Chapter 1 (Hidden in the Dark)

As I lay in the harrowing blanket of the night, I felt the tingling at the tips of my fingers begin to work its way up to my wrists. My breathing shallowed, my eyes tried to force themselves shut. My body began to shut down, piece by piece. The more I fought to rip myself free of the unsettling stillness, the deeper I fell into it. My mind was alert with panic and terror. Not tonight, not tonight, not tonight. The tingling reached my shoulders and pinned them to the bed, my breathing becoming rapid. Why won’t he leave me alone?

He used to visit me every night when I was an infant. My parents told me I would scream “shadow man, shadow man!” whenever they put me to bed, and eventually, I refused to sleep alone altogether. The visits stopped for a long time after I started going to school. I figured that it had just been my imagination and that I was growing out of it.

The buzzing began to screech in my ears. This is how I knew he was close. I pushed my eyes open enough to observe my surroundings. I wanted to see him. I wanted to know that I wasn’t crazy. The blinding light from the hallway lamp filtered into the corner of the room as the door drifted slightly open. He cast a silhouette along the wall as he slid inside the bedroom… I can’t really say he cast a shadow as such, because… well, he IS a shadow.

I focused my blurred vision as accurately as possible in his direction. What do you want? I knew he couldn’t read my mind, but I needed to know what he wanted from me, why he wouldn’t ever let me sleep.

The silhouette against the wall grew as he moved closer, his scarlet-red eyes piercing mine. He knelt at my bedside. His face lingered above me and I felt his threatening presence over my entire body, the tingling intensifying. He moved his face towards my ear and whispered the most terrifying thing my mind could have comprehended… “You are going to die”.

The buzzing in my ears turned into screeching. I tried to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I heard a bang, and it felt like my world had imploded. He disappeared. The screeching halted. I still couldn’t move a muscle, but the terror disappeared. I felt… at peace. Like I had entered nothingness. Was this it? Was I dead?

I screamed at myself in my head to pull myself out of this nightmare… this nightmare that I couldn’t believe wasn’t simply a nightmare. I screamed. I pled. I prayed. Jesus, please, help me.

All bodily function returned in an instant and I flung myself off the bed. Steadying my breathing, I grabbed the box of tissues from my bedside table and blotted the dripping sweat from my forehead. Don’t cry. Do not cry.

My back against the bedside table, I reached above my head to grab my phone from it, checking the time " 3:33… what is it about those numbers?

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What the Hell is this tat? I grimaced as I placed the scruffy - and slightly dirty - short plaid trousers back on the market stall. Sunday morning markets weren’t exactly a Utopia of great buys, but on a janitor’s salary with medical student debt, I didn’t have much choice but to shop there.

“Cheers, mate”. I handed the £7.49 to the stall owner for my collection of bargain polo shirts and collected my items to leave. As I dawdled towards the exit, counting the change I had leftover, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I whipped my head around to meet a pair of dark brown, harrowing eyes - eyes that looked as if they had seen a lot of pain.

“I know, Michael”.

I turned fully and stared blankly at the middle-aged lady in front of me. She sounded as if she was foreign - Brazilian, maybe? She knew what, exactly?

“How do you know my name? Have I met you somewhere?”

“No, darling, but I’ve met you.” I could barely concentrate on her words - her eyes were piercing. “I see him too.”

“See who?”

“The Grey”.

“Forgive my ignorance, but what are you talking about?”

“I’ll see you soon, Michael.”

She smirked and crossed my path and, walking towards the exit, I realised that I had forgotten to ask a vital question.

Snapping myself back around, I shouted after her. “Wait, what’s your name?”

“Jasmine.”

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Washing the wax out of my hair over the sink, I was still pondering the intentions of the lady I met at the market twelve hours earlier. How on Earth did she know my name? What was it she said she saw…? The Grey? What was that?

I roughly dried my hair off with the hand towel from the bathroom rack and dumped it on top of the washing basket, and stumbled sleepily from the en suite bathroom to my bed. I knew I’d have no trouble getting to sleep after the day I’d had.

As I curled up under my blanket and began to fall into a peaceful state of placidity, it began. I wasn’t anticipating this tonight - it has never before happened two nights in a row. The familiar sting of the tingling sensation spread through my fingers, and I decided I wasn’t having it tonight. I tried with all my might to free myself, but with each move of a muscle, I felt as if an anchor was pressing down on top of me, forcing me into position. He entered my room for the second consecutive night, and dangled himself over me. I felt something that I hadn’t felt in this situation before… I felt angry. I felt violated, infiltrated, bullied. This seemed to faze him. I guess he fed off of my fear, the emotion that I found usually came with his presence. As I bore my eyes into his, he backed off, and the tingling decreased. As he disappeared into the night, I noticed something that I hadn’t during my previous encounters… a flicker of grey on his skin. He appeared much more… three dimensional than I expected for a shadow person.

Breathing rapidly, I wiped the sweat from my brow with my bare hands and dashed to my laptop in the living room. Grey skin. Grey… Jasmine… The Grey… what is this thing!?

