"They're coming."
He used to whisper it outside my door. I'd hear footsteps coming down the hallway, then silence, then a single fingernail sliding down until it hit the doorknob.
The knob would rattle, but not open, and I would hear him say it.
"They're coming."
Then he would take off, and the worst part was, that was when I had open the door and follow after him.
. . . . .
My brother started having night terrors when he was six. My mother had a history of sleep walking, but she would always just walk out of her bedroom, pause in the hallway, and then go back to bed. That was not the case with my brother.
He would sit up in bed, eyes wide open, and stare straight ahead as if a murderer were inches away from his face.
My youngest brother would report this back to us, as he was the one who had the misfortune of sharing a room with David.
The first few times, it only got that far. David would sit up in bed, stare, breathe heavily, look terrified, and then fall back down on his pillow.
The next day he wouldn't recall anything.
After a few incidents like that, things escalated.
First came the shouting.
"THEY'RE COMING! THEY'RE COMING!"
Don't ask me how a person in the deepest depths of sleep figures out how to yell the most terrifying thing possible, but somehow David channeled his deepest fear--a fear he couldn't articulate to us while he was awake--and send it flying out of his mouth at every hour of the night.
Imagine being fast asleep and then hearing your brother or your young son screaming in terror that someone's coming for him.
More than a few times my stepfather and I burst into David's room ready to do battle with whomever might be there, only to find my younger brother, Ryan, cowering in bed, while David stood in a corner of the room, fists clenched, looking straight at us.
"David, are you okay?"
"They're going to get you."
"Who, David?"
"Just wait. Just wait."
We didn't know this at the time, but it's pointless to try and converse with people when they're having a night terror episode. The only thing you can do is lead them back to bed, and make sure they go back to sleep. Usually it only takes a few moments.
Unfortunately, they don't always go quietly.
One night, David was down the hallway before my mother caught him. He had the baseball bat he kept in his room in his hand, and he swung at her before she was able to take it from him. Just like a person that was actually being chased by someone, my brother's body was fueled with adrenaline, which gave him unnatural speed and strength, or so it seemed.
There's nothing as unsettling as seeing someone you love look as if they've been taken over or possessed by some demonic spirit. They can't hear you. They can't recognize you. They look at you as if you're trying to hurt them, and there's a mix of fear and hatred in their eyes.
"They're coming for you."
That was always David's phrase of choice, and every morning when he'd wake up, we'd ask him who it was he saw in those nightmares. We were so eager to find out what we'd been missing because it was locked away in his imagination.
"What did you see?"
"When?"
"When you were having the nightmare."
"What are you talking about? I didn't have a nightmare last night."
. . . . .
The last great night terror my brother had was a short time after his eleventh birthday.
Sometimes it was easy to tell when one was coming. Like anything else, there were sometimes triggers for the outbursts.
David's happened to be thunderstorms.
That night, a storm was raging outside, and around two am, the power went out. I remember because my clock was flashing 2:12...2:12...2:12...
That was when I heard the footsteps in the hallway.
Normally my parents were sensitive to that sound, and they would immediately run out of their room and make sure David got back to bed.
But this time they were away for the weekend, and I was watching the house...and David.
It had been a few months since his last episode, and every time one ended, my family liked to tell ourselves that was the last one. That David had grown out of night terrors the way my mother had grown out of sleep-walking. Actually, we were scared he was never going to grow out of it. We were worried he was going to be one of those men who hits his wife while he sleeps or winds up on a highway somewhere in the middle of the night, fast asleep and walking until a car hits him.
But we didn't tell David any of this.
I heard the footsteps, but this time they didn't stop at my door.
This time there were no words, but there was laughing.
I could hear David laughing softly as he walked down the hall towards the kitchen.
I got out of bed, and opened my bedroom door. I had just graduated from high school at this point, and I told myself that I should be able to handle an eleven-year-old.
But something about hearing that laughter made goosebumps pop up all over my arms.
When I opened the door and looked down the hallway, all I could see was darkness. The light over the stove in the kitchen was gone, due to the power outage. I thought of waking my brother, Ryan, but he was even younger than David, and I didn't want to upset him.
Besides, I had done this before. I had helped my parents put David back to bed more than a few times. What would be so different about this time?
I made my way down the hallway, keeping a hand on each wall with arms outstretched so that I didn't stumble in the dark, and finally made my way into the kitchen.
The moon was fighting its way through the rain to leave a small square of blue light on the linoleum, and in that blue light, I could a small, wet leaf stuck to the floor.
Before I could wonder to myself how a leaf got into the kitchen, I looked to the right, and saw that the patio door was wide open.
Leaves and rain were blowing into the dining room adjoining the kitchen. The storm was still raging.
Immediately I thought of those adults who run out into the street during a night terror, and I ran out onto the patio to see if David was outside in our yard.
That was when I heard the patio door slam behind me.
I turned around to see the door closed. I thought maybe the wind had done it, but when I went back to open it, David's face appeared in the glass.
He didn't look scared. He looked...satisfied.
I panicked.
"David," I said, "Open the door."
