@@DESCRIPT="In My Sleep by Black Sunshine"                           
                           In My Sleep
                        by Black Sunshine


     I was twenty the first time I saw a ghost.  
     It touched me in my sleep, and when I awoke, it was standing over my bed.
     Keep in mind, when I say that it touched me, I don't mean in a violating 
manner.  Its touch was faint, light, possibly not even readily apparent to one 
who was just slightly less sensitive than I.  Whatever it was-- the tangible, 
material substance it consisted of that was filtered through to this world and 
could be perceived with human senses-- actually felt like a towel being 
wrapped around my head, cushioning my face in the soft warmness of terry 
cloth.  
     It was a comforting sensation, and yet it was the presence of something 
unfamiliar that woke me.  As I sat up, the heat blushing in my cheeks abruptly 
turned to an icy chill and slid away down my neck and onto my back.  My heart 
was jack-hammering in my chest as I glanced around in the dark, searching for 
a sign of the movement in the physical world that had been the cause of my 
stir from slumber.
     Shadows lurking outside my window scraped silently across the wall in the 
moonlight. Deep in the stillness, I heard a stirring from the other room and 
knew my roommate, Jennifer, was having trouble sleeping.  Perhaps what had 
woken me had also woken her.
     But there were to be no answers-- or so I initially reasoned.  I assumed 
I had had a dream that left me feeling this way-- touched, yet unblemished; 
watched, yet alone; disconcerted, yet undisturbed--  as I sometimes do when I 
wake up to such a vividly irrational physical response.  Reaching under my bed 
and pulling out a notepad, I flicked on a tiny light by my bedside, and began 
to jot down my thoughts, trying to jar loose the fragments of the dream from 
my fading memory.  
     It was an activity I often participated in, one in which I did not quite 
have the unshakeable faith to be certain that it was actually accomplishing 
something.  But yet, it was something that I enjoyed, and I had learned quite 
a lot about myself from these midnight writing exercises.  If nothing else, 
they served as a marvelous storage receptacle for a myriad of unearthly 
notions which I could occasionally sift through, seizing upon one which 
gleamed with promise, and fashioning it into a more concrete and entertaining 
anecdote.  My stories were mostly filled with death, with the inabsolute 
boundaries between reality and fantasy.  My twisted thoughts seemed only to 
manifest themselves in my dreams, so it was no wonder that the tales I 
developed from them were morbid.  Yet I still had never in my waking life 
encountered so much as a breath of the demise or the dark, wet fear that 
permeated my dreams.
     That night's dream was not flowing with the ease that some do, and so I 
found myself hesitating to grasp more of something I could or could not 
remember.  I first perceived it almost as annoyance when there came a sudden 
pain in my hand, sharp and deep within the bone, forcing my fingers around the 
pen in an unnatural way.  Instinctively, I tried to drop the instrument, but 
my hand would not oblige. 
     The pen began to move across the page instead, and my hand scribbled out 
a word that wasn't in my handwriting.
     (Hello).
     It was writing crafted exquisitely into art.  The script was fluid like 
black ice melting across the page, and flourished with a female hand well 
educated in the skills of calligraphy.  
     I looked up, startled, as if the explanation for this sudden bizarre 
occurrence would be sitting right in front of me.  I had no inkling at the 
time of how near that came to being the truth.  The dim lighting from the tiny 
fifteen watt bulb at my elbow cast the room in obtuse patterns of light and 
shadow, making it appear even more surreal than darkness had.  My hand began 
to tremble across the page again.
     (Look behind you).
     Again, my heart tripped along in my chest as I conjured up the monstrous 
being that could be lingering behind me.  The hairs on the back of my neck 
stood on end and a cool breeze tickled my earlobes.  Or did I imagine it?  
No, there was definitely a presence... something... right... behind... me.
     I blinked a few times, my breath catching in my throat.  I wanted no 
surprises, so I moved slowly, as if I intended to trick whomever or whatever 
was behind me into entertaining the notion that I didn't really give a damn 
what was skulking back there.  Behind me, I knew, was the window, twelve 
stories up, beyond the reach of human limbs or drives.  And what was beyond 
the window was what I was afraid of.
     I continued turning my head until I could see directly behind me, 
turning my body as little as possible.  My reflection, lucid and glowing 
against the dark pane of glass, peered back at me.  My face seemed ethereal, 
illuminated by the tiny emission of light that originated from below it.  I 
felt a sudden eerie sense of dread, as if I wasn't really staring at myself, 
but at someone else.  