I typed “the grey” into Google - no luck. All the results were in reference to the 2011 movie of the same name. I tried “the grey shadow” - still nothing relevant. All references to '50 Shades of Grey'… I paused to think for a moment, and entered “the grey Jasmine” - I scrolled through links of miscellaneous results, until a preview of a website caught my eye - Jasmine Smith, UFO expert and Alleged Grey Abductee. “This has to be a joke…”

I clicked the link and scrolled until a picture caught my eye. Captioned with the words “artist’s impression” was a drawing of the shadow person - but he was grey, like the flicker I saw, not jet black as I had always thought. His stabbing, red hot eyes were just as I had experienced since I was a child. For a moment, I was elated - I’m not insane! But my elation slowly turned to a sickening mix of wonder and panic - UFOs? Aliens? They were the stuff of fairy stories, weren’t they?

I couldn’t bring myself to believe in something that I had never believed in - but something compelled me to print out the pages of alleged abduction claims and descriptions of what I still insisted on referring to as “the shadow person”. For the rest of the night, I sat in my armchair with the TV on. I felt much safer with moving colours and shapes in the room... as long as it wasn’t him.

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“Morning, Michael!”

My postman was a cheery chap. Still eighteen years old, he was full of life, and he brought a smile to the faces of many folk on my street. Handing me my letters and morning newspaper, he hopped onto his bike and took off down the road, zig-zagging playfully, not a care in the world. “Wait a few more years, Adam”, I muttered to myself.

I slumped back into the armchair that I had spent the last ten hours in, and flicked through my paper. Usually, I skipped right past the obituaries, but on this particular morning, a photograph caught my eye. The lady in the market.

Jasmine Smith, beloved mother and grandmother, you shall be truly missed.

“Oh my God…”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stared through the page for several minutes, before realising that I was feeling an odd sensation of despair that I didn’t expect. I hardly knew this woman - but I was mourning for her like a distant relative.

Taking it all in, and trying to keep from shedding a tear, I sat still in my armchair with my eyes closed, remembering her words at our first meeting. I’ll see you soon, Michael.

A heavy knock at the door startled me and snapped me back to reality. Rubbing my eyes and forcing a smile, I walked as confidently as possible to the door. I was met by a young, foreign woman, with stunning black hair and beautiful almond eyes.

“Michael Simmonds?”

“That’s me. What can I do for you?”

“Hi. I’m Jasmine’s daughter. Judith.”

“Oh, erm... how did you find me? Why did you find me?”

“My mother passed away four days ago.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“She knew she was going to die, Michael.”

“She was sick?”

“No. Followed.”

“Excuse me?”

“May I come in?”

Without waiting for a reply, Judith scuttled past me and into the living room. Immediately, she went to the laptop and asked for the password.

“Simmonds89.”

“Wow. Secure. Anyway, I need to know if you've been having the same experiences as my mother. She kept saying your name, amongst other key words, right before she passed. I think she thought you may be next in line.”

“Next in line for what? Can you please tell me exactly what is happening and why you're in my house?”

“You see the grey, don't you? On a regular basis?”

“I see something. What on earth is a grey?”

“Please save all questions until later, otherwise you'll think I'm insane. You need to hear me out on this.”

I conceded, rolling my eyes and taking a seat on the sofa, opposite the desk at which Judith was sat. Her eyes showed a confusing mix of fear and determination. She didn't look like the kind of girl to mess with, yet somehow still rather vulnerable.

“Is this anything like the “something” that you see?”

She swivelled the laptop to face me, confronting me with an artist's impression of a strange being with piercing red eyes, miniscule lips and silvery skin. I paused as I waited for her to laugh, or smile or something, but Judith didn't seem like she was having me on.

“Unfortunately. Why?”

“This is a grey.”

“What is it though?”

“A humanoid.”

“A what now?”

“Alien.”

I wasn't entirely sure how to react at this point. I remembered the stuff I had printed a few days prior, but... I mean, my instinct was to laugh. In the world I live in, if someone mentions aliens in a serious context... the only response is to laugh.

“...Oh come on. If you wanted to pull the whole “alien abduction” thing on me, couldn't you at least find a proper picture, you know, small body, weird head, massive black eyes and all that?”

“Like I said, these are humanoids. They're shapeshifters. They may appear somewhat human when approaching you at night, but I promise they aren't. These things disguise themselves during the day, appearing fully human, and at night, they paralyse their victims to induce fear. Fear is what fuels them. It's their food and water, if you will.”

“This is an absolute joke. Who do you think you are, parading into my house and spouting out fairy tales about spaceships and little green men?”

“Michael, I really need you to believe me. Can I please check your left elbow?”

“Sorry?”

“I need to see if you're chipped or not.”

“Stay away from me. You're seriously demented. You need to leave my house now.”

“Alright, fine. If you don't want to believe me, then I can't help you. I hope you manage to find the answers you're looking for.”

With that, she closed the laptop and swiftly removed herself from my house, closing the front door behind her.

Reviews

[Rabidporcupine]

Wow, this is actually really good. Please keep going with this.

[Natasha-Jayne Wigley]

@Rabidporcupine, thank you very much indeed!