Stage 1 | Long Nights
It had been a long night, and one of little sleep. Standing in front of my bathroom mirror, I see my face and it startles me in its severity. The circles under my eyes are dark. My undereye almost makes it look like I spent the night in a bar fight instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been unable to sleep, but standing here in the mirror I find it hard to remember a time I was more distressed by it. I find myself again thinking of my mother who I barely knew, of my father who I knew not at all. None of it matters, though. Tired beyond tired or not, work still waits, bills still need paying. So I turn on the tap and splash cold water over my face, forcing myself on toward the day.
#
Here I am in my kitchen, two days into a combined five hours of sleep and feeling more than a little sick. I can feel the bile rising up in the back of my throat, that hot, thick feeling of a roiling stomach. I’ve never felt like this before, so deep down, bone tired that I can barely think. My brain so broiled inside my own skull that I feel like I am either going to pass out or empty the contents of my stomach. Or both, at times. There has to be something going on. Maybe it’s something I’ve eaten, something I’ve been around? An oncoming flu or COVID or some new, horrid lab grown thing. The fluorescent light that hangs over my kitchen sink is pouring across my face and even though I know it’s impossible, I can feel a heat from it, some thin light trying to pull me further into the waking world, but it’s like my body refuses. My mind is a thousand miles away, worn and tired and craving a sleep that won’t come. Maybe the government is poisoning my water supply? Ha. I’m not that crazy. I know it’s just some chemical thing, I know that it isn’t anything serious. People have trouble sleeping all the time, right?
Right?
#
Oh God oh God oh God oh God. My heart is pounding, my mind feels like it’s about to boil over and come pouring out of my ears. Every nerve on my body is on fire. Why has it been a FUCKIN’ WEEK since I’ve slept?! What is happening? Why the hell am I bent over my fuckin’ buggy in the fuckin’ grocery store clenching every fucking muscle in my body? I can feel the tension in my shoulders pulling in, ratcheting tighter and tighter while my heart tries to come bursting from my chest.
Is this what a panic attack feels like? I always thought they were just suped-up anxiety, but this is physical…this is real. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I can feel the veins in my palms pounding as I have a death grip on the hand of the buggy. I can feel the people in the store looking at me, they’re gathering around aren’t they? Gathering around to look at me and point and laugh at how much of a freak I am, breaking down in front of the milk coolers. Look at him, the fool, the fool with his unkempt hair and his dark eyes and the tears runnign down his face. Another junkie falling to pieces. Falling apart in the Kroger dairy aisle. Oh God, someone help me.
Someone help me.
Someone kill me.
#
Two weeks. Two weeks with no sleep any longer than a few broken hours. Two weeks of steadily rising bile. Two weeks of a pounding heart, of panic attacks on a near cyclical repeat. I think once, a few days ago, I managed to get five hours, but it did nothing. I woke still exhausted, my thoughts seeming to have never settled though I could remember no dreams. I could not even remember falling asleep. My mind is on fire. There are moments, most often when I am milling around my house or stumbling through a day at work, that I feel for a moment like I have died. Like I am in some great and endless Catholic purgatory. What sin have I committed to condemn me to this?
Please, Christ, send me on to Hell.
I know now that I have been poisoned. There is no other explanation for what has been done to me. I am a healthy man, I work out, I eat well. I take the stairs at work unlike the others, unlike the slobs and fools I am stuck with. I have been poisoned, I must have been poisoned. I am being weakened so that someone, something, can finish the job. Can take me away. I have turned all of the lights in my house on. The light casts heavy shadows in the corners at night, but still it is bright. The house is bright now, filled with a light that seems at least a little to settle my racing heart. Whatever has done this to me dwells in the dark and I am sure of that. Why else would they deprive me of my sleep? It is because they need me awake in the dark of night. Whatever it is, whoever it is that has done this to me, will not win. They won’t get me. I’ll find a way to stop the poison. I’ll find a way to sleep. I will never walk in the dark again. They will not get me.
They will not.
They will not.
Stage 2 | They Lurk in the Shadows
Here on the edge of my bed, I see it as clear as I see everything. In the glimmers of moonlight that have found a way through my curtains, in the light of my house, all lights still illuminated entire, I can see it there in the far off shadows. I shriek, a ripping scream from the pit of my stomach as loud as I can manage it, but the shadowy figure at the end of my hallway hasn’t moved since I first caught sight of it. I tear at my throat, screaming again and again but it does not acknowledge me. It watches me, unseen and hidden face enshrouded in shadows that my eyes cannot penetrate. There is something unnatural there, a blackness that even the lights in the rest of my house meet as a wall. The light at the end of my hallway blew. It wasn’t the lightbulb giving out on its own, no, I know better. It was it. It was the thing, the shadow.
Whatever they are, I know they are what did this to me. They have taken my sleep, my dreams. Four weeks. Four weeks and I have not slept, have not dreamed, have had no peace. No more than a scattered few hours of restless sleep. They let me sleep just enough to survive, and then curse me again. How? I don’t know, but I know it’s the shadows. These things that live in the periphery of my house, just beyond vision. I have put lanterns in my fridge, to keep the dark away from it, to protect my foods. Have they all been poisoned already? I don’t know. I can’t know.