I don't know why I said it. I forgot that he couldn't really hear me--neither through the glass nor through his own haze of sleep--but I wasn't thinking. Rain was coming down on me, and it was cold. Plus, my brother Ryan was still in the house, and David was a danger to himself and to my other brother as long as he was out of bed.
"David," I repeated myself, "Listen to me. Open the door."
David pressed his hands up against the glass. He seemed to look behind him for a second. Lightning struck somewhere behind me with a crash, and blue light lit up my living room.
I thought I saw someone standing there--or was it my brother's shadow?
"They're coming," said David, "They're coming."
Then, he walked away from the door leaving me outside in the rain.
. . . . .
I knew the front door would be locked, and David certainly wouldn't be able to unlock it for me. I was getting drenched, and I didn't like the idea of being outside in a storm. Still, the thought of going back into the house disturbed me. It felt like returning to the lion's cage. My brother was out of control, and yet somehow, he had taken over the situation.
I was afraid of both my home and my family.
How had this happened?
I remembered the spare key we had in case we got locked out. I used it to let myself in the front door. I still had no idea where David could be, but as soon as I had closed the door behind me, I heard a scream.
It was Ryan.
I raced to their bedroom to find my eight-year-old brother Ryan holding David's baseball bat, swinging it wildly at him, while David stood pointing at him as if throwing a curse down upon him.
I grabbed David from behind, forgetting that the worst thing to do in that situation is to do something that could wake him up. To be honest, I didn't care. I wanted all this to stop.
David flung his arms wildly at me, and started screaming--
"LET GO! LET GO! DAD! MOM, HELP! KEVIN! HELP!"
My brother was screaming my own name, begging for my help. He wanted me to protect him from the evil monster that was holding onto him--and that monster was me.
. . . . .
My brother never had another incident after that night.
I put him to bed and slept next to him the entire night in case he woke up again.
For ten minutes after I got him to lay down, he kept his eyes open. Until the moment we both drifted off at once, he never closed his eyes.
Now when we tell him stories about those nights, he seems embarrassed. It's unnerving to find out that your body and mind are capable of taking over without your knowledge or control. So we've stopped telling those stories--even amongst each other.
There aren't many things I'm afraid of, but if I had to pick one, it would be seeing that look in my brother's eyes again. That look of terror while he looks at me, as if I'm the one who wants to harm him.
There is nothing scarier in this world than seeing someone you care about battling something within themselves knowing there's nothing you can do to reach them or help fight whatever it is that's causing their torment.
All you can do is lay next to them and wait for them to close their eyes.
He used to whisper it outside my door. I'd hear footsteps coming down the hallway, then silence, then a single fingernail sliding down until it hit the doorknob.
The knob would rattle, but not open, and I would hear him say it.
"They're coming."
Then he would take off, and the worst part was, that was when I had open the door and follow after him.
. . . . .
My brother started having night terrors when he was six. My mother had a history of sleep walking, but she would always just walk out of her bedroom, pause in the hallway, and then go back to bed. That was not the case with my brother.
He would sit up in bed, eyes wide open, and stare straight ahead as if a murderer were inches away from his face.
My youngest brother would report this back to us, as he was the one who had the misfortune of sharing a room with David.
The first few times, it only got that far. David would sit up in bed, stare, breathe heavily, look terrified, and then fall back down on his pillow.
The next day he wouldn't recall anything.
After a few incidents like that, things escalated.
First came the shouting.
"THEY'RE COMING! THEY'RE COMING!"
Don't ask me how a person in the deepest depths of sleep figures out how to yell the most terrifying thing possible, but somehow David channeled his deepest fear--a fear he couldn't articulate to us while he was awake--and send it flying out of his mouth at every hour of the night.
Imagine being fast asleep and then hearing your brother or your young son screaming in terror that someone's coming for him.
More than a few times my stepfather and I burst into David's room ready to do battle with whomever might be there, only to find my younger brother, Ryan, cowering in bed, while David stood in a corner of the room, fists clenched, looking straight at us.
"David, are you okay?"
"They're going to get you."
"Who, David?"
"Just wait. Just wait."
We didn't know this at the time, but it's pointless to try and converse with people when they're having a night terror episode. The only thing you can do is lead them back to bed, and make sure they go back to sleep. Usually it only takes a few moments.
Unfortunately, they don't always go quietly.
One night, David was down the hallway before my mother caught him. He had the baseball bat he kept in his room in his hand, and he swung at her before she was able to take it from him. Just like a person that was actually being chased by someone, my brother's body was fueled with adrenaline, which gave him unnatural speed and strength, or so it seemed.
There's nothing as unsettling as seeing someone you love look as if they've been taken over or possessed by some demonic spirit. They can't hear you. They can't recognize you. They look at you as if you're trying to hurt them, and there's a mix of fear and hatred in their eyes.
"They're coming for you."
That was always David's phrase of choice, and every morning when he'd wake up, we'd ask him who it was he saw in those nightmares. We were so eager to find out what we'd been missing because it was locked away in his imagination.
"What did you see?"
"When?"
