From the Teeth of Sleep

A Horror Short True Story

It wasn’t quiet, it was noiseless. Silent. The cabin we rented squatted over a big lake of mud, nothing anywhere except the shadows of skeleton trees and dead leaves. Nature died, we were visiting her grave.

No birds, no crickets, no wind.

We came on vacation, sightseeing the wilds of Alaska in midsummer. But there wasn’t anything to see here. We were far enough North to leave behind anything like a city, but not far enough North for the town to be known by name.

I was 14.

The road to the cabin was nothing but bumps, the driveway, less than an impression. Nothing but the paper crisp sound of leaves and a bad smell. The smell of dead mud.

The cabin had 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an open kitchen-living room. We unloaded our stuff, tramping through the silence, filling the place with noise, polluting the air. We didn’t talk though, nobody talked, too tired from a day of endless driving. It was shoes compressing gravel, chewing crunching, dry leaves hushing together being pushed around by our feet. The whole place didn’t sit right, it felt off. Wrong.

My parents took the big room, the twins took the other, and I was in the last room with my older brother. There wasn’t anything to do, so I wandered the cabin before bed, looking at a stranger’s things, making up stories about them. A big stuffed pheasant flying above the couch in the living room, shot when the husband’s hands didn’t shake. Framed quilts and a basket of knitting yarn next to a wooden rocking chair, for when the wife didn’t quite want to sleep. A restaurant take-out menu on the old fridge, called up on a spotty service then waited on till they weren’t hungry. A handful of worn VHS movies under an old tube TV, played for nobody while knitting needles snipped the silence into little bits. There wasn’t much in the cabin to go off of, but it made the few things stand out more. Signs of life in a lifeless place.

I walked by the twin’s room, saw the rocking chair in the corner with an afghan thrown over the back, knitting needles poking out of a basket on the floor. I peeked in on my parents room, but there wasn’t anything in there except a bed, a blanket chest and the smell of old wool and cotton. The cabin brooded quietly around us. We didn’t belong here. Nothing felt right. I inhaled the air of strangers, dragging my fingers along the trim on the wall, getting their dust in my fingerprints. I walked back past the twin’s room and the rocking chair was settling, like somebody just got out of it. I saw the twins out on the back deck kicking leaves through the railing rungs and figured one of them was sitting there. I told myself it was one of them. Had to be.

In all the other cabins and hotels, we’d put on the TV, watch a show about gold or living off the grid. Here, nobody turned the TV on. Things stayed quiet. Nobody had spoken since our shoes were kissed by gravel dust. I told myself we were all tired. We were. Driving all day does that. I told myself that's all it was. We were tired. My parents went to their room, the twins went to sleep, my brother went to sleep. I closed the bedroom door and climbed into bed. My brother was idling loudly and I sat up next to him, nothing to do. No phone to scroll or book to read, I just sat there. I was alone, the alone of being surrounded by sleeping people.

It was summer, so night never quite came, just a dull haze of purple grey for three or four hours. I couldn’t fall asleep. There was something strange about the place. Something I couldn’t describe but didn't sit right, down somewhere deeper than my gut and farther back than my head. I laid there, staring up at the pimple shadows of the rough ceiling, the dark wooden trim swelling, breathing in and out. The corners filled up with shadow while I watched the smoke detector wink its red eye at me. All I heard was the screaming loud whine of nothing in my ears, pulsing, swishing, buzzing. I was blinking with the smoke detector when I saw the top of the bedroom door swing slowly open. It didn’t creak like the movies, it swung in without a peep. Soundless.

The fizzling in my ears got quicker. I felt my heart in my teeth, pulsing in my fingernails. I stared at the door, wanting it to be a trick of the shadows, willing it to still be closed. I fixed my eyes on the door, didn’t blink or breathe, just stared. It was dark enough to make everything blurry, but it wasn’t pitch black. I looked into the shadowy smear outside the doorway, watching, waiting. Something moved.

It was at the top of the doorframe, and I laid holding my breath.

An arm reached in over the top of the doorframe.

Then another one.

Reaching in slowly.

Followed by the upper half of something. Something human-like but not.

It clung to the ceiling, frozen, half in the room. It was shaped like a person, but crawled like a spider. It stayed still for ages. The way it moved was, wrong. It moved in fits and starts, like it didn't want to be seen moving. It came in over the doorframe in a scramble of shuddering spasms, quicker than I could track and quieter than I could hear, silently clinging twisting grasping, then it stopped. Froze. It hung on the ceiling, fully in the room.

Motionless. Watching.

When it froze, it stayed perfectly still. It was up in the corner of the room forever, my wide eyes locked onto it and it looking back, no eyes to speak of, my breathing cut down to gasps, my arms trembling as I held myself up. It shuddered over right in front of me, sharp limbs blinking quick, dark presence hanging where the wall met the ceiling at the other end of the room. I wanted to cry, to scream and run, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but watch, paralyzed. It jittered down the wall and stopped at the floor, hunched. Poised.

I scrambled backward in the bed off nervous arms, sitting up not taking my eyes off it, shaking with one-inch breaths. It was all dark and skinny, crouched at the other end of the room, pulling my eyes to itself, a homunculus blackhole. It was fast and noiseless. It jittered, stuttering flickering, in a flash scrambled across the floor to the foot of the bed with one hand up on the edge, the other open in midair, hungry wanting. I yanked my knees in and pressed myself back against the headboard, breathing a mile a minute, eyes locked in to the gravity of it, the reality.

It was right there, paused mid-climb at the foot of the bed. Its mouth hungry and open like its hand ready waiting to snap with teeth, thin pointy things sticking out every which way. Its hand pressed on the comforter, narrow bones taut under oil spill skin.

Then it came.

In a flash of spidery crawling limbs it was on the bed coming at me and I screamed and kicked and hit the thing hard, felt my foot make contact with it and I was rolling in the covers screaming and kicking hitting it until my brother grabbed my shoulders.

He had no idea what was going on. I kicked him in the leg. When he had my shoulders he said I had been kicking him. Reality trickled back to me talking to my brother. He asked if I had a bad dream, I said no. It wasn’t a nightmare, wasn’t sleep paralysis or anything like that.

It was real.

Real as the night and the pulse in my teeth and I couldn’t explain it. My brother went back to sleep. Eventually I laid down, heart still thrashing away and flipping about like a bug in a web. I saw the bedroom door. I’d closed it before I got in bed, made sure the latch clicked. But now it was wide open.

I didn’t get much sleep. Everytime I closed my eyes, I saw it jerking toward me, it’s hand on the bed, it’s mouth open, toothpick teeth jutting out.

It was real.

Real as the open door. Real as me.