Black As Night

A man suffers from what seems to be sleep paralysis. However, it's actually much more than just a figment of his imagination, and he's not the only victim.

 I jerk awake from a deep slumber, long before first light. My room is barely lit, distorting simple objects like my dresser and ceiling fan into shapeless forms. As I try to turn my head to look at my alarm clock, I find that I am unable to. I try to flex my hand. Nothing. I lie there helplessly, struggling with my own body. It’s as though something has pulled the plug from my brain, every signal sent to it flickering out. Then I hear it. A distant humming sound, like activated machinery. It grows louder and louder, soon a deafening trill that could shatter glass and crumble walls. Then, as soon as it had come, it stops. Only silence is left in its wake. At last, I am able to stir. Drawing a shuddering breath, I close my eyes in relief. For minutes on end, I do nothing but stare at the dark shapes swimming beneath my eyelids, then rouse myself. I barely notice myself getting up, shuffling blindly through my home, and getting a glass of water in the kitchen. After drinking it, I slowly shamble back to my bedroom, and fall into a distressed, dreamless sleep.

 That is what would happen every single night since I had moved into my new house in Tucson, Arizona. For 2 months straight, those events repeated themselves each night, like my life was rewinding. The first couple of times, I chalked it up to being just some strange recurring dream. After it persisted for two more weeks, I finally decided to tell a doctor.

“What you are experiencing is called sleep paralysis,” he told me as I lay shuddering on the fainting sofa.

“So, this has happened to other people, not just me?” I asked, a bit relieved.

“Most of it. The ‘humming sound’, as you described it, is the only unique factor. I haven’t heard of another case like that.”

That scared me a bit. What could that sound be?

“Not only that, but most people who experience sleep paralysis say that they see some kind of apparition, like a large shadow or cloaked figure. The only manifestation that you talk about is this ‘humming sound’,” he continued, adjusting his minute, round glasses.

“Hmm.” I said, hiding my worry. After I left the clinic, I met my friend Gabe at a restaurant and decided to tell him about what was going on.

“Sleep paralysis, eh, Andy?”

“That’s what the doctor calls it.”

“Doctor?”

“It’s been going on for weeks. I had to do something.”

He nodded slowly. “I guess. What do you think the….uh…‘humming’ is?”

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

“No, no….” he replied, a bit too quickly.

“Hmm.” I looked away. We didn’t speak to each other the rest of our time there.

 The events persisted. The doctor prescribed me with medicine, but nothing worked. Every method he could think of didn’t work. Then, something changed. I had a new experience. I remember driving home that night, dreading what was to come. After getting home, I delayed going to sleep for as long as I could, reading and watching TV. After a while, though, I could no longer keep my eyes open, and had

to succumb. Sure enough, I woke up hours later to find that I couldn’t move. I heard the humming sound, as usual. This time, though, something was different. I could pinpoint where the sound was coming from. The window. It got louder, then stopped. When I could finally move, I got up and ran to the window, just in time to see something I will never forget. It was what looked like a ship silhouetted against the pitch black sky. This was possible because it was in fact darker than the midnight sky. It was a perfect oval shape, blacker than the blackest night. It was as though someone had punched a void in the universe. I watched as it sped away until I could no longer see it. I stood at the window for what felt like a half hour, just staring at the space where it had been. I thought about calling Gabe, but he would never believe me. I clambered into bed and tried to sleep, but couldn’t. I lay there all night, eyes wide open, petrified.  The next morning, I got up and rushed to the library. People stared at the massive circles under my eyes, but I didn’t care. I had to find an explanation. I stumbled up to the front desk of the library. The lady at the desk looked at me through thick, red, pointy glasses.

“How can I help you?” she asked in a Brooklyn accent. She sounded like she hated her job.

“Could you.....point me towards…..some books on…...sleep paralysis?” I asked, panting.

“I’m sorry?”

When I regained my breath, I asked again.

She gave me a sideways glance.

“Up the stairs, to the left, fifth shelf on the right.”

I muttered my thanks and hurried away. I must have brought home at least 15 books on sleep paralysis, and all I did that day was look through them, trying to find some kind of connection. For a while, the closest thing I could find was people claiming that there was a link between sleep paralysis and aliens, which seemed close enough. I didn’t find anything really promising until a book called Extraterrestrial Hypnosis. It looked like the ramblings of a nut, but I tried it anyway. What I found was both astonishing and terrifying.