"When you were having the nightmare."
"What are you talking about? I didn't have a nightmare last night."
. . . . .
The last great night terror my brother had was a short time after his eleventh birthday.
Sometimes it was easy to tell when one was coming. Like anything else, there were sometimes triggers for the outbursts.
David's happened to be thunderstorms.
That night, a storm was raging outside, and around two am, the power went out. I remember because my clock was flashing 2:12...2:12...2:12...
That was when I heard the footsteps in the hallway.
Normally my parents were sensitive to that sound, and they would immediately run out of their room and make sure David got back to bed.
But this time they were away for the weekend, and I was watching the house...and David.
It had been a few months since his last episode, and every time one ended, my family liked to tell ourselves that was the last one. That David had grown out of night terrors the way my mother had grown out of sleep-walking. Actually, we were scared he was never going to grow out of it. We were worried he was going to be one of those men who hits his wife while he sleeps or winds up on a highway somewhere in the middle of the night, fast asleep and walking until a car hits him.
But we didn't tell David any of this.
I heard the footsteps, but this time they didn't stop at my door.
This time there were no words, but there was laughing.
I could hear David laughing softly as he walked down the hall towards the kitchen.
I got out of bed, and opened my bedroom door. I had just graduated from high school at this point, and I told myself that I should be able to handle an eleven-year-old.
But something about hearing that laughter made goosebumps pop up all over my arms.
When I opened the door and looked down the hallway, all I could see was darkness. The light over the stove in the kitchen was gone, due to the power outage. I thought of waking my brother, Ryan, but he was even younger than David, and I didn't want to upset him.
Besides, I had done this before. I had helped my parents put David back to bed more than a few times. What would be so different about this time?
I made my way down the hallway, keeping a hand on each wall with arms outstretched so that I didn't stumble in the dark, and finally made my way into the kitchen.
The moon was fighting its way through the rain to leave a small square of blue light on the linoleum, and in that blue light, I could a small, wet leaf stuck to the floor.
Before I could wonder to myself how a leaf got into the kitchen, I looked to the right, and saw that the patio door was wide open.
Leaves and rain were blowing into the dining room adjoining the kitchen. The storm was still raging.
Immediately I thought of those adults who run out into the street during a night terror, and I ran out onto the patio to see if David was outside in our yard.
That was when I heard the patio door slam behind me.
I turned around to see the door closed. I thought maybe the wind had done it, but when I went back to open it, David's face appeared in the glass.
He didn't look scared. He looked...satisfied.
I panicked.
"David," I said, "Open the door."
I don't know why I said it. I forgot that he couldn't really hear me--neither through the glass nor through his own haze of sleep--but I wasn't thinking. Rain was coming down on me, and it was cold. Plus, my brother Ryan was still in the house, and David was a danger to himself and to my other brother as long as he was out of bed.
"David," I repeated myself, "Listen to me. Open the door."
David pressed his hands up against the glass. He seemed to look behind him for a second. Lightning struck somewhere behind me with a crash, and blue light lit up my living room.
I thought I saw someone standing there--or was it my brother's shadow?
"They're coming," said David, "They're coming."
Then, he walked away from the door leaving me outside in the rain.
. . . . .
I knew the front door would be locked, and David certainly wouldn't be able to unlock it for me. I was getting drenched, and I didn't like the idea of being outside in a storm. Still, the thought of going back into the house disturbed me. It felt like returning to the lion's cage. My brother was out of control, and yet somehow, he had taken over the situation.
I was afraid of both my home and my family.
How had this happened?
I remembered the spare key we had in case we got locked out. I used it to let myself in the front door. I still had no idea where David could be, but as soon as I had closed the door behind me, I heard a scream.
It was Ryan.
I raced to their bedroom to find my eight-year-old brother Ryan holding David's baseball bat, swinging it wildly at him, while David stood pointing at him as if throwing a curse down upon him.
I grabbed David from behind, forgetting that the worst thing to do in that situation is to do something that could wake him up. To be honest, I didn't care. I wanted all this to stop.
David flung his arms wildly at me, and started screaming--
"LET GO! LET GO! DAD! MOM, HELP! KEVIN! HELP!"
My brother was screaming my own name, begging for my help. He wanted me to protect him from the evil monster that was holding onto him--and that monster was me.
. . . . .
My brother never had another incident after that night.
I put him to bed and slept next to him the entire night in case he woke up again.
For ten minutes after I got him to lay down, he kept his eyes open. Until the moment we both drifted off at once, he never closed his eyes.
Now when we tell him stories about those nights, he seems embarrassed. It's unnerving to find out that your body and mind are capable of taking over without your knowledge or control. So we've stopped telling those stories--even amongst each other.
There aren't many things I'm afraid of, but if I had to pick one, it would be seeing that look in my brother's eyes again. That look of terror while he looks at me, as if I'm the one who wants to harm him.
There is nothing scarier in this world than seeing someone you care about battling something within themselves knowing there's nothing you can do to reach them or help fight whatever it is that's causing their torment.
All you can do is lay next to them and wait for them to close their eyes.
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