Do you ever wake up grasping at the remnants of a dream feeling like you lost the thread of something important? Do you ever get the feeling that your dreams are trying to tell you something? What if they are?
I was a child of science, raised in the belief that there was no truth beyond what we can observe, or test, or measure, that every phenomenon has a logical explanation. That is something I no longer have the luxury to believe. I woke up most nights drenched in a cold sweat, gasping for breath as my heart pounded against my ribs. I was convinced that some deeper truth had been revealed in my dreams, if only I could hold onto it before it faded away.
What if I tell you that another world, another life is being played out while you sleep, in your dreams? What if I tell you that that world is also a collective world, one that we all share? And what if I tell you that someone, or something, is trying to tear that world apart, and that you have the power to stop it? Would you believe me?
When I was eight my little brother disappeared. His name was Bryan. They found his body floating in the river three days later. I never learned what happened to him. He was only five years old. Soon after he disappeared from my life, he began to disappear from my memories. I couldn’t recall his face anymore. I can’t picture it except in my dreams, where he is as clear as day. But I can’t remember what he looks like when I woke up.
The nightmares began a few months after they found his body. I would be walking down a dark never-ending hallway, passing doorways to either side of me that were always open and always pitch-black. I could feel something alive and menacing lurking somewhere in my periphery, but I could never quite catch sight of it. As I pass the same doorways again and again, the pitch-blackness within the openings would seem to grow ever darker. Inevitably, something from within one of the doorways would reach out of the darkness to latch tightly onto my arm. I knew it was coming, that I could not stop it, and knowing did not make it any less terrifying.
Our parents, who believed that I was experiencing trauma from the death of my brother, sent me to a psychiatrist and put me in sleep therapy. But all that did was decrease the frequency of the nightmares for a short while. Eventually they gave up and hoped that I would grow out of it which, in a way, I did. I did not relish going to sleep therapy because I would wake in a strange and sterile place, without the comforting knowledge that my mother and father were right next door. It was like I woke from one nightmare into another. I somehow trained myself to wake up from my nightmares without screaming most nights, though that meant that nobody came to comfort me and I ended up unable to fall asleep again for hours.
My nightmares quickly grew more complex and frightening, drawing heavily from details in my waking life. That was also when Bryan began to appear in my dreams. A dark doorway would open up to my fourth grade classroom, empty except for my teacher sitting at her desk. She didn’t look at me, but when I walked close she would go stiff and her gaze would lift from her desk to the windows. I would look out the windows onto a dark and stormy playground, empty but for a menacing figure lurking behind the public restrooms beyond the swings, casting an indistinct shadow upon the ground. Bryan would be there, sitting on one of the swings between me and the shadowy figure.
These dark creatures featured prominently in all my nightmares. They’ve followed me through the empty hallways of my schools, wearing top hats, their capes dragging on the ground. They’ve looked down at me from apartment windows as I walked down the street to my home, staring with their empty white eyes. They’ve chased me through the streets and alleyways downtown, long sharp fingers scraping the brick walls of the buildings. And every time, little Bryan would be there, always standing between me and the shadows and always before I woke up, as if he was the only thing between me and the creatures that were hunting me. One time, I awoke to a heavy weight on my chest. I was struggling to breathe. I could not see anything, my bedroom was dark, but I heard the heavy breathing of the creature sitting on my chest, felt its sticky hands and feet on my breasts, and smelled the stale stink of its breath on my face. I was paralyzed, I could not move an inch of my body, not even wiggle my fingers or toes. And was struggling to draw breath into my dying lungs. Suddenly I felt the weight lift from me and I pulled heavy gulps of welcome oxygen into my lungs. Turning my head, I caught a glimpse of Bryan’s back before I jolted awake again, to an empty room. I trained myself to sleep a minimum number of hours every day, forcing myself to stay awake for as long as possible until my body became completely exhausted and my brain has all but shut down, and then I would collapse into my bed in the hopes that I would fall into a dreamless sleep, or barring that, would at least minimize my encounters with the nightmare creatures.
There are stories of such creatures depicted in the myths and folklore of cultures throughout the world. Nearly all cultures tell of a monster that comes in the night and suffocates the sleeper to death, the Filipinos have the Batibat, the tribal Hmong have the Dab Tsog, the Germans have the Alp, and the Americans have the Hag. The Japanese Baku feeds on dreams, eating up the hopes and motivations of the sleeper and slowly driving the sleeper insane. The Hungarian Lidérc is a lover-tormentor that seduces its victims with lust and sex and then sucks out their blood and strength. The Mara, from which the word nightmare derives, tortures sleepers with unpleasant dreams and attempts to remove the sleepers’ souls from their bodies, killing them.
