The Shadow Alphabet, and other tales for Nightmare Night

by Cold in Gardez

Presence and Absence

Rumble lay awake in bed.

It was a warm night for late autumn, and even the open windows offered no relief. His curtains hung limp and motionless from their rods, undisturbed by any breeze. Outside, the quiet call of cicadas puzzled by their extended lease on life filled the stale air.

Sweat prickled in his coat. His whole body seemed to itch with it. He rolled from one side to the other, rubbing against the sheets in a desultory effort to find some relief. He stretched his wings, but even those faint, cooling eddies died after just moments. The wet cotton air pressed against every inch of his exposed coat. In frustration he rolled onto his back and kicked away the sheets, exposing his naked belly to the night.

He was tired. Exhausted, even – a long afternoon playing with the Crusaders, then flight practice with his brother until the sun dipped below the horizon, had drained all his youthful energy. He had collapsed into bed after his bath, fully expecting to close his eyes and not move until morning.

It was not to be. Tired though he was, sleep refused to come. He stared up at the ceiling and tried to empty his thoughts. Surely, if he could just relax, sleep would follow.

But his thoughts refused to empty. He closed his eyes and saw back to that afternoon, running with the Crusaders, chasing them and being chased by them. He remembered being struck by how much they had changed over the years, and how those changes had made him aware of the changes in himself. They were teenagers now, almost young mares, and he found his memory drawn to a brief moment, when Apple Bloom glanced over her shoulder and caught his eye—

Nope. Nope. He shook his head and rolled onto his stomach. Sleep most definitely didn’t lie down that line of thought. He focused all his attention on the thin linen sheets beneath him and how blissful their momentary cool felt before his body warmed them to the same stultifying temperature as everything else in the room.

He stretched his forelegs beneath the pillow. It was still cool there, at least. If he reached his hooves a little further, it was like dipping them into the waters of the pond outside the Whitetail Woods – cool and endless and all of it unseen. He let out a long breath and closed his eyes. The weariness that had been lurking in the corners of his mind slowly stole over him, and he felt his body sink deeper into the sheets.

His hoof brushed against something beneath the pillow. Soft and fibrous and springy. A curled bit of the pillowcase. It sparked a brief moment of interest in his fading mind, but the encroaching tide of exhaustion was too much to resist. He fell asleep, and thought nothing more of it.

* * *

Rumble woke in the morning feeling like a million bits. No shred of the night’s exhaustion remained. He stretched all his limbs and was about to hop out of bed when he noticed something dangling from his forehoof.

It was a hair, dark. He brought it closer to his face. It was damaged, he noticed, and dirty. It smelled of earth.

He looked at his pillow. Nothing about it seemed out of place. He reached for it, hesitated for just a moment, then flipped it over. There was nothing beneath – just the plain linen sheets he’d had for years.

Weird. He shook his hoof to dislodge the stray hair and flew down the stairs to get ready for the new day.

* * *

The weather cooled throughout the day. His brother, Thunderlane, said a cold front was moving in. By the time Rumble turned out the lights and settled into bed, the gentle tap of rain against his window produced a soothing, soporific soundtrack for the night.

Hours later he woke with a full bladder demanding relief. He groaned and tried to see if it was getting light outside yet, and if it was worth simply waiting in bed and ignoring the growing pressure in his groin and the shadow of pain that lay beneath it. No dice – full dark, still, and probably hours until the dawn. He stumbled out from beneath the sheets, wandered into the bathroom to do his business, and then flopped back down into the bed, ready to surrender instantly to sleep.

He was in that half-awake state on the edge of sleep when the sound of bedsprings interrupted the darkness. In an instant he was wide-awake, frozen, staring at the wall and the window. The mattress behind him seemed to sag, as though a new weight rested upon it.

It’s Thunderlane, Rumble thought. His breath froze in his chest, every muscle locked rigid with fear. It’s Thunderlane. He heard me get up to use the bathroom and came in to see how I’m doing.

But Thunderlane said nothing, and Rumble remained frozen, not daring to roll over. His heart hammered in his chest. A sickening, thoughtless panic began to build, crawling up his throat, desperate to escape as a scream.

No. No. He willed the panic back into his body. None of this was real. He had imagined it – dreamed it. All he had to do was roll over and see that the bed was empty. He marshalled his courage, counting down to the moment he would turn and reveal the figment for what it was.

But every time he reached zero in his mind, he hesitated. His courage always failed. And in time the light grew outside his window, and dawn beat back the night, until finally he heard hoofsteps in the hallway and his bedroom door open and Thunderlane’s voice, “C’mon sleepyhead, you’re missing breakfast!”

Hoofsteps slowly faded down the hall and stairs to the ground floor. Rumble slowly turned, ready to scream and to bolt, but nothing waited for him on the bed. It was empty, and always had been.

Just a dream. But he could barely stop shaking as he made his way downstairs.

