved without any trouble. He pulled the sheets back and sat up not seeing anything abnormal, short of being soaked with sweat. His eyes scanned the sun filled room looking for anything that was out of place, but he didn’t see anything worth noting. He assumed he had just been hot and shrugged the entire incident off as just a horrible dream.
The rest of that day and the following week went by without any trouble and the whole thing slipped out of his memory. Just when everything seemed to be going back to normal, his eyes shot open in the darkness of his room, again he was frozen, deaf, and mute. And again the shadow figure was there in his doorway, then on top of him.
After that second visit he found it harder and harder to shake this feeling that something was there, in the dark, every time he went to bed. The figure came back at complete random, he never knew what day or time it would happen. And he always woke up tucked in and feeling like nothing had happened.