Visitors

I don't know if I'm being paranoid but recent events have me on the very edges of mental anguish and I need answers.  I find myself asking myself what goes on while I sleep, while we all sleep?  If this is happening to me maybe its happening to others that aren't even aware of it just like I was.  What hidden horrors do we escape witnessing while our eyes are closed that are more horrifying than any of our nightmares?  I feel the answer is terrifying ignorance because consider yourself lucky you still think the world sleeps.  I don't know where it goes when we close our eyes but I do know the world doesn't ever go to sleep.

I don't know how long this has been going on but it wasn't until recently that things began revealing themselves to me.  I used to live alone and never had a serious enough relationship that anyone would ever sleep over.  There was a long stretch of years where I slept alone so when I started having these nightmares that's all I thought they were, nightmares.

I would dream of me getting abducted out of my bed at night; getting taken out of my window against my will by gray disembodied muscular hands pulling at my face and legs, fingers digging into my cheeks and behind my lips.  I would wake up once I had gotten carried out my window always in a cold sweat.  The nightmares scared me while I was having them but I didn't give them any after thought since I just thought it was a weird reoccurring nightmare.  Most nights I would just go back to sleep.

That was until I found myself finally getting into a serious relationship and she began sleeping over.  The first couple of times she slept over I had no nightmares, no weird dreams, nothing.  It wasn't until maybe the fifth or sixth time she slept over that I had my reoccurring nightmare again.  After getting carried out my window against my will I woke up just like all the other times.  To me it was like as if nothing had happened, just me waking up to a nightmare but my girlfriend witnessed something quite different.

She told me I woke up her up by bolting straight upright into a sitting position, my eyes wide open with a look of pure terror and panic in them.  My mouth open, outstretched to its limit like I was screaming at the top of my lungs but with no sound escaping my mouth.  Then I started breathing heavily and very rapidly almost like I was hyper ventilating then coming to a sudden stop.  I slowly turned my head to my girlfriend looking at her with huge bulging eyes and giant black dilated pupils.  I said to her in a low raspy shaky voice "why are you hurting me?"  then I start moaning deeply like I was in horrible pain.  The veins in my neck were bulging out and my hands were clenching the sheets into balls in my fists.  She said it lasted about a minute of me writhing around in bed like someone was harming me in unthinkable ways with no way to help me.

It was a horrifying experience for her and for me hearing her recount the tale to me with that look of pure helplessness in her face; it quickly became clear that this might have been going on for a long time without me knowing, probably every time I have had my nightmare.  That realization of knowing there was a completely other experience to these nightmares that I was never aware of filled me with pure horror and dreadful knots.

At first I was embarrassed about the whole thing having my girlfriend witness it but she was more concerned why an adult would be having night terrors and why I thought someone was hurting me?  We checked my body for any bruises to see if I hurt myself in my own thrashing then my girlfriend noticed a flat horizontal scar about two inches long on my back below the base of my neck in the center going across my spine.  She asked me if I ever had a any surgeries and I told her no.  It was strange to have such a perfectly straight scar on my back and in that location.  I've never had any operations or any kind of serious injuries.  It looked healed and appeared like it had been there a while.  We both came to the conclusion it was from some time I hurt myself that I couldn't remember.

We went on with our lives normally for a while hoping my reoccurring nightmares wouldn't happen again, we were wrong.  One night when my girlfriend was sleeping at her place I had my nightmare again.  I remember clawing at the edges of my window and getting taken out and waking up as if nothing had happened but I knew better now.  A cold shiver of panic crawled its way slowly up my spine, I could feel it right beneath the skin.  I kept this occurrence to myself since I was already too embarrassed my girlfriend had to experience the other one.

She eventually found out the next night anyway when she saw four bruises on my lower back.  They looked like small orbs in a small arc shape, four of them.  At first I freaked out because I thought it could be blood clots then she made a weird observation that they looked like fingertips.  She then put her hand on top of them and if she had a larger sized hand they would have matched almost perfectly with her thumb, index, middle and ring fingers.  I told her she was crazy and I made a doctor's appointment to get checked out.