 (Scottsdale, Arizona, circa 1950) Johnathan Hillbale, age 37, began showcasing strange behavior after weeks of complaining of nightmares. According to his wife, Johnathan had claimed to awake to find that he was unable to move his body. “A few times, he went as far as to say that he heard a noise outside his window,” she says. After these claims persisted for weeks on end, they suddenly stopped. However, Johnathan began to show a lack of emotion and expression. “Now,” his wife says, “he’ll just stare into space with a deadpan expression. I’m starting to get really scared.”

 It was uncanny. This man claimed to be experiencing exactly what I had been, right down to the humming noise. The scariest part was the aftermath. What happened to him? I read further, desperate to find something, anything, to answer my many questions. I knew that the ship I had seen had something to do with it, but whatever was in that ship I could only guess. My main question was: What do they want from me?

After 400 more pages of eyewitness accounts, newspaper citations, and theories, it hit me. Every single case seemed the same, if not at least similar. A person claimed to have something resembling sleep paralysis, then after time, the claims stopped, and the person started to not show emotion. On a couple of the cases, someone even caught the sufferer doing some kind of strange ‘ritual’, like staring into a lit up mirror, or making hand signs out of a window, or speaking to air.

 Control. Our consciousness. Whatever these things were, they wanted control over our bodies. Why was beyond me, but that was the only conclusion I could come to.  I had heard about plenty of UFO sightings in Arizona, especially in my area, so it seemed likely that whatever was doing this was some kind of alien. I began researching UFO sightings in the area, and I had only just started when something strange happened. It was about one in the morning at the time, but I didn’t think anything would happen while I was awake. Those thoughts changed very quickly. I was sitting at my computer when a bright light suddenly lit up the room. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, but I guessed the window. All I could see was a white void, so much so that I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. Then, suddenly, I blacked out.

 I don’t know how much time passed, but it felt that almost immediately I woke up to find myself lying on cold, hard metal. My eyes flew open to be met by a wide array of strange objects. Everywhere I looked was stranger. I was in a large room shaped like a dome, with walls so shiny that you could see a perfect reflection of everything. I was strapped down to a narrow, steel bed that was in a row of them. The room contained multiple pieces of whirring, rotating machinery, some of the equipment even emitting steam. There was a network of transparent tunnels sprouting from the ceiling, each of them ending in a curve directly above each of the beds. I had no idea what would come out of those tubes, and I didn’t want to find out, so I began to struggle. Struggling seemed to only tighten my bonds, constricting me until I could hardly breathe. Then I stopped. I calmed down. I suddenly began to find myself slowly easing off of the far end of the bed, until finally I fell onto the ice cold floor. I saw myself in the wall, and almost screamed. I had odd, black markings all over me, like runes of some kind. My clothes had been taken away and I had been dressed in some kind of cloth. It was like a metal sheet draped over me, with a hole cut for my head. It was cool to the touch, and it felt like it was woven from strands of thin iron. I staggered to my feet, aching all over. I had to find a way out of there.

 I looked around the room, dazed, to try and find an exit. I didn’t see so much as a sign, let alone a door. I started to feel the walls, going all the way around the room. Finally, in between two of the metal beds, I felt a soft spot in the wall. Thinking it was a panel, I pushed my hand into it. When I say into it, I mean that my hand went through the wall. I recoiled. Slowly, I began to walk towards the wall. Where there should have been the cool feeling of metal, there was only air. I suddenly found myself in a different room, this one with multiple hallways branching off of it. One of them was blocked by a large, black, stony-looking door with a panel in the middle. “That looks important enough…”, I thought. I was making my way towards the door when I heard footsteps approaching. Thinking quickly, I dove back through the wall and hid under one of the beds. Through the wall, I heard a door opening.  Then, a man walked into the room. This struck me as odd, because it was a human man. Then I noticed something. His face was….blank. More than blank. Empty. It wasn’t a human, but what was left of one. He was possessed by these…….aliens. I shuddered. The man passed through the other wall. I emerged from under the bed, shaking. When I reached the stony door again, I cautiously touched the panel. It flashed red, and I flinched. Then it opened. I’ll be surprised if I ever forget what was behind that door. The room that it led to was different than the others, still round, but less reflective. There was a huge window that showed nothing but blackness and stars. Underneath the window was a long, curved panel, completely covered in buttons, levers, switches, and flashing lights. What was in the middle of the room was what stuck with me. In the middle of this room was a large, cylindrical tank with a reflective, metal base. Another system of glassy tubes was connected to the top of it. I guessed that they led to the room where I had woken up. In the tank was what I, at first, took to be a large, moving, black storm cloud. No flashing of lightning, no moisture, just a black puff of opaque gas. The strangest thing was that it seemed to be staring at me, even though it didn’t look alive. It was eerie, making a wave of dread wash over me.