If I told you that these stories are more than myths, that the creatures are real, would you believe me? If I said that the creatures you encounter in your nightmares and waking dreams have existed since the beginning of life itself, would you think me mad? These creatures, they do not care or feel; their only motivation is their lust for destruction and control. First they come for your sanity, then they come for your life, taking what is left, the shadow of your essence, and turning you into one of them. They have been building their army for a very long time, and they are preparing to invade the other two-thirds of reality, the waking world.
Bryan never spoke in my dreams, and he never ages. He looks as fresh and disheveled as the last time I saw him, running through our old yard to jump into a pile of newly raked Autumn leaves. He disappeared the next day, and three days after that he was found dead in the river. He silently guided me through my nightmares and silently protected me from the monsters. I learned much from Bryan as I grew up with these nightmares. There are people who are born equipped with the ability to maintain balance between the two worlds, who are the keepers of the Dream Gates and the bridge between the worlds. Bryan was one of them. But the nightmare creatures are growing greedy and they lust for more of the time, more of the existence. They want to inhabit and engulf all of our reality. And they have systematically been playing on the fears and lusts of humanity, plaguing our waking moments with the evil stench of our most terrible desires and driving the insane to commit the most inhuman acts, creating a loop of nightmares both in waking and in slumber.
Have you ever experienced moments of lucidity in your dreams, where you seem to “wake up” and realize that you are dreaming, and then to manipulate the dream’s outcome? People like you, like my little brother, like me, are gifted with the ability to consciously navigate in both worlds, to manipulate their realities. It is a part of us, in our DNA, inherited from ancestors dating back to the first conscious dreamers, who first learned to move fluidly between the worlds as if the only barrier between them was a translucent veil. We have lost much of that conscious ability, but we can get it back. We must get it back. For the nightmare creatures are multiplying and they have grown clever. They have learned to identify and track dreamers with your potential, and to kill them before they have to the chance to realize their innate powers.
We do not know how these nightmares came to be. What we know is that they have been in existence since at least the first human dreamers. Perhaps the first dreamers created these creatures in the course of exploring their powers of manipulation in their dreamscape reality, not knowing that the creatures would take up a life of their own. Or perhaps they have existed in that world since the beginning of time, since the beginning of the universe, and the first dreamers merely created a bridge that bound us together. Or perhaps the first human dreamers unwittingly brought a pollution into that world, disturbing its delicate balance, and the nightmare creatures evolved as a result. We do not know. But what we do know is that they are coming for us, and they are relentless.
I moved out of my parents’ home and into an apartment of my own two years ago and the nightmares only became worse. I was familiarizing myself with a new home, a new neighborhood, a new job. Everything felt strange and unreal. Soon, I began experiencing waking nightmares. On my first night in my new apartment, I awoke to the sounds of stone against glass, as if someone was throwing pebbles against my window, impossible since I lived on the eight floor of my building. I opened my eyes and looked around me. There were strange shadows moving along the walls where the moon cast its light. The moonlight was flickering and the shadows began to take on a more distinct shape. I smelled the faint stench of rotten eggs and, strangely, roses. It was then that I realized I was frozen to my bed. I was lying on my side, staring at the wall lit by moonlight. The darkness seemed to me to be alive. I began to hear a rhythmic thumping sound, like someone had put shoes spinning in the dryer. I could not blink or move my arms or legs, my muscles were frozen. The shadow creatures came closer and loomed over my bed, throwing their own shadows against the wall of moonlight. They were tall and thin. One wore and a top hat and was flanked by two others, all swathed in cloaks of black ink. They looked down at me with their glowing green eyes. I tried to force myself to move, to twitch a finger or a toe, or blink my eyes. My heart was thumping loudly in my ears as it pumped massive amounts of blood through my body, and I began to hyperventilate. From the corner of my eyes, I could see another set of creatures, blurry and pulsing faintly gray-green like T.V. static. They moved out of my line of sight, but I knew, I felt that they stood behind me. My fingers and toes began to tingle with electricity. I knew that if I could just turn or roll over, or scream, I could get away from this nightmare. I began to panic as I put all my willpower into trying to force myself out of that frozen state. I felt myself beginning to black out as I put all my effort into moving just a single muscle. Suddenly I managed to forcefully roll over onto my face and the creatures disappeared. I opened my eyes and “woke up,” still on my side, but the presence of the nightmare creatures were gone. I was drenched in perspiration. I could not go back to sleep for the remainder of the night.