The shadows are waiting on me. They are waiting until they can steal the rest of me but I will not let them. I will never let them.
#
Sitting across the desk from Jake Thompson, my boss, I can feel myself collapsing inward. I know my behavior was…inappropriate, but what else can they expect? I saw the damn thing, right there in the break room, just before the automatic lights cut on. It was watching me, and I knew it was before I even stepped into the room. When the chair hit the vending machine and the lights exploded on, but it was gone. It had gotten away.
“Did you hear me, Greg?” Thompson asked.
“Sorry, what was that?” I asked.
“I don’t know what’s been going on, but you’ve been acting pretty unwound the last few weeks. Everything okay?”
“Yes, why? Why would you ask that?”
“Well…you were standing in the break room screaming at the vending machine, Greg. You threw a chair at it. I could hear the whole thing all the way down the hall.”
“There was someone in there! I swear to God there was. I’m–”
“Woah, woah. Take it down a notch, I’m not saying you are in trouble. You just seem…stressed. I try to take care of my people. You know that.”
“Right. Yeah, I know.” I do know that. He has always taken care of me. Is he part of it? He can’t be. He can’t be. He’s a good man.
“I try, but I can’t help but worry we’ve put too much pressure on you, or that there is something more physical going on.” I watch as Thompson slides a binder clipped packet of paperwork to me. “That’s why I’ve requested HR put in for a leave of absence for you. Full pay until you have rested up and gotten a clean bill of health.”
I take the packet and hold it. I can feel his eyes on me as I scan it, and I know he is waiting for me to say something, but I say nothing. This is good, it is too good.
Is he part of it?
“How does all of that sound?” Thompson asked.
“Good,” I say, looking up and offering the best smile I can.
In a rush, Thompson offers platitudes and walks me to the elevator. I hear none of it, though. I am already thinking of what might happen at home. What piece of this debauched plan is next. I do not think Thompson is a part of it. He can’t be. But he is unwittingly playing into the hands of…of the shadow people.
I do know I will not go to any doctors. What could wait in their medications? In their needles? No. No, I will go home. I will find a way to sleep, I will stop it myself. I can’t trust the doctors. Can’t trust that they haven’t been compromised by whatever is after me, whatever is doing this to me.
Who else could save me but myself?
#
Another morning, another all but sleepless night, a new mark on the wall. The sharpie squeaks as I put another tally on the dry wall, that thin smell of marker the only thing I smell around me, though I know I must stink. I haven’t been able to bring myself to shower in days, the shadows of the bathroom too much, my body too worn down and weak to manage standing long enought for it to be any use. It has been some sixty days. I have slept so little I am beginning to believe that all hope is lost. At times, my body seems to rebel against whatever has happened to me, and I get four or five hours. It is never enough.
I know what they are now, these things that have done this to me. They are the Shadow Walkers. The movers in the dark. I don’t know how they have poisoned me, but I know they have. I see them often. In the dark corners of my house. In the gaps of the curtains during the dark of night. They are keeping me awake. They need me weak. Why? What do they want from me?
I hear my phone buzzing away on the kitchen counter, and when I get there, I see it is my brother calling. He hasn’t called me in months, why now? Why when he lives all the way in California? He couldn’t be worried. He would never worry about me. He’s been touched by them, I know he has. It would be dark in California already. He is working as one of their’s. I step over to the sink and I drop my phone in the garbage disposal. When I flip the switch, the horrendous grind is a triumph. I see sparks for a moment, and I smile. An electric exorcism of the darkness they have crept into my life.
I will not be taken so easily. I am stronger than they think.
#
I can feel a knot of pain in my stomach. I cannot stop the sobbing. I can feel myself existing beyond my own body, almost looking down on myself, lying at the center of my kitchen floor, crying my fool head off. Screaming. Trying to let it all out. My clothes, pajamas I have worn for time immorial, it seems, are stained and stinking. Beyond me on the floor is a stream of thin bile, retch of an empty stomach. Spittle dry heaved into the ether. My body aches, I can’t find any sense of myself, I am only a pain. A long, unknowing pain. I retch against whatever it is, another panic attack? These have become so common since the first I can hardly tell when they stop. Oh God. Oh God I just want to sleep please let me sleep. Oh God, what is happening? What is happening? Please just let me sleep. Please. Please.
Stage 3 | One Hunger
Last night, I did not sleep at all. It seems like that whatever the Shadow Walkers are doing to me is coming to an end. My heart is calming, though. I no longer feel a wild burning in my mind, my nerves are no longer on fire. I will not be conquered. I am too strong for whatever they have planned. My body is shifting, it is adapting. I am a creature of the light, entire. I feel hunger fading, I feel need fading. My body is shifting, becoming something greater. Something they can’t touch.
Still, the darkness is a hard thing to drive away. It lingers in the corners of my house. In the places between my curtains and my windows. In the darkness wherever it lingers. I have to find a way to drive the darkness away, to push it into nothing, to cut the Shadow Walkers off from my world. I will never step into the realm of the dark again.
