When I was a boy, I had very intense nightmares. Like being chased through the ocean's depths by a ghost wreck of a ship crewed by skeletal pirates, or walking through the fog past rows of severed heads mounted on spikes. Lots of blood. The adults all said it was general anxiety and too much television. Then there were the creatures that chased me. Some of them looked nearly human but they were not. Some of them wore our clothing but were shades of darkness they tried to mold when they saw me. I've done some research on them; nearly every culture has some sort of astral predator. Not quite ghosts, or demons...phantasms, perhaps. They would chase me, my heart pounding. But I could always awake by blinking my eyes. Just blink enough...and I would wake up. Heart pounding...covered with sweat. But I had escaped, at least for the night. But there was one dream from which I never really recovered. I was dreaming, and one ofthem was chasing me through my mind's labyrinth. I saw my house and ran to it. The door was open. I made the last desparate sprint and slammed the door shut. But the creature's hand, almost human, but sallow and nails sharp like claws, thrust through theopening just before it shut. It seemed unhurt; without a pause, it pried the door open. I stumbled back in fright, tears welling, from the large "man" -- the thing in a coat that appeared like a facade of flesh sewn on to a well of darkness -- that strode into the unlit hallway. I blinked my eyes....kept blinking them. Sometimes it took longer than others, but it always worked. Why was I still here. I blinked harder, faster. I knew it was a dream. Just a nightmare; not real. I tried to move my body...my real one that was asleep. He came towards me, not hiding the menace on his face. Blinking! Come on! He leaned over my supine form and pulled out a blade, twisted like a hook but with a sharply glinting edge. "Not this time," he said, and slid the knife across my throat. They say that you can't die in a dream; that you'll wake up first. Or perhaps if you die in the dream, you die for real, and no one ever wakes to tell. The blood poured from my neck covering everything with warm bright red. He laughed like a shadow, licked the blade and turned and left. Maybe he just vanished. I can't remember. I gasped and gurgled, convulsed as the warm became cold. And then everything became cold and dark. I died in that nightmare, whatever they say. I woke. I was in my bed. My mom and dad were in the room. "Are you okay?" said my mom, "You were having a nightmware." I was about to tell them about it, but was scared of my own words...when the creature came into my room. Before I knew what was happening, he brandished the hook-knife and cut my mom's throat. The scream and the gurgling was terrible. I think I started screaming, but I couldn't hear anything. My father lunged at the tall man, but the creature grabbed his arm. He twisted it, and I saw my dad writhe in pain just before the creature sliced into his neck, showering me with blood. I was crying. It had all happened so fast. He stood over me with his crooked grin. I awoke again. It was dark. I couldn't move. I was covered in cold sweat. The shadow creature was on the ceiling, the coat hanging in the air draping around his face. It was less human than before: an amorphic glob made of the stuff of nightmares. The creature leaned down to me, its arms and legs still gripping the ceiling like an insect, stretching with a hellish cracking noise. I remember seeing eyes, and a mouth -- more of a dark maw -- but the rest was a blur seeming of flesh stitched over some inky nothingness. He put a long bony finger in front of his mouth as if to say, 'this is your secret'. He crawled on the ceiling out the door and disappeared down the dark corridor. I couldn't move. I tried to move anything -- a hand, a foot, my neck -- but nothing happened. I could feel more own breath. I was afraid that I would stop breathing, even more than I feared the creature. So I counted my breaths. I must have drifted off, but I don't remember anything more than staring at the ceiling, counting my breaths, fearing they would stop or that the creature would return. Was it in my parents room, murdering them...or worse? I don't remember waking up. It was a long time ago, so maybe I did back then. I like to think that I used to remember. I do remember eating breakfast. Mom and dad were there. They were cheerful. I don't know if they noticed that I was quiet. I didn't tell them anything. It was too horrible. At first their disposition comforted me. But then, and I don't know how the thought entered my head, but it it seemed like they were different somehow. Like their skin was sewn over some simulacrum and that my parents were gone. To this day, lying in an empty room and sleep alluding me, a part of me still wonders whether I am awake or still trapped in that nightmare. I blink my eyes...but nothing happens. Maybe I am still there, and the world I look upon is peopled only with the empty creatures, the phantoms that lurk just beneath our world in the land of nod. If so, my tale may reach no one. But if you are hearing this story, then maybe someday you will see them too and the curse will pass from me.