It's even darker there. I don't want to go in there in the dark.... too scary! I search for a light switch. It takes a couple of minutes, and during that time I hear the sound again, like someone standing in one place, but moving his or her feat around restlessly.
I find the light switch, but as I reach for it, it occurs to me that if I turn on the light, I'll lose the element of surprise. If someone has broken in and is looting that room, he'll know I'm out here as soon as light comes pouring in through the door. I make a mental note of where the switch is, then I tiptoe down the hall to the door.
I peek through the crack between the hinges. I can see the feet and legs (up to the knees) of a man laying on his side on the floor. The feet are twitching, and every so often, his whole body moves as if something is pulling or pushing on a part outside my vision. That's when the shuffling sound happens, as if the sole of a shoe is moving on a wood floor, but the man's shoes aren't making that sound.
At the same time, I can hear a sloppy wet sound, like someone with a really runny nose sniffling while trying to find a tissue. I move a little, trying to change the angle of my view. I can see further up the man's legs to his waist. There seems to be some kind of thin, lightweight gray fabric laying across his upper body.
Leaning closer to the door and moving further to my right, I can see that the fabric is some kind of covering worn by a bald, really pale figure bent over the body. I can't see much of it, just the back of the head. The fabric starts halfway up the back of the head, and continues on down, flowing like a cloak, or a graduate's robe.
I lean forward to try to get a better look, bringing my cheek into contact with the door frame. The snuffling sound is louder now, and sounds more like someone slurping soup. I can see the man's head. Something I can't get good focus on is holding onto the top of it. It seems to be covered by more of that fabric. His hair is soaking wet, and there is blood on his neck. A white, bony looking appendage is sticking out of the back of his head. I gasp with horror and take a step back. When I do, the thing hunched over the man looks up, then turns to face the door.
I'm immediately nauseated by its appearance, even though it doesn't look incredibly horrifying. Something about it makes me feel just wrong, like having motion sickness or being dizzy from a drug. My limbs feel heavy, and the air around me feels dirty and somehow drippy, like there's some kind of poison in it. I don't want to breathe this. My stomach lurches, and I gag. The bony appendage I was seeing is the thing's elongated face, which looks like someone grabbed the end of it and pulled, stretching it to a point. It looks solid and hard, but the end is definitely flexible, because it's moving back and forth. I hear sniffing sounds again. It turns its vacant, hollow, beady eyes in my direction, and I see that blood has dripped from its... beak? ... and stained the front of its robe. I hear a hissing sound coming from it, and the door swings open to reveal the rest of the room.
At its feet, the man's body falls forward, showing a hole in the back of his head, where the skull meets the spine. I can see bone, not just the edge of the skull, but the inside of it. The brain is gone, the fluid is gone, even the top of the spine is gone.
A thin, whiny moan comes from the creature standing over the body. It moves smoothly toward me.
Finally, my fear breaks and I run, as I realize that it intends to do to me whatever it has done to this man. I head for the light switch, hoping that the light will scare it away, but the switch is gone. During the second that I pause looking for it, I feel something soft graze the back of my other arm. I scream and bolt down the hallway. There is a door at the end. I'm working my muscles as hard as I can, but I feel like I'm moving under water, fighting the resistance of the dense substance around me and odd currents that pull me off balance. I can hear a heavy, low sound, like one long toot on a low brass instrument, with the pitch getting lower, and lower, and lower, as if the sound were intended to imitate a liquid running down a slope.
Behind me, I can hear the thing shuffling rapidly along the hallway, as if its feet don't work right, or as if it's moving on something other than feet. I am afraid to find out how close to me it is. I just have to get to that door. Twice, I feel something warm on the back of my neck and swing my arm wildly behind me to bat it away. The second time, I come into contact with something cold, hard, wet, and rubbery. I hear a high, thin wail, and I realize that the thing was right behind me. I slam into the door at the end of the hall. It feels heavier than it should as I shove it open and stumble through. Turning, I slam it behind me, right in the monster's face. I hear a thud as it runs into the door. I turn the lock, then push a chair in front of it. Even that feels heavy, and it's just a simple little wooden dining chair. I can still hear the brass sound, but now it is so far into the bass area that it is like a low growl. I can feel it vibrating in my chest.