Once at the doctor's he told me they would run some tests, do some blood work and take x-rays.  I asked him about my scar and he told me the same thing I thought, that I maybe hurt myself.  He did say he would x-ray that area as well.  A week passes and I get called back in for the results.  he told me everything looked good and I was in good health but that there was something strange found in one of the x-rays.  Underneath my scar there appeared to be two foreign metal objects embedded and he couldn't tell what it was specifically.  It looked like bb pellets at each end of the scar.  He wanted to do a minor operation and get them out.  At first I was hesitant, just something about going under the knife really put me in an uncomfortable place and it felt more than just some kind of phobia fear.  He told me that down the line there is some possibility that these foreign objects could cause some sort of problems and it would be best to take them out now.  I finally agreed.  I was scheduled for a quick in and out procedure a few weeks later.

In the time before my procedure I had my nightmare two more times.  My girlfriend was there to experience one of them again.  She told me this time I was moaning out in deep painful moans "stop, please stop, it hurts, please, stop!" That freaked me out.  These dreams were starting to have real world affects on me and the people around me and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it.  I felt so helpless.  The other nightmare was like all the others since my girlfriend wasn't there to witness anything.  Gray disembodied arms pulled me out of my bed and through my window and I would wake up after that.

Finally my doctor's appointment arrived and I went in to have the objects removed.  Afterward the doctor said the operation went well, no complications but that he did find four bb like pellets instead of just the two he saw in the x-rays a few weeks earlier.  He said the x-rays must have not picked up the other two at the time.  I began to dwell on why there were four instead of two and a creepy thought crawled out of the back of my head; maybe those metal pellets were put there since last time.  As soon as my mind wandered into that avenue of possibility there was no going back and a cold shiver of fear ran up and down my spine like spider legs beneath my skin.  I could imagine a cold gray sharp knife opening my skin and someone or something placing those pellets there.  I had to find out what these pellets were.

I took them to a university research department where I had a friend that worked there to get them analyzed.  My girlfriend was completely on board in supporting me.  The  research faculty were more than happy to help me and run some tests.  I came back a few days later and they told me that the analysis was inconclusive.  The pellets were found to be no particular known metal on Earth but did have common characteristics to Gadolinium but that was a rare earth metal and had no business being buried in my back under my skin.  What was it doing there?  It was a weird metal that they couldn't quite match with anything but they were excited to do some more research on it so I left the four metal pellets there with them.

The next couple of weeks were horrible for me.  The nightmares were getting much worse now and there was more happening in them also.  I remember seeing blinding lights overhead, gray walls that moved like water and dark shadows within them.  The nightmares wouldn't end anymore with me getting taken out my window, I would be dragged on my stomach and watch as the watery walls pass me.  I'd claw at the gray water-like walls but never able to grab or feel anything.  My girlfriend was starting to feel the mental strain of these insistent nightmares.

Finally it all reached a breaking point one night when my girlfriend woke up to find me missing from bed.  She freaked out and found me outside sitting on the curb blank face still asleep and in some kind of trance.  She finally got me to wake up.  My feet were cut up like I had been running bare foot for miles.  They had glass and rocks embedded in them.  My back was full of those tiny four arced bruises.  We finally decided that I needed to see a therapist to find out what was causing my night terrors.

After months of no real progress with the therapist he was unable to get me to remember any deep embedded memories that I was blocking out.  He said that maybe perhaps something traumatic happened when I was a child and is finally having an affect on me as an adult and I'm blocking out those memories.  He finally convinced me for him to bring in a hypnotist to see if he could somehow open up those memories and uproot something deep down.  He set up an appointment and my girlfriend and I went to see him at my therapist's office.  After we all got acquainted with one another the hypnotist put me under.

I don't really remember all that much of what was said but I do remember the images that I saw and from what I can understand it was quite a horrifying experience for me.  My girlfriend re-told the experience to me.

Once I went under the therapist asked me to go back to the most recent night I had my nightmare.  "What do you see?" he asked in a calm tone.