That was the first time the creatures from my nightmares crossed the barrier between my dreams and my reality, however briefly. At first I thought I had had a stroke, but when I went to see a doctor, I was told that I was in perfect health, though there were some abnormalities in my EEG readings, likely caused by stress. I was told it would go away with lifestyle changes. Since then, I have had multiple such episodes every week for the next two years. The scientific and medical community call it “sleep paralysis,” with no definitive explanation for its cause nor any definitive way to cure it. I know now that it is the nightmares attempting to break through the barrier to the waking world, and they are becoming stronger. Sometimes Bryan would be there to help me come out of it. More and more often, I had to fight them off on my own. They cannot survive in the waking world without us. They need us to break to open the barrier from the dream world, essentially allowing them to cross the border, so to speak, into our world. And to do that, they must break down our sanity and destroy enough of the potential conscious dreamers that could stop them from carrying out their invasion.
Why am I telling you all this? Because we need your help; the world needs your help. You are a conscious dreamer; you have the ability to resist these nightmare creatures, and to bring balance back to the intertwined realities. You must help us find the others and wake them to their potential, before the nightmares get to them. There is only so much that Bryan and I can do on our own, especially from this side alone. You and the others are the bridge and the gatekeepers. You must listen and believe.
Last week, I had a severe episode of nightmare paralysis. It was 3:00 am and I was finally preparing for bed. Once I lay down and my head touched the pillow, my phone on the bedside table began to vibrate with a call. I wanted to ignore it but the vibrating would not stop. I sat up on the the bed and answered the phone. There was nothing but static on the other end of the line, and then I heard, hello?…, followed by more unintelligible sounds. I stood up and walked down the hall from my bedroom and the static cleared up. Hello, said the voice of a little boy. Bryan??
They are coming for you. You must get out. They have me, I can’t help you. Don’t let them in! Run!
There was a loud bang on my door and I spun around, startled, dropping the phone. Looking back down the hallway to my bedroom door, I saw shadowy figures with red eyes surrounding my bed. One was in a top hat. A shadow creature with black wings and dripping black mucus was hovering above. I saw myself, lying on the bed, frozen and staring up at the grotesque nightmare insect with glowing red eyes hovering above my face. I was watching myself from the hallway, but I was also in bed staring up at the creature, surrounded by the dread shadows. Suddenly my head began to shake violently side to side until my face became a blur. There was high-pitched buzzing and someone’s muffled screaming was coming from somewhere far away. I watched as the hovering insect shadow reached out a long hairy limb that ended in a sharp point. In one swift movement, it plunged the knife point straight into my forehead.
I felt a terrible pain that began in my head and quickly spread to the rest of my body. The pain became so unbearable that I was ready to pass out. My body was shaking violently and the tips of my fingers and toes felt electrocuted. The me standing in the hallway slumped against the wall and my eyes rolled back into my head. Then, through all this, I felt a warm touch on my hand. I pulled myself out of the death spiral just enough to look down toward my hand. It was Bryan. He put his small hand into mine and pulled me toward my front door. The pain was gone.
Sleep is restorative and dreams maintain our sanity. Without dreams, we would be set adrift in a vast chasm of nothingness for one third of our lives. The waking world and the dream world are intimately intertwined. One cannot exist without the other. Humanity and all the creatures that inhabit the waking world, and that sleep and dream, must spend some time in dreams. The creatures that are eating away at our dreams, turning them into nightmares, know this, and if they can control our dreams, they can control our realities. The nightmares are relentless and they will not stop hunting us until every last one of us is gone. And then, they will engulf the world.
Do you realize where you are now? Why I am here? I am here to help you realize who you are and what you can be. You and the others like you are our last defense against the nightmares. There is only so much Bryan and I can do from this side. There are few of us here and we cannot protect the Dream Gates. This is not just a dream. They are coming after you. The shadow is behind you now, slinking closer and closer. Can you feel the tension in the seeping cold? Can you see the darkness beginning to surround us? Don't turn around. They are coming for you and the others. I will help you wake up. I will help you evade the monsters for as long I can, but this is all I can do. I am forever in the dream world now, and all I can do is help find people like you as they traverse the dreamscape. You must remember this dream, this conversation. Remember, and find the others. You are the last defense between these demons and the waking world.
Are you ready? Now, wake up.