I turn to run out the kitchen door and almost run into the monster. Somehow, it has gotten behind me even though I heard it run into the door. It knocks me down into the chair. I feel something like hands, but without the solidity of having bones, grab me through the thin fabric that hangs down over its body. I am thrown to the floor. I kick my feet to turn myself over. It takes monumental effort just to move my leg, but I make it happen. To do that, I have to actually look at my leg, even though I'm horrified of not keeping visual track of what the monster is doing. In what seems like slow motion, I kick upward and feel my boot impact against something solid. I hear a crunch and a horrible sound, like a really loud train whistle, but higher pitched. I look and see that I've hit it in the bottom of that beak, and there is a crack along the... jaw? ... where my boot heel landed. The sound makes my head vibrate, like the time I had the really bad sinus infection and sat in with the choir, only it's not just my sinuses. It's my whole head, and the vibration hurts terribly. It feels like my skull is going to split.
I'm crawling toward the door, still intent on getting away, even though I know that the only way to escape this thing is to fight it and break that beak. The nauseous sensation is creeping into my chest. My hands and feet are freezing, but my belly and chest feel hot. It's hard to breathe. The air has taken on a thick, clinging sweetness that tastes almost like bubble gum. There is still pain from the effects of the monster's scream. My vision is messed up, too. It's like I can't get my eyes to open all the way. I feel lightheaded and kind of sleepy, and my whole body feels heavy. It's so hard to move that doing so is taking nearly all of my concentration. I get glimpses of the thing sitting back and watching me, but most of the time I can't see anything but a blur. I can feel that I am almost to the door. If I can just open it, I can escape and fly away. I just have to reach it.
Then, suddenly, I can see the monster's weirdly shaped, deep set and bulging black eyes an inch or two in front of my face, and I feel something grabbing at my shoulders. Adrenaline shoots up through my chest like a lightning bolt.
I have suspected for a long time that this dream is influenced by the time during my childhood when I got sick from a mosquito bite. I contracted a virus that caused swelling in the brain and nearly killed me. The virus made me very sick, causing vertigo, lethargy, nausea, widespread inflammation and pain, extremely high (up to 107ยบ) fever, vision and hearing difficulties, and vivid full-sensory hallucinations, but the symptom that to this day (over two decades later) sticks out the most in my memory is the terrible, crushing headache that it caused. Had someone asked me during that ordeal if I wanted a hole drilled in my head to relieve the pain, I would have agreed to it. Since then, I've had rather a vindictive fearful loathing of mosquitoes.
The earliest I can remember having this nightmare is during the experience of that illness, and I remember it more as a waking nightmare (hallucination) than an actual dream. The house I'm in during the dream is an odd conglomeration of parts of houses I've been in during life, not a real place. The kitchen is the living room to a relative's house, but with appliances and a dining area instead of living room furniture. The hallway is the hallway outside my old room at my parents house, but with a door to the kitchen instead of the closet door at the one end, and who knows what at the other. The room the man was killed in is a friend's father's den, but the man was no one I know. It's like my head just put a bunch of elements together to make up a setting to house the nightmare.
I always wake up at this same point, in a cold sweat and with my heart pounding madly, usually still nauseated, and often with a splitting headache. After having this dream, I do not feel rested, I usually have kind of a foggy/clumsy day with more than the usual muscle and joint aches, and I feel oddly "off" all day as if there is something really important I'm supposed to take care of, but can't remember it. Normally, that does not end up being the case, and there's no disastrous "oh, crap I forgot (insert vital factor here)" moment, but it still feels that way all day.
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