"I'm closing my eyes and getting ready to fall to sleep," I told him in a relaxed monotone voice, breathing slowly and calmly.  "I'm tired.  It was a long day."

"Good, fall to sleep."

"I can see darkness.  I'm very relaxed.  What was that?!" I said very startled.

"What do you see?"  the therapist said with slight alarm in his voice as if I startled him as well.

"I can see the arms pulling me away again.  They're reaching underneath me and lifting me.  I'm getting taken out of my window.  I can't stop them!"  My voice was trembling a bit now.  "They're too strong!  I'm outside my window now.  My eyes are opened now and I can see someone."

"Who? Who can you see?" he asks me calmly slowly trying to pull out every piece of information he can.

"I can see them standing at my window staring at me lie in bed."

"Is it the arms? Is that what you see?"

"No. This isn't the dream.  This is real.  Someone is watching me through my window," my voice was slowly starting  to get louder and panic was creeping through. "I don't know who they are but they come visit me.  I've seen them before but I forget.  I don't know how I forget but I do."

"Are they the ones with the arms?" he said calmly.

"Yes, but this isn't a dream anymore.  They come get me at night.  They take me.  Oh no!" I said in a panic, "they're in here now!  I can see them opening my bedroom door,"  my voice was in a panic now.

"Its ok, you're here with friends.  We won't let anything bad happen to you.  What happens after they enter your bedroom?"

"I can hear them talking to each other but they don't have any mouths.  They're all standing over me around my bed talking in clicks and slurs but I can hear it inside my head.  They're not looking at me but each other.  Their skin is gray and dark and has bumps all over it like dry wall.  I don't see any hair on their head or arms. I'm trying to move but for some reason I can't, I can only move my eyes."  every word was an epic struggle for me to muster.

"What are they doing now?"  the hypnotist said still fishing for information.

"Their long gray muscular arms are underneath me now, touching me and not in a gentle way.  I can feel their cold hard fingertips on my back fishing around for something.  I'm really scared.  I don't know what they're doing," my voice was trembling at every other word.  "One is leaning into my face, I looked at it in the eye, oh my god!  Their eyes, they're all black.  I can see my whole reflection in them.  They're huge oblong orbs of black.  It looks angry, I can see the muscles in its brow curl.  They flipped me over.  They're fingers are under my skin, I can't .....AHHHH!!"  then I start screaming in agony.  The hypnotist tries to take me out of my trance but I keep yelling.  "AHHH!!! Can you hear that?! They're inside my head!  It hurts so bad!  What is that?!  AHHH!!"

The hypnotist tries again to take me out of my trance but I continue to scream out in pain yelling something about a  series of sharp sounds piercing through my brain.  I told the hypnotist I couldn't see any of them anymore but I knew they were still there because I could feel them playing around under my skin.  It didn't feel like I was in my bed anymore but instead it felt like I was laying on something cold and hard.

Then finally the hypnotist got me to come out of the trance.  I was exhausted and almost crying.  I couldn't remember any of the conversation with the hypnotist but I definitely could remember everything I saw and felt very vividly.  Those things the hypnotist unlocked haunts me to this day.  Everyone else isn't quite convinced any of those things I saw really happened but I know what I felt and my feelings say they were real.  It  actually happened, I'm convinced.

Later, I went back to the university to see if they could tell me anything new about the metal pellets and apparently after a week of running tests on them, they dissolved into nothing right before their eyes, like it was a time release capsule they said.  Those pellets felt like they held only more questions but now that they are gone I feel maybe some answers went with them.

I'm too scared to sleep these days because of my nightmares but more importantly because I don't know what hidden horrors lurk when I close my eyes.  I just know that the world doesn't ever go to sleep and there are things out there that leave more questions than answers.  Things we were never meant to see.  I don't know what happened to me and others would have me convinced it wasn't real but I know what I saw and felt and oh god, those feelings of pure raw horror and fear, they were real.  I know something happened, that I'm sure of.  My doctor says I'm suffering from adult night terrors with hallucinations but just the other day I found another scar I never had before.