They cannot have me. They will not have me.
They must think that they have found a way to stop me. To finally get to me, to pull me fully into the dark. I am smarter than they think. I will find a way to drive all of the darkness away.
#
I’m in the hardware store now, and there are Shadow Walkers everywhere. In every dark corner, in every edge of blackness. They are watching, they are trying to see what I am planning, but they are fools. No amount of knowing will prepare them. The workers here, they are touched too. They are watching me, they are studying me. They do not talk to me, they do not offer help. It doesn’t matter anymore. I have already won. I will drive away the darkess. They do not realize that I am here to design their end. They have touched the architect of their end.
#
It has taken me a week of almost no sleep. I could have done it faster, but the work of the Shadow Walkers has progressed. There are times when I find myself trapped by their poision. Comatose and lying in my own filth in my bed, unable to move. Not sleeping, not dreaming, not thinking. Just locked there in an immovable state and trapped in my own fogged mind. It does not matter how much stronger their poison gets, it does not matter what new hells they try to trap me in. These Shadow Walkers are near their ends. My home is now a cacophony of light. It is the blinding surface of the sun. I have hung the lights and run the extension cords from the hardware store all over my house. They snake across my home a road map to my own redemptionn. It took another trip, it has taken almost four hundred dollars, but that doesn’t matter. Now, I am free. I am bathed in glory, in light. It feels strange, in ways. I no longer need to eat. I no longer feel a need to persist. I am bathed and nourished by the light. As they are creatures of the darkness, I have become one of the light. This is the end of the Shadow Walkers. They cannot find me here, they can no longer walk in my world. I am invincible.
I can hear them at night, gnashing their teeth at my door, at my windows. They are furious that I have beaten them. It will not be long now, it can’t be long, before they will give up, they will leave, they will leave me alone.
Perhaps then, I might sleep.
#
I can feel the light bathing me. I can feel the cold tile of my living room floor on my back. I can feel the sweat running down my face, into my eyes. I can feel the sting of it, that sensation of absolutism. Of victory over the dark. I can feel the edges of my ribs pressing into my skin. My existence pulled tight across my body. I feel weak, short of breath. The poison is working its way out of my system. The last gasp of my assailants.
The Shadow Walkers can’t get to me anymore. I am free of them, but I can still feel them just beyond the edges of my vision, waiting. But they can wait for an eternity, I will never be pulled from the light again. Sleep has to come eventually, one way or another, right? Time is becoming something I can’t understand. It might have been a month since this began, or it could have started a year ago. I can’t tell anymore. What else is there that I can do?
I need to sleep.
I need to sleep.
Stage 4 | Rememberances
They have finally come for me. Even in my best attempts, the light could not keep them away. I misunderstood. I misunderstood the limits of their realm and they have found a way to me even against my best attempts to stop them. The Shadow Walkers are in my house now. There is one I see sometimes and he looks like someone I knew once but can’t place anymore. I know who he was but not anymore. We went once to a carnival in our hometown and ate ice cream sitting on the ferris wheel. Now he is a Shadow Walker, what else could he be? There are others I hear when I am able to stay present. Something they have done to me is making me forget, making me slip through time. I hear my grandfather sometimes, singing an old song from his own childhood and I see myself small and healthy and sleeping on their couch. These Shadow Walkers taunt me with what I can no longer have. My brother has been here, he has touched me, he has taken away the lights that kept me safe. I hear him talk to the others who come here and they say I am sick, some twisted form of insomnia that is taking the breath from my body. Is that possible? Is it possible that the Shadow Walkers were never real, that this is all my own mind turned against it? I can’t. I can’t accept it. I can’t. These people, they are part of it. They have done this to me. They have stolen my dreams and left me to waste away. I have tried to tell him that, to tell my brother and the others to leave me alone, but my mouth will not move, my voice will not come. I moan, spittle flying from my lips like an invalid, but they do not hear the rage in my heart. They don’t hear me when I speak. He, they, call this dementia. Is that true? If it is, is all dementia this way? When my grandmother slipped into her state of silent vegetation, the cancer taking the last of her strength, did she hear us? Could she hear us talking about her like she was already dead? Did she try to tell us she was still there and her own voice refused? Oh God, sleep. All of this for sleep. I can feel it coming, but it is not sleep, not really.
Death is near, hanging around my shoulders, creeping forward. Was he always the Shadow Walkers? Was I just seeing my own end coming down the line? I keep thinking of my grandfather singing this old Appalachian song he brought with him from North Carolina. Oh Death, Oh Death, Won’t you spare me over for another year. I haven’t thought of that song in decades, but here it is, in these final moments. If this is really dementia, can you believe that? The past coming back so clearly here at the end. I always thought it would be a ceasing if that was how I went, but this is much worse. I am everyone and I am nothing and I am nowhere and I am everywhere. I speak, yet they cannot hear my cries. I am so tired. If this is the end, who am I to stop it?
Oh death.
Oh death.
#