     But my fear of monsters had dissipated as I realized that there was 
nothing else to see, because there was nothing there.  Just the dark, 
empty window and the moon hovering above the nightscape, shuddering in the 
winter wind.  The emptiness was almost more unnerving than if something 
really had been there.
     My hand began to move again.  I glanced at the paper.
     (Can you see me?)
     Without thinking, I shook my head no.  Who in the hell was I talking to?
     (I'm right behind you).
     "But I don't see anything," I said aloud.  My voice sounded strange as it 
first penetrated the awful silence, then was quickly drowned by it, almost as 
if I hadn't spoken at all.
     "Who are you?"      
     (Birds).
     "You're a bird?"
     (No, I want to be a bird).
     "Oh.  Are you a ghost?"
     (No.  I am still alive).
     A chill crawled down my spine.  I had no time to consider it however.  
The pen was moving again.
     (Fire).
     "You... you want me to build a fire, like in the fireplace?"
     (No).
     "Oh.  Were you kil-- hurt in a fire?"
     (No.  You have fire).
     "Fire?"
     (Yes.  You have fire.  Have strength).
     The gothic handwriting had reached the bottom of the page, so I quickly 
turned to a fresh sheet.  It glared back at me, yellowish and unnatural in 
the light, with no words to distract from its sordid tone.
     (You have fire.  Favor).
     "Fire favor?"
     (Do something for me).
     Again, there was a sharp cramp in the base of my hand, near the thumb, 
and I winced. "What?"
     (Kill).
     Whether it came from the warning bells clamoring in my brain, or whether 
the atmosphere in the room really did alter slightly, it was impossible to 
discern, but I sensed a sudden surge of danger.  Again, I tried to release the 
pen, as if all the peril that pervaded the room was pent up in the tiny ball-
point tip, and released only as my hand pressed that very tip to paper.  With 
a growing sense of panic, I realized now that it wasn't just my hand that 
wouldn't obey my senses.  My entire arm buzzed with numbness and 
unresponsiveness to the involuntarily tasks my brain commanded it to perform.    
     I threw back the covers with my other hand and jumped quickly out of bed, 
the notepad falling to the floor.  What exactly I was going to do, I didn't 
know, but my instincts blared that I had to survive, or at least convince 
myself that I was trying, and I somehow felt myself losing myself, somewhere, 
deep inside my brain where dreams were released, and my brain kept playing a 
song I'd forgotten, and holding a long, long note in a stilted pitch that told 
me I was losing.  Dammit, I was losing!
     There was a jolt through my body, a crack of pain that rippled through 
each of my muscles in turn and snapped them to attention.  I felt myself being 
thrust out of control, crammed into a tiny prison inside my body, where I 
could still see, but I couldn't control what it was I saw.  I felt drugged, 
lethargic, maimed, squelched.    
     Something else had taken over.  I was a spectator in my own body.
     I watched my hand open the bedroom door, and suddenly I was out in the 
hallway.  My body drifted into the kitchen, pulling open the drawer next to 
the stove.  The butcher knife gleamed in the moonlight streaming through the 
kitchen curtains.  The same hand that had opened the door grabbed the knife, 
and I was afraid.    
     Dreamlike, my body retreated back through the darkness in the hallway.  
I passed my own bedroom, and continued to the room at the end of the hall.  
The was another quiet stirring beyond the door, as Jennifer continued her 
quest for slumber.  
     My hand closed on the slick doorknob, and I dropped my other arm to my 
side, the knife cold and unbudging against my thigh.  Killing was not on my 
mind, but it was in my blood. Images of bloodbaths from another time saturated 
my mind, memories of horrors I'd never witnessed-- torn flesh; pools of blood; 
splatters of brain garnishing white plaster walls; bloody, staring eyes; 
entrails skewered from warm bodies. 
     There suddenly flashed before me an image of Jennifer, her hair marred 
with the red of her blood.  This was no memory, but a projection of the 
future.  
     Then there came an image of my bedroom window-- silent and cold, dark 
and without color, without red as all of the previous images had been-- the 
window that was twelve stories up.  This was another projection of the future.  
It was where later I knew I would go to practice being a bird.
     I wanted to scream, but I had no control.  My mind was falling once 
again, fraught with the orture it had endured while I had been in my sleep, 
losing itself in vague unreality, yet unsettled with the mocking feeling of 
comfort that masked the smothering.    
     As I pushed the door to Jennifer's room open slowly, I glanced up and 
peered across the hallway and into the bathroom.  Moonlight barely gave me a 
glimpse of my own pale countenance in the vanity mirror.  My eyes were 
haunted, ancient.
     I was twenty the first time I saw a ghost.
     
     