* * *

Rumble nearly forgot about the nightmare. All day, at school and at play, the bright autumn sun burned away those nighttime memories, evaporating them like the morning dew on the grass. Aside from a faint weariness that dogged his steps, the consequences of not enough sleep, it was as if nothing had happened last night.

By the time evening approached, though, a hint of the fear returned. As the sun set he imagined he could hear footsteps where there were none, smell the damp earth and rotting hair in his family’s impeccably clean home. With each passing hour his dread grew.

He thought, for a moment, about asking his brother for help. Thunderlane wouldn’t mind – he might rib him for it later, but his brother would gladly share the bed with Rumble if asked. He’d done it before, as a foal, when the dark was too frightening to bear alone.

It was just a nightmare. He shook himself. He was a big colt, now. Fear of the dark was for foals. Night terrors were for foals. He bid his brother goodnight, and made his way to his bedroom.

He closed the door and considered the lock. It hadn’t always been there – one day, over the summer, Thunderlane had installed it without being asked. He was reaching the age where he needed some privacy, Thunderlane said. At the time, Rumble didn’t understand what he meant – now, recalling the look Apple Bloom gave him, and the memory of her lithe form running through the autumn grass, he thought he had an idea or two.

Locks couldn’t keep out nightmares, though. Rumble closed the door and left it unlatched. He turned out the light and stood unmoving in the darkness.

Nothing changed. All the objects in his room behaved exactly as they had with the lights on. It was nothing to them, of course – the only object in the room concerned with light or dark was his mind. Everything else, all the actual, real items, cared nothing for it.

He stood, breathing in the darkness, until his heart slowed. In time, he made his way to the bed and crawled beneath the covers. They were extra thick tonight.

* * *

Rumble dreamed there was a noise in his room. He woke, and for a panicked moment couldn’t remember why he was in bed with the lights out.

He mastered his breathing. Slow in, slow out, just like flying. The thick blankets were a warm comfort over his shoulders. Although they were only cloth, they felt like an invincible shield against the darkness and whatever it held. Anything could be out there, but as long as he was beneath these covers, he was safe.

He rolled over, settling onto his side. His hoof snagged on something beneath the covers. A burr on his hoof, perhaps, catching the threads. He tugged it loose with the quiet snap of a breaking hair, and settled back down to sleep.

Enough light poured in from the streetlights outside to make out the contours of the room. Empty, still – not that he expected anything else, but it was a relief to see. Only the darkness of the hallway beyond the bedroom door remained absolute.

He closed his eyes, and in time sleep returned.

Comments

[Georg]

Another life saved, thanks to the Acme Monster Snorkel (tm)
c1.staticflickr.com/1/2/1468680_aa7fdc7407.jpg

[AcrossTheCosmoz]

"Monsters don't sleep under your bed, they sleep inside your head." - Unknown

Sometimes our own imagination causes us more anxiety than the reality around us.

Sweet dreams Rumble.

[circs]

Very creepy. Love the ending.

[KwirkyJ]

This one leaves me puzzled. It is possible that the intent is to convey the dread that one manufactures for oneself, but the oddity and recurrence of the hair suggests that there may be something more going on… though I cannot tease out anything substantive. Still, an evocative read.

8519896
Logic at its zenith.

[Cold in Gardez]

8523043

(his door is open)

[Tadrith]

8519896
The fact that someone besides me was thinking this makes me very happy.

[Zuabug]

Okay, but this actually strikes a chord with me. When I was... 15 or 16, for about a month I had nightmares and sleep paralysis. Sleeping on the couch instead of the bed helped a lot, as did sleeping with a green (Christmas) bulb on in my bedroom. This makes me think a lot of that time.

Also of the time that my own bed depressed like someone was sitting on it. God that freaked me out. Didn't turn to look, even though I had been thinking of grandma at the time - doesn't take much to stroke the reptilian brain, I gotta tell ya.

Though I do kind of think that there's a zombie or a demon or another critter in the room, hiding under his pillow, under his bed, in the closet, waiting and creeping and just watching for the moment he lets down his guard because that always happens and you can't avoid it and--

[Alondro]

Ghosts and demons don't need doors.

Clearly, what's really happening is... A SERIAL MOLESTER IS IN HIS HOUSE!!!

And that's actually scary because those monsters are real...

[Frustration in Excelsis]

Hmm. This one was a lot more unsettling, for me, than the previous two. Even aside the detail of the door being open in the end, it's in part because of some personal experiences -- I had my own phase of crippling fear of the dark as a child, plus a period after a surgery where I was under quite a lot of morphine and... well, among other things, I sleep on my side, and I had a recurring impression of there being something behind me, nestled against my back, its weight pulling at the covers, and I was terrified of it and could never work out the courage to look back and see what was going on.

Oh, I told myself it was only our cat sleeping next to me, but somehow I never quite believed it.