“Wait a minute……”

I realized something. All of the information I had read in the book came flooding back to me. The dull stare of that man I had seen. Why would they need control? I know knew why. This “cloud” seemed alive because it was. This “cloud” was the aliens. That’s why they needed control over human bodies. Because they didn’t have bodies at all. They were in a gaseous state. But what was the point of the sleep paralysis? A test? To see who was easier to control? Maybe. Maybe not. What scared me was that I had almost ended up like all those other people. A vessel. An empty shell, only room left for the black, vaporous thing in front of me. I was no longer scared. I was angry. I was enraged that these things had taken life out of humans so that they could invade our bodies, carving out our souls to make room for themselves. In fury, I grabbed what looked like a metal pipe, and, without thinking, smashed it into the glass tank. Black smog poured out into the room, enveloping everything. I fell backwards, stumbling into the controls. The fog was starting to disappear with a hissing noise, dissolving until there was nothing left. Was it dead? I hoped so. My vision was starting to blur. Alarms blared, and shapes came rushing through the door and into the room. That’s when I blacked out.

 I woke up to see nothing but gray. That’s all I could see. The color gray. That, and the ant that was now crawling towards me. I sat bolt upright. I looked around to find myself sitting on the sidewalk outside of my house. The street was completely deserted. It must have been extremely late.

“How did I get here……?”

Slowly, it all came flooding back to me. The ship. The glassy stare of the man. The black, alien cloud. Had it all been a dream? I shivered, hugging myself. Then I realized what I was wearing. A metallic cloth draped over me, covering everything except my head and arms. I looked all over myself to find black markings, like runes. It was real. It had actually happened. I jumped up and ran inside. Grabbing up the phone, I quickly dialed Gabe’s number.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up…….”

I heard him answer.

“Hello?”

His voice was almost robotic. He must have been sleeping. Quickly, I rattled off everything that had happened.

“Andy, I think you have lost it. I suggest seeing the doctor in the morning.”

With that, he hung up.

 The next morning, I changed into normal clothes and washed off the markings. They came off surprisingly well. I decided to go to Gabe’s house, bringing the tunic-like thing I had worn with me as proof. I had to convince him somehow. While driving there, I enjoyed the scenery rushing by me as I drove down the empty road. I entered Gabe’s house to find him sitting on the couch, staring into space. I tried explaining everything to him, showing him the cloth, but he wasn’t listening. He was just staring, as though in a trance. I thought something was wrong with him, so I called 911. When the woman answered, her voice was dull and toneless.

“Yes?”

‘Yes’? That was never the answer when you called 911. Thinking of this, I told her what was wrong.
“I think there’s something wrong with my friend. He’s just staring at nothing, and he won’t respond to anything.”

“There is nothing wrong. Continue with your day.”

Then she hung up. It was then that I sensed something was very, very wrong. Everyone seemed to be hypnotized, as though something had taken over them. It’s still like that now. The dreams have stopped, but everything seems different. I’ve gotten used to it, though. It’s not that hard. Something may be wrong, but it’s not all that bad………….

Author's Note

This is a very old story. I wrote it maybe last year. I'm rather new to writing as a hobby, so please don't judge me too harshly.

Reviews

[Sayo N.]

I really enjoyed reading it! It had a quick and snappy narrative - maybe a bit too quick for my tastes, but this was flash fiction after all - enough introversion that I could see through his eyes, and enough extroversion that I could watch him with awe.

[TheRavensWoods]

I love this story! Interesting from start to finish and definitely captured my imagination. Wonderful job!