My body freezes.
Not the normal kind of freeze—not theI’m scared so I’m holding stillfreeze.
The kind where I cannot move. My arms won’t lift. My mouth won’t open to scream.
Sleep paralysis, that’s what this is. Has to be.
I’ve read about it. Your brain wakes up but your body doesn’t and you’re trapped in yourself and sometimes you see things, hallucinate, your mind filling in the blanks with nightmare fuel because it doesn’t understand why you can’t move?—
The only thing I can still control are my eyes.
And I want to close them. Need to close them. Every instinct is screamingclose your eyes, don’t look, if you don’t see it it’s not real?—
But I can’t.
All I can do is see.
I stare into the darkness. Into shadows that feel like they’re stretching. Growing. Reaching across my room like fingers.
There’s nothing there.
Nothing.
Just darkness and shadows and my own terror making shapes out of nothing.
Inch by inevitable inch, my body comes online. A slow tingle starting in my toes. Pins and needles working their way up my calves, my thighs, my stomach. Like blood flow returning after you’ve sat on your foot too long.
I wiggle my toes. They move.
My fingers. They curl into the sheets.
My lungs. They expand. Contract. I’m breathing again without thinking about it.
I can move.
I look around my room. See nothing. Absolutely nothing out of place.
But the weight of someone watching presses down on my chest. The air shifts like someone just moved past, creating a cold wind.
My mouth goes dry. Cotton dry. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
A shiver crawls up my spine—that serpent-spine thing, vertebra by vertebra—until it reaches my scalp and spreads.
I try to speak. Can’t. The words won’t come.
I’m not alone.
Someone—something—is in this room with me.
Slowly—so slowly—I push myself up from my prone position. Slide backward on the bed until my back hits the headboard.
My throat closes. Tightens. Like hands wrapping around it. Like the hands that strangled?—
No.Don’t think about that.
I look around the room. Slow. Methodical. Cataloging every shadow. Every shape. Everything that could be innocent and isn’t.
My closet door—closed.
